AHAREI MOT – KEDOSHIM (Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27)

AHAREI MOT – KEDOSHIM (Leviticus 16:1 – 20:27)

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

“Aaron shall take the two he-goats and let them stand before the Lord at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, and he shall place lots upon the two goats, one marked for the Lord and the other marked for Azazel” (Leviticus 16: 7-8).

“You shall be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Leviticus 19: 2).

“Aharei Mot,” the title of this parasha, means “after the death,” referring to “the two sons of Aaron who died when they were too close to the presence of the Lord” (JPS translation).[1] Expiation was required.  All of Leviticus 16, in fact, is devoted to the expiation of sin and consequent purification.

Scrupulous attention is paid to the priestly white linen attire and a host of other atonement rituals, including the choice of a bull for sacrifice and a pair of he-goats. Of the latter, only one is chosen by lot to be sacrificed. The second, marked for Azazel, is to carry all the sins of the Israelites into the wilderness. Like casting our bread crumbs into natural waters at Rosh Hashana, it is reminiscent of the banishment of Cain and of Hagar and Ishmael as well. Cain eventually found respite in Edom, where he and his descendants prospered. Hagar and Ishmael were comforted that God would make of the Israelites two great nations. But what of Azazel, who symbolically carried all our sins away? Did he find respite on the mountain that some think was near Mount Sinai? Different rabbis of old have different explanations. The one that I like best is that of the medieval rabbi, Ibn Ezra. “According to Saadia [Gaon],” he writes, Azazel is “the name of a mountain, so called because it was precipitous.” [2] Possibly the goat driven into the wilderness would eventually stumble on the rocky cliffs and fall to its death, but it would not be slaughtered as a sacrifice.

Other commentators explain that “Azazel” is a compound word (more common in Aramaic than in Hebrew). Thus “as azel” means “the goat went.” [3] Rashi, however, translates Azazel as meaning “to the goats;” in other words, the goat was released alive into the wilderness, presumably to dwell among the other wild goats. I am comforted by Rashi’s explanation. [4]

I was born in January, you see. My astrological sign is the goat, a designation with which I was never comfortable until I visited Arizona, where a single, dry, brown mountain – Camelback – dominated the arid landscape. As my stay there grew longer, though, I began to discern shapes, motion, on the rocky mountain. Animals, living beings of different kinds, colored to match the mountains. And the most agile among them were goats. Surprisingly beautiful to my newly opened eyes, they were mountain goats.

One of them stood high on a cliff, looking out beyond the mountain, protecting the flock below. I began to think that being a mountain goat was perhaps a wondrous thing. To me, it signified that Azazel was cast by lot to be a survivor, a goat that could withstand the barren wilderness and create a family there. Perhaps, in overcoming the sins with which it had been burdened as a form of sacrifice, the sacrificial goat had also endured.

Watching God’s creatures, the nimble goats, I was so moved at the time that I wrote a short poem about this experience. I called it “Born in January, like me.” Now, with a little more humility, I am giving it a new name: “Azazel.”

AZAZEL [5]

Mountain goats in their whiteness

clamber up the stony cliffs,

scale rocky heights,

melt age-old snowcaps

with heated vision.

Flock protected beneath his

fortress, a monarch stands

alone atop the tajo.

Azazel.

[1] “Aharei Mot,” JPS Hebrew English Tanakh, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999) 244.

[2} Ibn Ezra, Quoted in Michael Carasik, Ed., Trans., “Leviticus,” The Commentators’ Bible: The Rubin JPS Miqra’ot Gedolot (Philadelphia: JPS, 2007) 120.

[3] Ibid., 120.

[4] Ibid., 121.

[5] My poem was first published in the 10th Anniversary Issue of Voices of Israel, Haifa, Israel, 1982.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2018. All rights reserved.

Parshat Metzora: The Healing Process (Leviticus 14:1-15:31)

Parshat Metzora: The Healing Process

(Leviticus 14:1-15:31)

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

About three years ago, just as I was about to serve as Guest Staff Rabbi on a long cruise to Brazil, it was announced on ILTV (Israel- English news) that Israeli scientists have created a technology that eliminates the need for insect repellent. That was the last I heard of it, though. However, I would have defied any disease-bearing mosquito to have come close to anyone who emerged from our bus tours, dripping with sunblock and extra-strength Deet. It would have been a fatal journey for the mosquito!

Meanwhile on board the ship, just as on this one, every precaution was taken. Passengers were reminded daily to wash their hands frequently; disinfectant soap machines were stationed outside all public areas; and attendants with piles of hot towels awaited us outside the ship at every port before we could even touch the ship’s gangway railing on re-boarding. In addition, we passengers had individual responsibility to be preventively vaccinated for all kinds of diseases occurring in that part of the world. Most of us took anti-malaria pills. In addition, the ship provided a infirmary staffed by two nurses and a doctor. We were protected plus.

In our Torah portion for this week, Parshat Metzora (which discusses infectious diseases in detail) we can similarly marvel at the wisdom of the careful precautions taken by our ancient Jewish religious tradition not only to isolate – that is, quarantine outside the community – a person afflicted by a disease deemed infectious, but also the concern shown by the priests, the biblical healers, in attempting to identify when the contagious period had passed, and when the infected person had healed sufficiently to return to the community without risk to its members. And without social rejection. Always there is the effort to bring the person back to the community.

