Parashat Emor

This week’s portion, Emor – literally, “tell” as in “tell all the priests to…” – is very unique, both to me personally and to every thinking Jewish person more generally. It is personally unique to me as this is my “bar Mitzvah” portion.  It is (or should be) unique to every thinking Jewish person as it fully represents the stark contrast between the ancient written Torah text and the more current Halachic custom. I will shortly elaborate on each of these points in my notes today.

Text vs. Halacha: When Is Rosh Ha’Shana?

Suppose you had to pick just one portion that would include as many Jewish holidays as possible. Emor would easily be a top choice. This portion is practically a “Lonely Planet Guide to Jewish Holidays.” Beginning with the somewhat dramatic statement: These are the Holidays of the Lord – Readings of holiness that you shall read in their due course” (Levit. 23:4), the portion goes on to describe in great detail each of the major holidays: Passover (23:5-8); The counting of the Omer (of which we are currently in the midst) (23:15-22); Rosh Ha’Shana (23:23-25); Yom Kippur (23:26-32); and Sukkot (23:33-44).     

I will not go here through the intricate details of each of these Torah-mandated holidays. What is important to me today are the dates: Passover, according to the explicit text, is to be celebrated “on the first month at the fourteenth day of the month.” But Passover is not celebrated today on the first month – Tishrei; it is rather celebrated on the month of Nissan, the seventh month of the year.

Conversely, Yom Kippur, is celebrated today on the tenth day of Tishrei – the very first month of the current Jewish calendar; but according to the explicit text it is to be celebrated “on the tenth day of the Seventh month.” More importantly, between these two important holidays lies yet another holiday, in the beginning of that seventh month, in which the text requires us to cease all work.  Today this holiday is called “Rosh Ha’Shana” – the beginning of the year (or, more simply, “New Year’s”) – a name, by the way, that can be found nowhere in our portion (or anywhere else in the bible, for that matter).

But how can we celebrate the beginning of the year on the seventh month? In particular, how can the year begin not in the first month as is specifically prescribed by the text itself? Have we been wrong all these years? Should we move Rosh Ha’Shana to Passover?

In a way – a textual way – we have been wrong.  The term Rosh Ha’Shana (New Year’s) does not appear in the text. The holiday – which today marks the beginning of the Jewish year – is not designated as such by the text. Moreover, the first month of the year is not up in the air. According to the text, the month in which the Israelites left Egypt – Nissan, the month of Passover (of course) – is the first month of the year. So what is going on here?

Halacha O’keret Mikra – the Halacha overrides the biblical text – is the principle used to explain these (and many other) discrepancies. This week marks one of the most explicit cases where the customs devised by our sages stand in stark contrast to the biblical text itself. Today, we receive these Halachic commands, first iterated by the Mishna, as a binding (Jewish) law.  But you don’t have to be Justice Scalia – who can’t stand a law that has no strong textual basis – in order to pose a penetrating question: What is the basis of that? Who are those sages – and who appointed them – to overrule (or override) an explicit biblical text?

I am not able to answer these questions here. I am, however, able to suggest that an acceptance of such Halachic override may have far-reaching consequences both in terms of understanding what are the real sources of Jewish law, and, more profoundly, what does it mean to accept the “yoke of Torah and Mitzvot” – to accept Jewish law as a person of faith.  More on that in future posts. 

My Bar-Mitzvah’s Haftarah

It has been long ago – way too long, over three decades – since I stood in the then-new synagogue next to my parents’ home in Ramat Aviv (a small Tel-Aviv suburb), very nervous and anxious, preparing to read aloud my first (and so far only) public Haftara.  We just welcomed, four months earlier, a wonderful addition to our family – my younger brother Uri; I was so proud to carry him on my arms to shul for the first time. I will never know how I really did that day (in terms of proper reading). Everyone, of course, sang my praises, telling me I did great. Then again, what would you tell a young Bar-Mitzvah boy who just finished his readings (for which he prepared over several months)? That he did horribly? That he was barely understood, or almost not heard? Indeed, even in Israel – the “tell-it-as-it-is-and-in-your-face” country – we have our limits. Bar Mitvah is certainly one of those.

I have been to many Bar Mitzvahs ceremonies since, but every year I love to come back to my own Haftara – by the Prophet Ezekiel, of course (Ez. 44:15-31). Initially I was disappointed to read its text – it seems to deal with the mundane issue of the type of cloths priests should (and should not) put on prior to perform the holy task of serving God.

But then it hit me, several years later, that this text must mean much more than that. And indeed, thanks to my own “Rabbi,” Yeshayahu Leibovitz, I grew to understand that the text has profound – and indeed very relevant modern-day— implications. In essence, it requires the priests and Levites, when they enter into the “inner” sanctum, the holy of holiest places, to wear special (and very specific) clothes. But when they go back outside, “to the masses” as the text puts it, these same servants of God should again put on their regular clothes: “and they shall not consecrate the people in their [special] clothes.”

Why would the priests wear special clothes when no one can see them, but regular clothes when everyone does? The answer implies a fundamental principle of religious leadership adhered to, unfortunately, only by very few religious leaders today (in all religions equally, by the way): It is the idea that a religious leader is unique only to the extent – and during the period – that he or she are serving God; in all other measures, in all other respects, they are equal to all other people – and therefore should appear like that. In that manner, both them and the people would have a constant reminder that they are not “above all others” in any respect, except for the time they serve God.

But none of the religious leaders I know today – from the Pope to the Chief Rabbis to major Mullahs – would sacrifice their uniquely-looking garbs (or robes) for the “regular clothes” of the people. They rightly fear that “the people” would quickly reveal that, behind those gilded quilts, they may not be so different from any of us…

Shabbat Shalom,

Doron