Bechukotai: Sugar for Sugar and Salt for Salt

Let's imagine for a moment that God is an anthropomorphic being that lives in the sky, watches us from above from his throne in the sky, and judges us according to whether we obey the least arbitrary rule, or rebel against his yoke. This God makes rules, and these rules are ethical only because they are His rules, rather than being ethical by human standards. Imagine that He gave Moses these rules, and they all have to be obeyed; that there is no real difference between eating rabbit and murdering a human being, between incest and wearing a garment spun of wool and linen, between homosexual relations and allowing a disobedient son to live. This God of our thought exercise is going to punish us for disobedience, in essence, the only possible crime. This God is going to reward us for obeying all the rules all of the time, without error, without equivocation, and without circumspection.

In this thought exercise, we move between two poles: God's wrath, and God's material blessings upon us. We express our devotion to our Sky King by obeying all the rules, and we are showered with bounty: our crops grow superabundantly, our animals are astonishingly fecund and robust, our enemies collapse before our might, and the whole world envies us. We waver in our devotion by deviating from the rules, and our crops fail, our animals and our children die, some of whom we are forced to eat in our famine, our enemies easily mow us down, rape our women, slaughter our babies, and enslave us while our Sky King watches our agonies in indifference bordering on disgust.

That is this, the final Torah portion of Leviticus, interpreted in the most literal possible manner. Why worship this God? Out of fear of punishment, and out of hope for reward. In the scheme, the entire purpose of consciousness is mindfulness about obedience to a system that has nothing to do with each individual will. Humans do what God tells them to do, or they enter a world of hurt. God's love is absolutely conditional on Israel's compliance.

I've never liked this version of religion. No Jew likes this this version of religion, with the possible exception of the most fanatical but least mystical of the ultra-Orthodox. Oddly, many Christians think that's what Judaism is, this bargain. That being the presupposition about Judaism, of course the sane ones clamored to Jesus' revelation, if only to get out of such an awful bargain. What kind of an idiot would stay in such a dysfunctional relationship?


Now, let's try another thought exercise. Imagine that we notice that:

The everlasting universe of things Flows through the mind, and rolls its rapid waves, Now dark—now glittering—now reflecting gloom— Now lending splendour, where from secret springs The source of human thought its tribute brings Of waters...[Percy Shelley, Mont Blanc, opening lines]. 

 Let us imagine that we try to find these secret springs, and we notice how consciousness and nature seem both to lead to the same source. We still our inner monologue, and find a stillness behind it. We notice that the stillness is pregnant with the potentialities of things, and we notice that in that stillness is an intelligence greater than our waking minds, an emotion more powerful than the hungry ghost that chases after memes that we think is our emotional center (but isn't).

We find a flow, a direction, a purpose, a center, and everything seems to point to it, align with it, and resonate its vibrations. And we are gobsmacked when we first perceive that it loves us.

It loves us with an intensity we cannot possibly be capable of. It loves us even though we seem helpless and crude and banal and cruel and thoughtless compared to It. Does It have a personality? Compared to It, do we?

Whether or not we call this Presence God is less important than to understand that the authors of the Torah did. These authors, these primitive men, were writhing in their crudeness and antiquity, and looking up from the chaos, the violence and savagery, the heedlessness of idolatry and butchery and ignorance and superstition to see if there wasn't a Power that could pull them out of the nightmare. And what they found, they called God. What they found, they immediately lost and scrounged and searched for. They spent much more time lost than found. And yet they found. They saw. Each stood before the Presence before losing that link forever, and died in darkness, only to have others learn from their discoveries and find the Presence again and lose it.

Abraham found what he called God, and used the force of his faith to be the progenitor of the loftiest dreams seeded in spiritual condition of billions today. And yet in his madness he bound his son Isaac to sacrifice him carnally before the Presence intervened. And Jacob found what he called God and wrestled with His angel from midnight to dawn, dislocating his hip in his struggle. And Joseph found God in a prison in a world of slavery and bondage, surrounded by enemy aliens, and God freed him and set him at Pharaoh's right hand. And yet he made sport of his treacherous brothers until they groveled before him.

And Moses, the fugitive murderer who had been the apple of the old Pharaoh's eye, who was tending his sheep near Mount Sinai, carrying a lost lamb who had strayed from the flock, saw a burning bush and had the presence of mind to notice that the bush was not consumed by the flame, and he beheld God. He spoke with I WAS, AM, AND SHALL BE WHO I WAS, AM, AND SHALL BE, and armed with that consciousness, he led his people from bondage to liberation. That Presence stayed with them, as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. It dwelt in the Tabernacle. It fed them food from heaven. In the Presence, their clothes did not wear out on their bodies, not for forty years of wandering. And yet, as we will see in the Book of Numbers, the Israelites retreated into their familiar crudity and petulance and idiocy. Sometimes Moses joined them in their cruelty, and sometimes Moses held firm and shared the light of God with the people.

What does it mean to walk in the Presence? What does it mean to find the Force, the Tao, the meaning and purpose of life? It means that you will plant crops in the way that will heal the land, give the maximal yield, and flow with such bounty that there will be plenty left over for the hungry, the stranger and the destitute. It means that those who oppose you as you walk in the Presence cannot possibly succeed. Those who create a bulwark against the Force will have that bulwark collapse on them. "And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and ye shall be my people." [Leviticus 26: 12].

