Parashat Emor
Leviticus 21:1–24:23
May 10, 2008 / 5 Iyyar 5768
This week’s commentary was written by Rabbi David Ackerman, rabbi, National Outreach, JTS.
At the geographic heart of Parashat Emor lies a seemingly innocuous statement: “The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions (Leviticus 23:1–2).” There follows a full listing of festivals and sacred days, with a special focus on the roles of priests in the observance of these holy days. Utterly unremarkable until the early Rabbis go to work on this verse and zoom in on the specific order of the words and clauses here. In its original order, Leviticus 23:2 reads: “These fixed times of the Lord, the ones which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions, they are My fixed times.” That sequence propels the Sages of the Mishnah to a startling conclusion: whether the festivals are fixed at their correct times or not, God has no other sacred times. God’s calendar, in other words, depends on a partnership with human beings for its very existence.
At the emotional heart of contemporary Jewish life lies a connection to the State of Israel. This week, the entire Jewish world celebrates the sixtieth anniversary of the modern miracle called Israel. The annual celebration of Israel’s independence, the coupling of Yom Hazikkaron (State of Israel Memorial Day) and Yom Ha’atzma’ut (State of Israel Independence Day) is the great modern addition to the Jewish calendar. Celebrating Israel each year focuses our attention on the roles of very real and very imperfect human beings in the making of Jewish history and Jewish destiny. Unlike the other sacred occasions on Emor’s list, which describe divine acts and their impact on humanity, Yom Ha’atzma’ut salutes the acts of people and raises the question of the impact of those acts on God.
That may sound like a radical piece of theology, but in fact Jewish thought has long imagined a divine-human partnership in which the actions of either partner have a real impact on the other partner. From the early Rabbis to the Kabbalists to the Hasidim to the Musar Movement, classical Jewish thinkers have always allowed for a human role in bringing about events of cosmic significance. To my mind, and to the minds of many others, the birth of an independent Jewish state in the land of Israel is the central example of this partnership at work in our time. How fortunate we are to live in this extraordinary moment!
While deeply encouraging of the concept that ordinary people can, at key moments, do extraordinary things, our tradition’s theology of divine-human partnership carries significant risks. The efforts of people, however well-intentioned, can certainly distort any reasonable understanding of God’s wishes. Human exuberance can, and too often does, yield results that dramatically dishonor God’s name. We’re all familiar with the litany of examples in which religiously motivated human excess has resulted in sheer horror and self-evident profanation of God’s honor. That’s the dangerous side of Emor’s implied partnership. We the people too often get carried away.
The Torah itself offers a corrective in the form of a well-known verse that immediately precedes the sacred calendar I’ve just described. Leviticus 22:32 reads: “Do not profane My holy name, rather sanctify Me among the people of Israel; I the Lord who make you holy.” The Talmudic tradition emphasized the public nature of this call for holiness, deriving many of the rules regarding minyan from this verse. In the glow of our celebration of Israel’s sixtieth, the Torah’s focus on honoring God’s name through visible, outward, and public behavior takes on a new light. The evolving miracle of modern Israel serves as a most extraordinary arena for the struggle to conquer profanity by honoring God’s name visibly and publicly. In classical Jewish terms, the possibility of hillul hashem (the profaning of God’s name) is meant to be outdone by acts of kiddush hashem (the sanctification of God’s name).
The State of Israel, for all of its challenges and, yes, missteps and mistakes, scores extremely well on the kiddush hashem scale. Israel’s commitment to democracy and human dignity, scientific and cultural achievements, and determined defense of the Jewish people around the world, all bring honor to our tradition, our people, and God. This week and this Shabbat we celebrate the great Jewish miracle of our time. Perhaps because of this miracle’s strong human component, we celebrate a work in progress, an ongoing effort to sanctify God’s holy name in a deeply unredeemed world. Our task as lovers and supporters of Israel is to stand on guard against the ever-present temptation of hillul hashem, and to keep the focus on Emor’s demand that we as Jews engage endlessly and eternally in actions that bring honor to God’s name. That shared commitment makes this a truly sacred occasion. Hag Sameah to us all!
The publication and distribution of the JTS Commentary are made possible by a generous grant by Rita Dee and Harold (z”l) Hassenfeld.
This study piece is offered as a service of the United Synagogue Conservative Yeshiva. It is prepared by Rabbi Mordechai (Mitchell) Silverstein senior lecturer in Talmud and Midrash at the Conservative Yeshiva. He is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Parshat Emor
(Ezekiel 44:15-31)
May 10, 2008
5 Iyar 5768Ezekiel, was a prophet/priest from the elite Zadok family, which had provided leadership in the holy Temple for over four hundred years, from the days when King Solomon set them up as the chief priestly family. Ezekiel was probably among the leaders of the people who were exiled by Nebuchadnezzar before the destruction of the Temple, since he prophesied about the destruction of the Temple from exile in Babylonia. He was a dour prophet, taken to pessimism about the human condition. His messages, unlike those of his contemporary Jeremiah, are impersonal and his models for the redemption of his people are more about God's capacity to redeem His people than they are about God's people rectifying their ways. (See J. Kugel, How to Read the Bible, p. 599)
When he does prophesy about his vision of the restored nation and the rebuilt Temple, his visions offer a glimpse into the heart of a prophet set upon recreating these institutions on a higher plane than those which existed in his past memories, perhaps with the intent of using institutional life as a means for maintaining the sacred stability of God's redeemed nation.
Here the details tell the story. Even minute details, like those outlining the particulars of how Ezekiel envisioned the priestly wardrobe tell us a great deal about the "Godly" nation Ezekiel sought to restore: "And when they enter the gates of the inner court, they shall wear linen vestments; they shall have nothing woolen upon them when they minister inside the gates of the inner court. They shall have linen turbans on their heads and linen breeches on their loins; they shall not gird themselves with anything that causes sweat." (17-18) In addition, according to Ezekiel, the priests were not allowed to wear these priestly vestments outside of the Temple precincts: "When they go out to the outer court – the outer court where the people are – they shall remove the vestments in which they minister and shall deposit them in the sacred chambers, they shall put on other garments, lest they make the people consecrated with their vestments." (19)
Having the priests serving in the inner court dressed totally in linen vestments marked a move to make all of the priests like the High Priest on Yom Kippur who also served in entirely linen garb. This gives us the sense that Ezekiel sought to increase the sacred nature of all those who served in the Temple. Similarly, his regulation stipulating that the priest had to remove these vestments before coming into contact with "the people" seems intended in some way to remove this sacred nature represented by the priestly garments from the people, both to protect the holiness from the people and the people from the holiness of the garments. (See R. Kasher, Ezekiel 25-48, Mikra L'Yisrael, p. 862)
These actions are paradoxical. Ezekiel seems adamant in his pursuit of creating a holier nation – a nation which will be closely allied with God and which will not stray from Him. He does this by fortifying its institutions and its elite with higher and higher levels of sanctity while he seems to have grave reservations about sharing this sanctity with the people. This paradox is disquieting and should offer us grounds for introspection on the challenges which faced Ezekiel and caused him to draw these conclusions.
In some sense, the tradition of the rabbinic sages was a reaction to his attitude in its call for the democratization of Jewish practice and learning, which in some sense gave all Jews the opportunity to be "major players" in the Jewish tradition. (See Gerson Cohen, 'The Rabbinic Heritage', in Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Cultures)
The pull from these two polar positions will always be with us.
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