Coat of many colours – Vayyeshev
Joseph’s coat of many colours has seized the imagination of generations of Bible-readers.
The Hebrew k’tonet passim is translated differently by the commentators. The accepted rendering follows the Targum Yonatan, whilst Ibn Ezra believes the phrase means an embroidered coat and others think it indicates a long coat reaching down to the ankles with sleeves to the wrists.
More important, however, than the translation of the Hebrew, is the symbolism of the coat as a mark of Jacob’s favouritism of Joseph above his other sons. The resulting jealousy amongst the brothers set in train a series of events that changed the whole of history.
Clothes are a very important symbol in Jewish tradition. They are a mark of modesty, dignity and identity. The garments you wear generally tell a great deal about who you are. No-one, especially a scholar, should wear shabby and dirty clothes. Nor should one go about in ostentatious clothing or wear garments identified with less respectable elements in society (in Talmudic times certain colours were associated with promiscuity).
Clothes also express your Jewish identity. Certain fabrics (sha’atnez, a mixture of wool and linen) are amongst the forbidden mixtures enumerated by the Torah. Fringes – tzitzit are a badge of Jewishness. A person’s clothing should include headcovering for both men and married women to show humility in the presence of God. Garments should not be skimpy or suggestive. Shoes should be worn. All this is part of the halachic pattern of Judaism.
But there is another level too on which clothing speaks volumes. Chassidic teaching refers to the good deeds one does as garments of the soul. The meditation said on putting on the tallit includes the prayer, “As I cover myself with the tallit in this world, so may my soul merit to be clothed with a beautiful spiritual robe in the World to Come in the Garden of Eden”.
In the fable, the emperor had no clothes, but in Judaism, a good person has both physical and ethical garments. Eshet Chayil, recited on Friday night and on other occasions when we pay tribute to the woman of worth, declares, “Strength and majesty are her clothing”. In a poetic sense God, too, is clothed in garments: the Psalmist describes Him in the psalm for Fridays (Psalm 93) as robed in majesty and strength.
“Conversely, ” says a modern rabbi, “we can defile ourselves by donning a garment of dishonesty and corruption. Every person can sink to the depths of moral depravity by becoming green with envy, red with rage, yellow with cowardice, or black-hearted with cruelty. Every one of us, therefore, has the potentiality of wearing a coat of manv colours” (Emanuel Levy, “Jewish Chronicle”, 11 December, 1987).
Yes, there are those who say, “Who cares what you wear?” Few people would agree. Judaism certainly does not. Your clothing is part of you and always has been, from the moment at the beginning of human history when Adam and Eve invented dress sense and sewed garments out of fig leaves!
