Unscrolled, Parashat Tetzaveh: The Emperor Has No Nose

“Can you picture, in your mind, what Anna Karenina looks like?”

With this question, author Peter Mendelsund begins his book, “What We See When We Read.”

To any reader of Tolstoy’s classic novel, there can only be one answer to this question: “Yes. As if she were standing here in front of me.” Tolstoy’s clear and expert prose creates the sense that one is watching the novel unfold through a polished window. Anna’s physical appearance — her dark, curling hair; her flashing eyes; her full arms — is palpably experienced.

But then Mendelsund pushes further: “What does her nose look like?”

Suddenly, Anna’s palpable presence reveals itself to be nothing but a puff of air. What we pictured in our minds collapses into a heap of disorganized pixels — a vague and noseless suggestion of a person.

The act of picturing is a mystery. Compounding that mystery is the fact that our intuitions about picturing are almost all wrong. Commonly, we suppose that our mind’s eye is witness to some interior stage or screen, upon which the books we read and the stories we hear play out like Hollywood movies.

Upon even the slightest examination, however, this proves false. The emperor has no nose. What truly happens in our minds when we read is much vaguer, and much less visual, than we would like to believe.

In Parashat Tetzaveh, G-d continues commanding Moses concerning the ritual objects for the sacrificial service. The tabernacle, the menorah and the table of the bread of presence have already been described. God’s attention turns now from sacred architecture to sacred attire. Most of the parashah concerns the materials for the High Priest’s garments, as well as the methods by which they are to be assembled and the ways they are to be arranged upon the body of the priest.

We are being asked by the Torah to picture. This is no small thing. It wasn’t until I had read it through three times that I felt I could transform the words of the parashah into a clear and meaningful series of mental images.

We are being asked by the Torah to picture. This is no small thing.

During my first reading, I saw only a blurred collage, gleaming with gold, shot through with veins of blue, purple and crimson yarn, and luminescent with the glow of precious stones. The names of the stones themselves — carnelian, chrysolite, emerald, turquoise, sapphire, amethyst, hyacinth, agate, crystal, beryl, lapis lazuli and jasper — were sweet on my tongue, but not since the days of my childhood rock collection would I have been able to picture each one individually. Instead, what I saw in my mind’s eye was a heap of jewels, glowing in all the hues of the rainbow, like a glinting treasure chest in a child’s cartoon.

During my second reading, I exerted myself to create a viable mental image — assembling the breastplate upon the ephod, hooking it into the epaulettes and topping off the whole thing with a turban and a golden diadem. Still, many details of the text confounded this image rather than clarified it.

During my third reading, I caved and decided to consult an image of the priestly garments found in an illustrated children’s bible from 1966, which I had recently found out on the street. Finally, I felt that I could see what the text wanted me to see.

“Visualizing,” writes Mendelsund, “seems to require will.” It also requires effort, and it is astounding to imagine that Moses, hearing this stream of complex instructions, was able to assemble it all properly in his mind. Indeed, there is an element of the miraculous about it.

In Parashat Tetzaveh, God commands Moses in a holy act of picturing — of seeing clearly with the mind’s eye what has not yet been brought into being.

His ability to do so is what separates prophets from idle dreamers.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.