Podcast #67: Parashat Emor

Today is a unique day in Israel as it is Memorial Day, a day to remember fallen soldiers, followed by Independence Day. The podcast hosts discuss Parashat Emor, which focuses on the caste system of the Kohanim, Levites, and Israelites. They question how this system aligns with modern ideas of equality. One host suggests that if we view the Torah as a metaphorical and existential book, we can see that we all have imperfections and are equal in that sense. Another host brings up the inequality of respect in society and emphasizes the importance of respecting every individual. They conclude that while roles may differ, inherent equality remains. They also mention the challenges of achieving equality in practice, using the example of the kibbutz system. Good morning, good morning Elisha, good morning everyone, strange day today Elisha, on the way here it rained, it never rains in ER in Israel but and not only that today is officially ER, it's Israel's birthday but indeed instead we are marking Memorial Day today and Israel is the only country in the world that has a Memorial Day for its fallen soldiers the day before its Independence Day and because everything fell, would have fallen on Sunday, can't have Memorial Day on Sunday so it was put off by one day to make sure we observe properly and tonight we have celebrations, Happy Birthday Israel for the 76th birthday and it feels very strange to be celebrating Israel's birthday during a rather bitter war in the seventh month. Yes, it's not an easy time at all and last night at the ceremony, the official ceremony, the place was packed with thousands of people, it's always packed with thousands of people but yesterday seemed even more so and six local names were added to the list of the fallen, three of them were soldiers and the other three were civilians and were killed in the party and other circumstances so it's a difficult day and then on the other side of the wall, there's a blood drive every year here at Kilat Vahavta, we commemorate Yom HaZikon by doing a blood drive with Magen David Adom and they're in desperate need for blood donations so we're expecting a lot of people to come here this morning, today throughout the day and so it's a unique day here in Israel and it's a unique year, it's a different year and we have our Parashat, Parashat Emor, by the time you read this we're going to be past this day and past Yom HaTzmaot and you're going to have to forgive us because Shlomo and I are really in the mood of Yom HaZikon and Shlomo right after the podcast is rushing over to Haifa to the cemetery there to support a close family who are standing by their son's grave so Shlomo, what are we going to talk about today? So Elisha, usually I go off in ten different directions based on your Parashat but not today, not today, today I'm going to focus on your Parashat because there are so many pieces of wisdom in it and you did the impossible Elisha, Emor is one of the longest Parashat in the Bible, it's 1600 words and according to Rambam there are 63 mitzvot in Emor, that's 10% of all the mitzvot, well it's not quite as many as in Ki Titzay but almost and many of them of course have to do with the Koanim, this is the Parashat about the Koanim, the holiness of the Koanim, hey what has this got to do with you and me and our daily life and of course we usually discuss what the Torah says to me in order to be a better person to live better and man you managed to find a way Elisha so I'm going to ask you things because there are some hard questions that arise from this Parashat. So let's begin with the caste system, Emor talks about the Koanim and they are the upper caste and then there are the Leviim which are next and then you and me the Yisraelim and you say that this caste system is very foreign to modern ideas of equality, we don't believe in caste, there are castes in some countries, in India they've tried to get rid of it, it still exists but you say the caste system is very foreign to modern ideas of equality so here do we hold our nose when we read Parashat Emor or do we say well this is about then but now is now, these are modern times and you find a way, you find a way to make it relevant to today but you raise a question, how can there be equality within a system which perpetuates class distinctions and limitations posed by physical imperfections, one of the things in Emor is that a Kohen who has a mum, who has a physical imperfection he can't be a Kohen, he can't do the religious duties and Elisha this is observed in my hometown in Saskatchewan, Regina, Saskatchewan, we had a Kohen from Lithuania named Boris Kriel, you know the Lithuanians can't pronounce shin and we kidded him about that, he always pronounced shin as sin but he had a problem with an eye and he was not allowed to be a Kohen, so this is enforced, this restriction in Emor is enforced to this day, so the question that you raise, we believe in equality, isn't this a direct contradiction of our Jewish value of treating people equal? Yeah, yeah, first thing in the morning, wow, on Yom HaZikaron no less and I have to also point out that on Yom HaZikaron we also mention the fact that there are so many young soldiers who before the 7th of October before they went out to war were totally perfect so to speak, physically speaking and are now impaired and are now seriously, seriously wounded, there are thousands of them, so it's very