Tetsaveh

(10) [Now] you, O mortal, describe the Temple to the House of Israel, and let them measure its design. But let them be ashamed of their iniquities: (11) When they are ashamed of all they have done, make known to them the plan of the Temple and its layout, its exits and entrances—its entire plan, and all the laws and instructions pertaining to its entire plan. Write it down before their eyes, that they may faithfully follow its entire plan and all its laws. (12) Such are the instructions for the Temple on top of the mountain: the entire area of its enclosure shall be most holy. Thus far the instructions for the Temple.

(20) You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, for kindling lamps regularly. (21) Aaron and his sons shall set them up in the Tent of Meeting, outside the curtain which is over [the Ark of] the Pact, [to burn] from evening to morning before the LORD. It shall be a due from the Israelites for all time, throughout the ages.

(1) You shall bring forward your brother Aaron, with his sons, from among the Israelites, to serve Me as priests: Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron. (2) Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for dignity and adornment. (3) Next you shall instruct all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the gift of skill, to make Aaron’s vestments, for consecrating him to serve Me as priest.

(22) There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the cover, from between the two cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Pact—all that I will command you concerning the Israelite people.

(43) and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My Presence. (44) I will sanctify the Tent of Meeting and the altar, and I will consecrate Aaron and his sons to serve Me as priests. (45) I will reside among the Israelites, and I will be their God.

You shall command the B’nei Yisrael. This is the only parshah in the Torah since Moshe first appears in which he is not mentioned (outside of the book of Devarim in which he is the narrator). This is in fulfillment of the curse that he proclaimed against himself, “[And if not,] blot me out from Your book” (Shemos 32:32). Although this curse was conditional upon God’s refusal to forgive the people for the sin of the Calf, the curse of a scholar is fulfilled in some way, even when made conditionally.

(32) Now, if You will forgive their sin [well and good]; but if not, erase me from the book which You have written!”

(5) So Moses the servant of the LORD died there, in the land of Moab, at the command of the LORD. (6) He buried him in the valley in the land of Moab, near Beth-peor; and no one knows his burial place to this day. (7) Moses was a hundred and twenty years old when he died; his eyes were undimmed and his vigor unabated. (8) And the Israelites bewailed Moses in the steppes of Moab for thirty days. The period of wailing and mourning for Moses came to an end.

(1) After the death of Moses the servant of the LORD, the LORD said to Joshua son of Nun, Moses’ attendant: (2) “My servant Moses is dead. Prepare to cross the Jordan, together with all this people, into the land that I am giving to the Israelites.

(10) Joshua thereupon gave orders to the officials of the people: (11) “Go through the camp and charge the people thus: Get provisions ready, for in three days’ time you are to cross the Jordan, in order to enter and possess the land that the LORD your God is giving you as a possession.”

(19) The people came up from the Jordan on the tenth day of the first month, and encamped at Gilgal on the eastern border of Jericho.

The baraita continues: And from where is it derived that Moses was born on the seventh of Adar? It is as it is stated: “And he said to them, I am one hundred and twenty years old today; I can no more go out and come in” (Deuteronomy 31:2). As there is no need for the verse to state “today,” since Moses could have said simply: I am one hundred and twenty years old. What is the meaning when the verse states “today”? One can learn from it that Moses was born on that date, i.e., he was exactly one hundred and twenty years old. This teaches that the Holy One, Blessed be He, sits and completes the years of the righteous from day to day and from month to month, as it is stated: “The number of your days I will fulfill” (Exodus 23:26).

(18) Make two cherubim of gold—make them of hammered work—at the two ends of the cover. (19) Make one cherub at one end and the other cherub at the other end; of one piece with the cover shall you make the cherubim at its two ends. (20) The cherubim shall have their wings spread out above, shielding the cover with their wings. They shall confront each other, the faces of the cherubim being turned toward the cover.

(1) As for the tabernacle, make it of ten strips of cloth; make these of fine twisted linen, of blue, purple, and crimson yarns, with a design of cherubim worked into them.

כרבים CHERUBIM — They had the form of a child’s face (Sukkah 5a).

כרבים מעשה חשב WITH CHERUBIM, THE WORK OF AN ARTIST — Cherubim were figured on them (on the curtains) in the process of weaving them, not afterwards by embroidery which is needlework — but by weaving it on its two surfaces, one design on one side, a different design on the other; e. g., a lion on one side and an eagle on the other side, just as the silken girdles are woven which are called in old French faisee (Yoma 72b, Jerusalem Talmud Shekalim 8:4).

כרובים. Birds. (shapes of) We base this on Ezekiel 28,14 את כרוב ממשח הסוכך, “as a cherub with protective outstretched wings.” (compare Rashi) It is a large bird. Our sages (Sukkah 5) understand the word to mean “having the faces of young children, toddlers.”

