Emor: Not Our Father's Religion?

By Ellen Dannin

Parashat Emor
Leviticus 21:1 - 24:23
Once past Genesis, the Torah gives us snapshots full of details interspersed with
continuing themes of holiness, concern for the stranger, the poor, the widow, and the
orphan, and the movement of the Israelites through the wilderness. One moment we
have details for building the Tabernacle, then the attire of the high priest, then the
sacrifices.

These details can seem tedious and weird unless we ask the questions that help us grasp
their significance and connect them to communal life. For example, what details exist or
are missing as to the practice? How does the Torah justify it? How would the practice
affect its practitioners and the society as a whole? Is the practice gone, or do we still
observe it in some form? What justifications are given for changes? Who is missing
from the Torah, and, despite their absence, what can we glean about their lives? When
the texts are approached from these vantage points, there is more that can be discussed
than can be contained in one d'var Torah.

Take the theme of sacred conduct laid out in the first two chapters of Emor, all justified
as necessary for holiness. The focus is on three limitations that remove priests (the
Cohanim) and the high priest (the Cohen Ha-gadol) from ordinary life.

First, mourning and caring for the dead. All Israelites faced sacral contamination by
contact with a dead body. But dead bodies must be prepared for burial and families and
friends mourn for their loved ones, so it is a contamination all are likely to face.

Emor bars priests from contact with any dead, except immediate blood relatives. But the
high priest is forbidden from contact with any dead body, including his own parents and
even forbidden from acts associated with mourning, such as tearing his clothes or baring
his head. We can see the harshness of these prohibitions when we recall the pain of
Aaron, the just-installed high priest, over the deaths of his sons on the day the
Tabernacle was dedicated.

Where is the connection between any of these mourning practices - or, rather, non-
mourning practices - with our mourning rituals - the chevra kadisha, sitting shiva, and
saying kaddish, all of which demand community support and physical presence.

Second, marriage. The priests may not marry promiscuous or divorced women, and the
high priest may only marry a virgin from the priestly class. Nothing is said, of course,
about the high priest's virginity or relationships with more than one wife. There are
vestiges of this in limits some male Cohanim still practice on whom they will marry.
Third, priests are prohibited from shaving their hair and beards and from cutting
themselves. Again, some of these prohibitions exist today and exist beyond the priestly
class.

These three limitations are justified in the name of being holy. But if we rush through
the text we miss the question: Why these practices and not others?

There is, after all, nothing innately holy about not doing any of these practices. Indeed,
there are societies whose religious practices include death rituals and the world of the
dead, as in Ancient Egypt; or ritual sex to propitiate the earth, as with Canaanites; and
cutting, self-mutilations, and various styles of wearing or not wearing hair. Why, then,
are these practices off limits to the Cohanim?

The one common theme is that they were practices of religions in the vicinity of the
Israelites. The intent seems to be to make this a holy people in part by separating them
from others and, in particular, by separating the priests and their families.

The level of that separation of the priestly clan from the rest of their society must have
been extreme. Not only were the priests and the high priest restricted in whom they may
marry, they are cut off from basic contacts, such as sharing meals. The priests and their
families and households eat the sacred foods, essentially parts of the foods offered as
sacrifices to God, but if anyone else eats the sacred foods, there is a penalty to be paid.
Thus, not for the priestly class the expansive welcoming of guests and strangers as
shown by Abraham, nor the injunction to welcome the guest, hachnasat orchim

We still have Cohanim but no priestly class. These priests had no land, but possessed a
valuable commodity, direct connection with God. That connection, as we know, is so
dangerous that it required the specialized rituals and clothing. We might think of the
priestly clothing as akin to donning a HazMat suit before entering a toxic site. This is a
dangerous job, one important to the community, and one that functions by keeping those
whose duties these are separate and focused.

And yet, Emor reminds us that a holy people must be concerned not only with complex
rituals but also with the welfare of the poor and the stranger.

Ellen Dannin Added May 7, 2008

Ellen Dannin is Fannie Weiss Distinguished Faculty Scholar and

Professor of Law at the Penn State Dickinson School of Law and
a former member of the Ann Arbor Havurah, Dor Hadash in San
Diego, and Congregation T'chiyah in Detroit.