timely. Well, I think that it really depends how we choose to read the Torah, if we read the Torah as a book of immediate guidance of immediate instructions then we're in real, real trouble, if we read the Torah as a very deep, deep book, first of all certainly metaphoric, certainly, but even beyond the metaphor, realize that it goes to the depth of the existential, of our existential thinking, then first of all, all of us, all of us are Kohanim, all of us, Kohen would be an archetype, it's not necessarily a caste, here, yes, it's a caste, we could read it as a caste, but if we choose to read the Torah as a deep, deep book about the truth of the inner life, in that sense we're all Kohanim, we're all Levim, we're all Israelites, just like we're all sometimes Pharaoh, and we're all the serpent in the garden, and we're all Adam and Eve, etc., etc., so if we use this approach, then it's already equal, we're all, all of us have a Kohen within them, a priest within them, and we're all imperfect on many levels, we all have parts that are perfect, we all have parts that are imperfect, and it's about learning to recognize, accept, and yeah, fully accept and embrace our imperfections, and recognize that imperfections are part of perfection, the Torah is considered perfect, so here we have with imperfection, we have the notion of part of perfection is having imperfections, and how amazing it would be if we could treat our own imperfections as perfect, for example, there are things, today I wear reading glasses, since I was 40, 41, it was quite a blow, I have to say, because it was the first time ever my body sent me a signal, you are getting old, I'm not so sure I had gray hair yet, now I don't need the glasses, and now I just look in the mirror and I see the wrinkles and the gray hair and I know I'm getting old, but at the time, this was the first time that I received my body said, hey, you're getting older, but that's not fair, if we're all equal, why can't we all be young forever, and so we are all equal in our imperfections, and really learning to accept our imperfections, so today I cannot, there are things I cannot read, there are things I cannot read without glasses, so if we read it on this level, then it's a level of calling us to accept the perfection of our imperfections. I have another take on this idea of caste, and Kohanim, and Levim, and so on, and actually I got this from a New York Times columnist who's Jewish, David Brooks, and he's brilliant, he writes wonderful things, and he made a powerful point, Elisha, in Kedoshim, in our podcast, we discussed what Rabbi Sachs called the democratization of the Torah, tell the Adar B'nai Israel, all the people of Israel, the whole gang, tell them what they need to do, they need to be holy, everybody, not just the Kohanim, and David Brooks makes this point, we have inequality in our society, and it's a problem, we have billionaires, we have poor people, we have those who suffer, we have inequality, and a lot of people make a big deal of that, and I'm uncomfortable with it as well, it's based on capitalism, which economists sold the world, but that's not the big problem, the big problem with inequality, David Brooks says, is the inequality of respect, that is, we don't respect one another, we respect people for their wealth, for their position, Elisha, I'm often called professor, and I'm very uncomfortable with that, because we don't say musician, or actor, or writer, David Grossman, we say David Grossman, professor is what I do, it's not who I am, there's an inequality of respect in society, which is fundamentally wrong, and it's fundamentally against the principle of Judaism, there may be Kohanim, but we respect every single person, and every single life. Right, right, that's very beautiful, and maybe we should explain, Rabbi Sachs indeed says in that, we studied it together also on Shabbat, he says that the inequality is in the role that we play, we all play different roles, we need different roles, we have a prime minister, we have the king of England, and we have people who sweep the streets, it's the role that we play, and as you're saying, it's not who we are, essentially, it's not who we are inherently, inherently we're all equal, and you know, I come from a kibbutz, and in a kibbutz, there was a real attempt to equalize the whole entire system, and on some levels it failed, on other levels, by the way, it succeeded, today we're looking back and saying that the kibbutz has found a new equilibrium, which is quite successful, the kibbutzim are very popular today, people are standing in line to live in kibbutzim, but in the good old days, in the name of equality, there was a lot of mediocrity, what's the right word? Mediocrity. Mediocrity. I remember, for example, if you're a brilliant entrepreneur, you're in entrepreneurship, then that's great, but you can have a two-year position as the head of the factory, but then you go back for two years, you go back to washing dishes, just so you know that you're equal to everybody else, and in this way, people's innate talents were stifled in the name of equality, so it's a really good, it's an amazing observation, what you're bringing up here, that it's the role that we play, and the role that we play, that's not where our equality is, and the equality is in our deep, deep essence, so it's beautiful that you brought it up, because you're absolutely right, the kuanin, they serve a certain