And what is the form of the face of a cherub [keruv]? Rabbi Abbahu said: Like that of a child [keravya], as in Babylonia one calls a child ravya. Abaye said to him: But if so, what is the meaning of that which is written about the faces of the celestial beasts drawing the celestial chariot: “The face of the first was the face of the cherub, and the face of the second was the face of a man” (Ezekiel 10:14)? According to your explanation, this face of the cherub is the same as that face of a man. The Gemara answers: Although two of the celestial beasts drawing that chariot had the face of a man, the difference between them is that one was a large face and one was a small face. In other words, the face described as the face of a man was the face of an adult, and the face described as the face of a cherub was that of a child.

שנים כרובים. And they were facing each other, like two friends who are talking back and forth on Torah matters.

Rav Ketina said: When the Jewish people would ascend for one of the pilgrimage Festivals, the priests would roll up the curtain for them and show them the cherubs, which were clinging to one another, and say to them: See how you are beloved before God, like the love of a male and female. The two cherubs symbolize the Holy One, Blessed be He, and the Jewish people.

It means like a man joined and clinging to his livaya, his partner, i.e., his wife. In other words, the cherubs appeared to be embracing one another. Reish Lakish said: When gentiles destroyed the Second Temple and entered the Sanctuary, they saw these drawings of cherubs clinging to one another. They peeled them from the wall, took them out to the market, and said: These Jews, whose blessing is a blessing and whose curse is a curse, due to their great fear of God, should they be occupied with such matters, making images of this kind? They immediately debased and destroyed them, as it is stated: “All who honored her debase her because they have seen her nakedness” (Lamentations 1:8).

You shall not make for yourself a sculptured image, or any likeness of what is in the heavens above, or on the earth below, or in the waters under the earth.

The two cherubs were placed on the ark to symbolize that the Torah was given from God through the senses, and therefore they had their wings drawn up to show that from above came the Torah ... And they faced each other to symbolize that they are loved and wholesome, as our sages said. And it's also possible further that these cherubs were in the image of two small children, who are pure and have not tasted the taste of sin. One in male form. One in female form. To symbolize and teach that every man and woman of Israel should, from a young age, study Torah day and night, reading it, fulfilling its commandments, for this is how they will become full and happy ... And they faced each other to show the brotherly love between two friends. And they were also on the kaporet to symbolize that in these two things - commandments between man and God, and commandments between man and man - in all of them one should behave as the Torah in the ark teaches ...

It is necessary to understand these similes correctly. The Rabbis meant that the very shape and position of the cherubs was such that they suggested a readiness to embrace each other. They did not mean that these cherubs performed such activities, especially not when exposed to public view. The idea the Rabbis wanted to convey was that as opposed to the Gentiles who require an intermediary in their approach to the Lord, the Jewish people are so beloved of G’d that they do not require an intermediary just as man and wife do not require an intermediary if they want to express their love for one another. For He, the Exalted, leads Israel all by Himself without the help of any intermediary (compare Deut. 32,12). The Gentiles, on the other hand, are assigned to intermediaries as we know from Deut. 4,19).It would have been possible to construct the cherubs in a way that one was the figure of an adult and the other the figure of a child. Ezekiel saw it like this in his vision (Ezekiel 10,14) “the appearance of the face of one was that of a minor whereas the face of the other looked like that of אדם, “an adult person.” In his vision the message would have been that the love of G’d for Israel was like the love of a father for a son, a very formidable kind of love. However, in the Tabernacle the intention was to describe an ongoing close relationship. Seeing that it was impossible to inform us of the type of relationship which exists between G’d and the Jewish people, the Torah decided to describe this by means of the cherubs in the Tabernacle.

ופניהם איש אל אחיו, “and they are to face one another;” these details all prove that these cherubs were not intended to be deities to be worshipped, else they would have faced their onlookers so that these could prostrate themselves in front of them. How is this proof? Supposing there had been only one cherub on the lid of the Holy Ark, or if the face of one of them (if there were two) had been turned toward the people, one could have perhaps understood the symbolism as meaning that their purpose was to inspire awe of them in their onlookers. Seeing, however, that they faced each other, is clear proof that they had no interest in any onlooker. Furthermore, though their wings were pointing upwards, their faces were looking down at the lid, i.e. the space from which G-d’s words would emanate to Moses, and the area in which the Torah was kept. The most important proof that they were not meant to be worshipped by anyone, is the fact that they were in a place that was inaccessible to the people on pain of death. Their function therefore was merely to be servants of G-d rather than His competitors, just as the cherubs (seraphim) in Isaiah 6,2 were perceived as G-d’s servants standing in attendance before G-d’s throne.

