Emor Leviticus 2017

Emor

(in process)

Emor is about corruption.

It’s easy to read it and to be horrified by the marginalization. After all, only priests who are pristine in their health can make offerings of animals also pristine in their health. Priests can only marry and conceive with certain women, also pristine. And holiday observations must also be pristine. Whether we are focusing on Shabbat, Succoth, Shemini Atzeret, Pesach, Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, there are certain offerings that must be made in a certain way.

While it is marginalizing, maybe for a moment we should take ourselves out of ourselves. It would be a great idea, especially for rabbis who love photo opportunities with corrupt leaders.

Because the idea remains the same. At what point is the corruption so great that we must sacrifice a core value (even if it is money) in order to defeat that same corruption?  At what point is the corruption so great that we have to even eliminate ourselves and our egos, not because we aren’t worthy, but because we want to honor the highest level of holiness.

Of course, in Emor, the subject is keeping the holy holy. The subject is not humiliation. The rabbis in that photo might have some disease. They may not. I would think that they do though. Because it’s only when we don’t see the disease in ourselves when we don’t see it in the other.  They are raising up a sacrifice though, the Trump trophy, for all to see.

And it is not only blind and broken, it is covered in leprous rashes we all can ponder every moment we open the news.  It’s the most public case of insanity  in my lifetime. It is in our vision every day.  

Yet, the rabbis are smiling, as if this photo opportunity does not reveal their own selfish motives, their need to follow the present leader (as it says in both Talmud and Devarim) but without consideration of the Schulchan Aruch (J. Karo) or the Mishneh Torah (Maimonides).

Both respected documents underline that when a law or a leader goes against clear moral principles, he is no longer to be the one followed. Dinna malchutecha dinna, in other words, has its limitations.

So do the American rabbis, I guess. There they are, representing the span of  American Judaism from Orthodox to Reform, there with their inner deformities as public as their sacrifice. My question is if they have studied Emor recently, really studied it.

Or do they just flow along with the illnesses of the time?