What happens if we join the forces of ignorance, superstition and brutality, and give up on our search for the Lost Word? If we embrace ignorance, we lose the gift of intelligence. We suffer all that ignorance brings, and make all the mistakes that burden us. We plant our crops in the wrong place and have no yield. We breed our animals at the wrong time and they grow infertile, skinny and rangy. We become bickersome and petty. With superstition, we begin to worship something less than the One. We walk for too long far away from the Presence, and loss ever having missed it. We lose all compassion and become cruel. We are so disorganized, dispirited and foolish that those who oppose us can easily scatter us, enslave us and destroy us. "And I will set my face against you, and ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you." [Leviticus 26: 17].

Eventually, our decisions will harm our children. We will allow our world to become polluted, and our children to sicken in a polluted world. We will exploit the wealth of the next seven generations, seizing and consuming it ourselves, robbing our children of their future livelihoods, trying to feed the hungry ghosts inside us that are never, ever satisfied. As we hunger for the Presence we have forsaken, and as long as we are too proud to return to the Source, we continue the devastation of our own crazy, soulless stupidity. The Presence, the Force itself, speaks:

And if ye will not for all this hearken unto me, but walk contrary unto me; Then I will walk contrary unto you also in fury; and I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins. And ye shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters shall ye eat.
And I will destroy your high places, and cut down your images, and cast your carcases upon the carcases of your idols, and my soul shall abhor you.
And I will make your cities waste, and bring your sanctuaries unto desolation, and I will not smell the savour of your sweet odours.
And I will bring the land into desolation: and your enemies which dwell therein shall be astonished at it.
And I will scatter you among the heathen, and will draw out a sword after you: and your land shall be desolate, and your cities waste.

Then shall the land enjoy her sabbaths, as long as it lieth desolate, and ye be in your enemies' land; even then shall the land rest, and enjoy her sabbaths.
As long as it lieth desolate it shall rest; because it did not rest in your sabbaths, when ye dwelt upon it.
And upon them that are left alive of you I will send a faintness into their hearts in the lands of their enemies; and the sound of a shaken leaf shall chase them; and they shall flee, as fleeing from a sword; and they shall fall when none pursueth.
And they shall fall one upon another, as it were before a sword, when none pursueth: and ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.
And ye shall perish among the heathen, and the land of your enemies shall eat you up.
And they that are left of you shall pine away in their iniquity in your enemies' lands; and also in the iniquities of their fathers shall they pine away with them.

If they shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked contrary unto me;
And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity:
Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I will remember the land.
The land also shall be left of them, and shall enjoy her sabbaths, while she lieth desolate without them: and they shall accept of the punishment of their iniquity: because, even because they despised my judgments, and because their soul abhorred my statutes.
And yet for all that, when they be in the land of their enemies, I will not cast them away, neither will I abhor them, to destroy them utterly, and to break my covenant with them: for I am the LORD their God.
But I will for their sakes remember the covenant of their ancestors, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt in the sight of the heathen, that I might be their God: I am the LORD. [Leviticus 26: 27-45].

Forget the Sky King metaphor for a moment. This is what it is like to live outside of the Tao. Imagine that the Presence is addressing us directly. What happens if we pervert nature in our greed and boredom? What happens if we feed the hungry ghosts instead of noticing, as Jacob did, that "Surely the LORD is in this place"? [Genesis 28: 16]. As we fight the flow of all purpose, we find that the Universe itself resists us.  Nature will reclaim what we have spoiled. Devastation and suffering will lead us to look for the Lost Word again, to again seek the Presence.

This is the deterioration that led to the destruction of the Temple, the Exile, the scattering and the Lost Tribes. And the passage back, the return, the teshuvah, the Passing of the Veils, the Crossing of the River in the 15th Degree, is the work we have to do to rebuild what we have lost.

It is customary in Torah study, when a student or group of students finishes studying a book of Torah, to say: chazak chazak v'nitchazek. This could be translated as "Be strong! Be strong! And may we be strengthened."

חזק חזק ונתחזק

Behar: Thou Shalt Relieve Him

This Torah portion is BeHar, or "On the Mountain", because it begins with words God speaks to Moses on Mount Sinai. To the Jews, this means that these commandments are part of the Revelation, and are thus as sacred as the Ten Commandments.

God commands the Israelites to look after their fallen brethren: "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee." [Leviticus 25: 35]. A Mason understands how a man can be his brother and yet be a stranger, as we profess to be linked together by an indissoluble chain of sincere affection. On this basis we form our friendships and establish our connections.

In the Midrash for this passage, Rabbi Pinchas, in the name of Rabbi Reuven, said: "Whoever gives a single coin to a poor person, the Holy One, Blessed be He will give that person life. For indeed, is he really giving only a single coin? No, he gives the poor person life! How can we explain this? If a loaf of bread costs 10 coins and a poor person standing in the marketplace has only nine, then if someone comes and gives a single coin so that he is able to buy a loaf of bread and, having eaten it, feels refreshed, the Holy One, Blessed be He, says to the donor, 'In your case too, when your soul presses to break loose from your body, I shall return it to you."

