Our Gemara discusses the power of the tzitz to render impure matters acceptable for sacrifice, and a discussion of its limitations according to some, such as whether it is limited to material for the altar or even sacrificial food. How do we understand this power of the tzitz, and what lessons does it teach about our nature? Rav Hirsch, whose commentary on Vayikra is spectacular at highlighting the symbolic content of sacrificial rituals, explains as follows (Shemos 28:38):

The tzitz has the power to purify the objects, but not those engaged in the practice on an individual level. The verse is avon hakodoshim, the sin of the sacred material, and the derash is: “the sin of the sacred material, hakodoshim, but not those who declare it sacred, makdishim” (Menachos 25a). Because the forehead of the Kohen Gadol, who represents the entire service of the Sanctuary, bears the inscription “Holy to Hashem,” explicitly declaring that God—Hashem in the full sense of His free, personal Being—is the sole One to whom the Sanctuary is dedicated, and toward whom all sacred objects are directed, this inscription is capable of removing any cloud of distortion that might affect the sacred objects regarding their orientation to the One God.

But that is only if the defect is purely objective, inherent in the object itself, and confined within the narrow circle of the Sanctuary. Only offerings that ascend the altar—that is, sacrificial elements such as blood, the handful, and the fats, which are offered directly to Hashem—are included. It does not apply unequivocally to items eaten, such as meat, where the relationship to God is mediated and the priest or owner who consumes the offering stands in the foreground.

Likewise, in communal offerings fixed to a specific time—including the daily minchas chavisin of the Kohen Gadol and the bull of Yom Kippur, since the Kohen Gadol represents the community—impurity is considered set aside. This principle is grounded not merely in the idea of communal offering, but in the defining feature of fixed time (see Temurah 14a). Indeed, any offering fixed to a time is, in a broader sense, a communal offering. (And I believe Rav Hirsch is saying that the community itself is also objectively Godly as a totality, as opposed to the individual, who is subject to subjective distortion that is too bounded to earthly matter for the tzitz to purify.)

Tum’ah, representing death and the vacuum of God’s life force, brings impurity. But humans have free will, and when it comes to our loss of connection to God, we must also reach out and cannot receive blanket dispensation. We see that certain powers of community and/or places that have been set aside as objectively sacred by God have a special, sweeping, intense power, such that the awareness of God, in an absolute form as inspired by the tzitz, can rise above impurity. Unfortunately, our subjectively generated distortions do not get repaired by this broad function; for that, we must internally rectify.