The Power of Positive Self-Concept - Parsha Tetzaveh 5779 - February 15, 2019

Parashat Tetzaveh presents the design of the bigde kehuna – the Priestly Garments. Tetzaveh is the only parasha of Moshe’s lifetime – four of five books of the Torah – that does not mention Moshe’s name. Clearly the focus of the parasha is all on Moshe’s brother Aharon and his descendants.

Moshe Rabbenu’s role in the nation is clear. Hashem chose Moshe as His representative to the nation to bring them the Torah and to convey Hashem’s prophetic message. He announced the plagues to Pharoh in Egypt. Moshe Rabbenu was G-d’s messenger to the Jewish people.

What was Aharon’s role in the nation?

Aharon taught Torah to the people. He offered the nation’s sacrifices in the mishkan. Malbim explains that Hashem chose Aharon to be the nation’s messenger in serving Hashem and in teaching Torah. Thus, Moshe and Aharon stood shoulder-to-shoulder. Moshe was Hashem’s representative to the people and Aharon was the people’s representative to Hashem.

What qualified Aharon to be the appropriate selection to serve as the nation’s representative to Hashem?

One of Aharon’s qualities is best stated in Pirke Avot – the Ethics of our Fathers. Hillel says, “Be from the students of Aharon: Love peace and chase after peace. Love G-d’s creations and bring them close to Torah.”

Our chachamim elaborate on one of Aharon’s tactics in pursuing peace: When Aharon felt that a person had done something evil, he would go over to the person, wish him “Shalom”, befriend him, show him care and affection. He would sit and speak with him. After a while, the person became embarrassed and said in his heart, “If Aharon only knew the depths of my thoughts and my evil actions, he would never allow himself to look at me; let alone talk to me. I want to retain my standing in his eyes that I am a good man. Therefore, I will try to make his idea of me come true and better myself and become one of Aharon’s disciples who learns from him.”

Aharon loved peace and chased after peace. Aharon realized that a person’s self-concept – how he or she views him or herself – ultimately affects how he or she acts and how he or she thinks. Self-concept – how one views him or herself – is shaped by many factors including how a person acts, how a person responds to challenge and how others view the person.

People tend to act in accordance with their self-concept. When a person has a positive self-concept, they tend to act in a positive way. A positive self-concept is not self-confidence. A positive self-concept a person’s view about him or herself that he or she is a good person.

Aharon motivated people to improvement by awakening a positive self-concept. He did not resort to awakening guilt or shame or fear. The people respected Aharon. He parlayed that respect into positive action by genuinely forging a relationship with people. These people changed their actions because Aharon awoke in them a positive sense of self.

A few years ago, Dr. Francesca Gino of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill conducted a fascinating experiment. Dr. Gino and her colleagues gave a pair of expensive designer sunglasses to members of a group of female volunteers. The researchers told some of the volunteers that the sunglasses were real and others in the group were told that they were counterfeit. They then asked the volunteers to perform pencil-and-paper mathematical quizzes for which they could earn up to $10, depending on how many questions they got right. The participants were told a tale about how doing these quizzes would allow them to judge the comfort and quality of the glasses.

Crucially, the quizzes were presented as “honor tests” that participants

would mark themselves, reporting their own scores to the study’s organizers. The quiz papers were not numbered and thus appeared to be untraceable, and were thrown away at the end of the study. In fact, though, each had one unique question on it, meaning that it could be identified—and the papers were recovered and marked again by the researchers after they had been discarded.

Of participants told that they were wearing authentic designer sunglasses, 30% were found to have cheated, reporting that they had solved more problems than was actually the case. Of those who thought they were wearing fake sunglasses, by contrast, about 70% cheated.

The results were similar when the women completed a computer-based task that involved counting dots on a screen. In this case, the location of the dots determined the financial reward. The women who thought they were wearing counterfeits lied about those locations more often than those who did not.

In a third part of the study, the participants were asked questions about the honesty and ethics of people they knew and people in general. Those who thought they had knock-offs were more likely to say that people were dishonest and unethical.

Apparently, believing they were wearing fakes made people feel and, more importantly, act like fakes.

This experiment supports the wisdom of Aharon’s technique in pursuing peace and bringing people who have sinned closer to Torah. Positive self-concept encourages positive action. Based on Aharon’s lesson, one strategy in self-improvement is to not only focus on that particular issue but to act, in general, in a way that will promote your own positive self-concept. This idea may be one reason why giving tzedakah is considered by our chachamim to be a form of repentance. By acting in a way that promotes a positive self-concept, we begin to see ourselves as capable of making a more difficult change.