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© 2018 John D. Brey.

First of all, it seems to us that the tzitzis on our garments, the milah on our bodies, the tefillin on arm and forehead, and the mezuzah on our homes have a common denominator.

Rabbi Samson R. Hirsch, The Hirsch Chumash, Bemidbar 15:41.

Far be it from any serious bible exegete to refer to the great Rabbi Samson Hirsch as "master of the obvious." -----And yet the quotation above shouldn't need to be said. ----And yet it is said. ----And when it is said many Jews scratch their head. . .  And yet this mysterious “common denominator” can be found simply by finding what’s common to all the aforementioned symbols. ---- E.g., the Name “Shaddai.”

Take the tefillin for instance.

The shel yad (the so-called "hand" tefillin) must be put on first. ----Which is obvious since it's the "sign" clearly memorialized "between the eyes" (by means of the head tefillin, the shel rosh) ------You can't memorialize the "sign" “between the eyes” until the "sign" is visible to the eyes where the memorialization is said to occur. ----Ergo the requirement to place the hand tefillin (shel yad) first.

And thou shalt shew thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt. And it shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine yad, and for a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord’s law may be in thy mouth: for with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt.

Exodus 13:8-9.

"In that day" is the son's bar mitzvah. The first mitzvah the bar (son) partakes of is placing the "sign" between his eyes (laying the tefillin). The father explains the "sign" to his son saying the "sign" represents what the Lord required of him, the father, in order to come out of Mizriam (Egypt) as God's firstborn. And it's not merely exegetical playfulness to transliterate "Egypt" with "Mizriam" (Miriam with a tzaddik in her belly) since "Egypt," i.e., "Mizriam," is the mother of God's Tzaddik, the firstborn [of] Israel. -----And it's not merely allegorical gamesmanship to focus exegetical precision on "Egypt" ("Mizriam") as the mother of God's firstborn since technically speaking Israel isn’t really even God's original firstborn? 

Someone struck by the strangeness of Rabbi Hirsch's common-denominator-seeking statement might be equally struck by the strangeness of the fact that we have another case where the firstborn of the father isn’t technically speaking his firstborn. It gets pretty strange when we note that the other time when a father called his second born his firstborn was precisely the time when Abraham, the father of the people to become the nation Israel (God's second firstborn), calls Isaac his firstborn after having clearly fathered another prior to Isaac.

Pointing this out isn't merely doctrinal fun and games since there's a specific and precise "sign" associated with Abraham's ability to call his second-born his firstborn.

Thus we should probably expect a recurrence of this self-same "sign" when it turns out that Abraham's covenant-establishing-scar is going to be found out to be merely a retroactive-stigmata for what occurs again at the Passover when God decides to label someone other than his original firstborn his "firstborn." -----We should expect the same "sign" when God pulls the same trick Abraham does to establish the people who will be established as God's second firstborn.

The "sign" associated with the Abrahamic-covenant, which makes calling Isaac “firstborn” possible, and which makes the Mosaic-covenant (associated with the Passover) possible, is the "sign" of circumcision. -----Abraham washes his yad of the act associated with his first firstborn and washes it in its own blood in order to be able to call Isaac his firstborn? Which is a quasi-legitimate excuse for using "yad" in place of "hand" (at Exodus 13:9 in the translation above) since in Hebrew the word "yad" (yod-dalet) יד speaks of both the "hand" and the organ taken in the "hand" when Abraham washes the yad, in his hand (his yad), of the birth of Ishmael, so that he can name his second-born ---Isaac--- his second firstborn.

Ditto for God.

This word-play ---which could be mistaken for mere playfulness ---is serious as a heart-attack since the relationship between the two yad at Abraham's covenant-establishing cutting of the "sign" (into the flesh) has caused the greatest exegetical error found anywhere in any book of the bible, at any time, and of any bible, Jewish or Jewish/Christian.

Correcting this one error, associated with the tefillin, i.e., exegeting the tefillin correctly, opens up the entire scripture to a well-spring of understanding the likes of which is pretty genuinely unthinkable to those who would like to bind the King within the shel rosh as though it were a dark prison cell, a crypt, or koteka. . . Or else nail him to the wood (the mezuzah) so that he can't free himself to enter into the inner life inside the doorposts (the mezuzot). The Zohar claims God is "bound and held within those compartments [of the shel rosh]." -----Professor Daniel Matt of the Pritzker Edition Zohar interprets the statement: "By wearing the tefillin, one `captures' God" (Vol. I, p. 99). -----He’s "held" in captivity within the tresses of the shel rosh.

It’s high time to set him free. ------And so we shall. . . ..

Moses says "in that day" the Jewish father must show his son something the Lord required of him (the father) resulting in his inclusion in the Passover and the subsequent exodus from Egypt. “And thou shalt shew thy son in that day, saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt.”

What's done to the father so that he could eat the Pesach lamb and exit Egypt?

. . . this [Passover] is that night of the Lord to be observed of all the sons of Israel in [all] their generations. And the Lord said unto Moses and Aaron, This is the ordinance of the Passover [the requirement to eat and participate in the Passover]: There shall no stranger eat thereof: But every man’s servant that is bought for money, when thou hast circumcised him, then shall he eat thereof. . ..

Exodus 12:42-43.

It's clear that the "ordinance of the Passover," i.e., what’s observed by the sons of Israel throughout all generations, is what was done to the father so that he could eat the Pesach lamb and exit Egypt. ----- No stranger (uncircumcised male) shall have the Pesach lamb "in his mouth" until he's been circumcised. Rabbi Hirsch claims the soul [sic] purpose of the tefillin is the same as the purpose of circumcision: that God's edible Law might "be in the mouth"?

On the day a Jewish male becomes an adult member of Israel ---able to have the Pesach lamb in his mouth, no longer a mere youth nor a stranger to the covenant, i.e., the day of his bar mitzvah ---his father is required to explain to him the circumcision-scar that entered him into the covenant allowing him to place the Pesach lamb in his mouth. Immediately after the father initiates the son into the "ordinance of the Passover," which signifies he can put the Pesach lamb in his mouth, the first thing he must do, the bar’s first mitzvah, is to place the “sign” on the yad between his eyes; he must don the tefillin so that he will no longer be estranged to the meaning of the sign of the Passover salvation. He can then put the law, the Passover, in his mouth.

