Parashat Emor and Spirituality
R. Yaakov Bieler
Parashat Emor, 5769
In the essay on Parashiot Acharei
Mot-Kedoshim 5769,[1]
I discussed aspects of the S3K study “How Spiritual are
R. Amital notes that whereas Parashat
Kedoshim dealt with the holiness to which ordinary Jews should aspire, Emor
focuses upon the responsibility of the Kohanim (the priests.) While it is not surprising that the Tora
states categorically concerning the Kohanim, (VaYikra 21:6) “They
shall be holy to their God, and shall not profane the Name of God, for they
offer the sacrifices of God made by fire, so they shall be holy,” what is
striking are the preceding verses for which verse 6 serves as a summation.
VaYikra 21:1-3
Tell
the Kohanim, the sons of Aharon, and say to them:
None
of them shall be defiled (render himself ritually impure by tending to her burial needs) for the dead
among his people.
But
for his relatives that are close to him—for his mother and his father, and for his son and for his
daughter and for his brother. ;
And
for his unmarried sister, to her he will defile himself.
In
contrast to the conception that holiness can be achieved only by completely
separating oneself from everyday life, and dealing with death is certainly the
type of thing that some concepts of holiness would seek to absolutely avoid, R.
Amital attributes to Judaism the assumption that not only is the average Jew
expected to sanctify the everyday activities in which he engages,[5]
and thereby spur himself on to draw closer to Godliness in all that he does,
but the Kohanim, at least to a degree—there are everyday restrictions
concerning ritual purity, not drinking wine, not allowing their hair to grow
long, etc. which inevitably separate them somewhat from their fellow
co-religionists-- are expected to do likewise. As opposed to the Kohen Gadol
(the High Priest) who is not permitted to defile himself even for the closest
of his relatives,[6]
thereby having to sacrifice his personal emotions in order to fulfill the roll
that he has been assigned without interruption,[7]
the tragedies of everyday life encroach upon the rest of the Kohanim and
there will be time when they will be mourners just like everyone else. They
must maintain their holy, spiritual mentality, despite being rudely “brought
back to earth” during such difficult times. Similarly, while a regular Kohen
cannot marry a divorcee for obscure reasons,[8]
the other extreme, i.e., celibacy is not an option, normalcy dictating family
life even for the holiest of lifestyles. How a Kohen achieves and
maintains intense thoughts of holiness, even when being required to endure the
vagaries and tragedies of normal human existence is no more than a more intense
form of what all Jews are required to strive for throughout their lives.[9]
R. Amital mentions an experience
from his youth which further illustrates the idea that holiness is to be
applied to normal, everyday circumstances rather than only to the separate and
the supernatural.
In my youth, I used to study in
the Beit Midrash of the Vizhnitzer Chassidim. The Chassidim
told me that the Rebbe had in his possession a Challa from the
time of the Ba'al Shem Tov, and that a continual miracle had kept it
fresh. I asked them what the Rebbe did with this challa on Pesach.
They thought about it, and then admitted that the story was probably not true.
After this, I understood better the prohibition of "Notar" in
the Tora (leftover sacrificial meat) – i.e., that after a day and a
night the meat must be burned. One could say that regular meat begins to rot,
but holy meat that lay upon the altar – surely that cannot rot? But the Tora
teaches that even sacrificial meat rots and dries; there is no difference
between regular meat and sacred meat.[10]
In Judaism, holiness is no different from the regular rules of nature. In fact,
holiness means acting specifically within the bounds of nature, in a correct
and worthy manner.
R. Amital’s further articulates his
contention that holiness and spirituality must be injected into the commonplace
rather than isolated within realms of the extraordinary and abnormal, in the
volume, Jewish Values in a Changing World.[11]
On the one hand, he points to a particular explanation for a portion of a Mishna
in Avot that supports the idea that when performing Commandments, there
is special incentive to do so in a pleasurable, aesthetic, emotionally-charged and
spiritually inspiring manner:
Avot 4:2
Ben Azzai says: …The reward for a Mitzva
is a Mitzva…
R.