role, and in that role, you need to appear a certain way, you need to wear certain clothes, you need to do certain things, and you're not allowed to do other things, that's part of your role, and it reminds us that every role has its boundaries, and every role has its, you know, you need to go and study certain things for a certain role, you need to behave in a certain way in order to perform a certain role, but it says nothing about you inherently, so at the end of the day, both explanations, the one you're giving, the one that I gave, is a way of looking deeper, where is equality really, where do we really find that equality lies, and that's in the essence of the human being, who is born in the image of God, all of us, regardless of where we are in the caste system, or the hierarchy. And you know, I'll quote another passage, amazing one, in your address, a very brave one, quote, perhaps the destruction of the temple was God's way of bringing the caste system to an end. Elisha, this is amazing, because it's very brave, I don't know many rabbis who would be willing to see some good in what was regarded as a terrible tragedy for the Jewish people, we sit on low benches on Tisha B'Av and mourn, and this is relevant today because we had a terrible, terrible tragedy on October 7th, it's not profanity to see some good in this, Elisha, it may be God's way of teaching us a lesson, the same has happened with the destruction of the temple, the destruction of the temple was what we call in entrepreneurship a pivot, a pivot is when a start-up begins going in a direction north and finds that it really has to go south, and the Jewish people went south because we lost our temple, our koanim, our ritual, our sacrifices, what do you do? And that's the core of our religion, the core, like in Amor, and what we did was according to Rabbi Yohanan Ben Zekai, we all became koanim in a sense, we all, we learned, we taught our kids how to read Hebrew, we made the house and the bechnaset into temples, we learned to pray, amazing pivot for the Jewish people and it saved us, because we could have been excellent, look what happened to the Romans and the Greeks when they lost their temples, so there is good in things that seem absolutely horrendous, and I believe there will be good things that will emerge from this terrible tragedy that befell us, we will mend our ways Elisa, and this is beginning to happen already. Yes, yes, and when you're living, when we're living through the tragedy, it's obviously, it's awful, it's terrible, it's a lot of despair, and I think the lesson that comes out of what you just said now is that just to keep in mind while we're in this really dark time, it's a really dark period in our history right now, just to really remember that it's true, it's in this darkness that a whole new and better horizon or better future is in the horizon, and it will, it will come to pass, it always does, that's always how it works. For sure, I also loved this passage in your Dosha, which is about how we relate to the Torah, the Torah truthfully is not a great place to learn about gender equality, and gender equality is something we really believe in strongly, I believe in it very strongly, because I've taught men and women together, and the men put down the women, and the women are smarter than the men, but the men don't want to listen, so how do we relate to the Torah where gender equality really is not there, but you say that we should beware of deriding truths that were considered holy to past generations, so we are traditional Jews, and we respect the Torah, and we don't write it off, but simply by saying, well that was then, that was appropriate for those times, but we're living in modern times, there are always things that we can learn from and respect and cherish, even though sometimes they are not consistent with modern values, how do you relate to these things in the Torah, like this passage in Parashat Amor, where the Kohen is disqualified because maybe he has a problem with one eye, how do we deal with a physical imperfection that makes somebody less of a Kohen, less of a holy person? Yeah, and again it goes back to the idea of how we choose to read the Torah, we certainly should never ever read the Torah as a history book, there's a lot of history to be learned from it, but it's not a history book, it teaches the relationship between human beings and God, and we certainly should not read it as an anthropological and sociological book, we can learn a lot about sociology and anthropology of biblical times from the Torah, but that's not the purpose of the Torah, the purpose of the Torah is, the word Torah comes from teaching, it's a teaching, it comes to teach us, and I love difficult passages in the Torah because I know, I just know that this passage is saying, Elisha, time to grow, if you want to grow, find a deep truth in this passage, and if I read the passage and I cannot find a deep truth, then I know that I'm just not studying well enough and doing a good job. And each one of us has a different way of interpreting, there are many, many ways of interpreting, one of them, I mentioned in the beginning, where we're all Kohanim, we're all Levim, we're all Israelites, we're all male, we're all female, we have it all in us, we all have imperfections, etc., and our imperfections are part of the perfect world, that's one way of seeing it, but there are also many others, and the depth