And thou shalt shew thy son [his circumcision] in that day [his bar mitzvah], saying, This is done because of that which the Lord did unto me when I came forth out of Egypt [I was circumcised so that I could eat the Pesach lamb qualifying me to exit from Mizriam as a firstborn Jew]. And it [the scar] shall be for a sign unto thee upon thine yad, and for a memorial [zikkaron] between thine eyes, [so] that the Lord’s [edible] law may be in thy mouth [since you have the mark qualifying you to eat the Passover meal]. . . ..

Exodus 13:8-9.

In the "ordinance of the Passover" (Exodus 12:42-48) first comes circumcision, then the Passover meal. In Exodus 13:8-9, first comes the "sign" of Passover, the circumcision scar, then comes the Passover meal. In the "ordinance" for all future Passovers the father must initiate his son into the covenant by explaining to him the sign/mark (which was given him at birth but explained at puberty) signifying that the son is no “stranger” to the Passover, but instead a full-etched member of the covenant. His son marks this glorious day (bar mitzvah) ---where the covenant-ratifying mark was explained to him ---by placing the sign of the Passover between his eyes (donning the tefillin).

Bar Mitzvah literally means “son of a commandment.” From the day of his Bar Mitzvah, a boy has the duty of keeping God’s commandments. One of the most important of these commandments is wearing Tefillin. . . The first new obligation of Bar Mitzvah is putting on the Tefillin for the first time. This is even more important than being called to the Torah in the synagogue.

Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, Tefillin, p. 19.

Through the Pesach offering, the Jewish people, assembled in family groups, stands before God like a flock, and in eating the Pesach offering the Jewish people recovers its personality, is redeemed from physical and civic death. . . To take part in the Passover, however, there is a basic condition: One must participate in the covenant between God and Israel. Such participation [requires that] . . . one must have inscribed the sign of this participation --- the milah [circumcision]--- on oneself and on one's people (i.e., sons and servants).

The Hirsch Chumash, Shemos, 12:43 [emphasis and bracketed comments mine].

According to Midrash Rabbah, circumcision blood is put on the doorpost along with the lamb's blood in order to remember Abraham's circumcision blood. And his circumcision blood is a precursor, a substitutionary precursor, to the Akedah blood, so that the lamb's blood at the Akedah is the surrogate not only for Abraham's circumcision blood, but for the blood Abraham's circumcision is a surrogate for: Isaac's. These ideas are totally explicit and explained throughout Jewish scripture and commentary. There's nothing implicit or hidden about the fact that circumcision blood is a surrogate for the sacrifice of the firstborn who’s sacrificed to Molech in the demonic world.

Implicit in the language of the Tanakh is the idea that apart from the sacrifice represented in brit milah (ritual circumcision) all firstborn are sacrificed to Molech. Circumcision represents the sacrifice of the Akedah lamb in place of the sacrifice of the firstborn to Molech.

Since the foregoing is faithful and true to Jewish thought, the Akedah lamb (said to be God's lamb prepared from the first Sabbath) is a surrogate for the surrogate blood of circumcision (which represents the blood of the firstborn). Both bloods (lamb and limb) represent the salvation of the firstborn through the surrogacy of the two bloods. But at the Akedah we learn the two bloods represent the same thing: salvation of the firstborn from being sacrificed to Molech, the god of this world, by means of just one blood: the blood Abraham shed at the Akedah.

Circumcision is the key to everything. And the sages know it. It's the mark marking entrance into the covenant. It's the mark qualifying one to partake of Passover. And as Rabbi Hirsch says (parroting every other meaningful sage): circumcision is the fountainhead of the covenant between Israel and God. 

So why would something so explicit, so obvious, i.e., the fact that the father must explain the circumcision-scar (that entered his son into the covenant instead of into the arms of Molech) be covered up in the exegesis of the most explicit teaching about these things? Because at Horeb Israel did precisely what the Talmud brilliantly uncovers about Adam's original sin in the Garden (Sanhedrin 38b):

Rab Judah also said in Rab's name: Adam was a Min, for it is written, And the Lord God called unto Adam and said unto him, Where art thou? i.e., whither has thine heart turned? R. Isaac said: He practiced epispasm: For here it is written, But like man, [Adam] they have transgressed the covenant; whilst elsewhere it is said, He hath broken my covenant . . ..

The footnotes to this passage say Adam covered up the mark of the covenant (circumcision). And that's precisely what Israel does at Horeb, and what the subsequent translations of Exodus 12 and 13 do too. They cover up the mark of circumcision when any serious student of the word of God can see, even based on the little evidence presented so far, that the text is speaking of circumcision as the mark that must be explained to the son before he can become a full-knowing adult member of Israel; before he can put the Pesach lamb in his mouth knowing what it means to put the Pesach lamb in his mouth because he’s now been taught that the blood of the Pesach lamb is the surrogate for his own blood. The blood of the lamb was made the surrogate for his own blood, which would belong to Molech, if not for the sacrifice of the lamb of God at the Akedah, reenacted, later, at the Passover.

On his bar mitzvah the son of the covenant is made to realize he's alive to eat the Passover lamb precisely because the lamb's blood was shed, and placed on the Passover mezuzah, so that he could live, through the surrogacy of the lamb, whose flesh (and blood) he subsequently eats so that the lamb who gave his life for him can now live within the temple of his body where the “blood” of the lamb thereafter resides.

The cover-up of the foregoing is the basis for the baffling ban on ingesting the blood of the animal sacrifice, in this case the Passover lamb (see essay, The Baffling Bloody Ban).

The same epispasmic interpretation that would rid Israel of the central flow of the Exodus passage also attempt to keep the life-blood, the soul and spirit, of the salvific lamb of God, on the outside of Israel, as merely an ethnicity publicizing ornament (the head and arm tefillin), rather than inside Israel as the life-blood of God, living within the temple of the Jewish body?

Domestic and cult houses symbolize cosmic motherhood. On the facade is depicted a woman's face, complete with nose ornaments, breasts below the mouth, and earrings at the lower eaves. . . The interior of the house is a belly (iai) or womb (Mead 1949, 211), which conjures not simply a female body but specifically a mother. . . men control the doorways, or mouths (kundia) and vaginas (kitnya), of house mothers. As a representation of the cosmos, the house is a maternal body whose orifices and internal spaces are carefully guarded by men.

Professor Eric Kline Silverman, Masculinity Motherhood and Mockery, p. 66.

