The Torah column is supported by a generous donation from Eve Gordon-Ramek in memory of Kenneth Gordon.
Emor
Leviticus 21:1-24:23
The Torah portion Emor has more verses than any other parashah in the entire Five Books of Moses. It contains a potpourri of content that relates to purity rites for priests, observances of holy days and elements in the portable sanctuary. That makes it long and dense, but also special.
In fact, Emor is special on many levels, not the least of which is that it is also read during the ancient pilgrimage festival of Sukkot, the Feast of Booths, which is observed in the fall.
Why would the rabbis pick Emor as the Sukkot reading? Why this parashah and not some other one?
The book of Vayikra, or Leviticus, from which this portion comes, is about the many laws, practices, rites, and rituals that make Jews unique. Vayikra is also the middle book of the Five Books of Moses, the fulcrum that balances the other books.
Sukkot is described in this parashah, but the holiday marks more than just a harvest time in ancient Israel. It is a kind of commentary on the human condition, on the fragility — just like the fragility of the sukkot, the flimsy and impermanent huts of the same name — of what it means to be alive.
Yet how can we celebrate life when it is so fragile and ephemeral?
That is the paradox not only of Sukkot (which the rabbis call, despite all its precariousness, z’man simchateinu, “the season of our joy”) but of other Jewish holidays as well.
During the Passover seder, for instance, we read a passage called Ha Lachma Anya. At this point, the seder leader holds up the delicate, fragile matzah from the table and recites the words: “Behold, this is the bread of affliction.”
The matzah is flimsy and precarious. It represents the brokenness of our world. But it is also a highlight, perhaps the signature element and object, of the weeklong Passover experience. And it is meant to convey our joy, the celebration of our freedom.
How can we celebrate life when it is so fragile and ephemeral?
Yom Kippur represents another example. It is a 24-hour period meant to break us down, to bring us face to face with our own fragility and brokenness. And yet, it is also the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, a moment when we are — paradoxically — built up again as “new” human beings.
At the end of the Ne’ilah service on Yom Kippur, we hear the final blast of the shofar, and we have cause to celebrate. The Days of Awe are over, and we are renewed for another year.
Even in the face of fragility and paradoxicality, we can still celebrate and can still assert our identities as Jews. Sukkot, Passover and Yom Kippur all convey that powerful idea.
But it is not easy to live in a state of paradox. We sometimes feel alone and set apart from others in our struggle with this challenging reality. The holidays are about community, though for some of us, they can make us feel alone.
One of the central messages of Emor, by extension, is that our feelings of isolation and separateness — from God, from nature, from one another — are illusions. Just as our Israelite ancestors needed manna from heaven and the support of one another to make it through the trials of the Sinai desert, so do we need Divine grace and human fellowship.
Emor teaches us that we can’t go it alone — and that we don’t have to. Our true redemption is in community, in God and in the rituals that connect all of it as one.
That is the fundamental teaching of the Jewish tradition: Despite the fragility of human life and despite the difficulty of celebrating in the face of existential struggle, we can ultimately find purpose and meaning in our faith.
While many of our rites and rituals may seem antiquated or obscure, they remain supremely relevant to contemporary Jews. Without the guidance they provide, we’d be lost in a quagmire of empty secularism and vapid narcissism.
Emor, and its place in the Torah reading lexicon, can remind us of this truth.