Emor: Down to Earth 

Most of  Vayikra, Leviticus, Torath Kohanim, the third (mid) book of the Torah, deals with the temple service and the sanctity that it demands.  The rituals were a way to communicate, in a language that humans would never understand, with the invisible Gd ( whom they would never understand). The temple was the place where the earth met the Other. Making the temple a guest house for Gd  required that it be "clean" in a sense that is invisible to humans; it had to be free of Tumah, "ritual impurity". Tumah is a kind of filth that is imperceptible to  humans, but is malodorous and grotesque to the guest we are inviting. To the blind people, who lack a sense of smell, the preparations translate into an abstract set of rules. 

Emor starts by confronting the funeral. The death of  parents and other close relatives is inevitable  on earth. The meaning of such events from Heaven's perspective are  unknown. Contact with the dead is clearly a tumah; it contaminates, it is ugly and smelly and loud in the Heavenly sensorium. The Kohanim, the Temple priests who performed the rite, could not be tainted by this stuff.  Emor begins with compromise. There are some relatives that are so close that the earthly customs can override the obligation to purity that is placed upon the Kohanim.  It is a reminder that the Temple is not only a place where where Heaven meets earth; it is also where Earth meets Heaven. 

The set of ideas that give rise to the Temple and its service stem from Abraham. The idea that the world has a creator begins with Adam and Eve. A single creator, to whom humans can somehow relate, is an idea that Abraham spreads. A Gd that intervenes ( sometimes) in human events  on a mass scale is revealed in the Exodus from Egypt.

 At Mt Sinai, that Gd announces Gd's singularity and unity. Then the temple is built, in full recognition of the total lack of comprehension surrounding it. Immediately after the inauguration of the Temple, Nadav and Avihu, Aaron's first two sons, die because of an erroneously performed service. This is the ultimate demonstration of human ignorance in the face of the Holy. This is the middle of the Torah.

In the ancient world, understanding the world  meant knowing the songs that told of creation and "why" things were  the way they are. The most brilliant of the Ancients combined observations and rules and generated new, untested ideas. The idea of unity, that the principles that  govern the precisely moving and predictable stars also govern motion on earth, gave rise to our science, the new monotheism. As the tools derived from these advances improved, we came to quantum mechanics, which dispelled the idea that we humans can understand the world. Now we build temples to that mystery: colliders, nuclear power power plants, fusion devices. 

The end of the parsha, the story of the half breed blasphemer, mashed with the Code of Hamurabi (an eye for an eye), can be seen as another example of the difficulty with understanding the world. The youth(?) with the Egyptian father infuses the story with possibility of cultural clash. The Egyptians had the code of Hamurabi; so did the Hebrews; but the interpretations were  different. With a  literal interpretation these are cruel, sadistic laws. The  jarring repetition of the Code in this story is an opportunity to learn the Jewish interpretation: Compensation must be as complete and equal as possible; and that eliminates a literal interpretation. Rather the compensation must be monetary. 

מִשְׁפַּ֤ט אֶחָד֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה לָכֶ֔ם כַּגֵּ֥ר כָּאֶזְרָ֖ח יִהְיֶ֑ה כִּ֛י אֲנִ֥י יְ

You shall have one manner of law, as well for the stranger, as for one of your own country: for I am the Lrd your Gd

For the present, one of the most important lessons of the Temple purity is how to handle the inscrutable: just follow the rules ( the math). For me, the reminder to realize when I do not understand is very important. Unfortunately, if I look deeply, it is all the time.