Anthropologist Professor Eric Kline Silverman points out (along with the Talmud, Yoma 2a) that in the ancient mind the "house" represents a "mother" and that the "doorway," with mezuzot on either side, represents the vaginal entry of the house. More to our purpose, he continues on the next page:

The personal names of a house are cognate to the patronymics of its male owners. Hence, as Wagner (1986, 46-47) wrote for the Usen Barok of New Ireland, the house "is a very visible sanctum of personal inviolability . . . Any assertive or aggressive intentions displayed by a nondweller in its vicinity are understood as violations of the inhabitants personality.". . Thus men, in their concern with protecting the doorways of dwellings, preserve their totemic identities . . ..

He goes on to says female spirits are stationed on the "doorposts" to protect the house and these female spirits often take on the patronymics of the male house owner by simply feminizing his name. "The personal names of these female spirits derive from the patronymics of the male house owner, appended by a feminine suffix . . .." -----"Shaddai" is the Hebrew word for "breast." -----Shaddai is the patronymic owner of the Jewish home whose blood protects the womb from Molech who’s the Gentile god who would like to enter in and spread his death to the Jewish womb as he's spread it to every other womb from Cain to the present.

Shaddai is an otherwise male God directly associated with the full (fertile) breasts of the female body. ----- Professor Silverman points out that the breasts of the human female are the only breast in the natural world that remain enlarged outside of actual pregnancy. They’re ornamentation celebrating virgin fertility since the seed of Shaddai exists in the female in a state of readiness even when no foreign god has yet entered the home to cause the animal form of copulation that typically preseeds the enlarged breast.

The breast of Shaddai's home, the Jewish virgin, are enlarged even when the veil of her temple remains intact.

That's not the case for any other mammal in the world. The Jewish virgin is pregnant with God's son before the veil is rent such that her breasts are ornaments celebrating and giving victorious proclamation concerning the imminent arrival of a virgin born Jewish male who will rule all the world as the firstborn of his father. The blood of circumcision is on the "doorposts" warning any male organ, even Molech himself, that to enter this space death, blood, will be required.

No man shall enter the sanctuary of Shaddai. Even the high priest himself must be ritually emasculated before he's allowed to symbolically enter behind the veil of Shaddai's home (leaving the temple veil intact) since the man who will open the veil to this home, this temple, was already inside the home when it was "built" (banah). ----His seed was sealed inside the house when the home was built (Genesis 2:22).

The oddity that the human female's breasts remain enlarged even when the woman is neither pregnant nor lactating is well known to biologists. And scripturally speaking it's not a mistake or accident of evolution. Every mammal, every animal, every insect, every plant, will enter into a renewed Edenic paradise because of the enlarged breasts of the Jewish virgin. They're thus the ornament par (peh-alef-reish) excellent since they represent the salvation of the world.

Shad-dai.

Since they bloom in all their glory (tiferet) before the act typically required to make them bloom (phallic-sex, animal copulation) they represent a pregnancy conceived with an intact veil. They represent the source of the salvation of the world, a pregnancy conceived without phallic-sex. They represent, in the ancient mind, fertilization from dry (unwatered) ground. The Jewish virgin’s breast bloom from the blood of circumcision since that blood signifies the secret of the yod (ye-sod), the yad, the hand, that will open the veil from the inside out (Ex. 13:2). Breast that will bloom before the soil is even tilled and watered (Gen. 2:5).

A Jewish virgin's pregnancy-celebrating breasts celebrate motherhood and pregnancy before the veil of her temple is even opened. She's in a constant state of readiness for the exit of the King who's conceived without offering up the woman's body, and the seed of the woman, to Molech, in the sinful act (tilling and watering) through which every post-lapsarian organism typically comes into the world.

The temple, and temple rituals, of peoples around the globe, and from one era to the next, one end of the globe to the next, all strain to reify these simple principles. They all, or most of them, have the same, or similar, anthropological, emblematic, nuances.

Judaism is somewhat unique from pagan religions in that in an anthropological sense Judaism uses the same temple, the same doorpost, the same sacrificial animals, and the same circumcised organ, as the other religions around the globe; but where the pagans can't get enough of the blood of the symbols into their flesh and blood and mind, straining, and striving, to understand the meaning (no doubt falling short), Judaism is made to drain the blood, the life-blood, of the symbols they acquired from their pagan religious peers, as though removing the blood of a pagan symbol in itself, just the draining of the blood, makes the pagan symbol kosher, and clean for Jewish eating and edification.

Unfortunately, the blood is always the "life-blood" of the symbol (see essay, The Baffling Bloody Ban). If Judaism sicks a sochet on the pagan symbol to drain its blood ---rendering it fit for Jewish sacerdotal services (even making it edible, kosher)---- then they need to replace the pagan blood they drain with new "life-blood" so that the sochet'd symbol doesn't become a mere golem, a chimera, a zombie, a chok, awaiting the blood-transfusion that will bring it back to life (that will resurrect it from the blow of the mohel and the blade of the sochet). The decrees --chukkim-- are just that: golems, chimeras, zombies, drained of the pagan-blood, but still awaiting the blood-transfusion the sages say will come with the good news of Messiah’s arrival. When he comes he'll give the blood-transfusion, the "life-blood," that will replace the pagan-blood formerly drained by the mohel and the sochet.

But he came. And he gave his blood. And the principalities and rulers enforced the baffling ban on blood even so far as this one unique blood is concerned so that even it was merely allowed to be worn on the lapel, or the forehead, such that those who drank the blood against the wishes and threats of the principalities and powers ruling Israel were exercised as demons, pagans, or minim.

Where the life-blood isn’t drained from the symbols, every temple, in its etymological genesis, represents a "virgin." -----The "Parthenon" is the quintessential example. A temple is considered functional so long as the veil separating what Rashi calls the "bedchamber" (where the firstborn is conceived) is intact. The veil in every temple signifies the hymenal veil of a Jewish virgin. And the "pillars" (the temple-version of "doorposts" mezuzot) are "swollen" (boaz, boah) breasts (see Professor Silverman: Masculinity, Motherhood, and Mockery) signifying that the temple is a "perpetual virgin" such that the fruit of her womb, when he arrives, will be standing between the ithyphallic pillars, as the yid of the shad: Shaddai, having opened the veil, the womb, with his own yad. He's the yad between the shad, or the yad of the shad, the yid of the shad: he's Shad-dai ש–די.

