TORAH SPARKS
Parshat Emor
May 6, 2023 | 15 Iyyar 5783
Torah: Leviticus 21:1-24:23 Triennial: Leviticus 21:1-22:16
Haftarah: Ezekiel 44:15-31
Burning Profane Daughters
Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah
Leviticus 21 contains a short and matter-of-fact verse about burning women to death. The end of the verse is very clear. We read in Leviticus 21:9, in fire she shall be burned. The opening of the verse, ostensibly stating the case in which this would happen, is more complicated. And the middle of the verse, describing why such a thing should happen, is entirely obtuse. The gist of the matter is that if a daughter of a priest does something inappropriate sexually, she should be killed by fire.
This daughter has profaned someone, perhaps herself, perhaps her father, perhaps the whole institution of priesthood. Making something profane matters for priests. Their business is the holy, the pure. Our parashah records the ways in which priests must stay holy. We are amidst zingers such as [the priest] shall be holy for you, for I the LORD Who hallows you am holy. Our whole system is built upon maintaining and transmitting holiness. The way this system works is that [priests] shall be holy to their God, and they shall not profane the name of their God, for the fire offerings of the LORD, their God s bread, do they bring forward, and they shall be holy. They maintain this holiness and avoid profanity by following laws regarding sexual relations and avoiding contact with the dead. So when a priest s daughter has an improper sexual relationship, the whole system can come crashing down. It would seem that burning the daughter serves therefore as a corrective measure, a way of returning the system to a state of holiness, of removing the impurity.
We see this at work in two cases in the Tanakh. The first is the story of Tamar and Judah all the way back in Genesis. Judah refuses to follow the laws of yibbum, levirate marriage, for his daughter-in-law, Tamar, after his first two sons die. Tamar takes matters into her own hands and plays the role of a prostitute, fooling Judah so that he would sleep with her. When Judah hears that his daughter-in-law has gotten pregnant outside of marriage, he orders her to be burnt. However, she proves to him that she is in the right, he admits his wrong, and from their union descends the line of King David. Despit the fact that neither Tamar nor Judah are explicitly called priests, their case is very similar to the one described in our parashah. The difference in Genesis, however, is that Tamar is exonerated. Judah accepts that he was wrong, and proclaims that Tamar acted in the right; therefore she is not burnt to death.
The other example of a daughter burning for inappropriate sexual conduct is Jerusalem, personified as a woman, often called Daughter Zion or Daughter Jerusalem. Many of the prophetic texts describe her playing the harlot, whoring after other gods and other nations. As a result, Jerusalem is burnt alive, consumed to her foundations. As we read in Lamentations, not only are the priests no more, the very Temple is no more. She has impurity in her skirts, which she brings into a place of holiness and is then burned for it.
The middle section of the verse from our parashah contains ambiguity. Perhaps the daughter has brought profanity to her father, the priest, making him unsuitable to serve God in the Temple. Perhaps, as suggested in Targum Onkelos, the daughter is profaned from her father, cast out and forbidden from sharing in his priestly status and social benefits. Or perhaps the daughter s conduct causes other people to hold her father in lower esteem, treating him as a less wothy conduit of holiness.
As we read in sections from both midrash and the Talmud, many hold that the daughter must have been betrothed or married in the case in our verse. Likewise, Israel was betrothed, married to God in the metaphor used in prophetic texts. It is only too appropriate that the Temple was burnt down, that Israel was seen as the erring daughter of a priest, bringing profanity on herself and therefore on her father figure. However, the Judah and Tamar story offers a wonderful corrective to this narrative. It suggests that perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye. If we do not burn the woman, but rather let her speak, it may emerge that she is in fact protecting and transmitting holiness rather than profaning it.
Hope is in the Details
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah
Not all prophecies of a future redemption are equal. Isaiah speaks eloquently of the desert blooming, of the miraculous road back from captivity and diaspora (chapter 35). Elsewhere, he speaks of a redemption that dwarfs the Exodus from Egypt (chapter 10). Ezekiel, whose words we read this Shabbat, speaks of the future redemption in terms of the Temple, in minute details that seem utterly irrelevant for us today, but are spoken with great concern and love.
Ezekiel was taken into exile in Babylon in the first group that was exiled from Jerusalem. In the year 597 BCE the Babylonians removed from Jerusalem most people who might cause unrest, as well as the artisans that could do work needed for preparing arms. This group settled in Babylon and, like many groups of immigrants, remained closely tuned to what was going on back in Jerusalem. If there was a hope of a speedy return to the good old life, it was shattered when the news arrived that the city of Jerusalem had been sacked and the Temple burned.
From that point on, redemption for Ezekiel takes on the form of rebuilding the Temple. For about eight chapters Ezekiel describes the structure, the practices, and all the surroundings of the future Temple. His descriptions are not a recall of the Temple that was, but rather a new Temple with some different rules and features that will be built in the future. He does not capture the imagination with a beautiful building but rather labors on the details. In this haftarah, matching the topic that the parashah opened with, Ezekiel dwells on some of the laws pertaining to the kohanim, and in the process introduces several new restrictions that do not appear in the Torah.
