When we listen to a symphony, we hear it both as it occurs, but also all the connections within the work. We hear later echoes of earlier themes, and simple progressions or tunes developed into much more complex and elaborate variated structures. A proper appreciation of any piece of music must be able to consider the work as a totality.
The very same is true for a book. Earlier events foreshadow later ones. Characters grow and develop, some toward redemption, others to perfidy. A reader who only read and analyzed a single chapter of Huckleberry Finn or Moby Dick would be considered woefully ignorant.
The very same would presumably also apply to the best-read book in all of Western Civilization: the Torah.
Well, at least it should.
Except that people do not, in fact, tend to read the Torah while using the rest of the text as context. Instead, they read a story, or a commandment or a chapter essentially in isolation, unaware of the connections that bind the entire Torah together. Which, to my mind, makes such readers just as woefully ignorant as someone who analyzed a single chapter of Moby Dick.
What do I mean by understanding each part of the text “in context”? I am referring to connecting the words and phrases to where they are found elsewhere. When we do that, a pantheon of otherwise-buried themes emerges from the text.
Take, for example, the detailed and even laborious description of the tabernacle and the garments of the priests. This takes up most of the end of Exodus, and much else besides. Read in isolation from the rest of the Torah, the Tabernacle and priestly garments are abstract and seemingly disconnected from anything we can relate to.
But when we start to look at the actual words used, then a wealth of meaning opens up.
Take, for example, the gold band around the high priest’s head. It is called a tzitz, and the writing on it says “Holy For G-d.” It is attached to the head using a ptil techeles, a blue sash. (Ex. 39:31)
When we see where those words occur elsewhere, we realize that the fringes a Jewish man wears, called tzitzis (essentially a diminutive form of tzitz), also are commanded with the injunction that, “you will be holy unto your God.” (Num: 15:40) The tzitzis also include blue threads, ptil techeiles. (There are, of course, a host of related symbolisms for the color, the meaning of “holiness”, etc.)
Once the linguistic links are shown, it is almost blindingly obvious that the two, tzitz and tzitziss are intrinsically linked. But because they are found in different parts of the text, the connection has heretofore escaped the attention of readers of the Torah. For over 3,000 years.
Here’s another: the Ark of the Tabernacle contains Aharon’s staff, his mateh. The high priest also wears two embossed items (breastplate, shoulder-stones, and the aforementioned gold band, the tzitz). The word for “embossed” is chossam. And thirdly, threads or cords are used to connect various garments worn by the high priest, ptil.
Two of these words is rare in the text. Ptil appears only 9 times. Chossam also appears 9 times. (Mateh is much more common). But why does it matter?
Because the very first time these words are found, they are found together.
And [Judah] turned to [Tamar] by the way, and said, Come now, I pray thee, let me come in to thee (for he knew not that she was his daughter in law.) And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayst come in to me? And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet [chossam], and thy cord [ptil], and thy staff [mateh] that is in thy hand.
Hold up! These three elements become critical items in the Tabernacle, but they are first found in the story of Tamar and Yehuda!
What is the underlying theme here? Well, for starters, each is clearly part of what makes Yehudah who he is: his signet is used to show his voice and his office remotely (such as by messenger); the staff is the formal sign of office in person, and the ptil is a sash or cord, designating Yehudah’s very person.
So we can understand the use of these objects in the same way: representing various facets of the people in G-d‘s house.
But we can also go farther: Tamar extracts these items as a pledge against future performance, as recognition of promises that have yet to be fulfilled. Tamar wanted a relationship, and she was willing to risk everything in order to make that happen.
If we apply these meanings to the Tabernacle, then a wealth of understanding opens up! The Tabernacle is a place of investment in relationship, of fulfilling commandments, of promises given and fulfilled. And it connects beautifully back to a story in Genesis that – unless you actually look at the words used – seems to be entirely unconnected to the Tabernacle itself.
Even more than this: The grand concept of the Tabernacle is tied to the core desires of a widow who wishes to make something of her life, to be connected to others. One lesson we might draw is that the “big” things in life are actually comprised of the desires of each individual soul: that Tamar’s ambitions and goals translate into the ambitions and goals for the entire people!
The Torah is thus revealed because we can read the text as an entire and interlinked document.
P.S. There is a verse that speaks to all other uses of thread, ptil:
This is the Tora: when a man dies in a tent, all that come into the tent, and all that is in the tent, shall be spiritually blocked seven days. And every open vessel, which has no covering bound (ptil) upon it, is spiritually blocked.
So a ptil protects someone from becoming spiritually blocked! Perhaps Yehudah, by giving up his ptil in order to be with Tamar, thus allowed himself to be blocked, to be spiritually lowered. Tzitzis, fringes, made of ptil techeles, are thus to remind us (when we look down) not to make the kind of decision that Yehudah made.
P.P.S. The only reason I can think of to not read the text as an interlinked document is if one believes that the document was not divine in origin, and was instead written by numerous people over a broader period of time. Those of us who believe the document is divine should therefore read it as the product of a single author – and thus the earlier chapters help explain the rest of the text.