TORAH SPARKS
Parashat Emor

May 1, 2021 | 19 Iyar 5781

Torah: Leviticus 21:1-24:23; Triennial 22:17-23:22

Haftorah: Ezekiel 44:15-31

 

 

Beyond Blemish

Ilana Kurshan

 

This week s parasha begins with God s instructions to Moshe concerning laws that apply to the priests alone. Unlike ordinary Israelites, the priests must hold themselves to higher standards. They may not come into contact with the dead, except for a short list of very close family members. They may not shave their heads smooth, make gashes to deform their flesh, or marry a woman who has engaged in harlotry. To some extent these injunctions make sense: The priest must remain pure to serve God, which demands a high level of propriety and decorum. Somewhat more disturbing to our modern sensibilities is the Torah s stipulation, just a few verses later, that no one who has any sort of physical blemish may serve in the Tabernacle: No one at all who has a defect shall be qualified: no man who is blind, or lame, or has a limb too short or too long or who is a hunchback, or a dwarf (Leviticus 22:19-20). How did later generations make sense of the Torah s stipulation that physical imperfections most of which seem to be congenital, and hence no fault of the individual render a priest unfit to serve? And what are we to make of this injunction in our modern age, when we strive to regard all people equally regardless of handicaps or disabilities?

 

The classical rabbinic commentators justify the prohibition on blemished priests serving in the Temple on the grounds that we are supposed to offer our best to God. Just as we would not choose a blemished animal to offer as a sacrifice, so too do we not choose a priest with a physical defect to serve in the Temple. As Chizkuni comments (Leviticus 21:18), Seeing that they [the priests] represent the whole Jewish community, it would not seem appropriate that the community dispatch blemished people as their representatives at the court of the King of Kings. The Tabernacle was like a palace for God, and just as a royal palace must be splendid and ornate to befit the king, so too must the Tabernacle befit the King of Kings. Rashi, in commenting on this verse, cites the prophet Malachi, who lived in the land of Israel during the Second Temple period. Malachi critiques the neglectful and corrupt priests of his day, arguing that God does not desire their worship or their sacrifices: When you offer the blind for sacrifice, is it not evil? And when you offer the lame or the sick, is it not evil? Offer it now unto your ruler will he be pleased with you? Will he show you favor? (1:8).

 

Presumably the implication of Malachi s exhortations is that God does not desire the blind, the lame, or the sick, and will be displeased to receive them in His Temple. But the contemporary Israeli rabbi and scholar Binyamin Lau (in his book Etnachta, published by Yediot in 2009 and still untranslated) encourages us to read Malachi s questions not as rhetorical, but as a challenge to rethink the way we relate to those with physical imperfections in our own day. Rabbi Lau cites the Talmud in Megillah (24b), which discusses the law that a priest with blemishes on his hands may not lift his arms to bless the congregation in the priestly benediction. The concern, as Rashi explains, is that priests with deformed hands would attract the attention of the congregation, which would violate the prohibition against looking at the priests at a time when God s presence rests on them. Anyone who looks different attracts attention, which serves to distract the members of the congregation during a moment of tremendous gravity.

 

The Talmud goes on to cite various counterexamples of priests who were blemished but who nonetheless participated in the priestly benediction, including a priest who was blind in one eye, and a priest whose eyes and nose were always runny. In each case, the sages explain that these particular priests were familiar figures in their towns, and thus people were used to their defects and did not look at them askance. They looked different, but their differences were not distracting, and so it was not a problem for them to stand before the congregation and recite the priestly benediction.

 

As Lau explains, our challenge is to train ourselves to relate to all people with deformities and disabilities as familiar figures in our communities. That is, we need to take the time to get to know those who look different so that we are able to see beyond the differences. At first it can be offputting to see someone who doesn t look or act like everyone else. But once we get to know those people, we see them beyond their disabilities and recognize their full humanity. They become familiar figures in our community not the blind man, but Danny, or whoever he may be. When these individuals then stand before us in leadership roles, we do not look at them askance, because we see them as unique human beings whose disabilities are simply a part of who they are.

 

According to this understanding, the rabbis in the Talmud were taking an important first step. Even though the Torah stipulates that blemished priests could not serve in the Temple, the rabbis argued that they could serve priestly functions in our communities assuming they were well-known, familiar figures that is, assuming the people of their communities had taken the time to get to know them beyond their superficial differences. Our challenge today is to take the rabbis one step further. Our functionaries need not be physically perfect. Indeed, the more of our prominent leaders who look different, the more desensitized we will become to those differences, and the more we will realize that all of us are different in one way or another. It is, in fact, our differences that humanize us, rendering us unique and distinct. Once we have internalized this lesson, we will be able to give a very different answer to Malachi s questions. Will God be pleased with us? Will God show us favor? If we can look beyond our differences, then surely God can as well.

 

 

 

Why Not Slaughter Both in One Day?

