The first half of this week’s Torah reading, Emor (Leviticus 21-24), like all of the Priestly Code, might be seen as having not more than nostalgic value; in it we learn which priests or animals are seen as blemished in God’s eyes and are not worthy to serve in the Sanctuary or to be offered as sacrifices on the altar. Then comes a chapter with the calendar of biblical holidays, all of which are celebrated today, and the Parashah closes with a bit of “action,” the kind that we can only be thankful is not operative in enlightened society (I hope I’ve packaged that in a way that will pique your interest — idach, zil g’mor! (now go and study it!)

Since Shabbat is preceded this week by Yom Ha’atzmaut, the foremost of Israel’s civic holidays, one might speculate how, or whether, it would be listed in an updated liturgical calendar of Jewish holidays. In fact, there are numerous Israeli prayer books which contain Yom Ha’atzma’ut liturgy; I’ll comment briefly on two such texts: al hanissim, and the prophetic reading, haftarah, from Isaiah 10:32-12:6.

Al hanissim is a statement of gratitude to God for the miracle of our survival; it has us imagine that Israel won its independence because God was on our side; it was originally written for Hannukah, and relates to the battle of the Maccabees against the Pagan Seleucids who brought idols into the Temple, and who were finally defeated by Judah Maccabee. Here’s how one prayerbook adapts the prayer for Yom Ha’atzma’ut:

We thank You for the heroism, for the triumphs, and for the miraculous deliverance of our ancestors, in other days and in our time.

In the days when Your children were returning to their borders, at the time of a people revived in its land as in days of old, the gates to the land of our ancestors were closed before those who were fleeing the sword. When enemies from within the land together with seven neighboring nations sought to annihilate Your people, You, in Your great mercy, stood by them in time of trouble. You defended them and vindicated them. You gave them the courage to meet their foes, to open the gates to those seeking refuge, and to free the land of its armed invaders. You delivered the many into the hands of the few, the guilty into the hands of the innocent. You have wrought great victories and miraculous deliverance for Your people Israel to this day, revealing Your glory and Your holiness to all the world.

Knowing what we know now makes us cringe when reading such a text, one which brings us back to how we were taught our history, to who we once were in our age of innocence. Can we allow ourselves to slide back into nostalgia? As is always the case with nostalgia, that seductive liar (George Wildman Ball) we had better tread carefully…it’s as if we were looking through an old photo album, in which pictures of our youth have faded and cracked…were things ever so black and white? Did we really have no choice but to meet “the enemy” on the battlefield? Were we so innocent, and they so guilty? With the Hebrew phraseology Shiv’at Amamim comes a clear reference to the seven Canaanite nations whom the Torah commands us to annihilate and/or expel from the land: this celebratory text has another, poisonous side to it that dehumanizes the enemy and evokes a very problematic chapter in our history. Sixty years later, the dust has cleared for many of us, and we understand that our deliverance has been at the cost of their nakba, our ingathering at the cost of their dispersion [in another version of this prayer, it speaks of the ritually unclean delivered into the hand of the pure, one more step in the direction of a religious war...]

Some of the verses found in the haftarah are sublime statements of promise, justice, non-violence, and peace:

With righteousness He will judge the poor, and decide with fairness for the afflicted of the earth…Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the hole of the cobra, and the young child put his hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

(Isaiah 11:4-9)

But the peace that is spoken of is the peace that follows a military victory, not one which can bring about co-existence, and therefore ultimately undermines the peace we supposedly seek so much:

They will swoop down on the slopes of Philistia to the west; together they will plunder the people to the east. They will lay hands on Edom and Moab, and the Ammonites will be subject to them.
(Isaiah 11:14)

We’ve come full circle: a weekly Torah reading that is all about nostalgia and blemishes, to a modern holiday, to our own recognition of the intoxicated, deadening temptation of nostalgia and back to our consciousness of the reality of blemishes. A time to step away from one kind of celebration in search of something else; at the very least, it’s our slow but steady learning curve. Shehekhiyanu v’kiyemanu v’higi’anu lazman hazeh — to thank and praise God for the patience and the nourishment that has kept us alive this far, and for implanting in us the desire and determination to stay on this journey and put our endowments to good use.

Recent Articles by Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom

• Pinehas: Human Rights and the rejoining the human family - July 18th, 2008
• Huqqat: Human Rights, Blemished Leadership and the Moral Sphere - July 3rd, 2008
• BeMidbar: Human Rights and The Triumph of God's Hope - May 30th, 2008
• Emor: Promise, Justice, Non-violence, and Peace - May 7th, 2008
• Durban 1: What really happened at the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance - March 3rd, 2008
• Shemot: Channeling our passions - December 29th, 2007
• Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom - December 13th, 2007
• Vayyiggash: Equality and economic justice - December 13th, 2007
• Bedouin Rights - September 1st, 2006

Categories: Emor
Tags: Bo, code, Emor, fairness, fen, human rights, ISM, judge, order, palestinians, peace, rest, righteousness, settlers, Yom Ha'atzmaut