Tzava, dressing to impress. Tzava, with its elaborate description of the sacred vestments,

which the priests and the high priest wore Lechavod or the Tifaret for glory and for splendor

seems to run counter to some fundamental values of Judaism. The vestments were made to be seen. They

were intended to impress the eye. But Judaism is a

religion of the ear more than the eye. It emphasizes hearing rather than seeing. Its key word

is shemar, meaning to hear, listen, understand, obey. The verb shmah is a dominant theme

of the book of Devarim where it bears no less than 92 times.

Jewish spirituality is about listening more than looking.

That's the deep reason why we cover our eyes when we say Shmae Israel.

We shut out the world of sight and focus on the world of sound, words, communication, and meaning.

The reason this is so has to do with the Torah's battle against

idolatry. Others saw gods in the sun, the stars, the river, the sea, the rain, the storm,

the animal kingdom and the earth. They made visual representations of those things.

Judaism disavows this whole mindset. God isn't in nature but beyond it. He created it. He

transcends it. Psalm 8 says, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers. The moon and the

stars, which you've set in place, what is man that you are mindful of him, son of man that you care

for him? The vastness of space

is for the psalmist no more than the work of your fingers. Nature is God's work, but not itself God.

God cannot be seen. Instead, he reveals himself primarily in words. At Mount Sinai, said,

Moshah, the Lord spoke to you out of the far,

you heard the sound of words but saw no form, there was only a voice.

Elijah, in his great experience on the mountain, discovered that God wasn't in the wind,

...