Behar: Property's Rights

Behar: Property's Rights

The first Rashi of the parsha quotes the Torath Cohanim:  בהר סיני. מָה עִנְיַן שְׁמִטָּה אֵצֶל הַר סִינַי?  What does the Sabbatical Year have to do with Mount Sinai?  This is the idiom , in modern Hebrew,   for declaring a non sequitur, irrelevance. 

The question arises from the oddity of a landless, nomadic population of dispossessed slaves getting detailed inheritance and land-use laws in the middle of the desert.  People who had no estates, no inheritance of goods or property for 210 years are dealing with the rules governing the sale and leasing of land.  It is a land that they have never seen. The claim to the land is based upon forgotten sales to Abraham and Jacob, vague treaties with Isaac, and the claim  that Gd has granted it to them 

This relationship to a land  of dreams  turns out to be very lasting, very important,  The fanciful relationship to the land, through the rules associated with it ( outlined in the parsha and expounded in volumes of talmud) kept the dream of return vivid for millenia.  Since this portion of the Bible is shared with the Christians, it formed part of the justification for alienating the Jews from the local , European, system of property, possession and legacy

The idea of the return to ancestral lands in the Jubilee year has not been implemented for millenia. But the promise of an ancestral homestead waiting for every Israelite ( when the Messiah comes)  is a dream that has never died.  In our day, 90% of the land in Israel is owned by the state.  Much of the Biblical Promised Land is expected to a Judenrein state on the West bank of the Jordan.  The dream is not close.  Somehow, we ended up an urban people.

The idea that the land itself has rights ( a right to rest on the Sabatical and Jubilee years) is very modern. In our time, we emphasize the the right of the earth to stay cool, we set aside land not to be settled.  The land has rights, and as we see in the next parsha, violation of those rights leads to exile.  If we do not respect the rights of the earth as a whole, that exile may mean death.  The idea of shmitah and yovel mean that we must consider the state of the earth, the estate we leave to our descendants

Emor: Holy and perfect

Emor: Holy and  perfect 

For the sacrificial rite, everything has to be perfect. The animal -unblemished, the priest - free of defects - limbs intact, face symmetric, eyebrows separated. .  This is the performance and no imperfection is tolerated. Kodesh,  is not tolerant, it stands in contrast to our Northwest,  Americans with Disabilites Act, values.  

Impurity  of thought is also a defect. The half breed comes along and questions the rite. He pokes holes (וְנֹקֵ֤ב ) in the process  What does Passover mean to him? His paternal ancestors were plagued and drowned,  Justice is reserved for the better castes: priests, Levites - not half breeds

The system cannot tolerate  his treason. He is taken out and stoned, killed in  a process of public participation. 

See what Holiness hath wrought. Holiness destroys the defective. . Holiness stones the deviant.

The coda of the parsha: מִשְׁפַּ֤ט אֶחָד֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם כַּגֵּ֥ר כָּאֶזְרָ֖ח יִהְיֶ֑ה Ye shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for the home-born One justice for all.

Be Holy. Gd is Holy

Kedoshim: outstanding

Kedoshim: outstanding

When I was a boy, maybe 13, I was recruited by my friends from Yeshiva Rabbi David Leibowitz to join  a cult. Our mission: bring Jewish youth to (our brand of) [Yeshivish] Orthodoxy.  We attended training sessions with a Rabbi.  Our core text was Rejoice O Youth by  Avigdor Miller, a book that explained how science and logic made The Faith the only possible choice. 

Part of the indoctrination into the party was  discussing the  third verse of our parsha, Kedoshim: 

אִ֣ישׁ אִמּ֤וֹ וְאָבִיו֙ תִּירָ֔אוּ וְאֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתַ֖יתִּשְׁמֹ֑רוּ
Ye shall fear every man his mother, and his father, and ye shall keep My sabbaths:

The interpretation was  that one should,indeed, respect parents, but only if that does not interfere with serving Gd.

The parsha is aptly named: Holy Ones. A series of laws are presented and, from time to time, we are told to be Holy. Most of the laws in the parsha demand  ordinary decency: Do mot steal, do not cheat, honor your parents, etc.  But  holiness  is something beyond  the mundane.

Consider the  קָ, the frist letter in kadosh, Holy. It is  one of the longest letters, it is as if an ordinary letter, a Raish, had something sticking out of it.  It has an exceptional appearance. That is an aspect of a holy person or group.  Doing the ordinary is a pre-requisite to the exceptional.

Honoring your parents is the expected, fearing Gd is the exceptional. Combining both is holy.

Acharei Mothe: The Performance

Acharei Mothe: The Performance

The parsha is introduced by the recollection of the death of Nadav and Avihu, and the relationship between their deaths and the unauthorized, erroneous, untimely service they performed in the Holy of Holies is emphasized. If you don't follow the rules, you die. 

The details of the Yom Kippur service are then outlined.  A series of bulls, goats, incense, a lottery, are presented.  . The service is to be done annually ,on The day of Atonement, solo, by the high priest. 

The instructions are elaborate and the Talmud points out that the manipulations  are difficult and the pace is very demanding. There is a tradition that, in the second temple, they often did not do it right, with the stated consequence: the high priest would die in the attempt.  This is said to have occurred so frequently in the later years of the temple that the High Priest ( which had become a purchased honor) would wear a rope around his foot so that the dead body could be dragged out of the inner sanctum. 

The High Priest has to surrender his aesthetics, his sense of how things should be done and submit to the stated rules.  No deviations are permitted.  There is some value in realizing that there are situations in which it does not mater what you think, you simply must do the procedure in the prescribed, hence correct,way.
The Yom Kippur service is a command performance.  The audience is the Supreme Being.  The consequence of error is death.

There have been perhaps 5 times in my life that a musical performance has thrilled me so deeply that I cried.  A composition, presented as it is written, perfectly performed can be the most moving experience  

In  the  ritual Done correctly, the actions impact the performer and her audience. Error is grating, fatal to the performance.  We see that in music and neurosurgery, In a broad sense that may be  true in life, and in general.