Leviticus Cycle Three Emor 21:1 to 24:23

Emor

The parsha Emor is about love. It’s a love though that doesn’t come easy. We need to work for it. I don’t only mean work in the fields (as we grow fruit for the needy) or with our hands (as we crush olives for the oil for the eternal light). I don’t mean the work of our intellect or of our eyes. I mean a work that naturally produces the oil, the food, the holiness in a world full of anger and war. I mean a work in which it is natural to see that there are rocks to be thrown.

Rocks, you might be thinking. I don’t throw rocks. But these aren’t literal rocks. Sometimes a word is said and it’s meant to be a symbol. Let’s look at Torah. Did the Reed Sea really part? Did Eve really come from Adam’s rib? There’s so much that is meant to be touched on many levels. Our ancient rabbis understood this. They could see that the Torah, the name or the mind of God, protects itself with that hard layer of judgment but it’s really a vessel for loving kindness. These rabbis of Talmud and Gemara, the sages, have been able (over centuries) to dig into the loving kindness in the subterranean flow moving through us all. As Lawrence Kushner might say, they have been able to guide us under the hard protective layer into the radiant river that leads us to the shimmering world of the nothingness of Ein Sof.

In Gemara for example we read that God does not get angry at the sinner but at the sin. There’s a teaching in the Babylonian Talmud by Abaye. He infers that the verse in Deuteronomy 6:5… you shall love the Lord your God….means that one should strive through one’s actions to help others to love God. In reverse (he says) if we are desecrating God’s name through our actions…others will associate our shortcomings with our God. Slamming the sacred, in other words blasphemy, therefore has reverberations for millions of miles and many centuries. In Psalms 74:18 it also includes acts of violence.

So then what do we do with a piece in Torah that tells us about a man, half Egyptian, who blasphemes and is ordered by God through Moses to be stoned to death? If Torah is a whole experience, which it is, we are each of these characters. We are God, Moses, the man being stoned to death and the person throwing the rock. So we get back to where I was. How could we possibly throw that rock? What is the rock? Could it possibly be Torah made solid? Could it be a rock from the river of loving kindness? Could it be pure faith? If it is, where did we find it? How hard was it to find? Did we have to dig through our own fears to find the stuff that could shock the evil instinct out of even the most negative cynic? Did we have to cry? Did we have to face our own layers of superficiality? Are we really killing the blasphemer or causing a soul-death? Are the rocks really aimed at someone outside of us or really at parts of ourselves? In Jewish mysticism there is a process of gilgul, a recycling of souls. Are we actually helping this man (or ourselves) find purification and greater intimacy with the divine?

In Kabbalah it is an act of the yetzer harah to block the freedom or joy of another person. We want to keep the yetzer harah as far away as possible. But in the end, really getting down to it, do we stone him to death? Of course not. We look deep within ourselves, do that inner work so we can find the faith to propel it to the man to heal him and/or ourselves. We may need space for this. While we’re getting that space we can give to others, and rather than curse the name with the name, bless the name with the name, another suggestion in Talmud.

The beauty of Torah is entrancing. The contrast between the horror of the scene…the man on the street being stoned to death… and the radiance of God brought out by metaphor and symbol…just like any Biblical poem…shocks us into the experience of the radiance. We find a deeper self, a more compassionate God. In other words, the scene of the blasphemer itself eliminates the same scene and therefore takes us by the hand into greater consciousness.

So, may we understand the importance of the Rabbinic tradition. May we see Torah in many layers and choose to deal with all of them according to the main focus of Judaism which is chesed or loving kindness. May we do the inner work so it is natural to give to the poor, to love God, to be in a place of balance, and to keep the ner talmid burning bright. May we be continually experiencing the love of God.