On the other hand, the left, when the veil is rent from the outside in, it’s always by Molech, or one of his priestly representatives: the temple is profaned, the bedchamber filled with amphibians (Exodus 8:3). And the hymen is rent from the outside in. This is the sad truth everywhere the bride and the fruit of the womb is being offered up to Molech. The Tanakh makes phallic-sex parallel the act of offering the firstborn to Molech (Isa. 57:8-9). The veil is torn by the demonic-god therein destroying the temple in the very act that's supposed to conceive the god's firstborn (through jus primae noctis) in the very house of God. . . And since the temple is profaned, in that profane temple service, the offspring of that temple is marked with a death-sentence over his head.

  

Mimicking that star of Jewish exegesis, Franz Rosenzweig, we can say the righteous groom shows his love for the bride is stronger than the lure of death. Rather than offering up his firstborn to Molech on his wedding night, he makes an offering of Molech under the chuppah. He offers up his animalistic desires and pleasure to death showing that his love for his bride udderly transcends the cheap thrill the unrighteous groom confuses with a true act of love. The righteous groom denies himself the cheap thrill Molech and his prostitute queen (mother nature) trade for ownership of the fruit of the womb. On the other hand, once the nefarious deal is done the fruit of the womb is fatally tainted by what mother nature leaves intact, no doubt hidden, behind the groom’s fruit of the loom.

Exodus 13:9 says the mark on the yad will be a "memorial" (zikkaron), between the eyes. . . But without explanation, in Exodus 13:16, the "memorial" (zikkaron), is re-named "frontlets" (totapot), between the eyes? ----In almost a parallel passage the text goes from "memorial" (zikkaron), to "frontlets (totapot), with hardly a clue about why the word changed? Nevertheless, Jewish exegesis found in Mekhilta: De-Rabbi Shimon Bar Yohai, tells us something extremely important. The "memorial" is for the individual alone. He's to see it himself (alone). While the totapot (frontlets) are a public ornamentation related to what's at first a private memorial in Ex. 13:9 (see essay, Trifling with the Tefllin).

This is consistent with the exegesis suggesting the first passage (Exodus 13:9) ---and thus the "memorial" between the eyes ---is the mark of circumcision being explained by the father. The father explains the mark to his son; he tells its purpose and meaning, at which time the son retires to a private chamber where the mark is placed "between his eyes" ----which is to say he looks at it for the first time having been schooled by the father on what it signifies.

As is taught in Mekhilta (which is extensive exegesis on the book of Exodus), the first text (Ex. 13:9) speaks not of a public ornament given the son at his bar mitzvah, but rather a private viewing of the mark entering the son into the covenant. The father's education of his son precedes his son's placing the mark "between his eyes" for the first time in the knowledge of its meaning. In truth he sees (intuits) the scar for the first time on his bar mitzvah.

This is the huge problem for the sages since what’s memorialized at bar mitzvah is not something different from what's made into the ornament called "totapot." -----The totapot (which probably isn't actually a Hebrew plural) is an ornament that symbolizes, in a manner appropriate for a public audience, what was private for the son of the commandment, the bar mitzvah. But what possible ornament could turn the bar mitzvah's private viewing into an appropriate public display to be worn as a glorious ornament for public expression?

As noted, the totapot likely isn’t a plural. And the shel yad isn't really on the arm or even the "hand." Etymologically speaking, Hebrew "yad" (yod-dalet) speaks of the "hand" or the "phallus." ----The word is used for the "phallus" at Isaiah 57:8:

Behind the doors [dalet] also and the posts [mezuzah] hast thou set up thy remembrance [zikkaron]: For thou hast discovered thyself [got naked] to another than me, and art gone up; Thou hast enlarged thy bed, and made thee a covenant with them; Thou lovedst their bed where thou sawest it [their yad].

The passage is speaking of God's adulterous bride leaving the covenant of circumcision to get naked and offer herself to the yad of the uncircumcision. Molech is going to enter behind the mezuzah and come to know the adulteress in the biblical way. The bride is unfaithful to the covenant of circumcision so she leaves her circumcised groom, makes herself "naked" (gimmel-lamed-heh) behind the mezuzah (doorpost) where she spies the uncircumcised yad, which, unlike the yad of the righteous groom, is allowed to enter behind the mezuzot, from the inside out.

Someone who takes false orthodox translations and questionable interpretations too seriously might doubt that this exegesis is sound until they read the corrected translation of the very next verse: "And thou went to Molech with the fruit of thy womb . . .." ----- Of course she does. -----It belongs to him: it's his firstborn. He fathered the bastard. -----He's the god of death, and that's what his firstborn inherits. The bride offers up her firstborn to Molech since the firstborn is naturally his:

Hear, O my people, and I will testify unto thee: O Israel, if thou wilt hearken unto me; 9 There shall no strange god be in thee; Neither shalt thou worship any strange god. 10 I am the LORD thy God, Which brought thee out of the land of Egypt: Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it.

Psalm 81:8-10.

No stranger may eat the Passover. Only the circumcision can fill their mouth with the flesh associated with circumcision. Molech is the flesh that’s eliminated after circumcision has come. He's a strange god who doesn't belong in any Israelite bride nor beyond the doorposts of any Jewish temple. Israel's firstborn shouldn't belong to Molech. ------Molech is the Gentile’s god. He practices jus primae noctis in every case of marital congress. Every firstborn belongs to him if he (Molech) opens the womb at conception. Molech is the yad that opens the door at conception while the Jewish firstborn possesses the yad  (hand) that opens the door only if Molech didn't have a yad in his conception. Circumcision makes Molech an abject stranger (a stranger rejected) in the conception-event that produces the first Jewish firstborn who retroactively establishes the nation.

As noted in the essay, Sotah Water, Ramban claims strict exegesis of the verses involved insinuate that the righteous bride being subjected to the sotah ordeal tells God that she hasn't even committed adultery against God with her husband. Every serious Jewish exegete then gets seriously anxious when in bizarre fashion, the text of the sotah passage implies that if the woman has indeed stayed faithful to God as though he were her groom (whom she lets down her hair for), then she's made pregnant not by her husband, or a paramour, but by the Torah scroll dissolved in the colloidal holy water she's made to drink.

It's as if, having remained a virgin up to the ordeal, God says to the righteous woman subjected to the sotah ordeal, "Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it," after which she drinks the Torah scrolls and gives birth to the circumcision. Her mouth was opened and her legs closed right up till the birth. She and she alone is God's faithful bride.