Emor: Leave Them Unto The Poor, And To The Stranger

In West Virginia, a man who petitions for the degrees of Masonry must have both arms and legs, and most of their fingers and toes. Why? Because in the Bible, the priests must be physically whole.

"Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; no man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the Lord made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God." [Leviticus 21: 17-21].

This restriction was present in Masonry in its earlier days, but has generally been dropped as unfair and wrong. There are a few holdouts, but the idea of rejecting an otherwise worthwhile man because he left a leg in Iraq after his humvee hit an IED is too distasteful for most Masons to contemplate.

Later in the Torah portion, God gives the rules for holidays. After Passover, when the Jews traditionally offered the temple sacrifice of the new barley (or omer), people are to count out fifty days until the next Pilgrimage Festival, Shavuot. [Leviticus 23: 15-16]. That counting has become a ritual practice, called the Counting of the Omer, and has taken on a Kabbalistic meaning.

49 is seven times seven. The seven lowest s'firot are Chesed, G'vurah, Tiferet, Netzach, Hod, Yesod, and Malchut. The three higher s'firot are Keter, Chokhmah, and Binah, which are so rare and subtle that they are in the highest of the four worlds, Atzilut, which is beyond the comprehension of most of us. Each of the s'firot has its own Tree of Life inside it, making 100 in all. By limiting ourselves to the lower seven, we get seven times seven states of consciousness to meditate upon. On the second night of Passover, we get to reflect on the Chesed aspect of Chesed. The next night, we get to reflect on the G'vurah aspect of Chesed, and so on, until the night before Shavuot, we reflect upon the Malchut aspect of Malchut. Tonight, for example, is the Netzach aspect of Hod. Each night, there is a prayer, and then you count how many days since Passover that you have counted. A person who remembers to count the Omer each night for all 49 nights is considered to be especially blessed. If someone forgets to count the Omer on a given night, he can count it the next day before sundown, but he is not permitted to say the blessing.

This Torah portion also includes the commandment not to reap all the way to the edge of one's field, so that the poor have some harvest that they can glean for their own subsistence. [Leviticus 23: 22]. I love this idea. It balances the idea that we have to provide for the poor with the idea that a man should earn his bread. This provides the poor with work to do that will sustain them. We are not permitted to snatch up all the wealth, all the opportunity, but have to leave wealth and opportunity for those less fortunate, so that with their own labor they can provide for themselves.

Kedoshim: Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbour As Thyself

This Torah portion continues the Holiness code from the previous portion. This portion is mostly a list of rules, introducing two different types of capital punishment, and the punishment of cherem, or excommunication.

There are some lovely mitzvot here as well.

1. Revere your mother and father
2. Rest on the Sabbath day and keep it holy
3. Not to reap all the way to the edges of a field, thereby depriving the poor and the homeless of teh possibility of gleaning from your fields, and thereby feeding themselves
4. Do not pick your fruit trees clean, so that the poor have some fruit to eat
5. Pay your laborers on the day they work, so that they do not go home hungry or unpaid
6. Do not put obstacles in the way of blind people (the rabbis debate whether this is meant literally or figuratively, i.e. putting moral obstacles in the way of those without much moral foresight)
7. Love your neighbor as you love yourself (unfortunately, some Christians think this originally came from Jesus. This is where Jesus got it.)
8. Show deference to the elderly
9. Love the stranger as you love yourself, for you were a stranger once in Egypt (some would interpret "stranger" as "foreigner")
10. Treat the convert exactly the same way you would treat someone born Jewish

Two forms of capital punishment are introduced: stoning and burning. The Talmud describes stoning as a procedure where the condemned is thrown from a height of at least two stories to the street below. If they survive, a massive rock (so big that it takes at least two people to carry it) is dropped on them, crushing them. That's pretty barbaric, but not nearly as barbaric as the current version of stoning used in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, Yemen, UAE, and Iran today. The contemporary version of stoning involves burying the condemned in the ground (men buried up to the waist and women up to the chest), and pelting them with rocks. The Iranian penal code forbids the use of any stones that individually could kill the condemned outright in one or two throws. It often takes a long time to die this way.

Burning, according to the Talmud is having molten lead poured down the throat.

The Talmud proscribes two other methods: decapitation and strangulation. Decapitation is with a sword, and strangulation is with two strong men on opposite sides pulling cords around the neck of the condemned until death.

In Jewish law, two witnesses had to see the crime for the death penalty to be in effect. These witnesses had to be fully educated in the law, had to be fully employed at the time of the crime, and could not be related to each other or to the accused. They had to each give a warning to the accused that the crime they were committing carried the death penalty. The accused had to acknowledge that the crime carried the death penalty and had to continue committing the crime anyway. The two witnesses could not have had a conversation afterwards about the offense, and thereby have corroborated their testimonies. The jury had to be in a strict majority, but could not be unanimous in their decision (to prevent a rigged jury). The two witnesses were required to be the executioners.

As a result, a Sanhedrin that executed more than one person in seven years (and some say seventy years) was considered to be excessively bloody.

