Priests vs Clerics - Tzav - Mythic Torah

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"Magic User, Fighter, Thief, Ranger, Bard or Cleric?"

I may have let the cat out of the bag in the last few weeks about some of my geekier interests and hobbies, but for parashat Tzav it's time to delve into another - Dungeons and Dragons (and other tabletop role-playing games).

D&D is a fantasy role-playing game in which each player creates a character to be their avatar in the game world, each character is defined by statistics, abilities, level, alignment and, most crucially for our discussion today, a class. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses - a fighter would be good at hand to hand combat but not best at sneaking past foes unseen, while a Magic User could draw on a potent range of spells but were weak if caught in combat.

Clerics were an interesting bunch. They had combat potential and could wear armour, they could call on their deities to banish the undead, and most importantly, they could always be relied on for healing spells. As long as a cleric was true to the strictures of their god (whichever god that might be), their powers were essential for keeping the party alive and in one piece, while a party without a cleric might struggle to make it to the final encounters with only a few hit points to spare.

And of all the stats that a D&D character has, it was Wisdom that was the Clerics most important characteristic.

As a student Rabbi, I like the idea that a cleric's main role is in wisdom (though I suspect Intelligence, Charisma and Constitution are also pretty important). A rabbis role is to learn our sacred texts and bring them to the people so they are accessible, meaningful and transformative.

But what about the Cohanim?



You become a priest because your father was one. That's it.

Parashat Tzav is concerned about priests, as it marks the moment when Moses anoints Aaron and his sons kicking off the hereditary priesthood, where every Cohen is understood to be a descendant of Aaron and his sons.

We have, I think, a hesitancy at a hereditary leadership structure that is imbued with divine authority, rather than a system based on ability (though I think we ought to value Wisdom over Charisma), and this hesitancy is mirrored in the text. Leviticus 8:23 reads:

²³ Moses slaughtered the ram and took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.

This moment, that marks the official beginning of the priesthood, is one of only 4 verses in the Torah with the long cantillation mark called 'shalshelet', a note that suggests hesitancy or reluctance. Perhaps Moses too is nervous about a priesthood based on birth. And yet God commands it, and Moses follows through.

Why? Why are the priesthood just a single family serving god regardless of their ability or merit?

Let's backtrack a little and compare our priesthood to another ancient system, that of Ancient Egypt. Now in Ancient Egyptian thought, Pharaoh didn't just represent the gods on earth, he was a god. In fact, he embodied many different gods throughout his existence - every living king was Horus, every dead king was Osiris.

But Pharaoh was also the mediator between the people and the gods, the ultimate priest for all of Egypt.

The scholar John Wilson wrote in The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man:

"...if the king could represent a god, it is also true that the king could be represented by a man... state dogma might insist that the king was the sole priest for all the gods; but it was impossible for him to function every day in all the temples; that activity must be deputized."

Thus Egyptian priests participated in the ultimate priesthood as manifest in the king. They acted as Pharaoh in ritual matters, allowing the king to be symbolically everywhere at once.

But Israelite priests are different.

Aaron is Moses' older brother, and Moses himself is no king. The priesthood is represented as having preexisted any kind of monarchy, their relationship is between God and Israel, standing at the border between the two, mediating the border through appropriate sacrifices and cleansing.

Because the priesthood and the Levites don't represent the king, they represent the people.

We know that the Tabernacle is paralleled to the creation of the world, the same verbs are used in the construction of the mishkan as are used in Genesis 1, the Tabernacle is a miniature universe.

And the Priests are a microcosm of us.

We are born into this universe, with obligations towards God and man, without consideration for merit, wisdom or dexterity. Sometimes it goes well, and sometimes it goes badly, but that's all their is.

The Priests serve in the temple just as we serve in the world, and whether we are skilled, gifted or not at all, the call is the same.

To serve.