Ovadia MiBartenura
…Another
explanation: Whatever reward and delight a person experiences through the
performance of a Mitzva is considered an an independent Mitzva,
so that he will be rewarded for the Mitzva that he performed as well as
for the delight and pleasure experienced through the performance.
But
then R. Amital cautions against equating with spirituality exclusively emotional
experience devoid of steadying,
centering cognitive corralaries citing
three basic reasons:
1)
…Despite
all the importance of religious experience, it is meaningful only when it comes
from time to time. When such experiences become one’s standard fare,
they lose their significance and impact...[12]
Assuming
that the author is correct, is it possible to regularly orchestrate such
experiences to assure that they will have the same impact on each occasion when
one participates in them? While we might be able to try to standardize such an
environment and atmosphere, apparently it is not assured that the individual
participants, who might be feeling differently, experiencing different things
in their lives during the interim between one religious event and the next and who
have a wide variety of unique concerns on their minds distracting them from
what is going on around them, will all come away inspired and spiritually
energized.
2)
…The
impact of a religious experience is passing and short-lived…[13]
The
ephemeral nature of purely emotional spiritual experience according to R.
Amital is exemplified by how rapidly the Jewish people repeatedly complain
about their lot[14]
and revert to idolatry[15]
shortly after the exaltation experienced and expressed at the splitting of the
Reed Sea,[16] as well as their steep retrogression
to resuming the worship of foreign gods[17]
following the dramatic miracle that took place on Mt. Carmel.[18]
The power of the emotional moment must apparently require intellectual and
theological preparation and reinforcement if it is to have a long-term impact
upon the religious outlook of the individual.[19]
Finally, R. Amital notes:
Different
people express their religious experiences in different ways. Many great Tora
authorities engaged in prayer without displaying any kind of outward emotion
whatsoever. Is it possible that they lacked the religious experience that
generally accompanies prayer?...
If
R. Amital is correct, short of an infinite variety of Minyanim, it will
prove difficult to fully satisfy individual spiritual needs within a shul context.
Many current studies, including the S3K report that catalyzed my ruminations
about spirituality, have noted that while there is an upturn in the contemporary
search for spirituality among many people, the search is typically privatized,
i.e., people seek these experiences individually, as opposed to expecting to
encounter what they are looking for as part of a community or an organization.[20] Yet it occurred to me that there is one part
of traditional Jewish services where true individuality is emphasized and can
come to the fore, namely during the Tefilla BeLachash, the silent
devotion. Although Jewish tradition places a premium upon communal prayer, the
communal repetition of the Silent prayer led by a Shliach Tzibbur,
particularly now when everyone has a Siddur, and the overwhelming
majority of people can read Hebrew or can readily learn to do so, is certainly
not as important as the individual personal prayer that always precedes it.[21]
Yet so much of our discussions aimed at spiritualizing services focus upon Chazarat
HaShaTz. There is no question that musicality, communal singing, active
rather than passive participation all can contribute to one having a serious
spiritual experience; yet if we do not pay sufficient attention to our silent
prayer, i.e., how much Kavana do we invest, how slowly and soulfully do
we enunciate the words, the extent to which we take to heart the words we are
reciting, etc., then at best the repetition of the Amida will be
emotional, with all that emotionality connotes and with the downsides that R.
Amital discusses.
A Rabbinic personality that was very
much concerned with spirituality in general and spiritual prayer in particular,
was R. Abraham Joshua Heschel. In a new anthology comprised of his pithy
comments and insights,[22]
here are two passages that directly relate to prayer:
“What
to Aspire To”
Prayer
teaches us what to aspire to.