1. What sins carried a potential death penalty?
2. One who gave a child to Molech
3. One who insulted his father or mother
4. A man who committed adultery with a married woman, and the married woman with whom he committed it
5. A man who lay with his father’s wife, and his father wife with whom he lay
6. A man who lay with his daughter-in-law, and his daughter-in-law with whom he lay 
7. A man who lay with a male as one lies with a woman, and the male with whom he lay 
8. A man who married a woman and her mother, and the woman and mother whom he married 
9. A man who had carnal relations with a beast, and the beast with whom he had relations 
10. A woman who approached any beast to mate with it, and the beast that she approached 
11. One who had a ghost or a familiar spirit

Now imagine that two men were having sex. Two witnesses, who are fully employed, and well-schooled in the law witness them in flagrante delicto. Each tells the two men to stop, that what they are doing is listed in the Torah as an offense that carries with it the death penalty. Each time, both men tell each witness that they know this, but are going to continue anyway. The two witnesses never talk to each other until after the Sanhedrin meets to decide the fate of the two men, and they decide for death by stoning, although not unanimously. How often do you think that occurred?

There are other rules in this Torah portion that seem bizarre to us today:

1. Not to interbreed different species, or sow fields with two different kinds of grain
2. Not to wear garments from both wool and linen (unless it is the High Priest's garment and you are the High Priest)
3. Not to eat the fruit of a newly-planted fruit tree for three years
4. Not to trim the hair on the sides of the head
5. Not to destroy the side-growth of the beard
6. Not to mourn for the dead by scarifying the flesh

The penalty of excommunication is also explained, and given as punishment for the following:

1. One who turned to ghosts or familiar spirits (but presumably did not possess them)
2. Marriage between siblings (including half-siblings, but not step-siblings)
3. Sexual intercourse involving a menstruating woman (both people would be excommunicated)

So, the Holiness code can be very harsh, and somewhat arbitrary by today's moral standards. With the exception of some of the ultra-Orthodox, there is nobody today who follows every jot and tittle of it. The point of it all was to ascribe towards some sense of holiness as a means of emulating God. The word kadosh in Hebrew means holy. It is where the title of the 30° in the Scottish Rite, Knight Kadosh, comes from. We are created in the image of God. The Holiness code is an early attempt to set the ground rules for holiness.

Acharei Mot: The Holiness Code

In this Torah portion, the observance of Yom Kippur is discussed, as well as a discussion of the sacredness of blood. Various forbidden sexual practices are discussed, including one of the only lines of Leviticus many Christian Fundamentalists read and observe. After listing a series of forbidden incestuous relationships and somewhat incestuous relationships like marrying your stepmother or marrying two women who are sisters. Other sexual sins are listed, like having sex with a menstruating woman (yeah, I know. Read the previous blog post), and committing adultery with your neighbor's wife. Then, suddenly, the rhythm of the passage falls off a cliff: "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Molech, neither shalt thou profane the name of thy God: I am the LORD." [Leviticus 18: 21]. What?

There was a practice in Semitic paganism of sacrificing children to Molech, a god worshipped during that time. It was thought that an iron statue of Molech with its arms outstretched was heated with fire, and the infant was placed in the arms of Molech until it burned to death. By so doing, the person believed that they could transform their fortunes for the better. What does this have to do with the previous rules? The Egyptian aristocracy had incestuous marriages, and the Philistines had child sacrifices. Moses is commanding the Israelites to behave differently than the Egyptians and the Philistines. And it is in this context that we can put the next verse: "Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination." [Leviticus 18: 22].

It's right there in the Bible, right? What else does the Bible refer to as תֹּועֵבָה (to'evah), or abomination?

1. The Egyptians regarded shepherds as to'evah.
2. Hebrew animal sacrifice in the land of Egypt was to'evah.
3. Idolatry
4. Remarrying a person you have divorced.
5. Haughty eyes
6. A lying tongue
7. Hands that shed innocent blood
8. A heart that devises wicked schemes
9. Feet that are swift in running to mischief
10. A false witness who utters lies
11. One who spreads strife among brothers
12. Incest
13. Adultery
14. Temple prostitution
15. Money earned from prostitution
16. Child sacrifice
17. Transvestism
18. Cheating in the market by using crooked weights
19. Dishonesty
20. Eating non-kosher food
21. Stealing
22. Murder
23. Breaking covenants
24. Usury
25. Armed robbery
26. Oppressing the poor and needy

This list includes behaviors we still take as taboo, like murder, child sacrifice, armed robbery, and incest. But eating rabbit makes this list, as does lying (which appears three times on the list). While transvestism was shocking years ago, nobody picketed the Milton Berle show for the occasional comic drag scene.

Maybe those who are so affronted by homosexuality should go after the other items on this list. When was the last time you saw a demonstration against usury? When was the last time that people waved Bibles in the air to protest the oppression of the poor and needy? When indeed.

Incidentally, the next line goes after bestiality, which is why some Fundamentalists equate homosexuality with bestiality. And yet they never equate homosexuality with adultery, like in the previous line. Go figure.

Metzora: Why Does The Torah discuss such things?

In this Torah portion, the priests are instructed in how to ritually cleanse one stricken with tsara'at, often mistranslated as leprosy, but when it affects people is closer to plaque psoriasis, and when it affects clothing or houses is closer to mildew or dry rot. There is instruction in how to recognize if a house is afflicted with tsara'at, and when it should be demolished to ward off the affliction. The rest of the Torah portion discusses male and female genital discharges, and how they make a person ritually impure.

