Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21:1 – 24:23)

Summary

This sidrah is part of the Holiness Code, a collection of material of similar content, style and feel: holiness attained through maintaining ritual purity at the collective and individual level, the latter also attained through personal and social righteousness. Unusually for Leviticus, reasons for laws are sometimes given and the Divine source and sanction of the laws is constantly emphasised, “I the Eternal am your God.”

Emor provides laws regulating the conduct of priests and their families and the most complete biblical account of the holy days. It concludes with a number of short, seemingly unconnected items: oil for the ritual lamps, the ritual ‘showbread’ and a narrative passage concerning the case of someone who blasphemes, one of four cases in Torah that Moses seeks a special revelation to resolve a matter that no one else knows how to judge.

Commentary

One of the festive accounts in Emor (Lev 23: 9-22) is of the omer period: the days in-between (and that link) Pesach and Shavuot. Most Liberal Jews would not know what to make of this period if anything, even if they knew the berakhah (blessing) one would recite each evening to announce the day of the omer. Actually, the omer was a sheaf of wheat brought and elevated and waved by the priest to mark the beginning of the wheat harvest. A series of other rituals are associated with the events.

The modern pioneers of ‘The Land:’ Eretz Yisrael sought to revive the Biblical precept of reaping the omer (and Shavuot at its conclusion) and turn it into an exclusively agricultural ceremony. Thus, glorification of nature, human toils and pride replaced praise for the Creator, the spirit and gratitude. Perhaps as a polemic against this trend in a comment to this sidrah, the Meshekh Chokhmah (commentary of Rabbi Meir Simcha Ha’kohen, Dvinsk, 1927) still speaks to me in a day that still glorifies the material over the spiritual, the ritual over the ethical and speaking to and through mechanical voices over talking with God.

“When you come to the Land…and shall reap its harvest (23:9),” this teaches that agriculture must not turn us into materialists. Hence the many commandments affecting every human activity and function, that turn all mundane efforts into brightly illuminated lances leading towards ideal perfection and communion with the Almighty…

Thus, God commanded us to offer the Eternal the omer and the two loaves (23:17) at the beginning of the harvest, whereupon we are allowed to consume the new produce. So too at the end of the harvest, we must leave a corner of the field (23:22) to the poor, whereas during the harvest we are not to gather any gleaning (23:22)

Thus, the initial, middle and final stages of the harvest are devoted to the Creator by acts of human mercy and loving-kindness, whereby the Jew approaches the bliss of ideal perfection, which marks the Divine goal. Why is it so hard for us to fulfil the seemingly simple commandment, “Love your neighbour as yourself”?

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