The shel yad unmistakably represents the "sign" of circumcision explained to the son before he first dons the singular totapot on bar mitzvah. His father explains what was required of him (the father) in order to leave Egypt, he explains that the son is marked similarly, so that the son retires to a private chamber to place the mark of his entrance into the covenant "between his eyes." But then in Exodus 13:16 what was formerly a private "memorial" (zikkaron), becomes a public "ornament" (totapot). ----Unfortunately the etymology of the word is extremely sketchy. It's difficult to find anything to sink ones teeth into. The root is allegedly "topop" (tet-peh-peh).

Luther implies "topop" (found at Isaiah 3:16), implies an ornament associated with prostitutes (which is what the passage in Isaiah 3:16 is talking about). Luther says the ornament is worn to entice men. Describing where the topop are found Luther says: fie treten einher und fchwanzen ("they come together and falter") they "bounce" around in a manner that's extremely enticing to men. . .

Thus the root of "totapot" is the hapax legomenon "topop" used to speak of a prostitute's breasts "bouncing" around (coming together and faltering) in a manner that causes profound passion in the unrighteous groom.

The last part of the word isn't much better. It speaks of a woman's private parts (peh-tav) thereby giving exegetical support to the interpretation of the earlier part of the word.

The fact that peh-tav is also used for the "forehead" plays into the strange supposition that when the "sign" is placed "between the eyes" (an undeniable metaphor for being in the light of sight), the Jewish interpreters suggest that it means on the "forehead" (even though any Jew who knows better knows the shel rosh is placed up on the forehead nowhere near "between the eyes”). -----If it's placed between the eyes its worn wrong and if it’s worn right it’s not between the eyes.

Totapot is an ornament found between the breasts. And since the sages are unanimous that the "mark," or "sign," of circumcision (what was required of the father to leave Egypt), i.e., the "sign" memorialized by the bar mitzvah, is the letter yod, spelled yad, we have the rather incredible inference that when you turn the yod, placed privately between the eyes of the bar mitzvah, into a public ornament, the totapot, you do so by placing the yod, the "sign" of both God, and circumcision, on a chain, dangling between the breast (shad) so that when you see this yod dangling between the "bouncing" shad of a woman you're looking at shad--yod, which in Hebrew spells "Shaddai," which is what's spelled out on the shel rosh that's "between the eyes" only if you have eyes on the front and the back of your head.

And the beauty of His ornament is what he made for their pride [Ex 13:16], but they made their despicable images of their abominations [ugly black boxes placed on the forehead]; therefore I made it [the ornament] niddah to them. And I shall give him/it into the hands of uncircumcised strangers for a prey and [also] to the wicked of the earth, for plunder, and they [the wicked] will profane it/him.

Ezekiel 7:19-21.

This passage is speaking of sacerdotal jewelry such as ornamented the kohen gadol. Commenting on these verses Rashi paraphrases Redak who explained that the priest and the people wore jewelry representing the glory of the temple, i.e. the high priest was ornamented as though his body were an anthropomorphism of the temple (his priestly clothing and jewelry mimics the temple ornamentation) such that the common Jew too wore certain sacerdotal ornaments representing the same things as the ornaments worn by the high priest (i.e., the glory of the temple).

According to Rabbi Hirsch these ornaments are the tefillin, which would then also be the totapot. -----Rabbi Hirsch claims the shel rosh (head tefillin) is the totapot. He goes so far as to says the shel rosh is the Ark of the Covenant in miniature. The tefillin/totapot-donning Jew, ornaments his body with the glory of the temple, the miniature Ark of the Covenant, which Rabbi Hirsch relates to the shel rosh (the head tefillin) . . . the totapot. . . And since Rabbi Hirsch claims even the mere phonetic similarity between words is exegetical fertile ground, we have an interesting example in Ezekiel 7:19-21 where the ornament, or jewelry, given for Israel's glory (the tefillin/totapot), are transformed by Israel into an "abomination."

The "totapot" (tet-vav-tet-peh-tav) become an "abomination" when God makes it niddah, unclean.

The word "totapot" is a transliteration of the Hebrew word exegeted above, while the word "abomination," isn't a transliteration of the Hebrew word it replaces. That word, the Hebrew word translated "abomination," is "toabot" (tav-vav-ayin-beit-tav). ----Phonetically speaking, the totapot are said to be transformed into the toabot ("abomination"), seemingly justifying, to some degree, Rabbi Hirsch's claim concerning phonetic similarity as exegetical fertility.

The word "toabot" (tav-vav-ayin-beit-tav) lends itself to this essay (though it must be returned) since tav-vav-ayin is the root, which implies going astray, while the last two consonants, beit-tav, speak of a "daughter," such that the word, in its essence, speaks of a daughter who’s gone astray. A prostitute, or unclean woman (niddah). -----The "glory" (tiferet) of the temple, which Isaiah 61:10 claims will be worn as an ornament between the breast of the virgin bride (the Jewish Parthenon, parthenos, temple, bride), is instead worn on the forehead of the woman of shame.

And though the foregoing is logically and theologically sound (so to say), and true to the spirit of Exodus chapter 13, even a sympathetic reader could be forgiven for thinking to themselves, "But what ornament could possibly capture the essence of what the bar miztvah sees when he looks privately at the sign of his entry into the covenant?"

Without paraphrasing the rabbis for the umpteenth time implying that circumcision (revealed at bar mitzvah) somehow returns the Jew to the prelapse status of Adam in the Garden, or else once again quoting the Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b, implying that Adam's great sin was epispasm, covering up the previously circumcised flesh, we can still say, in all joy and amazement, that the revelation uncovered in uncovering the referent for the totapot reveals not only the nature of the prelapse body in the Garden, and the nature of the epispasmic cover-up, but also those who will eternally be held accountable for protecting the cover-up, versus those who both sung and shouted for joy when the cover-up was finally uncovered (Psalm 132:13-18):

For the LORD hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for his habitation. 14 This is my rest for ever: Here will I dwell; for I have desired it. 15 I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread. 16 I will also clothe her priests with salvation: And her saints shall shout aloud for joy. 17 There will I make the horn of David to bud: I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed. 18 His enemies will I clothe with shame: But upon himself shall his crown flourish.