For men, genital discharges, both from semen and from gonorrhea, are discussed. For women, menses, and non-menstrual bloody discharges are discussed. It is enough to have a nocturnal emission or a discharge of pre-seminal fluid to render a man in a ritually unready state, but sexual intercourse leading to a male ejaculation, or a discharge resulting from gonorrhea will also cause a man to lose his spiritual readiness. In the case of gonorrhea, he will remain unready for a week after the last discharge. Also, if a man has intercourse with a menstruating woman, he is regarded as being in the same state of ritual unreadiness as a menstruating women for a week after the intercourse. In each case, ritual bathing and sacrifices are necessary to put them back in a state of spiritual and ritual readiness.

For women, their menses renders them in a ritually unready state for a week after the last discharge. They are also rendered unready by any bloody discharge, even if outside of her menstrual cycle. After bathing and bringing turtle doves to the priests to sacrifice, they are ready again.

This stuff is crazy at first glance. What is going on here? Why is this in the Bible?

The common factor is the intermediation of the priests. When something strange and probably unhygienic happens, bring in someone who is experienced in dealing with such things (read "doctor" here), and let them examine it. Then bathe and disinfect. Not bad advice. This was a superstitious age. To bring in an objective party and to stress bathing, quarantine for contagious afflictions, and a clear, delineated way to get back to normal is a big improvement for a people used to moral panics, child sacrifices, and mad eruptions of violence.

The Torah portion ends with the reason for all the purity laws. The Tabernacle is pure, and the people who come into the Tabernacle are unleashing powerful spiritual energies, powerful enough to kill the unready. Those who come into the Tabernacle should be in a state of spiritual readiness. When you enter the tyled lodge, you should be in a similar state of spiritual readiness.

Tazria: What "Leprosy" Actually Is

This week has the second double portion, of both Tazria and Metzora. Tazria is about tsara'at (צָרָעַת), which usually gets translated as leprosy. But any reading of the text will demonstrate that the disease being described is nothing like Hansen's disease. When it affects humans, it is more similar to plaque psoriasis, although perhaps not identical. But tsara'at also affects clothing and houses.

Let's step back a moment and put this in context. When I was a child, I was raised without religion by secular Jewish parents. When I was old enough to begin Hebrew school, my father offered me the choice of either spending my weekend mornings at Hebrew school, or playing pee-wee ice hockey, and I chose hockey. When my friends who attended Hebrew school began having their Bar Mitzvahs, I was invited to all of them, but I really had no context for what I was observing. The first Bar Mitzvah I went to was a friend who was in hockey with me (so he was doing both). His Torah portion for his Bar Mitzvah was Tazria, this Torah portion. I was given a Chumash (a book with the five books of the Torah in Hebrew with all vowel points and cantillation marks printed, and an English translation alongside the Hebrew text, with Torah commentary at the bottom of the page), and I followed along with my friend as he recited the passage. And I was horrified. It soured me on Judaism in general for a long time to come.

I am not unique in this. A lot of Christians, and even a lot of Jews, are mortified that the Bible puts so much detail into describing a disease, which in English often gets mistranslated as leprosy, and describes it as a Divine retribution causing the sufferer to become an unclean outcast who is removed from the community and blamed for his affliction. It is hard to reconcile with our understanding of a loving God, and goes against our contemporary concept of fairness. As a result, the entire Book of Leviticus is reduced to being "the leprosy book", and many Christians (and atheists) dismiss the whole Old Testament as "leprosy and stuff".

So, how does a contemporary Jew reconcile the ugliness of Tazria with a modern theological sensibility? My rabbi really enjoys teaching this Torah portion, because it illustrates many things about the Bible that are not well understood today. One year, my rabbi brought in a dermatologist to analyze the Torah's description of the skin disease, and diagnose it based on current medical understanding. In my community, we embrace textual ugliness rather than shy away from it. We haven't even gotten to the genocides Moses leads against the Midianites (that will have to wait until the Book of Numbers), but there will be a lot more that is disturbing in the weeks to come. How do we handle that which is disturbing in the Torah?

By taking in what is said with a critical eye, not rejecting the text, but striving to understand these things are in the text. There is often much subtlety in this approach. Judaism is one of the rare cultures that has a continuous history of many millennia, and in that time, we have gone from a pastoral or agrarian society from the early Bronze Age; to an urban culture in the Iron Age; to an ancient civilization in the midst of other ancient civilizations like the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and Romans; to a small urban minority in medieval, feudal society; to a modern religion. Jews have connections to all aspects of this historical continuum, being simultaneously ancient and modern. Being a Jew means having an identity that spans most of recorded history. So when we find our Scripture mired in antiquity, we can recognize that we traveled through that portion of space and time, and reflect upon where it fits in our long journey.

We can easily imagine that in the time of the Torah, contagious diseases were not well understood, and that sanitary conditions in the encampment of the Children of Israel were not especially good. In the desert, there was a constant shortage of water, which means that bathing was infrequent. Most people had the clothes on their back and no other clothes. The Torah tells us that one of the miracles in the desert was that the clothing of the Children of Israel never wore out, which means they were wearing the same garments for forty years of wandering in harsh elemental conditions. One can imagine that skin diseases like psoriasis broke out with some frequency.