This passage clearly identifies the dual concern in our tradition, both for the community and for the individual. The sick person is not an outcast. A daily effort is made by the healers – the priests, dangerously exposing themselves to infection – to go outside the community each day to examine the sick person or persons, and with the medical knowledge of the time to know when they are healed. Simply stated, the priest builds a bridge between the need of the community and the dignity of the person concerned. Only then can the community be whole.

Parshat Metzora also addresses inanimate objects – infected buildings – as well as people. Mold and fungus and greenish-black areas must be removed, and, if the buildings cannot be restored to health, they must be destroyed.

Understandably, most kids approaching bar- or bat-mitzvah dread getting this portion. Their initial reaction is usually “Ugh – Why me?” Most years Metzora is combined with Parshat Tazria, so that the two portions combined go into even more detail about these issues. When my granddaughter ascended to the Torah for her Bat-Mitzvah two years ago, and Metzora was the portion she got! It was my joy and honor to have studied it with her, and to be the rabbi conducting her Bat-Mitzvah. We decided to concentrate not on the disease but on the courage and medical knowledge of the healers, and, yes, she read and commented on this portion with great respect for the healers of our tradition in their ancient, priestly wisdom. In fact, this portion is an essential element in understanding the ritual purity code outlined in the Torah.

There is Divine symbolism inherent in this portion too. In the biblical account of the early years in the desert, Moses throws the sweet branch specified by God into the bitter waters, and, behold, they are sweetened. Jewish wisdom thus suggests that adherence to Divine commands is the sweetness (symbolized by the branch) that alleviates illness (the bitter waters).

Some moderns, like Rabbi Harold Kushner, suggest that concentration on what the powerful and beautiful words of the 23rd Psalm can help in the healing process. So today, thousands of years after it was written, we lift up our eyes to the mountains – to our Divine shepherd – for the health and strength and wisdom to overcome whatever this challenging era demands.

PSALM 23 [1]

Lord, You are my shepherd;

I lack nothing.

You make me lie down in green pastures;

You lead me to water in places of repose;

You renew my life;

You guide me in right paths

as befits Your name.

Though I walk through a valley of deepest darkness,

I fear no harm, for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff – they comfort me.

You spread a table for me in full view of my enemies,

You anoint my head with oil;

my drink is abundant.

Only goodness and steadfast love shall pursue me

All the days of my life,

And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord

For many long years.

[1] This modern translation is adapted from Adele Berlin and Marc Zvi Brettler, Eds. (New York: Oxford University Press [JPS], 2004), 1307.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2018. All rights reserved.

SH’MINI (Leviticus 9:1-11:47)

SH’MINI (Leviticus 9:1-11:47)

By Rabbi Corinne Copnick

As a Torah portion, Sh’mini covers a lot of ground, and what it has to say about the food we consume affects Jewish people to this day. In other words, Sh’mini explains what we have come to call “Kashrut,” “The Kosher Laws,”– an outline of our dietary do’s and don’ts for everyday living, which Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform Jews all interpret differently. A whole range of what we can and cannot eat at Passover is included in these laws too.

Despite the fact that her husband was a Labor Socialist with a dim view of God, my maternal grandmother always kept a strictly kosher home. But she refused to eat at my mother’s home. Why? Because my mother, who thoroughly enjoyed being an “acculturated” school teacher, did not keep a kosher home — even though she had been taught to do so by my grandmother. However, my grandmother would eat regularly at my home because I had not been taught to keep kosher. Also, she said, God would understand that it was important to be with her grandchild – her ainikel –and young family on Friday night. My grandmother’s God was very accommodating, stronger on rachamim than din. Of course, I kept special glass plates for my grandma and served her fruit salad, which was all she would eat, apart from the delicious cakes I bought from a kosher bakery with a heksher stamp.

Much later in my life, I was glad to learn that Los Angeles Torah educator (and political pundit), Dennis Prager, had simplified most of the kosher requirements expressed in Sh’mini into two simple rules: 1) Don’t eat animals that eat other animals, and 2) Don’t eat animals that are scavengers. Most important of all, of course, is the requirement to treat animals humanely, to slaughter them with the least pain possible, and the caution that, if we do eat meat, not to consume the blood of the animal. The ancient Israelites believed that the life of the animal – the DNA so to speak — was in the blood.

The rules concerning separation of milk and meat relate to a different text in the Bible – the prohibition about taking the chicks or potential chicks of the mother bird out of the nest while the mother bird is present. The idea is to avoid causing distress to the mother as much as possible. But there is a deeper concern. Milk represents life; it is considered life-affirming, whereas when we eat meat, it is dead. Dead meat. And so, according to Jewish reasoning, life and death should always be kept separate. Thus no milk and meat together. Some of my rabbinic colleagues have become vegetarian, in fact, so that they don’t have to think about whether or not they are keeping kosher appropriately when their congregants peek at their plates.