In the totapot narrative, Exodus chapter 13:9-16, the text speaks first of a mark being memorialized "between the eyes" of the bar mitzvah (13:9). The bar mitzvah looks right at the actual fleshly sign immediately after the father tells him what he (the bar mitzvah alone) is looking at: i.e., the mark directly associated with leaving Egypt (what was required of the father to eat the Passover and leave Egypt). But then, in Exodus 13:16, this hieratic fleshly mark, the mark of circumcision, is made into a public ornament (totapot) which remains a hieroglyph of the actual mark of circumcision.

As fate, or scripture, would have it, we don't even have to guess about what this totapot/ornament "between the eyes" looks like since scripture interprets scripture. We have a second Passover narrative in Ezekiel chapter 9 with all the same players. The angel of death is going to pass through the land, just like the original Passover, and destroy anyone who doesn't wear the mark required to survive the Passover, i.e., the mark associated with the first Passover.

A "cross" (the ktav ivri tav) is placed on the forehead of those who are going to be spared the holocaust of the second Passover.

I will cloth its priests with salvation, and its devoted ones shall ever shout for joy. There I shall cause David's horn to sprout; there I have set in order a lamp for My anointed. His enemies I will cloth with shame, but upon him a priestly coronation will spring up and blossom.

Psalms 132:17-18.

​

The Hirsch Tehillim uses four or five pages to associate Psalm 132 not only with Isaiah chapter 61, but with the sacred ornament that's Israel's priestly jewelry, the tefillin. Rabbi Hirsch associates the clothing of Messiah's priests with the sacred clothing spoken of in Isaiah chapter 61, which Rabbi Hirsch associates with the tefillin. In Psalms 132, we see this glorious ornament being made into an “abomination,” a curse בשת, since the text juxtaposes the wearing of salvation, signified by the totapot, with wearing the abomination, toabot. In the English translation of the Hebrew, the word for the "shame" (that will be worn by Messiah's enemies) is covered up precisely as Messiah's enemies use ornamental veils, allusions, to cover-up the primary revelation associated with the Tanakh.

The Hebrew word for the "shame" associated with Messiah's enemies is (beit-shin-tav) בשת. Which mightn't seem particularly remarkable until we realize that the word speaking of being clothed in "shame," i.e., Messiah's enemies being clothed in "shame" (when the sign of circumcision, totapot, is turned into an abomination, toabot), is constructed of the very cover-up associated with Messiah's enemies. In other words, the premise of this essay is that Messiah's enemies misinterpret Exodus chapter 13 to cover-up the revelation that's found there (i.e., the true mark of circumcision). -----They represent the totapot with the shel rosh, the head tefillin, when surely they know that the black box that's the shel rosh is called the "beit" (batim) ב? And surely they know a "shin" ש, is emblazoned on the outside of the "beit," such that if the "mark" that's supposed to be "between the eyes," (as revealed in the second Passover account, Ezek. 9) is a bloody tav, as Ezekiel chapter 9 claims it is (and as it was on the father at the original Passover), then the beit and the shin literally cover up the "mark" (the tav) associated with Passover in Ezekiel chapter 9.

If we take the beit (the bayit) and the shin (emblazon on both sides of the bayit), both of which (the bayit ---shel rosh--- and its shin) cover-up the tav, which Ezekiel 9 equates with the mark of salvation (which we know from Ezekiel chapter 9 is the true mark of the totapot, the mark of Passover), we see that these three letters spell the word (beit-shin-tav) בשת, which is the very word “shame” which Psalms 132 claims will cloth Messiah's enemies. Worse, if that’s possible, the beit ב and the shin ש are specifically used to cover-up the tav ת on the forehead (Ezek. 9) which is hidden beneath the shel rosh, the head tefillin (on the forehead).

According to Psalm 132, Messiah's enemies will cover up the true mark of Passover, which is the true mark of circumcision (the tav placed on the forehead in the second Passover narrative), by clothing themselves with a beit and a shin that covers up the tav on the forehead. The shel rosh covers the tav that's all that would be on the forehead without the cover-up provided by the bayit ב and the shin ש.

Those who wear the shel rosh (the head tefillin) are literally wearing (clothing themselves) with "shame" (beit-shin-tav). The batim and the shin that make up the shel rosh cover the tav (on the forehead) revealed in Ezekiel chapter 9, thereby revealing Messiah's enemies as those people who cloth themselves with "shame," which, when we discard with demotic cover-ups, can easily be seen to be the shel rosh:

Indeed, the symbolic dimension of Hebrew, as it appears in the sacred texts, disappears for the benefit of a purely utilitarian use of language. To be sure, in our desacralized world it is no longer a matter of consciously manipulating the magical virtualities of language in order to derive from it some personal gain. But when an entire society hijacks the language of its religious tradition to purely material ends, when it makes it into a mere instrument in the service of its immediate interests, it returns, without knowing it, to the attitude of the sorcerers of old. A "crude imitation" of the sacred text's language, modern Hebrew has emptied out the ancient words of their symbolic and religious signification in order to reduce them to mere indices of material reality.

Stephane Moses, Professor Emeritus at Hebrew University Jerusalem, quoted in Derrida's Acts of Religion.
​

Anyone who drains the sacred element of Hebrew for ethnicity publicizing purposes clothes themselves in shame and become enemies of Messiah; enemies of his revelation; enemies who claim he hasn't come, and may never come. Why should he. His enemies have things fully under-control when they present themselves as him, undercover, when they cover him, under their demotic denunciation, which is their proud denunciation of the sacred, the cover-up of the sacred par excellent.

Many in modern Judaism are unaware that two bloods were mingled on the Passover doorpost (and in the written narrative). One was the blood of the lamb, and the other the blood of the limb. Less known is the fact that even as there's two bloods mingled at Passover (lamb and limb), so too, there's two Passover narratives which quite literally define and interpret one another. You can't know diddly squat about one Passover without the other, even as you can’t know squat about the salvific bloods without using one to interpret the other.

The first Passover narrative deals with the lamb's blood while the second deals with the blood of the limb. The first Passover places the blood on the mezuzot (doorposts) while the second places it on the forehead. You need both to retroactively activate what’s already been said.

There are two Passovers (Exodus 12 and Ezekiel 9) and they have parallel narratives. The first narrative focuses on the yad mark, revealed at bar mitzvah. It explains that the yad mark will be explained to all the sons of Israel for all time on their bar mitzvah. Their father's duty isn’t fulfilled to the letter unless he reveals the letter revealed beneath the Passover scar (the scar of circumcision). If he doesn’t relate to the letter, the true letter, technically speaking, the son can’t partake of the Passover lamb, nor the salvation purchased by his flesh and blood.

