Leviticus Cycle Five Emor

Emor

About five years ago I was talking to one woman about inviting another to a party. In so doing I used the word disabled. Immediately, the person I was talking to went into a harangue against me. Her message, if I understood right, was that I was being highly insensitive.  I felt terrible.  I moved around the rest of the day in a shadow, about as far from God as I could get.

About six months ago I was standing near the Torah for an Aliyah. I was not feeling well. I had recently been through an emotional upheaval.  Suddenly I felt an iron grip on my arm and I was pushed forward. I almost fell. One woman in the congregation was trying to move a man in a wheelchair behind me. I hadn’t seen. Not a word was whispered. No one politely asked me to move.  There was just this loud iron grip.  No matter how smooth the Torah reading that Shabbat, I was as far from God as I could get.

According to the Talmudic rabbis, as hard as these two women were trying to be correct and kind, what’s clear is that they were off-balance.  In other words, despite their intention, they were both (through their actions or words) causing what’s known as ona’ah devarim. Anxiety through words and actions.

 

This is the way I see it: Being seen as loving is a body-obsession while being loving really is the soul-message.  And they are not the same. Not at all.  To bring this farther, any strong response to physical deformity is equal and the same to a strong response to what is seen as physical beauty. If you get caught up in one you are caught up in the other. And that’s that. 

Just this morning I went to a joyous creek and sat there. The body was turned off and the soul was turned on. The snow-melt was rushing like liquid muscle and the sun made the green greener. I could breathe. My soul could breathe. God was breathing life into me and I felt far from God’s inhale of death. I wasn’t thinking about yoga or make up or anything to do with my body or anyone elses body, the emotion-body, the relationship-body, the body I might be seen as, the transfiguring I might experience in the mind of a friend or lover, the physical mask and how it might relate to other physical masks, my failing eyes, my allergies, the bumps of poison oak on my leg.  And after some time…it always takes time…I knew I was as close to God as I could get. I was flying in the fountain of divine sparks rising-up and in so doing I was sending these sparks out to souls I knew in need of healing.

The light I offered to God this morning was pure. This is what Emor is about. Not the other scenarios I mentioned.  In fact, in Talmud it says that we are subordinate to our offerings. And in my opinion, if we remain subordinate, really in a place below our offerings, this is when we can really help others.

 This is what I mean: Who we are, what we are trying to be, what we are trying to prove or accomplish or get, that good job, the bonus, the invitation,  that house, that vacation, that five hours of free time, that car, that performance, the relationship that becomes nothing more than a monument, this is all surface material. Important in our minds but not the real spiritual juice. Not the stuff to know God. Not the light within the light, as it says in Psalms. Not the way to the true God-kiss. That woman on the front cover of the magazine. That cultural definition of beauty. That woman who is limping. That cultural definition of special needs. All of this is not the paradigm through which we want to define ourselves and especially not our divine merge.

Of course, letting go of body-image is hard.  But I think this is the best way to really describe the intention of Emor. After all here we have a parsha that gives a long and complete list of the physical attributes not acceptable in a priest if he is to make an offering. A priest with a hunch-back, with a mark, who is blind, lame,  who has a deformed nose, a misshapen limb….a crippled leg, a crippled hand…(who is a ) dwarf, who has severe eczema, or ringworm or who has a hernia…these priests are forbidden to make offerings (21:18-20).

 The beauties of the body… in other words, the fears, the marks, the muscles or lack of them, the small eyes or large eyes or runny eyes or blind eyes, the perfect legs or no legs, the long slender fingers or the rounded hands or discolored hands…this is not what defines us. And the more we cling to it all in our human-defense or pride, the more we find ourselves swimming around in the muck that seeps into all of our offerings and this is not what God wants. None of it. God doesn’t want our perfect slim bellies. He doesn’t want our marriage because it’s longer. He doesn’t want the body-effects of our physical illness or the body-effects of our physical health. He doesn’t want our mansion, the college acceptance letters, our wheelchairs or our Porches.  He doesn’t want our art if the art  has become more important than the message. He doesn’t want any of this seeping into our love for Him or for each other. He just wants us. And he wants us to know ourselves in a place of soul.  And to love each other in that way as well.

 

Of course it seems cruel that God doesn’t want the physically-hurt among us to make offerings. We see ourselves as a sympathetic community. We believe that people should not be judged or ostracized because of physical needs. But we also need to realize this: This also means that God doesn’t want those with myopically perfect hair styles to make those perfectly-stylized offerings either. It’s all the same to God. And for us to lean one way or another in horror, pity, admiration or obsession…. only brings about God-pain, inner-pain.

Torah gives us a huge challenge here. The way to healing  is by doing the inner work first. Only then can the woman who can’t walk become invited to the party with ease and joy and can the chant of Torah echo throughout the community and the world. Only then can the pain delivered with good intention be cut out of our conversation altogether. Only then can we offer up the light to God and bring it down to heal the Priests of body-pain.  Only then can love be what it is and only what it is.  Only then can we connect in that sacred center…spiritually, emotionally and physically. And once there, really there, only then do we know who we are and do we love each other really and behave in that way. The  Love God wants in other words is Love that is beyond the idea of Love.

As Rumi says:  We are the Beauty that originates, the look and the presence inside the look, praise and the light-connecting ligaments that hold this earth.