Nazarene Israelite Two House Congregation of Port Elizabeth

UNIVERSAL TORAH EMOR
By Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum. Leviticus 21:1-24:23
SAY TO THE PRIESTS.
As discussed in Universal Torah #20 TETZAVEH, the Torah conception of the priests
and their relationship with the people is radically different from the conception of the
priesthood in other traditions. The Cohen of the Torah does not absolve the Israelite of
his obligation to forge his own personal relationship with G-d. The Cohen is not an
intermediary who performs mysterious rituals that magically guarantee that all will be
well for the ignorant worshipper who stands by watching.
In many religions, the priests held or hold a monopoly on religious knowledge, often
actually discouraging the pursuit of such knowledge by the masses, whose very
ignorance is necessary in order for the priest to maintain his position.
By contrast, the Holy Torah was given as a fountain of truth and wisdom to Israel and to
all others who want to drink its waters. The entire people of Israel is intended to be a
Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation: the goal is for each Israelite to develop, build and
cultivate his or her own bond with G-d in every detail of life. How can we do this? We
need to learn how to do it. For this reason, pride of place in the Torah tradition goes to
the sage and teacher, because he is the one who can tell us how to do this. Even a
MAMZER TALMID CHACHAM (an outstanding sage who is of illegitimate birth) takes
precedence over the High Priest!
In our present parshah of EMOR, which is largely taken up with laws specifically relating
to the priests, we see that Moses was commanded to instruct not only the priests
themselves in these laws but also the Children of Israel. The Children of Israel are not
to be excluded from all knowledge and understanding of the priesthood. On the
contrary, they too are to study the laws relating to the priests. This is because the
Israelites, as a kingdom of priests, have to have a model to learn from. The Cohanim
are a kingdom within a kingdom. The Cohanim are to be to the Israelite what the
Israelites are to be to the world.
The Temple is G-d's palace on earth: a center-point for all the world to see, in order to
contemplate the profundity of the message it contains and thereby to draw closer to the
King. Everything about the Temple is about coming closer to G-d, particularly the
KORBAN ("sacrifice", from the Hebrew world KAROV, "close"). The entire Temple
services center upon the sacrificial rites: the daily animal, grain, wine and incense
offerings, the lighting of the Candelabrum, and so on. Like life in a royal court, life in the
Temple was a spectacle. This was particularly so for the Israelite who brought a
personal KORBAN, be it a SHLAMIM ("Peace") offering, or an OLAH and particularly a
CHATAS - sin-offering.

The animal is substituted for the person to undergo the slaughter, flaying, cutting and
burning the sinner really deserves. (Those who worry about the alleged cruelty to the
animal should first go and complain about the millions of animals daily slaughtered all
over the world, often with great cruelty, as "sacrifices" for the gratification of men's
selfish lusts. To understand the meaning of the KORBONOS, we must be willing to think
of the Temple as it actually was and will be, not try to adapt it to man-made moral
"standards".)
The SEFER HACHINUCH (explaining the meaning of the 613 commandments)
discusses the sacrificial rituals at length in Mitzvah #95: Building the Temple. The
ceremony consisted of various stages: SEMICHAH (the penitent's laying on of hands on
the animal's head), SHECHITAH, the slaughter of the animal, KABALAH, collecting of
its blood and sprinkling it on the altar, the flaying and cutting of the carcass, salting of
the meat, the burning of the altar portions and eating by the priests of their share. The
SEFER HACHINUCH explains in detail how the different stages of this unsettling and
even shocking ceremony all communicated an unforgettable lesson to the penitent
about how man must bring his animal side under control. We are to learn how to
"slaughter" and elevate our animality by devoting our energies to G-d's service and
thereby burning our fat on His altar. (See also Nachmanides' commentary on Leviticus
1:8).
The priests in the Temple, who conducted these ceremonies, were actors in a drama
that was calculated to awaken people and induce them think and repent rather than to
hypnotize them with hocus-pocus. The role of the priest was as a facilitator, enabling
people to understand the lesson for themselves.
Carrying the obligation to serve as ministers in the House and Court of G-d, the priests
are a nation set apart, and are subject to an even more stringent code than the
Israelites, as laid out in our parshah of EMOR. They are not allowed to defile
themselves for the dead except in the case of their closest relatives. They are strictly
forbidden to blemish their own bodies. They are not allowed to marry a divorcee or a
woman who has been involved in a relationship tainted by immorality, etc. The Cohanim
are to be a completely pure breed, fit to serve as G-d's ministers on earth. The true
Cohen is to be an exemplar in his very life of the elevated purity to which every Israelite
should aspire, each according to his or her level.
The ultimate exemplar is to be the COHEN GADOL ("high priest"). Although the
COHEN GADOL appears in costumes that are most gorgeous by the standares of this
world, he must remain completely separated from this world. This is because his task is
to keep our eyes focussed upon G-d's world. Thus the COHEN GADOL is not allowed
to defile himself with the dead even in the case of his closest relatives. For in G-d's
world, there is no death but only life.

