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The portion of Tetsaveh, as commentators have noted, has one unusual feature: it is the only portion from the beginning of Shemot to the end of Devarim that does not contain the name of Moses. Several interpretations have been offered:
The Vilna Gaon suggests that it is related to the fact that in most years it is read during the week in which the seventh of Adar falls: the day of Moses' death. During this week we sense the loss of the greatest leader in Jewish history - and his absence from Tetsaveh expresses that loss.
The Baal HaTurim relates it to Moses' plea, in next week's sedra, for God to forgive Israel. "If not," says Moses, "blot me out of the book you have written" (32: 32). There is a principle that "The curse of a sage comes true, even if it was conditional " (Makkot 11a). Thus for one week his name was "blotted out" from the Torah.
The Paneach Raza relates it to another principle: "There is no anger that does not leave an impression" When Moses, for the last time, declined God's invitation to lead the Jewish people out of Egypt, saying "Please send someone else", God "became angry with Moses" (Ex. 4: 13-14) and told him that his brother Aaron would accompany him. For that reason Moses forfeited the role he might otherwise have had, of becoming the first of Israel's priests, a role that went instead to Aaron. That is why he is missing from the portion of Tetsaveh which is dedicated to the role of the Cohen.
All three explanations focus on an absence. However, perhaps the simplest explanation is that Tetsaveh is dedicated to a presence, one that had a decisive influence on Judaism and Jewish history.
Judaism is unusual in that it recognises not one form of religious leadership but two: the navi and Cohen, the prophet and the priest. The figure of the prophet has always captured the imagination. He (or she) is a person of drama, "speaking truth to power", unafraid to challenge kings and courts or society as a whole in the name of high, even utopian ideals. No other type of religious personality has had the impact as the prophets of Israel, of whom the greatest was Moses. The priests, by contrast, were for the most part quieter figures, a-political, who served in the sanctuary rather than in the spotlight of political debate. Yet they, no less than the prophets, sustained Israel as a holy nation. Indeed, though Israel were summoned to become "a kingdom of priests" they were never called on to be a people of prophets (Moses said, "Would that all God's people were prophets", but this was a wish, not a reality).
Let us therefore consider some of the differences between a prophet and a priest:
The key words in the vocabulary of the Cohen are kodesh and chol, tahor and tamei, sacred, secular, pure and impure. The key words in the vocabulary of the prophets are tzedek and mishpat, chessed and rachamim, righteousness and justice, kindness and compassion.
The key verbs of priesthood are lehorot and lehavdil, to instruct and distinguish. The key activity of the prophet is to proclaim "the word of the Lord" The distinction between priestly and prophetic consciousness (torat cohanim and torat nevi'im) is fundamental to Judaism, and is reflected in the differences between law and narrative, halakhah and aggadah, creation and redemption. The priest speaks the word of God for all time, the prophet, the word of God for this time. Without the prophet, Judaism would not be a religion of history and destiny. But without the priest, the children of Israel would not have become the people of eternity. This is beautifully summed up in the opening verses of Tetsaveh:
Command the Israelites to bring you clear oil of pressed olives, to keep the lamp constantly burning in the tent of meeting, outside the curtain that is in front of the Testimony, Aaron and his sons shall keep the lamps burning before the Lord from evening to morning. This is to be a lasting ordinance among the Israelites for the generations to come.
Moses the prophet dominates four of the five books that bear his name. But in Tetsaveh for once it is Aaron, the first of the priests, who holds centre-stage, undiminished by the rival presence of his brother. For whereas Moses lit the fire in the souls of the Jewish people, Aaron tended the flame and turned it into "an eternal light".