I am not a naturally dressy person. If you saw me on my ordinary days when I am at home or even working from home, you would find me dressed in jeans and a scruffy t-shirt, with perhaps an ancient pair of trainers to finish off the outfit. It?s not that I don?t like dressing up; it?s just that I really like old comfortable clothing.
 
But I wouldn?t dream of dressing in jeans when I come here. Same for meetings, or visiting you when I come to your home. You would probably agree that even at shul I am not the smartest of dressers. But my guiding principle isn?t fashion or taste; it called kavod ha-tzibbur, the honour of the community. In other words, kavod ha-tzibbbur is about doing, acting dressing and even speaking in ways that bring honour to our congregation. Now you might say that?s a bit difficult to interpret. If we were a glitzy synagogue in Knightsbridge I might feel the pressure to dress in the latest of fashions, and so might you! But we are in Hackney. And we don?t want to set up an expectation that everyone will come in a suit, because it?s also fine to come along in jeans. So, I manage as best as I can by cranking up my usual appearance just a few notches, till I feel I am smart enough.
 
Thank goodness I wasn?t a priest in the times of the Temple. This week?s parashah devotes a full 39 verses just to their clothing, and then an entire 46 verse chapter to the ceremonies for their initiation. Here was the wardrobe: a breast piece, an ephod, a robe, a fringed tunic, a headdress and a sash. The materials are gorgeous. Gold, blue, purple and crimson yarns, the finest linen, lazuli stones, pure gold and twelve precious stones for each of the tribes of Israel. The clothing of the priests was not just to be a work of beauty. These were the tools of their protection. A doctor in a hospital will wear a white coat. The coat may not be clean; it might even be quite grubby. But that white coat is a symbol of protection. We the patients are protected from the Doctor and their own personality, because here the doctor is being just that, a living example of the function of healing. The coat protects the doctor from their fears of disease, from their own fragile humanity, and gives them the conviction that they have the power to heal. Interesting, also, that as one rises up the hierarchy, to the rank of consultant, the coats are shed, as if power of rank alone inspires this feeling of protection. The consultant wears the suit, a symbol of success; here is someone in whom I place my trust.
 
Yet the priest has a more difficult and dangerous role. It is the priest who moves close to the Holy of Holies. The priest who handles the sacred items of sacrifice, and hands them over from the people to God. The priest, who, born into his role, has no escape from it, unless he is physically imperfect. The clothing of the priest convinces him and everyone else that he alone is safe to move between the zones of ordinary life and the dangerous sacred. A holy force that improperly handled, will lead to his death. As in fact happens, to Aarons two son, Nadav and Abihu, who despite all warnings end up doing things their way, and going up in smoke.
 
Yet this exclusive Jewish priestliness barely lives on. There are some who say that if you want to have a sense of this priestly based religion, you might go to the Catholic or Eastern Orthodox Church. There you will see the Priest as person close to God, who operates sometime in view but often out of sight in mysterious and holy places set apart form the ordinary people. The modern day priest, too, has his robes, that signal ordination, and his setting apart for his own special task.
 
Judaism, instead, was forced to abandon priestliness as a living reality, after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. The holiness of the place was moved into our texts, and we learned to invest our holy leanings into study. Rabbinic Judaism sprang up, and brought with it a new kind of democracy. Not the kind of democracy we would anticipate today. The rabbis were all male, and they certainly knew a thing or two about power and hierarchy. But the rabbis worked out their ideas through discussion and dissent, and cultivated in us a powerful drive to reason and to argue, and set for us the expectation, today, that not one person has all the access to the Truth. They saw the evolution of the synagogue, the house of leaning or beit midrash, and the place of meeting, the beit ha-knesset. They established the content of our services, which survive in form and in very large parts in content, even today. The synagogue became the property of the people. It can be a very ordinary place, a place of committees and planning meetings and fundraising. A place for taking care of our ordinary human needs. For caring for each other in our sickness, or when we are grieving. And it becomes at times, a sacred place. A place where prayer can lift us up on wings of our own making, taking us by surprise, sometimes. But there is no priest in this community. We are simply here by ourselves, whether we come with our families or we come here alone.
 
Tomorrow we will meet to think about the next stage in the life of this community. We will think about how we are building our community, about how we involve our members for growth. Some of us at the meeting will bring their experiences in community development. Others will be planners, or people who are good with figures. Some will bring their straightforward enthusiasm. But we will also bring our questions. We will think about what it is that we are all looking for here, about where we fit in the many pockets that make up a living community. We will consider our task to reach out and bring each other in, to connect our own Jewish journeys to the others we meet. To truly meeting each other, and to building real friendships. To using the energy we find to living out our task as a Kingdom of Priests.
 
Because that is who we are. We have absorbed this priestly mission into our deepest selves. We are not priests in the sense that we stand between the people and God, or that we fancy ourselves as holding on to a higher task. We are priests today because we are all of us equal. And the responsibility rests on each of us to re-kindle the holiness that comes down to us in our living Jewish tradition. But that?s not all, if you look around closely, we can see that the synagogue itself has digested priestliness. Here in the ark, rests the Sefer Torah. It is clothed in a mantle, and topped with bells. The priestly cloak, adorned with pomegranate bells, now dresses our Torah. The Torah itself wears the breastplate that the priests once wore. The parochet, or sacred curtain, that in the days of the temple screened of the Holy of Holies, now closes the ark of the synagogue. Yet an ordinary person will be called to open and to close it.
 
We have not left priestliness behind We have simply re-imagined it in a more useful way. We continue this process of re-imagining tomorrow, and we invite you to join us.