How would an ancient and primitive people handle such outbreaks? Most likely by ascribing such afflictions to Divine retribution, and possibly mass panic. To deflect against this, the Torah describes skin diseases in a great deal of detail, and then insists that the sufferer be brought to Aaron or to the Priests for inspection. This would immediately diffuse a panic, since the Priest as mediator would protect the sufferer from the panic of the general populace. The immediate prescription is a week of quarantine. This would keep the affliction, if contagious, from affecting other people, and keep the sufferer out of the way of the crowd who might panic at the sight of such an affliction.

The Torah describes when tsara'at affects clothing (and houses in the next Torah portion). By a modern understanding, this could be mildew or dry rot. We know that these things can spread, and that they have to be treated early before they do more damage. Again, the affected garment should be brought to the priest, which is then quarantined if it proves to have tsara'at. If after seven days, the blemish has not gone away, a garment is to be burned.

All this is fairly reasonable medical treatment for a Bronze Age physician. So why is this in a holy text? The Torah is intended to be all the laws for the Children of Israel. Unlike other religions, Judaism intends to cover every aspect of life, the ugly and material as well as the sublime and spiritual. The Talmud is intended to be a whole document that covers every possible judgment that could be made, and this includes such issues as well as a myriad of other examples far stranger. When we get to the Sotah in the Book of Numbers, we are going to see things far less reconcilable to a modern sensibility, so get ready.

As I have mentioned previously, the word that gets translated as unclean might better be translated as unready. Someone overcome with skin lesions might not be ready for social intercourse, let alone the spiritual demands of temple services. Clothing eaten away by mildew might not be ready to wear.

The Talmud interprets tsara'at as the Divine punishment for harmful gossip. This metaphor of dry rot or skin lesions for the effects of gossip is effective. When we gossip maliciously, we cause real damage with our words, harming the reputations of others, and turning amicability into emnity. Many a social organization, including more than one Masonic lodge, has been destroyed by harmful gossip. The Talmud suggests that tsara'at might not even be visible, but merely the residue caused by lies and malicious rumors. There is a Hasidic tale of a woman who has spread mean-spirited rumors who, feeling some contrition, asks the rabbi how she can fix the damage she has caused. He tells her to go home and take a feather pillow, tear it open with a knife, and scatter the feathers out her bedroom window, and then to return to him. When she does this, she goes back to the rabbi and asks him what she should do next. He tells her to retrieve every feather that she scattered.

"That's impossible," she tells the rabbi. He replies that it is equally impossible to reverse the harm caused by malicious rumors.

Shemini: Ye Shall Therefore Be Holy, For I Am Holy

I gave hints of the horror of this Torah portion last week, and now it is here. Nadab and Abihu rush forth into the Tabernacle with incense pans filled with alien fire, and are struck dead by fire from God. This tragedy is all the more stunning because the Tabernacle is in the midst of being consecrated for its first use. Moses' immediate response is enigmatic: "This is it that the LORD spake, saying, I will be sanctified in them that come nigh me, and before all the people I will be glorified." [Leviticus 10: 3]. This line is sufficient to silence Aaron.

The rabbis who comment on Torah are of two different minds about this incident. One camp, the more mundane camp, see this as Divine punishment, and scramble to find an offense. Thus the Talmud cites Exodus 19: 22: "And let the priests also, which come near to the LORD, sanctify themselves, lest the LORD break forth upon them." The next commandment listed in the Torah after this incident is "Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation, lest ye die: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations." [Leviticus 10: 9], causing some rabbis to speculate that Nadab and Abihu were drunk, and are struck dead for being drunk inside the Tabernacle. There's quite a lot of speculation as to what offense the two boys committed that caused such a swift and immediate punishment, none of which strikes me as convincing.

Others regard this incident in a more esoteric way, claiming that Nadab and Abihu either consciously sacrificed themselves to God to consecrate the Tabernacle, or that God brought them too close, and they were unable to withstand the spiritual intensity of that peak moment. Rashi cites the following: "...at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD: where I will meet you, to speak there unto thee. There I will meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle shall be sanctified by my glory." [Exodus 29: 42-3].

My own understanding of this tragedy is that God, through Moses and Aaron, was implementing a brand-new spiritual technology, and like any new technology, its safety margins were not well understood. The Tabernacle was the devotional focal point of an entire nation of millions of people. The intensity of that focus was sufficient to incinerate a person under that lens who did not have sufficient protection. It was similar to touching the third rail during the dedication of a new subway.

Moses' comment seems to suggest that Nadab and Abihu were sanctified rather than punished, and his comment silences Aaron, who just watched his two eldest sons die. Moses summons two of Aaron's cousins to drag away the corpses of the two boys (touching a corpse would desanctify Aaron), and Moses warns Aaron and his surviving sons that if they mourned the death of the boys in the usual manner customary to Israelite custom, they would also be struck dead. Instead, the entire community of the Children of Israel are to mourn the death of the two boys for the immediate family.

