Emor
Leviticus 21:1-24:23
Ezekiel 44:15-31
Yiddish curses are some of the best around. They involve hurling such expressions at others such as “You should be like a lamp; hanging by day and burning by night!” and “You should be like an onion, growing with your head in the ground.”
But blasphemy, attempting (as it were) to curse HaShem, is even more particular. This is due to a theological belief that since we are dealing with an infinite and omnipotent being, the only curse that would even make sense is to suggest that HaShem strike HaShem. But think about it: Here is a person so angry as to want to insult and attempt to hurt HaShem. Finding oneself limited to throwing our bad intentions for Divine self-injury sounds frustratingly impotent, to say the least.
So why would anyone even want to bother to try this in the Torah?
Yet they do. Near the end of this week’s Torah portion comes the story of an unnamed angry man who blasphemes. The man is imprisoned while Moshe seeks guidance as to the suitable judicial consequence.
Many questions arise. What is this doing here, smack in the middle of a book of the Torah with almost no narrative? The texts tells us who his mother was, but not he nor his father. Why? Tradition teaches that this is because he was of dubious lineage. Why is this relevant? And finally why didn’t Moshe, otherwise consistently knowledgeable, know what to do in this case?
I believe that the Torah’s expenditure of effort to focus on this person’s family background is the key to unlocking this puzzle.
People without a context for their lives will curse their present for unrealistic expectations of what is, and no understanding of why things are that way. Nothing in this world is perfect, but it is indeed possible to gain a limited understanding of “why.” Yet that ability to gain meaningful comprehension comes only with context; one who has no context is left only to hate the reality.
Thus, Moshe had no idea what to do with him because Moshe’s life had always been shaped by context. Moshe was the only one of his people raised in the palace and schooled in leadership, and had a vision of what his downtrodden people were up against.
Moshe’s parents were both committed and thoughtful guides to the Jewish people, who imparted to him a sense of duty and compassion. He conversed with HaShem and was offered glimpses of the Divine plan.
And so Moshe was baffled at meeting a man who lacked a sense of or connection to his past, a man whose life existed in a vacuum. The blasphemer is divorced from all this.
In today’s culture, we tend (and indeed prefer) to think that we make our own identities from scratch. That no one else has a say in who I am. I can be whomever I wish to be.
Certainly this is helpful in terms of one’s positive sense of responsibility and self-determination, but is it 100 percent true? In fact, each of us does come from somewhere and is impacted and shaped by heritage and genetics and family.
The great tormentor of the world is a word called “complexity.” Life, personal decisions and political issues just don’t really break down neatly into “good guys” and “bad guys.” It is rare that a whole history can be neatly represented by any three-minute explanation or sound bite. There is always more.
As individuals and as a community, we owe it to ourselves to embrace the great questions of our lives and of our generation with a view of their full context. Our history calls out for detailed study, both the history of our people through the ages as well as the personal study of our individual families and how each of us got to be who and where we are.
With that background of understanding, we can then move on to frame our present and choose our future destiny with wisdom. Shabbat shalom.
Rabbi Judah Dardik is the spiritual leader at Orthodox Beth Jacob in Oakland. He can be reached at [email protected].