Parashat Emor is almost entirely about sacrifices. The sacrificial worship system focused on exacting detail and set procedures. For example, Emor begins with what qualifies a priest for sacred service, or a sacrificial animal to be offered. In both cases they must be physically perfect, without blemish. It then goes on to list the major holidays—Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot–with their particular sacrifices. Then in the middle of this long list of sacrificial details it says, “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger: I the Lord am your God.” (Leviticus 23:22) What is this line doing here? Perhaps it comes to teach us that Judaism is a combination of both careful religious ritual and a commitment to work for social justice. To focus only on one or the other is to miss Judaism’s message: to be a religious person requires sustaining our connection to God and to each other.

This week’s double Torah portion is about “cooties,” the ritual impurities caused by childbirth, skin diseases and molds in houses. There are times when Torah gets very strange and this is one of them, as we read this ancient view of disease and its impact on the individual and the community. With text like this, we always have three choices: accept them at face value, reject them or try to find a way to make some sense out of them. Rather than focus on the understanding of disease, look at how the Torah describes a ritual for separation and quarantine of the infected person and the ritual for inclusion. So often in our society, disease sends us into a limbo state, scared, isolated and lonely. Our tradition understands that ritual has deep psychological power and can ensure that even in the most difficult moments we will feel connected to community.

~Rabbi Dean

This week’s portion begins with Moses pleading to God to let him enter the land of Cana’an and God refuses saying, “Enough! Never speak to Me of this matter again!” (Deuteronomy 3:26).

For almost all of us, no matter how long we have lived or how much we accomplished we can never have enough of life in all its richness and beauty, pain and suffering, joy and satisfaction. Existence is the ocean in which we swim and we cannot imagine anything beyond it. This consciousness of our mortality haunts us most of our lives, like a shadow.

Judaism suggests on way to address this in Psalm 90, “Teach us to number our days, that we may attain a heart of wisdom.” The most we can do is to live our lives well, being just, performing acts of compassion and loving kindness, being good people, citizens and members of our family. We will never cheat death but we can live on in the memories of those whose lives we have touched.

~Rabbi Dean