Emor
I hold a special place in my heart for this week’s parasha, Emor, as it was my son’s Bar Mitzvah portion in the year 2000. Making it simple enough for a 13-year old was easy, as this portion deals with the major holidays on the Jewish calendar. My son outlined the section of the Torah dealing with the holidays, and then honed in on his favorite of the holidays, Sukkot. To this day he remembers the year that we constructed a sukkah in our backyard, and then needed to reconstruct it halfway through the week as the southern California winds common to the fall blew over our rickety dwelling.
Our parasha this week focuses on the annual cycle of holy days. Four different terms are used to identify Shabbat, Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot/Shemini Atzeret.
Mo’adei Adonai refers to the fixed times when the holidays are to occur. I recently received an email from the producers of our spiral-bound Luach. “Recent weeks have been difficult for individuals and challenging for congregations. All of us have had to adjust to the unfamiliar. So we want to reassure our Luach users that at least something remains familiar.”Our Torah dictates the exact date on which the holy days are to be observed along with what should and shouldn’t be done in order to please God. The dates are familiar, predictable and reliable for all time.
Mikra’ei Kodesh, another term, refers to holy occasions. The fact that these days are referred to as holy sets them apart from all other days. Holy means elevated and exalted, or worthy of complete devotion. The holidays of Emor are those that require specific rituals and symbols, ranging from the candles, wine and challah of Shabbat, to the seder symbols, bikurim, and arba minim of the 3 pilgrimage festivals of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot.
Shabbaton is another term used in our parasha when explaining the holy days. Yes, you may recognize the word Shabbat as part of this term, which leads us to its meaning of the cessation of work. Shabbat shabbaton – “It is a complete day of rest.” To take a day off from the day-to-day routine, to take a deep breath and surround oneself with time rather than space, as Heschel proposed in his book, “The Sabbath,” is to bring these special days into sharp focus, so that they do become elevated and separated from that which is mundane, shifting it into a world of kedusha (holiness).
The fourth term used for the holy days of Emor is the one that, perhaps more than any other, ensures the survival of Judaism. Chukat olam – “It is an eternal statute throughout your generations.” Rabban Yochanan, in explaining the law of the Red Heiffer of which we will read in a few weeks, asserts that we are Jews and it’s a mitzvah, so we are to do it without justification. And perhaps, just maybe, in the doing, there will come understanding. This idea of naaseh v'nishma--we shall do and then we will come to understand - is not easily packaged and sold to liberal Jews. We are methodical about our actions; we are conscientious regarding our engagements. And yet there are some things we do, not because they are rational, but because they link us to a shashelet shel kabbalah, "a chain of tradition," by the mere fact that others before us have done it that way as well. We light candles on Shabbat, we circumcise our newborn sons, and we stand under a chuppah when we get married. The concept of naaseh v'nishma maintains that when we do mitzvot that may not seem logical or rational on the surface, they will come to have great meaning through the repetition of performance.
Consider this story: A young woman stood cooking Shabbat dinner in her kitchen one Friday morning. Her mother sat nearby, visiting with her daughter as she cooked. The daughter took out a beautiful roast from the refrigerator and prepared it to go in the pan to be cooked for dinner. Just before placing the roast in the pan, she chopped off an inch from either end of the roast. The mother, watching her daughter's preparation, asked, "Honey, why would you chop the ends of the roast when they are perfectly good meat?" The daughter responded, "Because that's what Grandma always did and that's what Great Grandma always did, and so that's how you make a Shabbat roast!" The mother laughed. "Honey, Grandma only chopped off the ends of the roast because her pan wasn't big enough! And Great Grandma's as well!"
Sometimes we do things not because we know why, but because they have latent emotional value for us. They are tradition. They link us back to those who came before us and connect us to community and to something bigger than ourselves. And with a little kavanah (intention), they link us to the Divine.
I reflect back on what it was that made that indelible mark on my son’s memory. It wasn’t sitting in the sukkah for dinners, or singing songs like Lamah Sukkah Zu or Debbie Friedman’s This Is What We Need to Build a Sukkah. Those, of course, can be part of the recipe for imprinting the holiday onto a soul. In my son’s case, however, it was the act of using his hands and engaging in the mitzvah of building that sukkah. The sukkah was built at a specified time, beginning with the first piece of PVC pipe right after Yom Kippur. The materials were purchased as a family project, with excitement to put the elements together in constructing a unique holiday dwelling. When completed, we took a step back, took a deep breath, and admired our sukkah that offered a place of respite during this festival so ancient and yet so relevant to our lives in the city. And why did we do it? Because we could, and we should.
According to Rabbi Menachem Leibtag of the Tanach Study Center, this is the essence of kedusha (holiness) - the theme of Sefer Vayikra or the Book of Leviticus. We set aside special times and infuse them with special kedusha to come closer to God. However, our experience during these holidays provides us with the spiritual strength to remain close to God during the remainder of the year.
Shabbat shalom
