Tzav

Nonverbal communication

This week’s portion, Parsha Tzav, narrates the initiation ritual of Aaron and his sons as high priests. Moses gathers the community at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, the place where Moses confers with God, and consecrates Aaron and his sons as priests. The ritual opens as Moses places priestly garments on Aaron:

He put the tunic on him, girded him with the sash, clothed him with the robe, and put the ephod on him, girding him with the decorated band with which he tied it to him. He put the breastpiece on him, and put into the breastpiece the Urim and Thummim. And he set the headdress on his head; and on the headdress, in front, he put the gold frontlet, the holy diadem—as GOD had commanded Moses. Leviticus 8:7–8:9

This passage caught me by surprise. Despite all the priestly details and specifications, Moses is, ultimately, dressing Aaron, from tunic to headdress. It is intimate. After their falling out over the golden calf, Moses and Aaron don’t speak to each other. Their brotherly connection has seemingly been lost forever. But here they are, in the backdrop of the priestly manual, so close to one another, Moses dressing Aaron, carefully, like a child. And then, at the end of the passage, the intimacy is flattened by the last six words: “—as the Lord had commanded Moses.”

Ascribing the cause of the tender moment to God’s command, nothing to do with Moses’ desire, completely negated my fantasy of the two brothers reconnecting after the golden calf, if only in a small, silent way. This refrain appears throughout the rest of the initiation rite. When Moses poured oil on Aaron’s head, I felt myself grow hopeful again, only to find the same concluding clause at the end of the paragraph. Moses tenderly wipes sacrificial blood on the ridge of Aaron’s ear, on his thumb, and on his big toe—specific, sensitive locations on the body that would certainly require gentleness and care from one brother to another. Yet, the conclusion is the same: the act, whatever the implications, was spurred by God, not Moses. When the rite is completed, Moses finally speaks directly to Aaron and his sons. Even when he does communicate directly to his estranged brother, his tone is as formal as God’s, and he speaks as though Aaron isn’t even there, saying:

Boil the flesh at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and eat it there with the bread that is in the basket of ordination—as I commanded¹: Aaron and his sons shall eat it; and what is left over of the flesh and the bread you shall consume in fire. Leviticus 8:31–8:32

To drive the point home harder, Moses continues: “Everything done today, the Lord has commanded to be done, to make expiation for you. You shall remain at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting day and night for seven days, keeping the Lord’s charge—that you may not die—for so I have been commanded” (Leviticus 8:35).

At this point in the reading, my confusion transformed into pure skepticism. Moses, at every point in the interaction, has verbally distanced himself from Aaron and the situation itself. He repeatedly invokes God’s command to absolve himself from any implication that he might care in the slightest about his brother. It reeks of overcompensation. Stay at the entrance of my tent, Moses says, for seven days, so that you won’t die, but only because I’ve been commanded to command that of you.

Even though there is nothing in the text explicitly about Moses’ feelings toward Aaron during the rite, and there is everything explicitly denying a care at all, treating Moses and Aaron as real actors with real feelings and motivations makes a purely literal approach to the passage impossible for me. Moses and Aaron didn’t suffer sudden amnesia after the golden calf. They still hold the memories of their partnership in the exodus, how they so depended on each other as brothers and joint leaders. The sentimental nature of their original partnership—that Moses needed his brother’s help because of his speech impediment—is impossible to forget, especially in contrast with their relationship as seen in Parsha Tzav. Where once everything was relayed between the brothers through speech, Aaron acting as Moses’s literal mouthpiece, in Tzav, everything is inverted. Moses, now self-assured in his speech, confidently announces his distance and apathy toward Aaron and his sons without stutter, while his actions, nonverbal, small, and decentered within the text itself, leave a world of feeling implied.

Image: Carl Schuler’s “Aaron and Sons Consecrated” engraving from Johann Ludwig Ewald’s Erklärung der hundert Kupfer der Heiligen Schriften des Alten Testaments.

1. Alternatively vocalized as “I was commanded.”