Parshat Tetzaveh: The Body is a Spacesuit - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

imagine that you own a priceless diamond would you take it out into the street holding it in your hand I don't think so you put it in a plush line jewel case the body is a priceless holy thing it's the dwelling place of the soul in this world the more holy something is the more it needs to be covered to honor the body we keep it away from the eyes of the world and then robe it in clothing the holiest place on earth was the Holy of Holies in the beta Mick - the Holy Temple it was also the most covered place in the world it was sequestered in the very center of the temple and only once here on the holiest day of the year Yom Kippur the Day of Atonement with the high priest enter there but if the body is holy why didn't a demand Eve wear clothes one of the enduring icons of the last millennium must be Neil Armstrong's portrait of Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon you could tell it was Aldrin because he had his name neatly embroidered on his spacesuit now no one actually thought that this bulbous white by peg was Aldrin it was perfectly clear to everyone that when the suit said Aldrin it meant that Aldrin was inside the suit before Adam and Eve sinned it was perfectly clear that the function of the human body was to be a spacesuit for the soul to exist in this world just as a human being cannot live in the vacuum of space so the soul cannot perform its work in this world without a body in the tour of the word dart knowledge always implies connection or mixing when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they caused the knowledge a mixing of good and evil before Adam and Eve ate from the tree it was impossible to imagine that the body was the person it was clear that the body was just a way to exist in this world nothing more than a spacesuit but when they ate from the fruit they made it possible to confuse the essence the soul with the spaceman body thus God made garments to man so that the body's role should be downplayed that it shouldn't be seen as a person's essence there's one place however where the body needs no covering the face the Hebrew word for face is Panem which is spelled identically with another Hebrew word to name which means inside the face is the only place in the body where you can still see the soul bursting through the skin and tissue the face needs no covering for the soul shines through it as it always did [Music] you [Applause]