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

 

Text: Vayikra 22:27-28

27When an ox, or a sheep, or a goat is born, it shall remain with its mother for seven days. From the eighth day on, it will be acceptable as an offering made by fire to the LORD. 28And an ox or a sheep – it and its young you must not slaughter in one day.

●      Why do you think that the Torah instructs us to leave a newborn animal with its mother for seven days?

●      The animals are probably not aware of not being slaughtered on the same day, so what might be the reason for such a mitzvah?

●      Is compassion playing a role in these mitzvot, and if so – how? You may want to rethink this question after reading the commentaries.

 

Commentary: Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch Vayikra 22:28

All these demands can be summed up in one idea: The attachment of the mother animal to her child This tinge of humanity is what makes the animal able to fulfill its symbolic role. The only purpose of sacrifices of animals in Judaism is the moral advancement of humanity. This is in complete opposition to the pagan understanding which sees in the sacrifices a destruction that satisfies the gods.

●      What reason does Hirsch assume is behind these two laws?

●      How does this explain the placement of these mitzvot in the Torah?

 

Commentary: Shadal Vayikra 22:28

Not out of compassion for the animal as much as to strengthen in our hearts the value of compassion and to distance us from cruelty.

●      Why does Shadal think that these verses are not commanded out of compassion for the needs and wishes of the animal?

 

Midrash Vayikra Rabba 22:28

A righteous [one] regards the life of his animal -this is the Holy One blessed be He, in whose Torah it says And an ox or a sheep or a goat . But the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel – that is Haman the Wicked as it says (Esther 3:13) to destroy, to kill, to annihilate

(This Midrash is based on a verse from Proverbs 12:10: A righteous [one] regards the life of his animal, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. )

●      What does the juxtaposition with the verse about Haman s intentions suggest about the intentions of God when commanding not to kill the parent and the young on the same day?

●      The full verse from Esther reads And the letters were sent by couriers to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, young and old, children and women, in one day Why was this verse chosen to highlight the horror that the midrash saw as the background to the mitzvah in Vayikra? (Pay attention to recurring language as well as ideas.)

Don t Sweat: The Details

Bex Stern Rosenblatt

 

It s a fairly audacious undertaking to try to describe in detail what a perfect world would look like. Yet this is precisely the work that is undertaken over and over again in the Tanakh, as God gives or we create excruciatingly precise rules for how to exist in a land that we will come to. The Torah opens, in Genesis 2-3, with a first attempt at a perfect world. We are given the Garden of Eden, if we can keep it. To no one s surprise, we can t. And yet, in the imaginings of what a perfect world will be in the rest of the Tanakh, over and over again we return to imagery and language pulled from that original story. We find it in the descriptions of the building of the Tabernacle, the construction of the Temple, and then again in our haftarah in the Book of Ezekiel.

The haftarah is part of a grand vision of Ezekiel, stretching from chapter 40 though chapter 48. Ezekiel tells the community in exile after the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple that a time will come in which God will not only rebuild the Temple but also restore the exiled people to their land, including even the long-lost tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. In this vision, an angel describes to Ezekiel, in chapter 47, a river flowing through the land giving life to everything, much the same as the flow which arose from the earth and watered all the face of the land in the Garden of Eden. Likewise, Ezekiel 47 speaks of a great tree, similar to the Tree of Knowledge from Eden. Restored Jerusalem is the perfect world that once was, is the Garden of Eden realized again.

This time, however, there is one crucial difference: the people invited into the Garden. We have moved from Adam and Eve to a restricted group of priests. The haftarah begins by defining exactly who has entrance to this new Eden, who can be in the place where God will dwell. God declares that it is only the Levitical Kohanim from the descendants of Zadok who may approach God to serve God. The rest of the haftarah is devoted to a series of laws about how this group must act and refrain from acting in order to maintain its ability to serve God. In this description of a perfect world 2.0, Ezekiel attempts to leave no ambiguity – the laws of priestly behavior are exact and detailed such that perhaps this time we will not fail, we will not be kicked out of the Garden again.

The most intriguing detail included is found in the rules on what the priests must wear in the inner court of the Temple. Within the list of garments to be worn, we are told that the priests cannot wear anything that makes them sweat. If I were imagining my ideal world, I might very well include one with less sweat. But there is perhaps a deeper meaning here. The root word for sweat appears in only two places in the Tanakh – here and in the punishment given to Adam for eating from the Tree of Knowledge. Adam is told, by the sweat of your brow shall you eat food until you return to the ground from which you were taken. Ezekiel, by forbidding the priests to sweat while serving God, undoes the curse of Adam. He has restored the Temple as a new Eden and restored priests as a new Adam, an Adam that no longer must suffer in his work because his work is to serve God.

There is much debate about when Ezekiel was written and who the intended audience was – whether it was written in exile or after we returned to the land. But whenever it was written and for whomever it was written, it presented a vision of perfection in which the redemption was in the details.