So often we do not know what to
cling to. Prayer implants in us the ideals we ought to cherish. Redemption,
purity of mind and tongue, or willingness to help, may hover as ideas before
our mind, but the idea becomes a concern, something to long for, a goal to be
reached, when we pray:
Guard
my tongue from evil
and
my lips from speaking guile;
and
in the face of those who curse me,
let
my soul be silent.[23]
“An
Invitation”
Prayer
is an invitation to God to intervene in our lives, to let His Will prevail in
our affairs; it is the opening of a window to Him in our will, an effort to
make Him the Lord of our soul. We submit our interests to His Concern, and seek
to be allied with what is ultimately right. Our approach to the Holy is not an
intrusion, but an answer. Between the dawn of childhood and the door of death,
man encounter things and events out of which comes a whisper of truth, not much
louder than stillness,[24]
but exhorting and persistent. Yet man listens to his fears and his whims,
rather than to the gentle petitions of God. The Lord of the universe is suing
for the favor of man.
Were a person to read material
such as these examples of spiritual thinking before his Tefilla BeLachash,
raise the level of his personal prayer to one of meaning and inspiration, and
then invest his listening to and singing along with the Chazarat HaShaTz
with great focus and reaching out to the Holy One, Blessed Be He, spirituality
will become so much more a reality for so many more of us!
[5] In Parashat Kedoshim’s essay, we discussed the implications of various forms of Netilat Yadayim (the ritual washing of hands) in light of Berachot 53b as presented by R. Elimelech Bar Shaul in his work on Parashat HaShavua, Min HaBe’er Re’em, Tel Aviv, 1980, p. 114.
[6] Mishna Sanhedrin 2:1 and commentaries.
[7] Once the priest has defiled himself, even within the context of performing a great Mitzva of burying the dead, he must undergo a purification process which will preclude him from being able to offer up sacrifices during that time. Other Kohanim have replacements, but not the Kohen Gadol.
[8] VaYikra 21:7
[9] The eroding of the essential difference between the Kohanim and the rest of the Jewish people is epitomized by Shemot 19:6.
[10] LeHavdil, R. Amital’s comment about Notar brings to mind the scene in F. Dostoyevsky’s masterpiece, The Brother’s Karamazov, Part III, Book 7, Section 1 “The Breath of Corruption.”
[11]Chapter 6, “Religious Experience,” R. Amnon Bazak editor, Ktav Publishing House, Jersey City, NJ, 5765, pp. 73-9.
[12] Jewish Values in a Changing World, p. 77.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Shemot 16:3; 17:3.
[16] Ibid., Chapt. 15.
[17] I Melachim 19:10.
[18] Ibid., 18:39.
[19] This second point causes me to recall a private conversation that I had with R. Joseph Soloveitchik, ZaTzaL, while I was a Rabbinical student in his Talmud class in 1970. The Shiur was studying Tractate Chullin, a Masechet dealing with myriad details concerning the laws of Kashrut, and for various reasons I expressed my frustration with what I considered the abstruseness of the subject matter since I at that point intended to be a Jewish educator. The Rav responded to my disquiet: “If you wish to be an educator, it is your responsibility to learn as much as you can about everything. Otherwise your teaching will be nothing more than empty emotionalism, quickly evaporating like the morning dew with the rising of the sun.” Just as a teacher must strive to present lessons that will last and stay with his students well beyond the formal ending of classroom study, so too, what is needed so that our religious experiences will be long-lasting, memorable and meaningful.
[20] “Studies regularly
show an erosion of support for institutional religion, especially the mainline
churches, which are aging and worried about attracting the next generation
(see, for example, Wuthnow, Robert. After the Baby Boomers How Twenty- and
Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion.
[21] This is especially true about the Ma’ariv and Ne’ila services that do not even have a repetition of the Amida.
[22] I
Asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology, The Crossroad Publishing Co.,
[23] This last quote is from the beginning of the additional prayer attached to the end of each of the Tefillot BeLachash.
[24] This phrase is reminiscent of I Melachim 19:12.