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HEBREW TABERNACLE CONGREGATION May 7, 2011 D’var Torah
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Rose
is currently a seventh grader attending the NYC Lab School. Her favorite
subjects are math and science. She enjoys playing basketball, swimming and
riding her bike. Aside from Hebrew School, Rose’s extra-curricular activities
include reading, drawing and being a part of the math team. Rose loves to be
with her friends near and far. Next summer she will be heading up to the
Berkshires to attend Camp Eisner for her third year. Not only does she love going
to Massachusetts once a year for camp, Rose loves to travel. She has been to California,
Seattle, Milan, Venice, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. She has been to Israel many
times and hopes to return this summer to celebrate her bat mitzvah at the
western wall. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This week’s Torah portion, Parshat Emor, provides a list of laws governing Jewish ritual. These laws deal with a wide range of subjects: the proper procedure for performing sacrifices, the role and responsibilities of the priests, and how the major Jewish festivals are to be observed. Specific reference is made to Shabbat, Pesach, the Counting of the Omer, Shavuot, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkoth. The laws governing the role and responsibilities of the Priests go into minute detail. For instance, the High Priest may not marry a divorced woman. Descendants of Aaron who have a blemish may not offer the sacrificial bread. Priests must place twelve cakes in two rows of six cakes per row every Sabbath upon the pure table before the Lord. The laws governing the priests mainly define what actions and behaviors and conditions are sacred, and what are profane. The laws specify that the actions and the behaviors of the priests must be the sacred ways of doing things and specify that the priests have to avoid what would be considered profane actions or conditions. For example, priests may not go into a room with a dead person in it, except for their kin . The High Priest, who must follow the strictest laws, may not go into any room with a dead body. Parshat Emor ends with the story of the execution by stoning, of a man who blasphemed the Lord, and the list of punishments for several specific crimes including blasphemy, murder, maiming, and killing a beast. I have thought a great deal about my parsha. There is one story, otherwise it is made up entirely of laws. Why are there so many laws? Are they all important? It is hard for me, as a thirteen year-old in the twenty-first century, to understand how all of these laws are important. Even when I try to picture the life of the Children of Israel in the desert three thousand years ago, I still find it difficult to understand how some of these laws are important. Then I thought about the second part of my parsha, where the rules for the holidays and festivals are given. My parsha, Emor, comes between Pesach and Shavuoth, between the holiday of freedom and the holiday of receiving the law. This made me think about laws and freedom as two ideas that are brought together in parshat Emor. It made me think about, on the one hand, a society with no laws, only freedom; and on the other hand, a society with no freedom, only laws. A society without laws is pure wilderness, where the only laws are the laws of nature. Such a society is governed by the principle of the survival of the fittest. People only look out for themselves and their families. Nothing would be mandatory or prohibited. This also made me think about laws without any freedom, for example, slavery, or totalitarianism. The Children of Israel were slaves, and God freed them – we were slaves, and God freed us, as we relearn every Pesach. We see and hear about societies with laws and without freedom every day in the news. Each of the two types of society, in my opinion, is very extreme. I believe that, in an humane society, one should not be without the other – freedom without law, law without freedom. And, I wonder if a society can even be stable with too much of one or the other. The Israelites weren’t ready for freedom without law. The Golden Calf story illustrates that without law the Israelites might worship idols. Once the Israelites started to believe that Moses was gone from them, they made Aaron build them a golden calf. They were acting like pagans, praying to an idol and dancing around it.
So I believe that a fair and humane people must have freedom and law. But why so many laws and so detailed? After reading this I wondered, can’t people just be good? Is that what G-d was really trying to achieve? I think G-d was also trying to achieve something else. Maybe it is not enough to want and intend to be good. Maybe G-d was saying, as long as you follow my laws, you have the freedom to do anything you want. I imagine that if you follow all G-d’s laws, it would be impossible to be bad no matter how hard you try. If so, why are there so many laws
that to me don’t seem obviously designed to help us be good people. Some laws I understand as keeping society
fair and ordered, for example if one kills a beast, one must compensate the
beast’s owner. Some laws I understand as defining and keeping the sacred and
the profane, for example, for sacrifice one must offer animals that are
without blemish But some laws I still do not understand, for example lining
up the cakes for sacrifice in two rows of six. Maybe God makes laws the way a parent makes rules for her or his child. Is the relationship between G-d and the Children of Israel like the relationship between parent and a child? I think the two relationships are both similar and different. Both relationships are similar in that both the parent and G-d make rules for the children, for the safety of the children, and for the right and moral behavior of the children; and not only for the present but for the future. I think that a big difference between G-d’s relationship with the Children of Israel and parents’ relationship with their children, is that when a child grows up he or she becomes another version of their parents. The parents’ rules are such, that when the child grows up he or she will be safe and moral as an independent person. The Children of Israel are a nation and don’t grow up as an individual child grows up, and will never become another version of G-d. G-d’s laws for the Children of Israel are forever.
So again I wonder, why so many laws? Maybe G-d gave the Israelites all these laws to set us apart. Sometimes you can recognize a Jew by how he or she behaves when following G-d’s laws, for example, not eating bread during Pesach. Maybe He wants us to be set apart, to remind us of the covenant between G-d and Abraham and all Abraham’s descendants, that we are G-d’s people and He is our G-d. I think a possible or partial answer lies in my parsha itself. G-d made laws to make us holy and to be made holy by
us. We read in Parshat
Emor,, “And ye shall
keep my commandments, and do them: I am the Lord. And ye shall not profane My holy name; but
I will be hallowed among the children of We are supposed to hallow G-d, or make G-d holy, by our actions and behavior and by following the laws. And in the same way, by our actions and behaviors and our fulfilling the laws, G-d hallows us, and G-d makes us holy. To me hallowing G-d is about having faith, not simply behaving and acting well. And if we question G-d’s laws, we still follow them. I think that hallowing G-d and being hallowed by G-d is more about trusting G-d and trusting the fact that we are G-d’s people. I realized that despite saying all of this, I don’t follow MANY of G-d’s laws. I think probably no Jews follow every law in the Torah. I think it is a matter of either taking the Torah literally, or interpreting it in our own way. I believe this is at least partly why there is a Talmud, and why Judaism has developed into different denominations. Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist, each have different positions on how they decide to interpret the Torah. Not even the most observant Jew can follow every single law in the Torah. Even the most observant among us Jews, don’t make animal sacrifices; even the most observant among us Jews, don’t execute blasphemers. To me, Parshat Emor asks us to think about what is sacred and what is profane; Parshat Emor asks us to think about freedom, and about law. I think Judaism – its laws, as well as its traditions, and its history, – helps bring us toward the sacred, and away from the profane, and helps us have a balance between freedom, and law. And by doing this, we hallow G-d, and are hallowed by G-d. There are many people without whom this day would not be possible. First, I would like to take a moment to think of those people we love, and have loved, who are not with us today. I want to thank Rabbi Gale for his guidance,
and Cantor Rubel for helping me with my
chanting. I want to thank Shelly Koy and Connie Heymann, for
leading our wonderful Shabbat Shalom.
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