Redirection, resistance, permission
Leviticus 21:1-24:23
Summary: Emor deals with the difficult reality of telling a limping kohen that, despite any desire he has to serve, he cannot serve because of this limp. This stands in for all manner of non-negotiable obstacles to doing what we think we want to do that require that we redirect. How do you do that?
***
There is scenario in which an otherwise-fully-qualified, devoted, educated, enthusiastic, engaged, alert, humble, joyous individual is not able to serve in the Temple because he has a unibrow. This situation would be non-negotiable and the decision is final. There is nothing anyone can do to change it.
There is also a person who loves to sing but she is tone-deaf. And there is the one who could have been a dancer but he has two left feet. And there is the teacher who loves the material and loves the kids but can’t quite connect one to the other.
Of course many humans are inclined to see those as problems and to try to solve them. But they are only problems if those people should be able to, and should want to, do the things they cannot do, and to do them in the way two-browed, tone-aware, coordinated people do them.
It is the rest of us who need the tone-deaf girl to work through it, to find the right genius-teacher who knows the right way to guide her past the challenges and obstacles, to find the inner strength to push on through and to find her way so she can be on American Idol and capture the heart of the world. But she just wants to sing. And sing she will.
Of course that otherwise-fully-qualified, devoted, educated, enthusiastic, engaged, alert, humble, joyous individual is looking at around at his father and brothers and uncles and cousins who all have fabulously divided eyebrows and get to serve in the Temple, and of course that feeling of “why me?” and “that’s what I should be doing” and “I have been denied my destiny” and “I feel left out” might come up at some point. And no one would ever begrudge that person those feelings, and they’ll have to work through them in their way.
But the strength I need right now, the well I need to draw from, is the one that helps people accept the frustrating reality, grieve appropriately, and then move forward in a different way. I want to listen to the people who shook off the resentment and allowed themselves to be guided toward other goals, other destinies, whose work took shape and became clear because they were willing to honor this limit not as an obstacle but as a parameter. It became permission to give time and attention and voice to the other gifts the person has to give.
**
There was a man who, according to legend, was a virtuous and holy man. Every night he would rise around midnight and wander about, commiserating with the Jewish people and their fallen state in exile. A certain Egyptian guard noticed that the man would leave every single night at the same time, and one night, after the man had gone on his way, the Egyptian guard entered the man’s tent and slept with his wife. Maybe he forced her. Maybe she didn’t know it was him. Maybe she was amenable. There are different traditions.
The woman became pregnant with the Egyptian guard’s child. The child was fortunate to be of the Jewish people by dint of his Jewish mother, but because his father was not of the Jewish people, and a child’s tribe is determined patrilineally, he did not have a tribe. When the time came to pitch his tent among the people of his tribe, he went to do so in his mother’s tribe. When they told him he was not welcome there (which is another problem, but for another day), he was given a choice: resentment or redirection.
Yes, the hand he was dealt was a hard one to manage. It was in no way his fault that he ended up in the situation. He was the unfortunate recipient of a potent combination of piety, malice, lust, power, envy, lack of generosity, fate, destiny, and all the others. Choices made by other people. He could resent all those people, and all those rules, and the God Who made it all possible, or he could take a step toward wondering what is next. He could tap into his “adopted” father’s ability to wander, to walk between, to be in exile. He could take the path of those righteous people who were unable to keep Passover in the wildness because they had come in contact with a dead body and, instead of resenting their fate, asked Moshe if there was another solution, which God promptly granted.
He did not follow that path. He fed and then vented his resentment. He cursed the God Who made him who he was, Who made the world as it is and the rules as they are. In so doing, he said, emphatically, it should be otherwise. It should not be as it is. God was mistaken in making me as I am. I have no choices because I am denied the only life that makes sense to live. If I cannot have that job, that role, that place in the community, that lifestyle, then there is no other way to be. There is nothing else to do. Therefore I must tear down this barrier, and the barrier is God God’s-Self. God must come down.
Alas. It is a sad story - both stories in the book of Leviticus have this same shape and form - people who didn’t want things to be as they are, and acted accordingly, and suffered accordingly. And it’s tricky because we are flooded with messages about how things don’t need to be as they are, and we can overcome, and we can change, and there are no limits, and we just need to manifest, and try harder, and learn the new method, and daven more, and believe more, and things can change.
And, yes, some things can, and should, change. And some things cannot, and should not. And may we all figure out the difference before it’s too late.