Rabbi Daniel Siegel

Your imperfect offering

While we see tikkun olam as a call for humanity to bring the divine dimension into our imperfect world, the Bible, as reflected in this week’s parashah, often seeks to maintain the perfect state of divinity that should not be trespassed upon by imperfect humanity.

This Shabbat, one might shudder to read parashat Emor in one’s synagogue, a place in which access is granted to those physically challenged and psychologically distressed. In this space of shared prayer and service, we all can come near to God, precisely because we are in need of healing and the love and support of community.

In Emor, however, the priests are reminded that no one who is defective can make an offering to God. “He shall not enter behind the curtain or come near the altar, for he has a defect”. Or, if physically whole, he is likewise compromised if in a state of “impurity”, and cannot approach God.

Today, we expect our religious leaders to serve with purity of heart, but neither they nor a congregant would be barred from the bimah or the synagogue for a physical or psychological “defect” or ritual “impurity”.

The ancient world saw “direct access” to God granted to the elect who served as the representatives of the people who themselves could not approach and make an offering within the proscribed holy precincts. Neither the one making the offering nor the offering itself (the animal) can be defective, when the perfect God is being propitiated.

The Rabbinic world and contemporary Judaism, seeing the God of the ethical and ritual realms, the prophetic and priestly traditions, being of a single whole, understand prayer and our personal and collective offering as the nexus between perfection/the holy and imperfection/the profane, neither existing separate from one another. 

A story

Rabbi Sheshet was blind. Once all the people went out to see the king, and Rabbi Sheshet went with them. While walking, a person came up to Rabbi Sheshet and said: “Whole pitchers go to the river, but to where do the broken ones go”? Rabbi Sheshet replied: “You do not see what I see”. The first troop of the king’s men passed by and a shout arose. “The king is coming”, said this person”. “He is not”, replied Rabbi Sheshet.

A second troop passed by and when a shout arose, this person said: “Now, the king is coming”. Rabbi Sheshet replied: “The king is not coming”. A third troop passed by and there was silence. Rabbi Sheshet said: “Now, indeed, the king is coming”. And, when the king appeared, the person asked Rabbi Sheshet: “How did you know this?” To which Rabbi Sheshet replied “For the earthly king is similar to the heavenly King…”

(Talmud, Berakhot)

It is the “imperfect” and the “broken”, our tradition teaches us, that most fully experience and receive God. The “whole pitcher” who would reject Rabbi Sheshet for his “defect” is himself lacking, unable to discern royal presence let alone divine presence within our world. Far from being discarded as a “broken vessel” each of us, in our imperfections, are drawn closer to God.

Ring the bells that can still ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

Leonard Cohen