The High Priest, the Kohen Gadol, physically carried the names of the people on his shoulders and on his heart. He had two onyx stones, one on each shoulder, each with the names of 6 tribes, and he also wore the hoshen mishpat, a breastplate with 12 different precious stones, each with one of the names of the tribes on it. The Torah uses the word nasa, “carry,” for all of these name-bearing stones; the High Priest carried the names of the people on his shoulders and on his heart, al libo (Exodus 28:9-30)
How We Carry Others
Whom do you carry on your shoulders and in your heart? Who are the people that you hold dear, that you worry about – maybe they have some particular challenge or illness right now or maybe you just want to make sure they are ok. What are their names? On the breastplate, the names were inscribed onto the stones by the shamir worm who did it by a magical kind of radioactive energy, making an impact without taking away from the stones (Talmud Sukkah 48b). You can inscribe the names of the people you are concerned about in a similar way, energetically allowing them to have an impact on you, feeling how your care for them inscribes their names on your heart.
What is hard about our concern for others is that a lot of the time we feel that we carry this weight on our own. We feel that we are solely responsible; there is an urgency and a mistrust to our worry and to our actions, a need to “fix” things for this person immediately, and we tend to carry that weight and that tension in our bodies, in our cells and our bones, in our tight shoulders and our churning innards.
The High Priest Difference: God
Here is what is different about the Kohen Gadol: the Kohen Gadol did not carry these names on his own. He carried them lifnei Hashem, before God, as a vessel on earth for God’s own holding and carrying of the people. The same higher power that was carrying all the troubles and woes of the people was also carrying him, so that the burden was lightened, held aloft by an infinite love that holds us all without effort or difficulty.
Can you sense how that shift might be possible for you? Can you feel the heaviness of this weight, and then imagine a divine loving presence that comes now to hold you as you hold all of that, to hold all of it with you? Your function is to be the human shoulders and heart on earth, but you are ultimately just God’s representative, God’s partner, God’s heart on earth. Maybe you can let God take some of your burden, let God hold it with you, loosening, letting your shoulders relax and your jaws unclench and your heart soften. We do not hold all of this alone.
Urim veTumim: Divine Light Behind the Names
Tucked into a flap of the garment behind the High Priest’s breastplate was the urim vetumim, a piece of parchment with God’s mystical name written on it (Rashi on Exodus 28:30). The word urim comes from or, light. The light of God’s own name shined from behind the breastplate and poured into the stones with their individual names. We, too, have this divine light deep inside our hearts, tucked behind the names of those we carry, and we can let the light shine and pour out into the names.
What does this feel or look like? Maybe you can picture the person you are concerned about and imagine a divine aura surrounding them, holding them in their troubles, guiding and healing them in the way that they need. We often have an urge to solve things for the people we care about, to fix their problems; we are desperate to help them, to protect them. But this is different. This is about asking God to guide them on their own journey as only God can. It is about admitting we don’t necessarily know what is good for another person, and pouring our heart into this one simple desire: that God’s light be with them wherever they go. Blessing them, with a heart full of love, as the priests did – ya’er hashem panav elekha ve’yekhuneka – may God shine God’s face of light upon you and deal graciously with you, or perhaps reading veyekhuneka as related to hinukh – may God guide you and teach you (Numbers 6:25). To carry others as the priests did is to continually hold them in God’s light in your own heart and to trust God to light their way..
And if right now, you are in a place that it is you that very much needs this divine light, please, include yourself, make yourself the center here. It is all the same, others and ourselves. God’s light shines on all of us together, holding and healing and guiding us all. Kulanu ke’ehad.
The Light of Each Person
When we imagine God’s light shining from behind the breastplate into all those individual stones, another thing happens as well – we become aware not just of God’s light but of the divine spark in each person. To carry another person in your heart as the Kohen Gadol did is to see their brilliant sparkling light even when they have forgotten it. to bear witness to their wholeness even when they feel impossibly broken. The Torah says that these stones the High Priest carried are to remain be’melu’otam,” in their wholeness” (28:20). The gemara interprets this to mean that the writing on them may not be engraved in the usual way because it would take away some of their wholeness (Talmud Sukkah 48b). The stones must remain malei, whole, as the people they represent are also always whole, no matter how broken and disintegrated they feel.
This is important. When we are concerned about other people or the world or even ourselves and we carry those worries around, we tend to adopt their negative view and to collude with them in forgetting their brilliance, their light, their strength, their wholeness. Keeping the urim vetumim tucked inside our chest behind the names, letting the light shine through, holding others in God’s light, means remembering their light and holding it for them even as they walk through darkness. Not falling into the darkness with them, but holding out for them the lantern of their own divine spark.
The twelve stones on the breastplate, each one is a precious stone, each one unique. The names for these stones in Hebrew – names like odem, pitrah and nofekh (28:17-18) – we aren’t sure exactly what they refer to. This is an apt description of the divine light of the individual soul – precious, unique and mysterious, difficult to know and define too precisely, a piece of the infinite in this world. It is this preciousness and light and infinite value that we hold for one another when we carry each other as the Kohen Gadol carried the people. We forget our own brilliance and we remind each other, reflect it back to each other, holding each other lifne Hashem, “before God,” seeing ourselves and each other as God views us.
Stones of Belonging
The Kohen Gadol carried two sets of stones, one on his shoulders and one on his heart. On one the names were written individually and on the other, they were written in groups. This, too, is how we help each other – when we hold another person both in their uniqueness as an individual and at the same time in their connectedness to the larger group. So many of us suffer from loneliness and a sense of disconnection. The Kohen Gadol’s shoulder stones with multiple names is a way of reminding people of their inherent belonging in the larger web of life. We are each both one of those individual stones on the breastplate and at the same time jointly belonging to one of the larger communal stones on the shoulder, all of us together being held in the loving light of God.
