The Torah portion this week takes us to the end of the book of Exodus and, wow, it’s been a journey (pun intended). The Israelites started off as a band of lost folks just setting out into the wilderness, led by a guy they had basically never seen before and the God he was repping. Now, well, they’re still lost in the wilderness, led by the same guy. But now they’re a free people and that’s a heckuva difference.
Over the course of the book, they’ve had the chance to get to know the powers of this God, to test out the leadership capabilities of Moses and his brother Aaron, and to come into their own as a nation. The people who will receive the many commandments we’ll read about in the book of Leviticus are not the same as those who received the tablets at Mount Sinai. They have opinions. They have chutzpah. They have a sense of who they are.
Reading the biblical text this week was confusing for me, since it’s almost exactly the same as the text we read a few weeks ago, when we read Tetzaveh. I literally checked twice to make sure I hadn’t made an embarrassing mistake when I was writing about Exodus 18–20. Could I have somehow read the wrong verses? If not, why was the biblical author telling me something I already know?
We get it, we get it, I thought, the Priests have to be wearing special garb, inlaid with gold, copper, silver, and precious…
