Lev. 6:1-8:36
Précis: The parasha begins with Adonai ordering Moses to command (“tzav”) Aaron and his sons concerning offerings. Requirements for the daily offerings, directions for the meal offerings, instructions for guilt-offerings and thanksgiving offerings are described. The parasha then describes the initial offerings of the Tabernacle made by Aaron and his sons following their consecration to priestly service by Moses.
Lev. 6:3 “The priest shall dress in linen raiment, with linen breeches next to his body; and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire has reduced the burnt offering on the altar and place them beside the altar.”
According to these requirements, as the first order of business each morning, the priest must dress in linen clothing (which was rather pedestrian compared to his usual raiment). So garbed, he sweeps up and discards the ashes left over from the previous day’s sacrificial fires. Why does the religious leader, dressed like a commoner, undertake a function that might seem more appropriate for the janitor?
I’ve suggested before that this was a form of what we might call “holy drudgery,” meaning that any work connected to the Mikdash or Temple (and by extension our synagogues) was holy. (There is even midrash suggesting that priests fought so strenuously over the chance to undertake this duty that eventually a lottery was used to select the ash-gatherer for the day.) There is a more esoteric explanation. When the priest dons ordinary clothing and sweeps up the ashes, he cannot forget a link to ordinary people who undertake mundane tasks.
Dressed in fancy robes and seeming to appear to the “common folk” as someone closer to God than the people could lead the priests to unwarranted self-satisfaction, or even the belief that they were somehow superior to other human beings, able to act without regard to the holiness of their responsibilities. There is a lesson for the current leaders of our society.
