A good amount of this week’s parsha, which deals mostly with the inauguration of the Kohanim, is spent describing what they will wear to the event. Though we may not automatically ascribe much spiritual value to our clothing, the Torah clearly has a different message. The clothes of the Kohanim are no small matter. They are, the Torah tells us, are “for kavod, honor, and for tiferet, splendor (Shemot 28:2).”  Rashi points out (Shemot 29:29) that it is through his garments that Aharon is invested with the kehuna gedolah. Perhaps most surprisingly, the Gemara tells us that it is the merit of the garments of the Kohen Gadol which saves us from being destroyed by our enemies in galut (Yoma 72b).

This definitely requires a bit of explanation. In order to gain clarity, it helps to begin at the beginning, from the first place we find clothing in the Torah, which is immediately after Adam and Chava sin in Gan Eden. Before the sin, Adam and Chava were unclothed and felt no shame. Shame is borne from the gap between where we would like to be and where we really are. Before the sin, the was no gap. We were clothed in light, and our physical bodies were perfect expressions of our soul. After the sin, a separation was created between our physical body and our soul. Adam and Chava recognized the gap and felt shame.

The first response of Adam and Chava to the situation was to clothe themselves. We call the clothing we create for ourselves beggadim, which comes from the word bagad, to betray. It expresses the idea that our physical bodies betray our essence by hiding our most valuable part, our soul. We clothe our bodies to minimize the physical so that we can emphasize the spiritual. For this reason, we don’t usually cover our face, since that is the one place on our body where our neshama is still clearly seen.

However, when Hashem clothes Adam and Chava, the verv that is used is “vayalbishem,” from the root levush. Levush is another word for clothing, but it can also be read as lo bush, without embarrassment. Hashem was teaching us that we can use our clothing not just to hide our bodies but also as a tool to mitigate the results of our sin.

We are actually clothed in many layers, and most of them are not physical. For example, our middot are called levush, clothing (see Yeshayahu 52:1, 51:9, Tehillim 93:1). Our highest soul is clothed in our lower soul, and then again in our middot, our character traits, which enable our soul to express itself in the world. Those middot are clothed in our bodies, and finally our bodies are clothed in our physical garments. The true purpose of our physical clothing is to be the final link in this chain. On the one hand, our clothing covers our body. On the other hand, it is also an expression of the spiritual covering of our soul. Clothing is an expression of true honor, kavod, which is our internal connection to our highest self. Kavod is another name for our soul, which is hewn from the kisei hakavod, the throne of Hashem’s Honor.

Our clothing has the potential to be the expression of our soul. This was certainly true about the clothing of the Kohanim. Aharon’s clothing reflected his middah of Hod, and his role in the giving of the Torah, which was to be “a mouth for Moshe.” In the desert, Moshe was the face of the written Torah, and Aharon was the face of the Oral Torah. With this as an introduction, we can begin to understand the statement of the Gemara that the clothing of the Kohen Gadol is what saves us from destruction in the galut.

The Gemara illustrates its point with a famous story. Yoma 69a describes what happened as Alexander the Great was advancing on Israel, ready to conquer the tiny nation-state. Shimon HaTzaddik was, at the time, leader of Israel. He was both Kohen Gadol and head of the Anshei Knesset HaGedolah. In response to the threat, Shimon put on the garments of the Kohen Gadol and went out to greet Alexander. It was a moment of great tension. At daybreak the two leaders met in the field, and to the astonishment of the entire Greek Army, Alexander bowed before Shimon HaTzaddik. It was Shimon’s image that he saw before him in all his successful battles.

This is a Gemara that expresses the spiritual reality that underlies historical events. Shimon HaTzaddik lived at a turning point in Jewish history. His was the first generation without neviim, prophets, and the first generation in which Torah was expressed in the name of the teacher who said it. His generation was the generation that moved from the world of prophets to the world of scholars. In his generation the human intellect became the main repository of the Torah in this world.

The tremendous outpouring of Torah that was cultivated in the minds of the Chachamim of Am Yisrael, had to be balanced in the world by an outpouring of wisdom in the secular world. Without this balance, free choice would not be able to be maintained. The spread of the Oral Torah in the world, as exemplified by Shimon HaTzaddik, was what paved the way spiritually for Greek philosophy and culture to sweep through civilization. The clothes of the Kohen Gadol were clothes that revealed the soul of the Kohen Gadol, which was the soul of Torah She Ba’al Peh. These are the clothes that Shimon HaTzaddik wore to confront Alexandar, and these are the clothes that save us through our long years of galut.

We no longer have the clothes of the Kohen Gadol, but we, too, are able to wear clothes that express our souls. The Kohen Gadol was our representative, and his clothing was empowering for all of us. From the clothing changes of the Kohen Gadol, we learn the halacha of wearing special clothing for Shabbat (Shabbat 114a). Shabbat comes from the root shav, return. On Shabbat we can all return to our inner point, and connect to our higher soul.

We are in galut, but we have Torah. And Torah draws out the soul of the person. Each of us has a unique soul that is hewn from the Kisei HaKavod, and a unique revelation of Torah and of that soul in the world. We can clothe ourselves in our Torah and find our kavod.