“If you dress the part, you will live the part” is a famous saying, but is it true? We discover in life people dress with extreme piety and they don’t live the part or conversely dress in such a simple manner but are pious and learned. What is worse? Looking frum but not acting frum or being frum and not looking frum? When I was a child in 4th grade I asked my Rebbe, what is considered Yeshivish attire? He told me that if your mother would go to the flea market and buy the cheapest clothing possible, that was Yeshivish. How times have changed that it became more expensive to dress Yeshivish. One also needs to be swathed in black. I am not just referring to men, the women too are all in black and its sad that a wedding looks like a levayah. When being modest means that one cannot be elegant or classy, the test of tznius is greatly magnified. Being a tzanuah yet remaining graceful and chic, is complimentary and a kiddush Hashem.
“The Canaanite king of Arad, who dwelled in the south” Rashi explains this is Amalek and not Canaan because Amalek, and not Canaan, lived in the south. Amalek changed their language and spoke the “mother tongue” of Canaan so that the Jewish people will be confused and pray that Hashem should make them victorious over the Canaan people and not Amalek. However, they didn’t change their attire, but kept the dress of Amalek. However, the Jewish people prayed without specifying which nation Hashem should save them from. The Almighty, Who knows everything, heeded their tefillos and the Jewish nation was successful over their enemies.
The Balei Musssar explain that Amalek could not change their dress code because then they would have become real Cnaanim. They reasoned that since your clothing defines everything who you are, and the Jewish people would daven to be victorious over Canaan, and their prayers would be successful. Maybe this is how Amalek thinks, but it can’t be the way we think. We need to look into the neshama of a person and see his purity, and if we start to think that clothes are all that matter, we are thinking like Amalek.
At the passing of Aaron Hakohen, as described in this week’s parsha, it says that Aharon’s clothing was removed and put on Elazar. There are two terms for clothing in the passuk, begged and levush. Levush is from two words “lo bush” not to be embarrassed by your clothing. Begged is related to begidah, betrayal. If you go to a wedding in work-out gear, it’s a begged, and it works against (betrays) you. When you wear clothing that is appropriate, then it’s called a lebush; no embarrassment. When Aaron’s time was up, Moshe removed the Kohain Gadol’s clothing as “begadav,” his clothing that is no longer appropriate for him, as it was time for his passing. He then put it on Elazar as a “levush,” because it was appropriate for him.
Clothing is very important to one’s identity, but it does not really define the person. When one dresses, he needs to contemplate “does this kind of clothing express who I am, or who I wish to be?” Although one’s clothes do not necessarily portray the inner person, it does reveal who you wish to portray yourself as.
