The legacy of the Jewish people includes a striving for perfection in ourselves, in our children and in the world. The quest for perfection inherently acknowledges that each of us is imperfect in some ways. In Parashat Emor, such defects are presented as a barrier. If taken on its face, this barrier could be confused for a defect in the Torah.

We read in Parashat Emor at Leviticus 21:21 about the ritual of offerings to the Lord by the priests where it says “no man among the offspring of Aaron the priest who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the Lord’s offering.” The defects noted range from a broken arm to a short leg to crushed testes.  One can only suppose that this passage suggests that the priests’ physical imperfections would detract from the holiness or sanctity of the offering.

In our modern religious practices, having abandoned tangible sacrifices at an altar, we strive for perfection in the observance. Why else would we have so many rules about when and where rituals are observed? Take a common example such as lighting Shabbat candles. The exact time of lighting is announced in emails and the methodology of lighting the candles is passed down through the generations. With all of our myriad Jewish rituals, our physical attributes are not the issue. Every Jew, with frailties or abilities, is bound to the laws and traditions. 

Yet, in this instance, Torah exhibits a bias against persons whose bodies are less able or less well designed. It is a bias exhibited and limited to the time of making offerings to God and at the altar before the mishkan which is described as God’s dwelling. This exclusion is painful for me to read. After dozens of years of working with persons who are less abled, I’ve known that holiness is often best found in the interaction where abilities and disabilities complement one another.  The doctors who heal. The therapists who restore motion. The teachers who educate. They may be the Priests of today. And each one of those professionals have their own defects of some sort. We all do.

If in Torah even a priest with a broken leg that can mend or a growth in his eye that can be healed is not eligible to offer a sacrifice, aren’t we really being told that none of us are eligible? Or perhaps the best explanation is that no one should think of themselves as eligible to make offerings to God if they think of themselves as better than anyone else. We bring our whole selves with our defects to the rituals we perform and in pursuit of perfecting a damaged world. In fact it is our desire to surmount imperfections that fuels the engine of making the world a better place.

Rabbi Evan J. Krame

This week we have a double portion, Tazria and Metzora. They both deal with the reasons for creating boundaries of time and space, and fixes due to being tamae, ritually unsure, or tahor, ritually, pure. For many who look at these two portions, they seem confusing, unsophisticated, and sexist. These are two of my favorite parshiot for those reasons – they cause me to look harder at them to find something relevant for this time and place. 

Even though we don’t participate in the sacrificial cult at the Temple any longer, we do begin morning prayers with “My God, the soul You have given me is pure” and in my head I hear Debbie Friedman’s  z”l voice singing those words. Therefore, the questions about which I want to seek possible answers are these. What might change this soul from its state of purity?  Is that what tamae and tahor are describing?

I lean toward the understanding that when humans come in contact with a particular point on the life-death continuum, they become tamae. Even doing important mitzvot, such as giving birth and burying the dead, cause one to become tamae. In order to return to tahor requires time, water, and sometimes blood. The original elements present at birth – the infant isn’t considered tamae, only the mother. It seems to be a remarkable system that says, “You have just experienced something powerful or potentially life-giving or perhaps the opposite, death. Take some time to appreciate that experience, then you can return to your normal routine.” Or in ritual language, you can return to being tahor. 

 We have constructed our lives wanting full control over our time, so we see this “time out” as a punishment, rather than permission to not do something.  We like being able to fill our time with work, entertainment, family, exercise, etc. We have leisure time (even if it doesn’t feel that way), so perhaps we don’t appreciate the requirement to take time. But have you heard some say they need a “sick day?” Isn’t that asking permission to be prohibited from working? Physical ailments may force us to take some time.  Turning from the physical to the spiritual, how do we know if our souls are healthy? Maybe we all need to take some time to think about that. 

Among the reasons that Jewish yoga and chant cultivate loyal followings is their focus on the body as a spiritual portal. After centuries of Jewish focus on matters of the mind (study) and spirit (prayer), we are rediscovering the spirituality of embodied corporeal life. Passover – especially the last day, when tradition celebrates the trek through the Sea of Reeds – calls us so deeply into our bodies that we can experience joy and freedom even in our bodies.

The slaves of the Exodus, whose bodies had toiled almost unto death, were ejected from Egypt in great haste, with no time to prepare or even think of the body’s basic needs (Ex.12:39). As Reb Nachman (1772-1810) taught, Passover’s first day is about transcending bodily limits. Passover’s last day goes even further. On this day, the fleeing slaves reached the Sea of Reeds, blocked at the water’s edge but pursued by Pharaoh’s army. Trapped between them, the Haggadah recounts that Nachshon ben Aminadav walked into the water, and only when he went so far that the water reached the face, threatening to overcome him, did the waters part.

The Slonimer Rebbe (1911-2000) taught that Nachshon’s spirituality was the most exquisite form we humans can achieve, such a quality of loving faith as to empower the body to leap into the sea, confident even in our bodies that the waters will part. What would it be like to feel spirit so deeply in our bodies that our “walking into” can become a “walking through” by force of faith? What if spirit so infused our bodies that song were to flow out of us as freely as breath (Ps. 35:10)? How would this kind of liberation feel in our bodies – not a faraway faith, not just a mindful conceptual understanding, but a freedom so giddy that our whole bodies resonate with joy?

