Emor reads like a Joni Mitchell Song. "The Circle Game" …. And the seasons they go round and round….we are captured on the carousel of time ….and go round and round and round in the circle game…." We have the set times of the Jewish Calendar for sacred occasions: the Sabbath, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the Pilgrimage Festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.
Emor also reads like a law book. We also have laws regulating the lives and sacrifices of the priests. We have descriptions of clear olive oil to light the sanctuary menorah, and ingredients and displays of loaves of bread in the sanctuary. We are commanded to leave the gleanings of the harvest for the poor and the stranger. We are also told about how contact with the dead leaves the priests ritually impure.
The priests had roles in antiquity of identifying disease. Leviticus 13 verses 1-3 in Parshat Thazria and Leviticus Chapter 14 verses 1-5 in Parshat Metzora outline the role of the priests to confirm and heal the symptoms of leprosy. This disease resulted in a leper’s ritual defilement making them unfit to enter the sanctuary. After the leper was recovered, he was to be brought again before the priest, who confirmed the leper’s healing, and offered sacrifices for his recovery.
In this weeks Parsha, we are told in Leviticus Chapter 21 Verse 1 that Adonai instructs Moses that the priests and sons of Aaron "shall not defile themselves among the people, except for his kin, that is near unto him", for his (wife), for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother, and for his sister. In Verse 10, we are told that the "highest priest among his brethren, upon whose head anointing oil is poured" is forbidden to go in the presence of any dead body, even the corpse of his mother or father. The exception is an unattended corpse, known as met mitzvah.
If the High Priests and the Ordinary Priests were alive today, my guess is they would instruct us regarding obligations to care for the sick and caring for the dead and comforting mourners. Such obligations to family and community were clearly issues in the Bible that were subject to discussions by commentators of old and of today.
Rashi explains that the Kohanim who are fit to perform the Temple Service may not defile themselves by having contact with someone who has others to attend to his burial. In the case of "a dead person of the covenant", a corpse whose burial is not being attended to, the Kohen is not forbidden to become impure through caring for this met mitzvah and is in fact obligated to do so.
Rabbi Abraham Chill in The Mitzvot: Their Commandments and Their Rationale, agrees with Rashi and says that "a high priest walking along the road by himself who has found a corpse with no one else to attend to the needs for burial, is obliged to make the necessary arrangements, even though he will thus defile himself" (pg. 255).
Rabbi Chill quotes a number of commentators. Maimonides comments on the question of why the Ordinary priest is allowed to defile himself in the case of the death of a near relative, but not in the case of a stranger. The ritual impurity caused by contact with any dead body is the same for a relative or stranger.
Nachmanides explains that every Ordinary Priest is a potential High Priest who is absolutely forbidden to have contact with any dead body. To train himself for this possibility, the Ordinary Priest was permitted to make himself ritually impure only when a close relative died, but not when a stranger passed away.
Arabanel said that as soon as the nefesh leaves the guf, the body becomes ritually impure and contaminating. In the case of the death of strangers, there is no need for the Ordinary Priest to attend to the funeral needs, since the family of the dead stranger is obligated to care for these matters. In the case of the close relatives of a Priest, he is responsible to his family to arrange for the funeral because of his expert knowledge of the laws for burial.
Keli Yakar, Hinnukh asks why the Ordinary Priest was allowed to make himself ritually impure when the death is in his immediate family while the High Priest was not allowed to become ritually impure even then? The answer explained is because the High Priest represents the highest concentration of holiness on earth. The Ordinary Priest is holier that the layman but is not as holy as the High Pries from whom he received the right to be a Priest. Therefore, while the Ordinary Priest was more restricted than the Israelite, he was not forbidden, as was the High Priest, from all contact with the dead.
Radbaz elaborates on the significance of Shivah, the week of mourning after burial of a loved one. Shivah is intended to create an atmosphere where man thinks about life and death, deeds and meaning. Such thoughts will lead to repentance and remorse. Man must grieve in order to attain these emotions and to feel humility in his own life.
Thus the Priest too was obliged to observe mourning for his close relatives so that he would also cleanse himself of the sins he may had done.
