Vayikra Cycle 7 Emor

 Emor

What Certain Humans Care About

A big question about Torah (in my small opinion) is what we can do with passages that seem completely archaic and contrary to our intimacy with God.  It seems pretty obvious (after all) that Torah is there to take us all on a path to God, not away from Him. Do I need quotes from Talmudic rabbis to prove this? From modern scholars? From mystics or the wise? I don’t think so.  The whole idea of any sacred document is to offer a sacred path, one that reveals a step by step passage to the Divine, one that will both amaze us and hold our hand, that will point to a truth that in turn points to an even deeper truth, that creates boundaries to propel us faster, that gives us both a reasonable and a beyond-reasonable faith and focus. 

Therefore, I find it sad when people (instead of finding ways to move through the sacred language to Hashem) support a painful literal piece out of context as if in so doing they are supporting Him. This kind of Torah can only (ironically) bring us to places of  emotional and spiritual deformity, like priests banned from their service. In so doing we ban ourselves from Divine intimacy. We become both the animal with the wound or the spot (the nefesh bahama wounded for all who like Tanya)) and the hunchback priest (the wounded beinoni).  We become (even more) our own hurdles to God. 

 For a reminder, in Emor the priests receive the ruling that they are not to be of service if they have any deformity whatsoever. So too, an animal can not be offered if it isn’t perfect.  Welcome to This Week’s Difficult Passage.

What do we do with it? 

Step One:  We want to (with awareness) try to understand what the literal could have meant within the context of the whole.  The way to do this though is to see what this section could have meant out of context (as referred to above).  First (as we see our rabbis doing all the time) we show that the piece cannot stand on its own. Then we offer a wider interpretation.

 The important sections of this parasha therefore must be understood. They are the following: There are priestly codes. The priest (in short) must remain pure. He can’t defile himself by touching the dead or marrying a non-virgin.  Even more (as I said) any animal of sacrifice also must be pure. To continue, there are the descriptions of the sacrifices on the holidays and then there is the story of the “blasphemer”. A  man blasphemes God and therefore is stoned to death.  It all seems highly incongruous, separate stories and realities strung somehow next to each other. None of them pleasing by the way.

 And if this is the case, then it’s easy to say (of the above mentioned section) that God clearly wants only his best men stepping forward. Imagine the perfect Aryan-Jewish world, beautiful Jews with exquisite kippahs and elegant noses and designer suits. Yes, that world. That’s the simple analysis of this charming piece (on priestly deformities) out of context.  After all (and not to mix metaphors)   it’s easy to chop the piece out that refers to priestly deformities (sort of like chopping an arm off a body) and trying to  hack at it even more for molecules of understanding. If we do this, trust me, we will certainly end up with a cup of something and it will probably be blood and it will certainly be our own.  In some religions this might be the way to intimacy with Hashem. But it isn’t in Judaism.

This brings us to Step 2. Now that we have cleanly invalidated text analysis out of context,  we want to focus on the textual ropes. Ah, we might think, these sections, are inter-related! But how? Well each one is not only about purity (boring sterile judgmental and sometimes impossible purity)  but about variations. We see here a how-to of purity from who our priest must marry to the words that must not leave our mouths to the way we (priests or non-priests) can honor and thank God  concerning the organization of time and holidays. The organization alone leads to the holiday offerings and therefore the sacrifices.  The heightened beauty and purity we can bring to ourselves (through discernment and behavior) is exactly what we can bring to God. The hierarchy creates movement and the flow of the sarifices.  So from this we see that there is movement and flow but we are still stuck with that questionable idea of purity.

What’s next then? Do we scrub ourselves with steel wool every morning? Stone people who say “Oh God”? Kill animals with a few wounds and throw them in the trash? Keep our elderly or half blind rabbis on the bench so the younger folk can bring us closer to God?  Make sure our women walk three steps behind us? I think not.

I don’t think they did that in the ancient days either. After all, Torah is a sacred document, not a history book. And sacred documents ask us to stretch our minds and hearts a bit. So let’s do it.

This leads us to Step 3: We now use symbol to glean a better understanding of how this parasha can bring us closer to God. The use of metaphor isn’t some kind of apology. It isn’t a weak way out or an excuse. It’s the next step of holiness. Just ask a kabbalist. We’ve covered the basics. We have the foundation. Now we can move on.

So then, what do we really have here? If we take the zoom camera back a bit?

We have vessels (humans) to hold the light of God. We have vessels that can hold more light of God (the priests). We have that which the priests can’t embrace and that which they can.  We have the beauty of the sparks of the sacrifices rising to God. We have the stuff we can’t include within us and within the rites of sacrifice. We have the flow and motion of the sacrifice on the holidays.

We have an amazing power of rising light that itself does not allow for scraps of darkness. We have the order to the priests to make sure they build the boundaries within themselves so that this process of God intimacy can continue.

There’s actually great beauty here, not on the outside but within, in the internalization of the action of approach.  It’s simple, not complicated at all.

Final question. What do we raise-up as holy? Do we raise up trash we throw in the public parks? No. Then we don’t throw it. Do we lift up nasty words? No. Then we don’t say them. Do we lift up abuse or finger pointing or embarrassment? No. Then we don’t take part in that. 

This is about God and the light of God within each of us.  It’s only those who tear God away from God and maim themselves who see this as a process of material superiority or even fight against it.  We are our temples, our music, our laughter, our reach. We are the golden words that chime from our mouths. We are figures of deep and lasting inner purity, a purity that is so beyond material that it hurts me to even mention it.

Perhaps it hurt the writers of Torah as well to write this knowing that one day…someone…somewhere…would analyze this section  literally.  In fact, we can even come to an equation here: The more painful, the more contextual (must be our analysis), the more metaphoric.   God, after all, the very word, is a metaphor for the absolute and purest light possible. And God doesn't care about literal blemishes. Only certain humans do.