The second Passover reveals the mark of the first as an ornamentation on the forehead, the totapot (singular). We’re left in the dark about the nature of the mark on the forehead until we get to Ezekiel chapter 9 where the nature of the mark on the forehead is finally revealed in the second Passover account.

The glory of the Lord rises from the cherubs on the Ark of the Covenant, moves to the doorposts of the Temple, and speaks as Shaddai (the yad of God between the mezuzot) to the "man in linen" who we suspect (if we do the exegesis) is the Lord's left-hand man, Gevurah (etymologically and logically “Samael” שמאל), harsh judgment (death). We're told the man in linen is standing by the brazen altar. And since the scripture doesn't throw in trivial information, standing by the brazen altar is an important clue to the narrative. The destroying angel has a cup in his hand standing next to the brazen altar (I wonder what he puts in the cup) before he commences his next move:

And the LORD said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof. 5 And to the others he said in mine hearing, Go ye after him through the city, and smite: let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: 6 Slay utterly old and young, both maids, and little children, and women: but come not near any man upon whom is the mark;

As is the case so many times in the scripture, the written version doesn't tell the whole story. We move immediately from the man in linen with the cup standing by the brazen altar, to placing a "mark" (tav) on the foreheads of those who are going to be spared the Passover massacre. Which is those who place a “mark” tav, on the mezuzah of their heart and mind. The cup in hand, and its relationship to the brazen altar, are implied, but not stated. 

Every serious Jewish commentator will comment that the "tav" is the "mark" on the forehead. The "mark" is a tav, a ktav ivri (ancient Hebrew) tav, which was a "cross." A cross is placed on the forehead for the sake of salvation. You'll get no argument from the commentators on that. -----But the color of the mark is a whole other story. It's where the real battle begins. And Professor Elliot R. Wolfson is a good commentator concerning the nature of the battle over the color of the tav:

Before returning to the medieval kabbalistic source, we would do well to note that the singular mark of the biblical text becomes two marks in the rabbinic homily: an ink spot on the foreheads of the righteous and a bloodstain on the foreheads of the wicked, the former serving as an apotropos to deflect the angels of destruction and the latter as a lure to attract them.

Alef, Mem, Tav, p. 161.

The bible speaks of one mark. The rabbis two. The bible states the man in linen places the mark on the forehead immediately after pointing out he's standing, cup in hand, by the brazen altar where the blood of the sacrifice is spilled. The narrative is clearly paralleling the first Passover where the blood of Shaddai (sacrificed that day) stands as “Guardian of the Doorposts of Israel.” -----Here, he stands at the doorposts of the temple commanding the angel of death to "pass over" the land destroying anyone without the salvific mark. Redak points out that it's nearly identical to the mark of blood at the first Passover. He quotes the Talmud, Shabat 55a, saying the "tav" literally means the letter "tav":

The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Gabriel, "Write in ink on the foreheads of the righteous a `tav,' and on the foreheads of the wicked write a `tav' in blood."

Shabat 55a.

The sages are aware that as surely as we have a second Passover narrative, they have a serious problem. They have a serious problem since they teach that the totapot (on the forehead) is a box dyed in black ink (halachically it must be dyed in black ink), while in the bible there's no ink mentioned at the first Passover or the second Passover, and even though the salvific marker at the first Passover is blood red, for the rabbis, and their hala-chic dress-code, black is the new red. Ink is read, precisely, where the first Passover speaks in black ink about red blood.

Whereas in the first Passover blood deflects the angel of death, in the rabbinic version of the second Passover, used to interpret the first, the blood attract the angel of death. Professor Wolfson continues:

Three crucial points in the talmudic source may be clarified with the help of Saul Lieberman's analysis. First, in all probability, the exegetical decoding of tau in Ezekiel as referring to the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet was enhanced by the phonetic affinity between tau and and the Greek theta, which was used as an abbreviation for thanatos (death) in capital sentences in the Gentile courts. . . [but] the black-mark of death (nigrum theta) is depicted in the rabbinic homily as the blood-mark (tau shel dam), which is set in contrast to the ink mark (tav shel deyo).

The Greeks use the "black ink theta" (the nigrum theta) to mark the abominable prisoners convicted as a capital crime. The black mark on their forehead was akin to saying "dead man walking." -----But the stiff-necked rabbis persevere bull-at-a-gate (so to say). They so hate the thought of a bloody-cross marking salvation, i.e., as the mark of “salvation,” that even though the nigrum theta was a black ink letter (art, perhaps, perhaps not) on the forehead of a criminal about to meet his maker, the rabbis stubbornly cling to their hala-chic belief that good guys wear black:

This may be explained as a rejoinder on the part of some rabbis to an exegetical tradition cultivated by early Church Fathers that connected the tau of Ezekiel with the paschal lamb the symbol of salvation. This possibility is enhanced by the evidence (supplied for instance by Origen) that Jewish Christians interpreted the tau of Ezekiel as a sign of the cross (related, as we have seen, to the shape of the letter in the ancient script) placed on the foreheads of Christians. Apparently responding to this interpretation, rabbinic exegetes emphasized that the mark of blood signals destruction rather than deliverance.

Ibid.

I will clothe its priests with salvation, and its devoted ones shall ever shout for joy. There I shall cause David's horn to spring up; there I have set in order a lamb for My anointed. His enemies I will clothe with shame, but upon him his crown will blossom.

The Hirsch Tehilim (Psalms), 132:16-18.

These verses speak of "clothing" Messiah's priests with "salvation." ----The verses literally claim that "there" (i.e., the priest's "clothing") is where Messiah (David's horn) will "sprout" (the Hebrew used for "sprout" is the word for asexual shoots growing out of dead roots, like Jesse's). It's fairly explicit that "salvation" clothes Messiah's priests; and that "there" (the priestly garments that "cloth" Zion's priest) is where David's horn (the anointed one: Messiah) will sprout, like an asexual branch (Isaiah 11:1).

Someone predisposed to argue against the proposition that the text is saying the anointed will sprout out of his priest's clothing, will imply that the "there" (from which the anointed will "sprout") speaks not of the priest's clothing, where "salvation" is found, but from Zion itself: the anointed will "sprout" from Zion. Unfortunately the sprouting out of the clothing interpretation is augmented by the fact that prior to the "there" (where the anointed one sprouts) it speaks of "salvation" clothing the anointed one's priests, and immediately afterwards speaks of "shame" clothing the anointed one's enemies.