Rabbi Maurice Lamm, in The Jewish Way in Death and Mourning, writes how the Bible does not just give the Kohen, the Priest, permission to defile, but commands him to concern himself with the preparation, handling, and burial of immediate family members until the closing of the grave. This also applies to a met mitzvah, a stranger who has no family to bury him, which according to Rabbi Lamm includes someone who does not have sufficient pall bearers or care for other burial arrangements. Rabbi Lamm says the Kohen in this case is under biblical obligation to remain with the "corpse and honor him".
Clearly, even during the Temple times, we had different understandings of individual and community obligations in treating the ill and the dead. In the 21st century, we have no High Priests; we have no Temple. We still have notions of sacred space and sacred time, ritual purification and impurities. These manifest themselves in how we relate to the sick and how we treat our dead and comfort those in mourning.
Visiting the sick and comforting mourners is a mitzvah familiar to most of us as we get older. I recently visited my 89 year old aunt in the hospital before she died. At her funeral, I was reminded how old many of my mother’s cousins are and how my mother, the last and at 82 the youngest of five, has herself spent many years observing this mitzvah in her own family. When I looked at Parshat Emor, I wondered why the priests were not described as teaching this mitzvah by example.
How many of us are aware that there are people in our own community who may not have funds for healthcare, aftercare, mortuary and cemetery burial and know where to go for resources? Do we in our own community have the capacity to help those in need in our own congregation? I am sure that the Priests and even the High Priest had no notion of the needs and concerns we have in today’s world of health and healthcare, home based attendant care or institutional rehabilitation. Burial was not a business with multiple mortuaries and cemeteries competing for buyers. I doubt that the High Priests contemplated about the Federal Trade Commission Laws regarding consumer rights or the possibility that a mortuary who people trusted with preneed arrangements might go bankrupt and have their license taken away as happened in l994. While the High Priest was obligated to help a stranger with arrangements for burial whom had no one else to attend to the needs for burial, are we aware what our community has available to those with no resources or family? Are we familiar with the work of organizations like Jewish Free Loan, Jewish Family Services, Bikur Holim Holocaust Survivors’ Assistance Program, and the California Center for Health Care Rights?
Ritual impurity comes with connotations of mystery, fear of the unknown, and the potential for contagion. Are we afraid we might become contaminated, pick up disease because we are ill-at-ease around people who are sick or disabled? Do we avoid visiting someone in the hospital because we might come in contact with a dead body (either our loved one or the patient next door)? Are we afraid of coming in contact with mechanical devises such as breathing machines, dialysis equipment, heart monitors? Are we afraid of giving someone disease because we are at dis-ease and do not know that there are precautions we can take when visiting a sick friend or relative that would minimize our transferring germs or picking up germs when visiting? Are we uncomfortable talking about illness because of superstition that talking about it may befall us, someone else, or hasten someone else’s death? While it is standard policy in hospitals not to bring young children to Intensive Care Units, do we avoid answering questions of young children about an illness or treatment because we are uncomfortable or not sure how much or what to say?
In today’s world, it is important for patients and family members to feel they have the right to ask questions of their health care providers and get answers to what they are asking. We do not live in the days of the High Priests where we were brought before him for identification of illness (e.g. leprosy) and treatment (e.g. by isolation and then sacrifices). Healthcare today is a partnership between patient and provider. If patients (and their family members) are unclear what their medical condition is and what their treatment options are, they have a right to ask. If they are uncomfortable with a plan of care, they have rights to ask for a second opinion. If they are uncomfortable with a discharge plan of care, they have a right to appeal the discharge. Discussing and completing documents like Jewish Medical Directives by the Rabbinical Assembly or Advanced Health Care Directive by the California Medical Association give patients and family members an opportunity to discuss and document a patient’s health care wishes and surrogate decision makers, leaving clear instructions for health care providers to follow as guidelines.
May the message of Emor be about the importance of visiting the sick, and of respecting those who need the support of resources and community. May one lesson the Priests teach us be how appropriate action requires preparation, responsibility, humility and intention for holiness. May the resources we have in our community be used for physical and spiritual healing of those who are ill, their caregivers, providers, and families.
Shabbat Shalom.