Parasha Tetzaveh goes to great lengths to describe the clothes of the Kohanim, the Temple priests.
The Kohanim had to wear holy garments for their holy job. “And these are the garments that they shall make: a choshen,an ephod, a robe,a tunic of checker work, a cap, and a sash.. and linen pants to cover the flesh of their nakedness…”
So from here we see that the Torah is teaching us that clothes matter. Not only that, but we should dress to impress. But who should we impress? Then verse 28:2 has G-d telling Moses to prepare his brothers’s official outfit “for honor and glory.”
The Ramban explains :so that Aaron will be honorable and glorious by wearing honorable and glorious clothing. These garments bring glory because they are royal clothes.
The teaching here is that we are impacted by our garb. The way we dress affect not only how others perceive us, but also how we feel about ourselves.
A fascinating 2012 study by Northwestern University psychologists Adam Galinsky and Hajo Adam conclude that the idea that we think with not only our brains, but with our physical experiences as well, show that the clothes we wear do have an impact in our behavior. For example they tested 58 people who randomly chose some of them to put on a white doctor’s lab coat, while others were left wearing their regular street clothes. Then they were asked to perform tasks that involved a high degree of diligence and sustained attention. The ones wearing the lab coats made a full 50% fewer mistakes than their counterparts in street clothes.
This growing field known as “embodied cognition,”shows how the clothes we are wearing have a huge impact in the way we think and behave.
some excerpts from “Torah Studies”JLI
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