It doesn’t matter what our bodies are like, whether we’re young or old, however able our bodies may be. Passover reminds that our spiritual journeys from narrowness to expansive joy call us forward not only in heart, mind and soul, but also in body – the real corporeal lives we actually lead, each in our own way. As we journeys through the narrows this season, may joy penetrate even our bones so that songs of liberation can flow through us and into the world.

Rabbi David Evan Markus

by Rabbi David Evan Markus as posted in My Jewish Learning on March 19.

When does time begin? What does time measure? What came before the beginning? Such mind-bending questions evoke timeless truths especially relevant at this moment in the Jewish year.

Humans mark space and time from origins. Moderns traveling east or west across the globe chart distance in longitude from Greenwich, England, a relic of the British Empire’s dominion. Modernity marks secular time against Greenwich Mean Time, which scientists call “Universal Coordinated Time,” as if the whole universe sets its clock by London’s lights. Spiritual time and space also chart from starting points. Jews traditionally pray toward the Western Wall in Jerusalem, as if the Temple once towering above was the center of the world, the axis mundi around which all else revolves.

Jewish time spirals from not one but four origins – four New Years, each with unique spiritual and historical purpose. Rosh Hashanah (“Head of the Year”) marks the physical creation, cycle of teshuvah(repentance), ancient tax year, and sabbatical and jubilee years. Tu B’shevat (“New Year of the Trees”) marks the agricultural birthday of trees. Rosh Chodesh Elul marks tithe years for cattle and Moses’ ascent of Sinai to receive the second tablets.

Tomorrow night (March 19, 2015) begins the fourth Jewish New Year, Rosh Chodesh Nisan, origin of Jewish identity and spiritual consciousness. Two weeks before the Exodus from Egyptian bondage, “God said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt: ‘This month [Nisan] will be for you the first month… of your year,” a tribute to the upcoming liberation (Ex. 12:1-2). This tribute to freedom – defining Jews as a people released from bondage to reach toward spiritual liberation – is the origin of Jewish time. In a spiritual sense, Jewish time exists only in relationship to our bondage and liberation.

Jewish time exists only in relationship to bondage and liberation. If not for liberation from bondage, there would be no Jewish time. As then, so now. When we are gripped by inner emotional or spiritual bondage, in a sense, Jewish time stops. In a real sense, in bondage we stop living. Just as Shabbat reboots the weekly Jewish work cycle, Rosh Chodesh Nisan reboots Jewish time itself.

A coincidence of Rosh Chodesh Nisan helps illuminate this truth. On this day, the newly freed Israelite slaves wandering the desert completed and inaugurated the mishkan, the ancient cultic focus for God’s indwelling presence among the people. As the people journeyed, the miskhan was the center of their camp. The mishkan, symbol of holiness and holy living, became our forebears’ symbolic origin of space, linked to Rosh Chodesh Nisan as their origin of time. It was the mishkan to which our forebears brought not only celebrations and triumphs for gratitude, but also guilt, shame and defeat to be ritualized and released. The mishkan offered ways to express yearnings for holiness, to release heart and soul continually from the grips of emotional and spiritual bondage.

The ancient cycle of bondage and liberation continues to this day. Rosh Chodesh Nisan marks the two-week countdown to Passover, marking the liberation from historical bondage. Each day and each moment invites us into emotional and spiritual release from inner bondage. Community and ritual – playing out in space and time – bring this drama to life on the human plane.

And now – right now, with Rosh Chodesh Nisan – is our time to begin again. Time itself refreshes and renews. We get ready for freedom. At long last, we welcome the radical liberation of Now.

Rabbi David Evan Markus

The opening of Torah’s middle book, Vayikra (Leviticus), asks a hidden question that is perhaps the most important question in Jewish spiritual life.

Torah’s story of liberation and wandering goes on hiatus, shifting to our ancestors’ ancient cultic rites.  Before relaying that narrative, Torah begins: “God called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting” (Lev. 1:1).  The rabbis wondered, “Why does Torah say that God called to Moses?  Shouldn’t it be enough that God spoke to Moses?”

Rashbam (Shlomo ben Meir, 1085-1158), grandson of Rashi (Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105), observed that in Exodus, God “called” to Moses from the Burning Bush that Moses could approach no closer (Ex. 3:4), and “called” to Moses from within Mount Sinai where Moses could not penetrate (Ex. 19:3).  Similarly, Moses couldn’t enter the Tent of Meeting amidst God’s presence (Ex. 40:35), and now God “called” Moses from the Tent of Meeting.  Rashbam concludes that God “called” Moses from the very places Moses couldn’t go: God “speaks” from anywhere, but “calls” from places that are off-limits.

But the “call” itself isn’t off-limits.  The Hebrew root kra, as in Vayikra (“God “called”), also means “cry” – an emotive act that draws in and reaches out.  In Kriyat Torah, we don’t just “read” Torah: we “cry” Torah – we call it out, drawing holy wisdom and ourselves into each other.  In like fashion, maybe we can understand God “calling” as a crying out, bridging the distance between us and a quality of holiness that otherwise might seem off-limits.

In this way, Vayikra asks: From where does God call today?  How do holiness and spiritual wisdom call to each of us in our own lives, and how do we respond?  We long ago left Sinai and outgrew the Tent of Meeting, but as Rashbam wrote, God kept calling along the way – first from the Burning Bush, then from Sinai, then from the Tent of Meeting.  Why not also from our own holy places – synagogues, dinner tables, nature hikes, museums, yoga mats, salons – wherever we gather with the intention to connect?  Maybe God is calling you right now, maybe from the very place that seems most off-limits.  If you stopped to listen, what might you hear?