of, if we try, now I'll say it differently, we know, Jewishly, we don't live according to the Torah, we don't, no one does, it's not just the Masorti movement, no one does, neither do the Haredi, the Orthodox, the Reform, the Secular, we all live according to the Sages, the Sages basically took the Torah and turned it into laws to live by, you're not allowed to live according to the Torah, it's not permitted according to Judaism to live Jewishly according to the Torah, and there's a reason to it, there's a reason because it needed a translation into mode of life, from the archetypes, from the deep, deep, deep existential truths, to the do's and the don'ts, do this, don't do that, so it's not a coincidence, you can't and you shouldn't live your life according to the Torah, because the Torah goes much deeper than the do's and the don'ts. Absolutely, and Elisha, another part of your drashah, which I found fascinating, so I teach entrepreneurship and innovation, and the core of what I teach is change, innovation, newness, novelty, be creative, invent new and useful things, become the change that you seek, change is a political slogan, and you note, contrarian, Parshat Emor poses a challenge, it reminds us that there are things over which we have no control, Parshat Emor asks us to practice a different kind of attentiveness, to agree, to accept reality, so psychologists talk about a growth mindset, which is seeking change to grow and change and learn and improve and get better, etc., and your point is we need to accept things as they are, that reminds me of the Quaker prayer, which is familiar, to have the courage to change what you can change and the wisdom to accept what you can't change, and often we mix up those two things very much. Talk a bit about this idea of accepting, why should we accept injustice, flaws in ourself, the way things are, the status quo, why should we be accepting, aren't we Jews innovators and always want to change things and make things better? Yes, we do, we do, we do want to change things, we want to make things better, yet, before changing anything, there's huge benefit and power to accepting, and accepting could be a momentary acceptance before change comes, it's something very intimate, it's something very powerful, intimately in the body that actually happens when we're able to accept reality as it is before we change it, in fact, we may end up changing things differently if we first accept them, and accepting is really difficult, accepting doesn't mean to agree with it, it's not up to us to agree or not agree, if this is the way things are right now, that's the way things are right now, we don't have to agree with it or disagree, accepting is like really saying, okay, this is what's happening right now, let's fully grasp what's happening, let's really let it sink in, this is what's happening now, and only when we let it sink in, and I use the body to do this work, I really feel it in the body, it's called a felt sense, to really sense in the body the reality right now, number one, first of all, we realize that there's a lot of wisdom in the existing situation, that the current situation, there is a reason to it, there's a wisdom to it, as horrible as the situation can be, there is deep, deep wisdom to the situation, and if we don't accept it, if we don't go through acceptance first, then we miss all the great lessons, and there's a good chance, that's the second thing, in order to change, we can't know, we can't truly know what to change and how to change, if there's not acceptance first, and we really accept something, and we are able to receive the wisdom from this situation, then all of a sudden, the next step may surprise us, it may turn out that the next step is actually not what we thought it would be, because when we are resisting something, we can't truly see it's wisdom, we can't truly see it's value, we can't truly see it's gift, because there's so much in resistance, and we are wanting to change it, just from a pure place of resistance, acceptance is a powerful, powerful tool. This is amazing Alicia, because listening to you, I now understand this is the basis of a method or a model that I've been teaching for over a decade, about how to innovate and how to come up with creative ideas, and it's called zoom in, zoom out, and the idea is based exactly what you just said, you can't solve a problem until you really understand it, so you begin with acceptance, acceptance means really, really deeply understanding what's going on, what has happened, who are these people, what do they want, understanding the full situation, and doing your homework before you leap to a solution, because problems Alicia are uncomfortable to us, we always leap to solutions very hastily, and that often doesn't work, zoom in, do your homework, understand, understand and accept, and only then, and then set it aside, let your brain work on it, and only then think about what you may change. And chances are that the ideas of change are going to emerge naturally, what you have to think about it, it will just come up for you. They do, they do indeed, exactly, perhaps we'll end with this, I wish everyone a meaningful Memorial Day, and tomorrow a happy birthday for the State of Israel, and acceptance and serenity that comes with understanding how good emerges from what seems like evil. Beautifully, beautifully said, thank you Shlomo. Todah Elisha. Leet Rot everyone. Shalom.