A few months ago, my wife and I were in Madrid for our summer vacation. One of the highlights was visiting the Royal Palace of Madrid, which we took a guided tour of shortly after arriving. The tour raised a question for me: why does some beauty inspire awe in the moment, yet dissipate without leaving a lasting imprint?
From the moment we entered, the Palace was overwhelming in the best of ways. Ceiling after ceiling, room after room was filled with art, craftsmanship, and opulence. It contained more than three thousand rooms, each designed to impress. I found myself constantly reaching for my phone, trying to capture it all. It felt almost magical.
And then, unexpectedly, something changed. Nothing had gone wrong, and I was still grateful to be there. But I no longer wanted to take more pictures or see another rare or expensive object. The beauty hadn’t disappeared, but it had stopped drawing me in. Why?
That question is precisely the one Rabbi Jonathan Sacks raises in an essay on Parshat Tetzaveh, this week’s Torah portion. Judaism, he explains, takes beauty seriously. The Torah lavishes extraordinary attention on the priestly garments, and the Talmud teaches that it was a serious transgression for a priest to serve in the Temple without wearing them.
Aesthetics, it turns out, are not incidental in Judaism. They are an integral part of the story.
At the same time, Rabbi Sacks explained, Judaism’s understanding of beauty differs sharply from the classical Greek ideal—the same ideal that shaped much of Europe’s monumental architecture. Greece aspired to beauty as a finished form, complete in itself, inviting admiration, contemplation, and awe. But it does not necessarily ask anything more of the observer. In a way, once we apprehend the form, the encounter is over.
Rabbi Sacks emphasizes that the Torah’s concern with beauty is not about beauty for its own sake. It is about what he calls hadrat kodesh—sacred beauty. Beauty infused with holiness is meant to draw a person inward, not overwhelm the senses. It is meant to communicate meaning and to leave the one who encounters it changed.
Seen this way, the garments of the priests were not simply beautiful because they were pleasing to the eye. They were beautiful because they conveyed something essential about the service of God itself—that it should be transformative. Beauty helps shape the inner world of the person who encounters it.
This distinction helped me make sense of my experience in the Royal Palace. The Palace embodies a particular kind of beauty—opulent, impressive, awe-inducing. There is nothing wrong with that. But that kind of beauty has limits. The Palace was beautiful, but asked nothing of me beyond admiration. Once I had seen it, there was nowhere else to go. The experience was complete—and therefore closed.
Parshat Tetzaveh offers a different model. The beauty of the Tabernacle and the priestly garments was designed to orient the soul toward God. This is beauty in the service of something higher—beauty that invites engagement rather than saturation.
Judaism returns to this model again and again. Much of Jewish life features not overwhelming beauty, but repeated, measured forms of it: Shabbat candles, a well-worn siddur, a tallit or kiddush cup chosen with care. Their beauty does not fade because it is not consumed all at once; it becomes a steady reference point for how we relate to God and live our commitment to mitzvot across time.
Beauty endures, Parshat Tetzaveh suggests, not when it overwhelms us, but when it teaches us how to live before God.
Josh Poyurs is the Vice Head of Kodesh and Ethos, leads strategic projects, and is a Faculty Member at Yeshiva College, the second largest Jewish school in South Africa with over 800 students. Josh combines his Masters in Clinical and Research Psychology, his MBA, his experience in both management consulting and tech, and his years of learning in Yeshiva and Kollel, to deliver meaningful classes, and transformative projects that are backed by science and infused with a Torah ethos. He is a member of the third cohort of the international Rabbi Sacks Legacy Scholars Programme, and lives in Johannesburg with his wife, Ashleigh.
This essay was written as part of our collaboration with The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Sacks Scholars.
