Q&A: The Ephod and the Breastplate of Judgment
The Ephod and the Breastplate of Judgment
Question
The onyx stones on the shoulders of the ephod are two, and identical. The onyx stones on the breastplate are twelve, and different. What does this teach? That only when each and every tribe acts and lives out its own character, its own unique destiny, is the Jewish people one. But when the Jewish people try to all be the same thing, to fight for a single, uniform shade, identical, then by necessity we split into two, literally like two kingdoms (Judah and Israel), and become a burden, a load ("on the shoulders"). Only when each tribe is settled in its own portion, its own color, its own light that was designated for it, is it revealed how we are one. And that unity, in our being utterly different from one another, is apparent only to the heart.
That is the parable (a tiny part of it, in my humble opinion) that is conveyed through the ephod and the breastplate. What does the Rabbi think?
P.S. The burden is on God and is delegated to the High Priest, God's representative, since our God "bears" iniquity, transgression, and sin.
Answer
My attitude toward such parables is that they are devoid of importance and meaning. If you want to argue that each person is supposed to act according to his own nature, then say that (even though of course that is well known and fairly trite). In any case, the parable from the ephod stones adds nothing to it. I could attach another thousand different messages to it, including opposite ones. These are just nice homiletic flourishes. Sorry for being discouraging.
Discussion on Answer
I’ll add that when I wrote that each one acts and lives according to his own unique character, I meant on the plane of the service of God, with no connection to nature (I assumed there are twelve different ways of serving God), meaning that the difference between them is ideological and principled, not natural or based on personality. And what I wrote above applies both on the level of discussion and judicial decision-making, and in its implementation.
I didn’t mean that each person should act according to his own nature, since that isn’t the context here, but admittedly the point also wasn’t sharp enough even for me. The intention is that each stone has a different word of God to speak (after all, it is called the Breastplate of Judgment), and each tribe is meant to voice, in the divine judgment on every case, the word of God that it was tasked with voicing. You’ll agree with me at least that each stone has a different meaning, and that it is in this context, that of judgment. The attempt to be engraved under the same stone—that is, to cancel the concept that these and those are both the words of the living God, and thereby to achieve some kind of unity under one word of God—is what leads to the people always being split into two, and to the burden of sins that the priest must ultimately bear. I think the Rabbi is too quick, a priori, not to be persuaded by attempts to find a reason or meaning in the commandments.
Likewise, forgive me for the audacity, but in my humble opinion neither you nor anyone else is really capable of thinking of an opposite parable or message (not to mention a thousand), at least not something that you yourself would find persuasive. But you’re welcome to try and test your thesis regarding the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) = Rorschach. The fact that when the stones are different they are found together, and when they are similar they are found separately, and that these are on the heart while those are on the shoulders, so loudly cries out the above message that, although I do not infer it deductively, it is far from being just the musings of my heart.