The following Divrei Torah on Parashat Emor were written by our students and shared with their peers in our Monday morning minyanim.

Lachlan Corne – Year 9

1. Emor, is the largest parashah in Sefer Vayikra, the Book of Leviticus, consisting of no fewer than 124 verses. The parashah relates many laws regarding Kohanim. Perhaps I was asked to do this Devar Torah because I am a Kohen (Corne is actually derived from the Hebrew word Kohen).

So here are some of the laws that relate to the Kohanim.

• They’re not allowed to come in contact with a dead body
• They can only attend the funeral of a close relative

A Kohen is required to maintain a higher spiritual level than an ‘ordinary’ Jew and is considered/asked to be more kadosh, ‘holy’.

Jewish tradition describes how we should honour a Kohen (I like this part). For example:

• A Kohen should be served first at a banquet
• He should wash his hands first before a meal
• He should be called first to the Torah, before a Levi and Yisrael.

The Parashah also talks about the conditions required of an animal to be fit for sacrifice, including that it must be physically perfect. An animal is acceptable only from the eighth day after birth onwards just as a baby boy is to be circumcised on the eighth day.

The Torah then relates the prohibition against slaughtering a mother animal and its young on the same day, showing mercy. It goes on to speak about many other things such as the various festivals and the menorah and its lighting.

Included in these additional matters, God tells the Jewish people that they need to a leave a corner of their fields unharvested to allow the poor to come and take from it. God doesn’t tell them to give some of their crops to the poor, but rather they should leave them some of their crops. The difference, although seemingly insignificant, is actually quite powerful.

When someone in need has to take from someone else, this not only takes courage but can also be quite embarrassing. There are times when we all need help from someone else of one kind or another. But no one wants to feel dependent upon someone else for his/her basic needs.

In an effort to allow this needy individual not to feel ashamed, God tells the owner of the field to leave the crops. This way, perhaps in the middle of the night, the one who’s in need can simply take without any embarrassment. To be able to pick up the crops with no one seeing him is an effort to lessen the receiver’s emotional pain of knowing that at this moment he is dependent upon someone else for life’s necessities.

What if you don’t have a field in which to leave your crops? Today most people aren’t farmers and the Torah is also an instruction guide for living in modern times. So, what lesson does this come to teach us?

Perhaps it’s providing for others without ever letting them or anyone ever know that it was you who gave. To give anonymously to someone powerfully demonstrates that your motives are totally altruistic and you seek nothing in return except for knowing that you helped someone in need.

The more you can give without the receiver ever knowing who you are, the more you’ll be giving for the right reasons. It will be all about them and not about you.

It won’t be for the sake of an award, gratitude, or to see your name in lights. Giving in this way not only ensures that the recipient won’t be embarrassed, but it also enables you to become completely in touch with the true and only source of all your possessions.

Hannah Shteinman – Year 11

2. In this Parashah, God describes the rules that apply to the Kohanim, the priests of the Temple, so that they stay ‘pure’. Among these rules are: They aren’t allowed to touch dead people, they should be careful not to profane the name of God through their actions and they can’t marry a ‘harlot’. In fact, when the daughter of a priest ‘defiles’ herself through harlotry, it is her father whom she ‘defiles’, and she must be burned in fire. They can’t marry a divorced person, they can’t bare their heads or rend their garments, practices associated with mourning, and they MUST marry a virgin, from their people of course. If they are ‘blemished’ by any of the above, they can’t serve at the altar to give offerings to God.

Moreover, any man with a ‘defect’; which includes being blind, being mutilated, having broken any limb, having limbs that are “too long” OR even if they have a scab, cannot make an offering upon God’s altar.

Clearly there is this massive emphasis on ‘purity’ and avoiding profaning the holy areas of the Temple and its practices. So it seems like being physically imperfect makes one unholy.

Now while this isn’t still a necessity in modern Jewish law, this idea of being physically perfect, still exists. Girls with the ‘perfect’ body, and the ‘perfect’ hair, skin, teeth, eyes, face, are seen as the modern day version of holy, the ultimate goal. The same goes for guys: perfect body, hair, skin teeth, eyes, face etc! This is drilled into us constantly; through celebrities, Instagram, mass media, and businesses that profit from our insecurities, that are entirely based on this notion of being perfect.

In a way, like God is presented in the Bible, we have set these standards that honestly are based on nothing. If we can see how strange it is to prohibit someone from the precincts of the Temple for having a ‘defect’ then surely we can see that judging someone for their level of ‘attractiveness’, is no different.

However, specifically to the Torah portion, if we think about it, it isn’t just the issue of attractiveness it’s the idea that having these ‘defects’ makes one ‘un-whole’ and therefore unholy. So it’s also this lack of wholeness that excludes them from being able to go up to God’s alter and maybe we need to consider what we define as being ‘whole’.

We need to question why we have created this idea of ‘holy’, why it has such rules and why it’s exclusive. We need to redefine its meaning and reconsider these standards that we have set for ourselves.