A Sacred Path To
Eternity: Emor
By Rabbi Boaz D.
Heilman
For those who would search for the fundamentalist strain in
Judaism, there’s no need to look much farther than this week’s Torah portion, Emor (Lev. 21:1—24:23). Agreed, there
are some other portions, especially in Deuteronomy, that are even harsher. Yet some of the laws spelled out in Emor are as brutal as any that are still
practiced anywhere in the world today.
“Fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth” reads
Lev. 24:20, a verse that—if practiced—would set Western civilization backward
some three thousand years.
In some temples, rabbis prefer to gloss over this section of
the Torah. And yes, it would be so much
nicer to just study the laws of Shabbat and the holidays, another topic covered
at length in this portion, or focus on that beautiful and compassionate verse
about not slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day (Lev.
22:28).
But that leaves us open to attack from various quarters. After all, isn’t Emor the portion where a blasphemer—a person who curses God’s
name—is stoned to death by the entire Israelite community at Moses’s and God’s command
(Lev. 24:23)? And isn’t this the portion
where some of the most restrictive rules severely curtail priests’ behavior in
love and death?
And what’s this about physical deformities disqualifying priests
from offering sacrifices? Doesn’t
Judaism teach us to look inside the book, rather than its cover?
It would be hypocritical of us to focus only on the lovely
sides of this portion while simply overlooking those parts that we, refined
denizens of the 21st century, find distasteful.
Yet there is a logic to the portion in its entirety. For while the Torah does reflect the world as
it was at the time of its revelation, built into it is an evolutionary process that
allows culture, customs and even laws to evolve and adapt. We begin at the basic level and move forward
from there.
The purpose of religion is not only to unite societies and
nations, nor does it set out merely to curtail our more selfish and violent
behavior. Religion imbues us with a
sense of wonder, with curiosity about the world around us. It is these very qualities that, far from
restricting us, actually empower us to change, to imagine, and then to create
that which we see inside our minds and hearts.
Some of the laws set out in the Torah are indeed harsh, but
they are not meant to be the end-all of justice. Rather, they serve as a foundation, as a starting
point for further development. Mosaic Law is based on even more ancient legal
systems, but it does not stop with them.
Internal evolution of the concepts of justice and righteousness is
evident throughout the Torah, and can be witnessed in the succeeding stories of
Noah and Abraham. Moses furthers this progression,
compelling even God to temper justice with compassion, anger with understanding,
and frustration with recognition of the frail nature of the human being.
The law that Parashat
Emor reiterates in Lev. 22:28, “Do
not slaughter a cow or a sheep and its young on the same day,”
is there in order to evoke and reinforce within us the same qualities
that we expect to find in our God. Arbitrary behavior, brutality and lust for
revenge, typical of ancient cultures and the mythological gods of Egypt, Greece
and the Near East, cannot be the core of the Jewish system of justice. We can, and must do, better.
But it isn’t only the legal and moral systems that undergo
this evolutionary process. Along with justice and the human condition, Parashat Emor teaches us that time, too,
can be uplifted.
Emor teaches us to
look at time—time, with its cruel vicissitudes, with its tendency to speed up and
slow down; time that trickles from our fingers, that runs out yet never stops—and
make it better. And so we transform
time. We punctuate time with holiness,
with those moments when we allow God’s eternity to enter into our lives. A full third of Parashat Emor gives us instructions for the observance of Shabbat
and the holidays, teaching us that they are there not only to give us rest from
our daily toil, but also to provide us with precious opportunities to delve
into the mystery of existence, when we can try to imagine the unimaginable,
when we can fill our minds with wonder, and marvel at the many miracles that
surround us.
Lifting basic concepts to higher planes, we become participants
in an unending process of growth and development. Emor teaches us that to be God’s people does not mean simply to
accept things the way they are—or appear to be. It means always to look up, always to improve,
always to imagine and create better ways.
Perhaps the key to it all can be found in Rashi’s explanation
of the verse where Aaron, the High Priest, is instructed about the kindling of the
lights on the Temple Menorah: “[Aaron] shall tend the lamps upon the pure gold
lampstand before Adonai continually” (Lev. 24:4). Explaining the words “Upon the pure gold Menorah,”
Rashi, the great medieval Torah scholar and commentator, writes, “[Before
kindling it] he would first clean and purify it of ashes [from the previous
night’s burning].”
Following the example set by the High Priest, we too look at
the world around us. We examine its laws
and customs, its failures and triumphs.
We accept what we cannot—for the time being—change, but improve whatever
we can. Like Aaron, we clean up the
ashes and messes left behind by those who came before us, and then, looking up,
we find paths that lead us to a new world, a better world, paths that take us
ever closer to our ideal of God.
The process itself is sacred, and participating in it gives
us a sense of what it means to be holy.
May the light of the Torah continue showing us the many paths
we can take to greater justice and compassion.
May it teach us to be more understanding of one another, more accepting
of our own frailties, and more forgiving of our failures as the failures we see in others. May we all come to
realize that our time on this earth—as finite, short and full of sadness as it
sometimes is—is our share in an eternal and ongoing sacred process of
creation. And may the blessings of this
Shabbat help us find the beauty and holiness in every moment and every day
throughout our life.
Ken h’hi ratzon—may
this be God’s will, Amen.
© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman
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