In their shock, Eleazar and Ithamar burn the sacrifice that should they should have eaten, and Moses is very angry with them. Aaron responds to Moses: "Behold, this day have they offered their sin offering and their burnt offering before the LORD; and such things have befallen me: and if I had eaten the sin offering to day, should it have been accepted in the sight of the LORD? " [Leviticus 10: 19]. This is the closest that Aaron comes to complaining about or mourning the death of his sons. There is so much grief and pain in that line that it melts the heart. We get a sense of the agony with which Aaron would have internalized the metaphor, ingesting the meat of the roasted sacrificial lamb while his own lambs were roasted and sacrificed.

This is sufficient to make Moses back off: "And when Moses heard that, he was content." [Leviticus 10: 20].

The Torah portion ends with a discussion of kosher dietary laws. The animals that are regarded as unclean are mentioned, and prohibited. One who eats unclean animals makes himself "abominable" in the sight of the Lord [Leviticus 11: 43]. The purpose of such restrictions is as follows:

For I am the LORD your God: ye shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and ye shall be holy; for I am holy: neither shall ye defile yourselves with any manner of creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. For I am the LORD that bringeth you up out of the land of Egypt, to be your God: ye shall therefore be holy, for I am holy. [Leviticus 11: 44-5].

This strikes me as very curious and unique. God wants us to be holy, as He is holy. What does that kind of holiness mean? Other religions have buildings, books, artifacts that are holy, but here, God wants people to be holy. We sanctify the holiness of God by being holy ourselves.

As Masons, we are engaged in building that spiritual building, that house not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens. That building is holy, and the Deity to whom it is directed is holy, so we have to be holy in order to build it. Masons understand that the Temple of Solomon, so stately and magnificent, could not withstand the ravages of barbarous force. Freemasonry notwithstanding still survives. It survives because we are building the new Temple not in a place where fire, ram, wrecking ball, or bomb can harm it. We are building it out of our immortal souls, as living stones, which have to be holy if they are to make a holy structure.

Tsav: what isn't being said

In Jewish hermeneutics, remez is studying what isn't being said, rather than what is being said. It is the textual equivalent of looking at negative space in art. So, when Moses is up on Mount Sinai, receiving the Law, Aaron is down at base camp making a Golden Calf for the people to idolate. But the Torah doesn't mention the Golden Calf until much later. There's really no hint in the passage where Moses receives the Torah that the people are otherwise than fully supportive of Moses.

Similarly, in this week's Torah portion, Aaron and his sons are ordained before the finished Tabernacle without giving any hint what is going to happen next week. God tells Moses to gather all the Children of Israel around the entrance of the Tent of Meeting. Recall that there are 600,000 men over 20 years of age, and many more women and children gathering. Moses brings Aaron and his sons in front of the whole group, and ritually washes them, dressing Aaron in the vestments of the High Priest, and his sons in the vestments of the priests. Then he anoints the Tent of Meeting, and Aaron and his sons with anointing oil.

Moses brings forth a bull for a sin offering. Aaron and his sons lay their hands on its head, and then it is ritually slaughtered. The blood is sprinkled on the altar, and its intestinal fat, the protuberance of its liver, and its kidneys are ritually burned, and then its body is burned outside the camp Then Moses brings forth a ram for a burnt offering. Aaron and his sons lay their hands on its head, it is ritually slaughtered, and its blood is sprinkled on the altar and then it is burned whole on the altar. A second ram is slaughtered, and Moses daubs its blood on the ridge of the right ear, the thumb and big toe of Aaron and his sons. The ram's intestinal fat, protuberance of the liver and its kidneys are burned on the altar, and its blood, mixed with oil, is sprinkled on Aaron and his sons and their vestments. The meat was boiled, and Aaron and his sons were to eat the meat inside the Tent of Meeting, from which they were forbidden to leave for seven days.

Spoiler Alert:

What happens next week? On the eighth day, God consecrated the Tabernacle. More animals were brought to be sacrificed, and the Presence of God (כְבוֹד-יְהוָה in Hebrew) came down as a fire and consumed the sacrifices. Then something bad happened. On their own initiative, Aaron's two oldest sons, Nadab and Abihu, each grabbed a fire pan, lit incense, and to offered it to God. The fire they offered was described as "strange [or alien] fire", or אֵשׁ זָרָה. The result? "And there went out fire from the LORD, and devoured them, and they died before the LORD." [Leviticus 10: 2].

I'm going to talk about this a lot more next week, but for now, there's no hint during the description of the ordination in this week's Torah portion that these sudden and shocking deaths are about to happen. None. What does the silence mean?

After all, the Torah narrative is full of foreshadowing. Throughout the description of Eden is a foreboding that it cannot last, and will end in grief. Joseph's triumph in Egypt sows the seeds of the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt. Pharaoh's stubbornness is his downfall. Why no hint that Aaron's firstborn and second-born son are doomed to die for misplaced zeal? What is the Torah saying this week by describing their ordinations as if no tragedy is about to occur?

It suggests that their deaths never should have happened, just as the Golden Calf never should have happened. God was seeking perfection on Earth, and man is imperfect. That is why Moses, enraged, smashed the first set of Tablets of the Law inscribed by the hand of God, and made new Tablets with his own hands. Nadab and Abihu were cut down by the intersection of their own imperfections with the perfection of God. Why? That will have to wait until next week.