From the preceding remarks it is clear that the belief in the existence of angels is connected with the belief in the Existence of God; and the belief in God and angels leads to the belief in Prophecy and in the truth of the Law. In order to firmly establish this creed, God commanded [the Israelites] to make over the ark the form of two angels. The belief in the existence of angels is thus inculcated into the minds of the people, and this belief is in importance next to the belief in God's Existence; it leads us to believe in Prophecy and in the Law, and opposes idolatry.

If there had only been one figure of a cherub, the people would have been misled and would have mistaken it for God's image which was to be worshipped, in the fashion of the heathen; or they might have assumed that the angel [represented by the figure] was also a deity, and would thus have adopted a Dualism. By making two cherubim and distinctly declaring "the Lord is our God, the Lord is One," Moses clearly proclaimed the theory of the existence of a number of angels; he left no room for the error of considering those figures as deities, since [he declared that) God is one, and that He is the Creator of the angels, who are more than one.

(24) He drove the man out, and stationed east of the garden of Eden the cherubim and the fiery ever-turning sword, to guard the way to the tree of life.

את הכרבים THE CHERUBIM — Angels of destruction (Exodus Rabbah 9:11).

הכרובים “the cherubs;” who were these cherubs? They were creatures whose very appearance frightened all those who merely looked at them. They carried gleaming swords in their hands. המתהפכת, “these swords exuded flashes of lightning from either side of the blade.”

(1) I looked, and on the expanse over the heads of the cherubs, there was something like a sapphire stone; an appearance resembling a throne could be seen over them. (2) He spoke to the man clothed in linen and said, “Step inside the wheelwork, under the cherubs, and fill your hands with glowing coals from among the cherubs, and scatter them over the city.” And he went in as I looked on. (3) Now the cherubs were standing on the south side of the House when the man entered, and the cloud filled the inner court.

Each one had four faces: One was a cherub’s face, the second a human face, the third a lion’s face, and the fourth an eagle’s face.

the face of one was the face of the cherub That was the face of the ox, which was transformed into a cherub.

(2) Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for dignity and adornment.

From the roots of the commandment is the principle established for us, that a person is impacted according to his actions and pursuant to his thoughts and intentions. And the agent that atones must attach all of his thoughts and intentions to the [Divine] service. Therefore, it is fit that he wears special clothes for it; as when he stares at any place of his body, he will immediately remember and be aroused in his heart as to in front of Whom he is serving. And this is like the tefillin that all have been commanded to place on a part of the body, that it be to remember proper thought. And even though the priest also wears tefillin, due to the greatness of his matter, he needs this too.

For honor and splendor. This is only said about the garments of the Kohein Gadol. Aharon was required to act with special piety and to set himself apart from the people, which was liable to bring upon him an accusation of haughtiness. Therefore it was necessary that he be distinguished in his dress so that he will be honored in the eyes of people and all would know that God had chosen him to be the “Throne” of the Shechinah.

For should a man seize his brother, in whose father’s house there is clothing: “Come, be a chief over us, and let this ruin be under your care,”

(18) In that day, the LORD will strip off the finery of the anklets, the fillets, and the crescents; (19) of the eardrops, the bracelets, and the veils; (20) the turbans, the armlets, and the sashes; of the talismans and the amulets; (21) the signet rings and the nose rings; (22) of the festive robes, the mantles, and the shawls; the purses, (23) the lace gowns, and the linen vests; and the kerchiefs and the capes. (24) And then, instead of perfume, there shall be rot; and instead of an apron, a rope; instead of a diadem of beaten-work, a shorn head; instead of a rich robe, a girding of sackcloth; a burn instead of beauty.

(1) When Mordecai learned all that had happened, Mordecai tore his clothes and put on sackcloth and ashes. He went through the city, crying out loudly and bitterly,

(1) On the third day, Esther put on royal apparel and stood in the inner court of the king’s palace, facing the king’s palace, while the king was sitting on his royal throne in the throne room facing the entrance of the palace.

On Esther’s third day “Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther clothed herself regally…” (Esther 5:1) The royalty of her father’s house.

(7) So Haman said to the king, “For the man whom the king desires to honor, (8) let royal garb which the king has worn be brought, and a horse on which the king has ridden and on whose head a royal diadem has been set; (9) and let the attire and the horse be put in the charge of one of the king’s noble courtiers. And let the man whom the king desires to honor be attired and paraded on the horse through the city square, while they proclaim before him: This is what is done for the man whom the king desires to honor!” (10) “Quick, then!” said the king to Haman. “Get the garb and the horse, as you have said, and do this to Mordecai the Jew, who sits in the king’s gate. Omit nothing of all you have proposed.” (11) So Haman took the garb and the horse and arrayed Mordecai and paraded him through the city square; and he proclaimed before him: This is what is done for the man whom the king desires to honor!