I don’t much like the book of Leviticus, in case that hasn’t been clear until now, so hang on. We began reading the 21st chapter of it this week, and up to the 24th almost all the material has to do with emphasizing the importance of the priests, the kohanim . It follows logically that all the Children of Israel should support the special status of these people and protect them. They were key to communicating with God through sacrifice, which is how Torah understands we are supposed to communicate: through rituals that include no little violence to animals. That is a very different understanding of what it means to communicate with the Divine to the one most of us have today. For many who grew up in a liberal Jewish environment, the center of Jewish ritual was the synagogue (which came to be called a temple mostly in order to accentuate how non-Orthodox we are by the early vociferously Reform rabbis), and the spiritual leader, the rabbi. How are we today, as a post Exilic Jewish community, supposed to relate to supreme ritual technicians with no role relevant to modernity? It’s an open question with an evolving answer…
As I had shared with you on a Shabbat last month a piece written by Gil Koptch about why the destruction of the Temple was not a tragedy, you are familiar with my view. History shows us that the pursuit of learning and expansion of knowledge is what most Jews share today, no matter their level of ritual observance. Here is the difficulty for me: the discussion in Jewish tradition is not primarily around “what is holy” or “can we truly know God” but rather: Study or Deeds, which is more significant? Torah or Ma’aseh are not polar opposites, one can and should both engage in study and live a life that displays respect for others and for God. But they are a pair, and as such they can be seen as a see-saw: in the first ten centuries after the destruction of the Second Temple Jewish culture prioritized Study. Since the Enlightenment and the possibility of Jews having not only religious but also civil identities the see-saw seems to have come down on the side of Deeds. Jews could study passively in their closed yeshivot OR they could move into non-Jewish society and engage with their contemporaries which led to Jewish support of many revolutions and independence movements in the 20th century and beyond.
Both in Torah and today we have to look not only at what the story is, but behind it or underneath it, to ask why we are telling this story. We did not invent the idea of killing animals to please a Divine Power, nor did we come up with the idea of a homeland (well, maybe) – but those two ideas of a monopoly on ritual leadership and the desirability of political autonomy have accompanied us for millennia. We were so comfortable thinking this way that we have been reluctant to give up the vestiges of the defunct priesthood. It took hundreds of years for the ideal of Jewish religious leadership to change from Priest to Rabbi, and as we know all too well, not every change is welcome. This week I ask you to look at where we as a people would be without the influence of non-Jewish culture. Our reinterpretation of wanton pagan sacrifice into a highly regulated system overseen by one small segment of our society was transformational. We understand God wants us to thrive and not to wander through life with no boundaries, but the absolute mania about how to ensure that we are doing exactly what God wants? We have lost that focus, we are no longer a closed community of believers who must fend off all alien threats. We have become them. So what does this Torah portion say to us in 2023? That we would do well to examine the motivations for our actions, that just as the priests had to be scrupulous to avoid impurity, we too need an awareness that our every day behavior reflects our deepest beliefs and values. There is no real divide between secular and religious – we all strive to be moral people.
To conclude on a lighter note: the character from the Star Wars franchise, Yoda, has always been disproportionately popular in Israel. Well, he’s short, speaks funny and can flatten you as quick as look at you, so maybe that’s part of the attraction, but I suspect his creator chose that name (consciously or not) because it shares the same Hebrew root as knowledge (ידע) so Israelis hear him as “The Knowing One”. When you’re short and speak funny it helps to have an awesome reputation.
May the Shabbat Force be with you Rabbi Leah Benamy