Vayikra: Making Sacrifices

This week begins the Book of Leviticus, probably the most misunderstood book in the Torah. The book begins with a detailed discussion of different animal sacrifices, tells of the ghastly botched inauguration of the Tabernacle, and discusses the concept of readiness and unreadiness for ritual activity in more detail than most people are comfortable with. Most people within the Judeo-Christian tradition are deeply uncomfortable with its frankness, harshness, and profound strangeness.

It must be understood that Judaism prior to the fall of the Second Temple was, as all ancient religions were, centered around sacrificing animals, birds, and grain products. The parameters of worship, observance, penance, and celebration were based around the sacrifice of cattle, sheep, goats, birds, and measures of grain. This is pretty much baffling to modern sensibilities, but the ancient soul was buoyed and awestruck by these sacrifices, and in them found the bulk of what for them constituted worship.

The Rabbis of the post-Talmudic era have struggled with this, as it is so alien to what we consider a cultured understanding of Deity, faith and worship. We know that when Titus destroyed the Second Temple, the portion of Jewish observance centered around animal sacrifices died out, and with it, the hereditary priesthood, which was centered around the Temple sacrifices. A group of rabbis gathered in the city of Tiberias in Israel and collectively decided that, without a Temple towards which to direct sacrifices, Jews should offer prayers instead, a prayer session for each designated time for sacrifice. Instead of morning sacrifices, afternoon sacrifices and evening sacrifices, with an extra sacrifice on the Sabbath, and yet another on Yom Kippur, instead we have, respectively, Shacharit prayers, Minchah prayers, Ma'ariv prayers, Musaf prayers, and Ne'ilah prayers. This transformation saved the Jewish religion, but much more importantly, it made Judaism a modern religion. There are still some Orthodox Jews who want to rebuild the Temple and begin the animal sacrifices all over again, and there is a line in the Amidah, or standing prayer, about bringing back animal sacrifices, but most contemporary Jews shudder at the idea.

While Christians (and Masons) insist that the Temple will be rebuilt not in physical space, but in each yearning soul, Jews do something similar in suggesting that when the Messiah comes, animal sacrifices will no longer be appropriate, because the soul will be able to express its devotion to God without the need for such intermediaries. The Rabbinical explanation seems to be that primitive people needed agricultural sacrifices because they were too crude for the subtleties of prayer, but after the Temple was destroyed, we could no longer take refuge in such sacrifices, but were forced to confront the mysteries of prayer head on.

Vayikrah (וַיִּקְרָא in Hebrew) means "and He called". Somehow, it is very Jewish to start a book with and. This Torah portion describes five types of sacrifice. The burnt offering (עֹלָה, or olah), the meal offering (מִנְחָה, or minchah), the peace offering (שֶׁ֫לֶם, or shelem), the sin offering (חַטָּאת, or chatat), and the guilt offering (אָשָׁם, or asham) A burnt offering is an animal or bird that is entirely burned. A bull is burned, or a ram if the person cannot afford a bull, or a goat if a ram proves too expensive, or a turtle-dove or pigeon, if the person cannot afford a goat. If a person cannot afford a bird, they can sacrifice a meal offering instead. High-quality wheat would be mixed with olive oil, and a scoop was placed on the fire, and the rest given to the Priests. Leviticus describes the meal offering as "a thing most holy of the offerings of the LORD made by fire." [Leviticus 2: 3], but in the Hebrew, it is described as a kodash kadashim, קֹדֶשׁ קָדָשִׁים, or a Holy of Holies among the fire offerings brought before God.

This is strange. We know that God rejected Cain's grain sacrifice in favor of Abel's animal sacrifice [Genesis 4: 3-5]. We also know that a meal offering is for someone too poor to afford a small bird to sacrifice. That a person that poor would still offer something up to God is profound, and God understands how holy such a sacrifice is.

The peace offering was given freely, without needing to have the sacrifice expiate for the sins of the sacrificer. It was often given to form a new alliance, or to testify about a friendship. The sin offering was in atonement for sin, and the guilt offering was for when the sacrificer was not sure if he had sinned or not, or had unwittingly sinned.

The description remains similar each time. For a bull, the priest would lay his hands on the bull's head, and then it would be ritually slaughtered. The bull's blood was brought into the Tabernacle, and sprinkled in front of the parokhet, or curtain veiling the Ark of the Covenant. Some of the blood was sprinkled on the incense altar, and the rest poured out at the base of the sacrificial altar. The layer of fat covering and attached to the stomachs was pulled out, along with the two kidneys and the  fat surrounding them, and the lobe on the liver near the kidneys. These are placed on the altar and burned, along with the skin of the bull, and all of its flesh, including the food still in its intestines.

To those who find such forms of worship odd, you are not alone. While there are still people today who are awestruck during a bullfight, watching the tragedy of the last tormented moments of the dying bull, I'm not sure they would keep the same emotion while watching various swathes of intestinal fat and organs being collected and burned.

In Talmudic pedagogy, the Book of Leviticus is the first section of Torah taught to young children. In the midrash on Leviticus, Rav Assi explains that children are pure, and the sacrifices are pure, and that is why they are introduced to Torah through the sacrifices. I think a more pedagogically sound explanation might be that sacrifices are deliberate and procedural, and have less interpretation than the troubling and complicated lives of the Patriarchs of Genesis.