Everything about the Temple is designed to lift us up above the often tawdry world
around us and to teach us how to draw closer to the underlying reality of G-d. For this
reason, the Temple must be a place of the imposing splendor and beauty. Everything
must be in the best repair. Not a flagstone must be loose nor an altar stone chipped.
The vessels must be the finest gold and silver. And so too, the ministers themselves
must be people of pleasing looks. Our parshah details the physical blemishes that
disqualify a priest from participating in the Temple service itself (though not from eating
sacrificial portions). The parshah also details the blemishes that disqualify an animal
from being offered as a KORBAN. Everything offered to G-d has to be the very finest
and most beautiful. So too, we must seek to beautify our offerings of prayers, our
mitzvot and acts of kindness, and take care that they should not be blemished.
THE CYCLE OF THE YEAR.
The calling of the COHANIM was very exalted. The separation and purity demanded of
them is not required of the Israelites, who on the contrary are required to be involved in
the world -- farming, manufacturing, selling and buying, raising families, etc. As
discussed in the commentary on the previous parshah, KEDOSHIM, it is precisely
through bringing every area of our actual lives under the wing of the Torah that we attain
holiness.
Only the Cohen Gadol is to remain within the Temple precincts or in his nearby home in
Jerusalem all the time. The people are to be throughout the country, going about their
lives. For the Israelite, the relationship of G-d is one of "running and returning":
"running" in the sense of regularly rising above the mundane to make a deeper
connection with the underlying reality of G-d, but then "returning", in the sense of going
back to grappling with everyday reality.
The Torah appointed a rhythm of weekly, monthly and seasonal MO'ADIM, "appointed
times", whereby the Israelites rise above the mundane and restore and strengthen their
connection with the divine. Our parshah is one of several in the Torah (Ex. ch. 23;
Numbers ch. 23; Deut. ch. 16) that set forth the cycle of festivals and their associated
practices, each with its own particular focuses.
In our parshah (Leviticus ch. 23) one of the main themes that runs through the account
of the various festivals and their associated Temple practices is that of drawing
ecological balance and agricultural blessing into the world. During the ALIYAH LE-
REGEL -- the foot-pilgrimage to the Temple on Pesach, Shavuos and Succos -- the
Israelites would leave the work of making a living and tilling the ground in order to
participate in ceremonies whose purpose was to bless that work with G-dliness.
Pesach, and Shavuos are particularly bound up with grain, which is man's staple food.
The Matzahs eaten on Pesach may be made from one of the five kinds of grain. On the
second day of Pesach, at the beginning of the grain harvesting season, an Omer

