Leviticus Cycle 6 Tzav

Tzav 

A Study of Masks

Tzav is quite a verb construct. It’s from the shoresh tzaddick vuv hey. It forms the imperative or as we also call it, direct address. It's different though. It doesn't follow the rules.

We can just accept it and say that it’s an irregular verb (and that’s why and that’s the way it is) and completely avoid the subtle invitation of this strangeness. We can simply move on and look at the literal meaning of the verb and talk about sacrifice and how it relates to prayer. Then we will feel good about ourselves, supported by the masks of centuries.

What we need to do though is break through the masks. That’s why they are there. We need to pull them off with gentle or brash direction and peer with yes (longing) at the next mask that must be uncovered,  and the next and the next, then at the clear gap between the God-center and the seeming truth at which we stare.  Not an easy journey but very Jewish.

I can’t possibly (in a short drash) pull all masks off of this parasha. So let’s try one: that of language.

  

For a review, in order to form the direct-address of any pael verb  many of us have religiously studied that we take the future (or atid) in the appropriate person and drop the first letter. And in order to form the future of any lamed-hey verb (3^rd person singular) we keep the hey and add a yud. Therefore it only makes sense that there would be a hey at the end of tzav and it wouldn’t be tzav but tzavah. Please remember the parashah Tetzaveh. There we have the future tense, hey included. 

Now let’s look at another verb. The verb yatsa (to exit) does drop the first letter of its future tense conjugation and thereby also forms a two-letter construct for direct address.

Ah, (we might wonder) is our verb..to direct…just copying this verb…to exit?  It could be.  In English they seem like totally different words. They don’t sound alike. They aren’t spelled alike. But for anyone who knows Hebrew (who is either just learning or steeped in expertise), these two verbs that tiptoe and stomp through Torah can easily be confused and mistaken one for the other.  They sound alike, look alike and shout at us. They are both stars of  the Exodus myth, significant, both of them, joined at the hip.

   

It makes sense. After all if we are to exit we better have some good directions.

The only hurdle is that there’s a huge gap between any exit and the discovery of directions. There always is.

Think of  a book like Kerouac’s On the Road. He certainly makes an exit but not with any exact plan. Think of Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. Hans certainly exits his conventional life but it takes him quite a while to find some remnants of direction. Think of the myths of gilgul and after-life. Yes, we die and our soul rises to Hashem but it’s not an immediate thing. There’s a process, a new freedom beyond the boundaries of body.  New directions are therefore created by the mystics, new ways to approach the Divine.  Think of Derrida’s essays on the gap between the spoken and written word. The word when it becomes written automatically transforms to a new feeling (a new voice and a new process of connection) and therefore boundaries of transmission-direction change as well. Think of the fires on the altar with its billions of sparks in mid-exit, all of them moving chaotically and then in one final direction-up. Think of people who have historically been catapulted from nation identity to a new identity, one that must be embraced. Think of the exile of the Jewish people, metaphorically and for real. Is direction not the purpose of a good percentage of our sacred and modern commentary?

 Think of any new moment, any shock of exit when it comes to consciousness, home, relationship or creed. At first there’s a feeling of desperation, of being scattered, of being like a million disparate parts or sparks. With direction there’s a force of energy that propels us to a new level of acceptance and self-understanding. It propels us to a new strength that in turn enables us to reveal a whole new level within self. We then tend to give each new level the same name. We call it Love.  Love is certainly great. Love certainly points to more Love.  And more and more we recognize Oneness.  The process is never ending. Eternal.

In Tzav, we are still many parts, each one of us approaching the altar of truth (literally) to take care of a specific responsibility.  Just as the parts of the animal and the minchah offering (however) are held in the hand of the Kohenim and waved, just as they are joined together on the altar to become one line of sweet smelling smoke for God…so too are we those same ontological parts. Here, in this parsha, we are merging the two verbs (tzavah and yatsa) to become one sweet verb for God. We are crossing the gap between the exit (from wherever we come) and the directions to become one sweet consciousness for God.  We are on the crucial walk of humanity.

In the parsha Tzav  we are shown all of this by means of one basic weird verb construct. This is why Torah amazes me.

Torah is not some literal linear series of archaic paradigms. Torah is the action of Oneness and Connection. It’s the study of masks and levels, of gaps between man and God.

So next time when you look at a verb construct and just want to throw it off with sighs of oh it’s irregular, it might be a good idea to delve in, peel off that mask, realize that (really) everything is irregular. Finally, you never know what you might find on the altar of your own anointing.