The whole passage is about the fundamental nature of clothing as the manifestation of the inner truth that sprouts from the one so clothed. Salvation (associated with the anointed one) sprouts out of the clothing worn (or dangles between bare breasts) on the anointed one's priest, while in some way "shame" clothes his enemies.

Fortunately, even as there are two Passover narratives that interpret one another, here too, there are two parallel passages that explain one another. -----Isaiah chapter 61 is so close to Psalms 132, that only the daftest interpreter would try to interpret one without the other. Isaiah 61, which is clearly a direct parallel with Psalm 132, links both passages with Isaiah chapter 11, which speaks of the peculiar birth, life and times, of the anointed one.

Isaiah 11 is almost an exact precursor to Isaiah 61 (which interprets Psalms 132). But first comes the preliminary verses ending Isaiah chapter 10, where we read that the mighty Lebanon (the ancient temple) will be cut down to the ground and that not only the mighty tree, but "the forest thickets" too (the people of the ancient temple), will be razed to the ground prior to the miraculous establishment of a new forest growing out of the stump of the former temple and people. The new forest rises in association with Zion, the everlasting temple of God's anointed one. Right after speaking of the cutting down of the temple and forest of Jesse (10:33-34), Isaiah says:

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The spirit of the Lord will rest on him . . ..

Isaiah 11:1.

The spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news . . ..

Isaiah 61:1.

Isaiah 11:1 speaks of the shoot coming out of the dead roots of the Lebanon and its forest (10:33-34), while Isaiah 61 presents this anointed one telling us he's been anointed to preach the good news.  ----- And what's the "good news" (Greek "gospel") that God's anointed will preach? ----That his priests will be called: "the trees of righteousness, planted by the Lord, to display the ornament of his glory" (61:3). The former trees, associated with the Lebanon, the ancient temple, are cut to the stump (CE 70). But rising out of the stump of the Lebanon, and its people, grows a new growth, a new temple, and a new priesthood (see Hebrews chapter 10), grown out of the messianic-root of Jesse, through David.

After the holocaust, Isaiah 10:33-34, a new temple rises, replete with its own forest, its own priesthood: "the trees of righteousness."

וכהניה וגו. When the priests of Tziyon (verse 9) will clothe themselves with צדק [righteousness] . . . then God will also invest them with ישע [salvation], with the maximum power of perfect human "being" and life. ישע is a result of צדק, and its relation to צדק is the same as that of the positive garments of the high priest to the more negative garments of the ordinary priests (see commentary to Shemos 28:43).

The Hirsch Tehillim, commentary on Psalms 132.

In his commentary on verses 16-18 (of Psalms 132) Rabbi Hirsch implies that the ordinary priests are clothed with "righteousness" צדק, but that the high priest will have an additional ornament on his garment; and that that ornament is called ישע (salvation). -----"Salvation," which Rabbi Hirsch equates with a perfect human being living a perfect life, somehow becomes an ornament setting the kohen gadol, the high priest, apart from the "ordinary" priests.

Rabbi Hirsch points us to his commentary at Shemos 28:43, which helps clarify what he says. ----But before getting that clarification, its important to point out the gravity of what Rabbi Hirsch is suggesting, especially in the context with all that's been said prior to his quote in this essay.

He's implying that the priests of the anointed one, who sprout as a forest of priests after the Lebanon is razed to the ground (with her own forest of priests being destroyed with her) will all, rather than just the kohen gadol, be clothed with "salvation" ישע. ----All the priests of Zion are high priests garmented with salvation. There are no ordinary priests in Zion. They all wear salvation as a garment and ornamentation.

Because of the gravity of that revelation, it's important to investigate Shemos 28:43, where Rabbi Hirsch is going to give us some clue about what clothing, or ornamentation, is unique to the kohen gadol, the high priest; so that we can know how every priest of Zion will be garmented? What ornament will they wear to show the world who and what they are?

You shall put the Urim and Tummim into the breastplate of judgment, so that they will be over Aharon's heart [between his breast] when he comes before God. Let Aharon bear the judgment of the Children of Israel over his heart before God at all times.

The Hirsch Chumash, Shemos 28:30.

In his commentary to the verse above (which he references when speaking of the ornament growing out of the clothing of the priests of Zion in Psalms 132), Rabbi Hirsch points out that the urim and thummim are precisely the additional ornament of the kohen gadol not worn by the "ordinary" priests. Whatever the urim and thummim are, they represent what every priest of Zion will wear between his or her breast. Which makes them pretty important. Which makes trying to understand what they are, and what they represent, and what they look like, pretty important.

We can say right off the bat that they represent "salvation." ----They're an ornament associated with "salvation," in direct opposition to the ornament associated with "shame"---- such that everything said throughout this essay, to include the Passover interpretation of the nigrum theta (black theta) and the bloody tav, are dependent on precisely what the urim and thummim are and represent?

The exact nature of the אורימ ותומים [urim and thummim] is a mystery. However, the etymology of these terms implies "enlightenment" and "moral perfection," respectively. . . אור denotes not only the warming power of fire, but also its all-consuming power. תומים is the plural form of תום, "perfection."

The Hirsch Chumash, Shemos, p. 670.

Rabbi Hirsch has too many gems to address them all here, but on the nature of the urim and thummim (which is the key to this essay), i.e. the ornament of salvation worn by all the priests of Zion, he says something incredibly valuable. He relates verse 17 of Psalm 132, "I have set in order a lamp for My anointed," with the menorah. The ornament that will cloth every priest of Zion, but only clothed the high priest of the Lebanon, i.e., the urim and thummim, marks the high priest as the living temple of God, where the Living God dwells. And the urim and thummim does this by representing the menorah found inside the ancient temple, as part and parcel of the temple ornamentation that represents the very Presence of God.

As fate and good fortune would have it, Rabbi Hirsch has a thing or two to say about the menorah (see essay, The Hirsch Menorah). And what he says about the menorah not only segues perfectly with the difference between being clothed with salvation, versus being clothed with shame, but it reveals almost everything anyone would need to know about the two ornaments ("salvation" and "shame") as they're related to the two forests related to the two priesthoods related to the two Passovers.