It starts with a command: Tzav. Same root as mitzvah. Here, though, there is an extra urgency. The voice of the Talmud came to me in my morning meditation. Extra urgency, Tzav, hurry! Do this thing.

What thing? Lift up the ashes, thus says your Torah. Keep the fire burning, and put on some fine clothes. Which ashes, what clothes? (Leviticus 6:1-6)

The ashes from the ‘olah, the offering, lifted up, all burnt, yesterday’s ashes, lift them up. Hurry, lift up the remains of yesterday, put them next to the holy altar, the fire shall not go out. Clean up your ashes, man; this I heard in the voice of the Talmud.

Then the voice of the Mishnah began to speak through me. 

Nothing of the offering can be used, everything burnt up, except the hides. You can make a nice jacket out of the hides. 

The hide business is not a very fashionable business these days, I thought. Still, the idea that I could sport a fine jacket, a great suit today was a small comfort. I wasn’t expecting to embrace the outside in the inside-outside dynamic; generally, I attach to the inside.

But something I learned from the Zohar classic text of Jewish mysticism spoke to me: After wandering, one returns to the pshat, the plain sense of the text, because through the plain sense of the text, the surfaces relax and everything appears. The surfaces release, so to speak, their opacity and become transparent. At that level, there is no outside-inside dynamic; it’s all inside. Or once you have been inside, the outside-inside tension ceases and through the outside you see everything. It’s all inside or it’s all outside, it’s all One anyway and transparent.

Now, if I am sporting a fine jacket or a great suit, you will understand I am not shallow, I am transparent. I have lifted up the remains of yesterday to the best of my ability, I have kept the fire burning the best I can, I cleaned up yesterday’s ashes and lifted them up yom yom daily to the extent that I could, and I am wearing a really fine suit that I may have made from the hides, because I can use this hides. And if I’m looking pretty darn good some days, I need to look pretty darn good from the outside because, on the inside, I may be wounded or overwhelmed by grief or confused or fearful or lost, and a really fine suit made from those hides is about what I can manage and it will have to be enough. That day. Nice merchandise.

You may see me one day and say to me, Jimmy, you look good today, and that may be a serious compliment. My insides may be expressing that day through that Italian fine wool suit, and I’ll thank you from the same place. I lifted up the ashes of yesterday, my eyes will say, I have kept the fire burning.