measure is to be brought from the newly-ripened barley crop. During the coming weeks,
while the wheat-harvesting is going on, the Sefirah count directs our minds forward to
Shavuos, when a "new grain offering", the first wheat offering from the new crop -- two
loaves of leavened bread -- was brought.
The observances of Succos are particularly bound up with the water-cycle. The four
species of Esrog (citron), Lulav (palm branch), Hadass (myrtle) and Arovos (willow
branches) all require ample water. Succos comes after the hot, dry summer of Eretz
Israel, prior to what should be the rainy season. We take these four species in our
hands and pour out our hearts like water in thanks and praise, hinting to our heavenly
Father how totally depend we are on His blessings and mercy.
The chapter in our present parshah of EMOR relating to the festival cycle leads us in
the direction of next week's parshah, BEHAR, which sets forth the commandments
relating to the cycles of Sabbatical and Jubilee years, which are also bound up with
agriculture, ecological balance and reverence for the earth.
HIDDEN CYCLES.
Besides the cycles of festivals and Sabbaticals that give time its rhythm, the world is
also governed by cycles that are often not apparent, because one generation does not
know what happened in previous generations and therefore cannot understand how
what happens today is cyclically rooted in what happened earlier.
To understand the incident of the MEGADEF ("blasphemer") in the closing section of
our parshah (Leviticus 24:10ff), it is necessary to understand that "the son of the
Israelite woman who was the son of an Egyptian man" was in fact the issue of an illicit
relationship. Our rabbis teach that Shulamis Bas Divri was the wife of the Israelite whom
Moses saw being beaten by an Egyptian the first time he went out to visit his brothers.
The Egyptian would daily drive the Israelite out of his home and send him to his labors,
thereafter going in to his wife. (See Rashi on Lev. 24:10 and on Exodus 2:11).
There is a deep counterpoint in the positioning of this episode in parshas EMOR, which
centers on the special purity demanded of the priests. Shulamis Bas Divri is the
exemplar of the opposite: immorality. While the holiness of the priesthood requires
separation and the making of distinctions between pure and impure, fine and blemished,
she sought to erase distinctions, greeting everyone with a naive "Peace be upon you,
peace be upon you". As if friendly chatter is enough to turn evil into good. It was
Shulamis Bas Divri's endeavor to erase distinctions that laid her open to the immoral
relationship which led to the birth of the blasphemer. The latter, however, discovered
that, whether you like it or not, this IS a world of distinctions. While the blasphemer was
an Israelite through his mother, he had no tribal affiliation, since this comes only through
the father. Accordingly the blasphemer had no place in the Israelite camp.

Contemporary political correctness will cry out in the voice of Shulamis Bas Divri that he
should have been given a place -- isn't it unfair that he should be excluded because of a
quirk of birth? Endless similar questions can be asked about other commandments in
our parshah. Why should a blemished priest not be allowed to serve in the Temple?
Why should a divorcee not be allowed to marry a priest? etc. etc.
Rashi brings a midrash that the blasphemer "went out" (Lev. 24:10) in the sense that he
departed from the Torah: he mocked the idea that the Sanctuary Show-Bread (subject
of the preceding section), which was eaten by the priests when it was nine days old,
was a fitting institution in the Sanctuary of the King (Rashi ad loc.). The blasphemer
could not accept G-d's Torah the way it is. He wanted to adapt the Torah fit his own
personal views.
There was a way that even the blasphemer could have found his place. As quoted at
the outset, even a MAMZER TALMID CHOCHOM has precedence over the High Priest.
If the blasphemer had been willing to submit himself to G-d and accept the position G-d
put him in, he could have been saved. But he was not willing to submit and instead he
opened his mouth and poured out a torrent of abuse.
Over sixty years previous to this, when Moses saw this man's father striking Shulamis
Bas Divri's husband, Moses knew that there was no potential. "And he looked here and
there and he saw that there was no man [that no man would come forth from him to
convert, Rashi] and he struck the Egyptian" (Ex. 2:12). The rabbis taught that Moses
"struck" him by invoking the Name of HaShem. It was precisely this name that the son
of the Egyptian's illicit relationship blasphemed. Prior to the Giving of the Torah, Moses
inflicted instant justice on the father. However, after the Giving of the Torah, Moses was
subject to the Torah like everyone else and he had to wait to hear from G-d how to deal
with the blaspheming son.
The account of the punishment of the blasphemer includes related laws of punishments
for killing and the damages that must be paid for inflicting injury to humans and animals.
The cycles of crime and its penalties and payments revolve from generation to
generation, but this is not apparent to the onlooker who sees only the here and now and
does not understand what was before and what will come afterwards.
Shabbat Shalom!!!
Avraham Yehoshua Greenbaum.