Redemption, apparently, is not only a return to the old days. The new that is built on the concept familiar from the past will be a little different, it will be perceived as improved in some ways. Isaiah speaks of the desert, but it will be enhanced by the water that will spring there and the blooming that will take place. Ezekiel speaks of the Temple, but as Radak comments on v. 22 the rules stated, will be for added holiness in the future. These are not the laws of kohanim that are stated by the Torah, nor the laws that were practiced in the Second Temple period. Ezekiel s Temple is an idealized creation, where every detail reflects thought, hope and longing.
Reading Ezekiel s apparently irrelevant details we understand what redemption is about. Seeing every detail is believing that the vision will happen, it will not remain a dream. If it is to be real, we need real instructions. Ezekiel tries to provide all the instructions for the next Temple. For him, it is real. When our dreams are significant and real enough to occupy all our attention, we plan in detail.
Curbing our Killer Instinct
Joshua Kulp
The Halakhah in the Parashah
I am often asked if halakhah is meant to make us better human beings. This is a complex question, but the asker is usually not referring to mitzvot that are considered ben adam lehavero –mitzvot that govern relationships with people. The Torah mandates that we honor our parents, that we do not lie, that we do not cause physical harm to others, and other such mitzvot. No one is asking me if these mitzvot are meant to shape our character into better human beings. They are almost always asking about the mitzvot that are ben adam lehavero –between a person and God.
I am reluctant to boil down the motivation for all mitzvot to the goal of morality. Mitzvot such as Shabbat, kashrut, holidays, niddah, do not seem to me overall to shape morality, even if they do at times function as such. However, there are mitzvot that do not directly govern our relationship with others, yet do seem designed to encourage a moral awareness in humanity.
In this week s parashah, in the midst of a few mitzvot concerning sacrifices, we read the following pair of injunctions (Leviticus 22:27-28): When an ox or a sheep or a goat is born, it shall stay seven days with its mother, and from the eighth day on it shall be acceptable as an offering by fire to . However, no animal from the herd or from the flock shall be slaughtered on the same day with its young. The Torah mandates that a domesticated animal may not be sacrificed for its first seven days it must remain with its mother. And the second commandment, also connected to animal parentage, is that one may not slaughter a mother (or the father, if known) and her offspring on the same day. Do these mitzvot cause us to be better people? And if so, how?
Let s start with the first mitzvah the prohibition of sacrificing an animal during its first seven days. Is this mitzvah designed to prevent the extreme duress that would be caused to the mother by having its child removed so close to its birth? We have very little idea of the emotional life of animals, specifically how emotionally attached they are to their own offspring. Human beings have a tendency to project our own emotions onto animals. It is possible that this mitzvah could be an educational tool we do not do things to animals that we would imagine are emotionally painful to us. But if this is the correct interpretation, then eight days seems an insufficient amount of time to get over the impending loss. Reading this mitzvah as part of the commandment to not be cruel to animals misses the point.
Rather, most commentators read this mitzvah as connected to the prohibitions that appear a few verses earlier, prohibiting sacrificing blemished animals. After a week, life is considered worthy of being sanctified human males through circumcision and sacrificable mammals through sacrifice. Sacrifices are symbols meant to teach us to willingly offer the good things with which we have been blessed. Offering blemished animals or animals before they have reached the age at which they can be sanctified would teach us the wrong moral lesson that we should give freely of the things we do not want. To analogize to our own lives we should ask if giving away old, unwanted clothing is really a form of tzedakah. Of course, it may be better than throwing clothes away. But when we give without experiencing any loss, we are not inculcating an ethos of generosity.
The second mitzvah is the prohibition of slaughtering a mother and her offspring on the same day. Again, it is hard to imagine that this mitzvah is designed to cause less suffering to the animal. After all, to observe the commandment all one would need to do is wait one day and then slaughter the other animal. Rather, the mitzvah again seems to have been designed to shape our moral character. The Sefer Hahinukh offers two ways in which this occurs. First of all, while the Torah does, reluctantly, allow the consumption of meat, human beings are instructed to be stewards over the animal kingdom. At the time of the Flood, Noah is instructed to prevent the destruction of animal species. Refraining from slaughtering a mother and her offspring on the same day reminds us of our responsibility for the continuity of the animal kingdom. Furthermore, slaughtering both mother and child on the same day seems exceedingly cruel, even if the animals may not be aware of the cruelty. Killing animals is tolerated and even mandated by the Torah. But, the Torah warns us, slaughter should not desensitize us to the suffering of God s creatures.
Both of these commandments are still observed to this day. Based on a passage in Shabbat 136, it is prohibited to slaughter an animal for its first seven days (Shulkhan Aruch, Yoreh Deah, 15:2), even in our times when sacrifices are not offered. And when slaughtering domesticated animals (cow, goat, sheep), it is forbidden to slaughter the mother and offspring on the same day (ibid, 16). While most of us will never be presented with the opportunity to transgress these commandments (most of us do not slaughter), their moral meaning should still have an impact on our lives. We should recall the message that is reiterated over and over in the passages in the Torah that refer to the consumption of meat sacrifice is mandated, slaughtering animals for food is allowed, but we are not to become callous to the suffering of any of God s creatures. And we should constantly recall that God s first words to humankind were that we are masters over the animals, and that their welfare is in our hands.