* * * *

For centuries, the laws pertaining to Kashrut were clear, but according to Rabbi Lance J. Sussman, Kashrut has become both complex and controversial in modern times:

“A number of factors [have] contributed to the debate over kosher food during the last two centuries. Among those factors are massive acculturation, changes in food production including the industrialization of the making of foods, ‘new’ foods from tofu to genetically modified products, changing views of hygiene, the application of scientific method to kosher food inspection, mass marketing, the health food movement, new understandings of Jewish spirituality, and the recent growth of Orthodox Judaism to mention a few” (“You Are What You Eat: The New World of Kosher Food”).

Added to this is the fact that the kosher food business is BIG business in over 100 countries and, according to Forbes, accounting to food sales of over $12 billion under rabbinic supervision.

Until recent years, the Reform movement considered that kashrut was no longer binding on modern Jews, but it has come a long way since a non-kosher meal known as “the treifah banquet” was served in 1883 at Hebrew Union College. Jewish soldiers, by the way, were first granted an exemption from keeping kosher during World War I.  Since 1979 and more especially since the second Pittsburgh Platform in 1999, the Reform movement has defined its policies with a new openness to traditional practices. Then, “in 2011, the Central Conference of American Rabbis published The Sacred Table…which presented “the possibilities of an ethical, health-based, spiritual approach to culinary culture in the Progressive Jewish Community today.”

Also, many Progressive Jews have become involved in observing “Eco-Kosher,” which Rabbi  Shacheter-Shalomi and Rabbi Arthur Waskow’s Jewish Renewal movement defined as “good practice in everyday life that draws on the deep well-springs of Jewish wisdom…. The fusion of the ancient with the post-modern.” Eco-kosher stresses respect for animals and concern for their distress, it is about not ruining the earth, not eating foods with carcinogens, not overusing tobacco and alcohol, avoiding anorexia, etc.; it stresses tzedakah, the sharing of food with the poor, and praising God for the earth’s bounty before and after a meal. There is a lot of emphasis on praying for rain, which, living in California, I particularly appreciate. Other links with the earth are clothing, energy, breathing (in regard to air pollution) and socially responsible work conditions. And of course, shmita, giving the earth a rest. All of these concerns may be summed up by the ethical principle of Tikkun Olam – Healing the World.

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2018. All rights reserved.

TZAV

TZAV

by Rabbi Corinne Copnick

The title of this week’s parsha is Tzav, which means “command.” It comes from the same Hebrew root as “mitzvah,” which also means “commandment,” but which we often translate today as “good deed.” In last week’s parsha, Vayikra (God “called”), the emphasis was on what you, the person, would bring as a sacrifice in ancient Israel, and on the kind of offering –five types were specified — that you would be bringing as your particular sacrifice. Would it be an “ascending offering” (an olah, which is completely burned); a meal offering (a minchah) – that is, cakes made of grains and mixed with oil? Or would it be a sin offering (a chatat, devoid of oil, to be eaten completely by the priest); or a guilt offering (an asham, also eaten by the priest)? Happily, perhaps it would be a peace offering (a shelamim, eaten by the person who brought the offering – the owner of the animal — after the priest has taken his share? A special kind of shelamim was the Thanksgiving offering, one of gratitude brought by a person who had survived a life-threatening event. Other people could be invited to share in the shelamim feast — because the food could only be kept for a prescribed time before being jettisoned. (After all, there was no refrigeration.)

Although sacrificing animals strongly offends our sensibilities and sense of decency today, a kind of democracy was inherent in all these offerings: People were encouraged to bring offerings that they could afford, without any sense of shame for being poor. For example, if you could only afford to bring a bird rather than a meat offering, it was sacrificed with its feathers intact so that the offering would look bigger, not scrawny. Lots of incense was put on the altar so that the offering would smell good to God.

In Tzav the emphasis shifts from the individual bringing the offering to the role of the priests, the priestly garments they should wear, the anointing with oil to sanctify them, and the offerings they should bring themselves to mark beginning to serve in the sanctuary. The High Priest was required to bring a meal offering every day in order to reinforce his humility through continued identification with the impoverished.  Also, as the priests ate, thus sanctifying the offering, the owner of the korban, the sacrifice, would achieve atonement.

What remains relevant today, is the meaning of the noun, “korban” along with the verb “lehakriv.” They mean drawing near, closeness, the desire, through sacrifice, to come close to God. In Judaic culture, it is about love of God. Sacrifice entails giving up something you love in order to come close to the godly essence within yourself. In our contemporary culture, it may mean giving up your leisure time for a worthwhile cause, or sacrificing a much needed vacation in order to pay for your child’s tuition in a good school or college, or to provide care for your elderly parents. Perhaps it means giving as much as you can manage to a charity or standing up publicly for an ideal. Perhaps it means military service to defend your country – although, since the time of the Akeida, when God prevented Abraham from sacrificing his son, Isaac, human sacrifice is prohibited in Judaism. In Judaism, suicide bombers are a sacrilege.

The Jewish tradition also makes clear that a whole range of giving is permitted, from large to small, without shame, depending on your financial circumstances. But, since biblical times, the act of giving in order behave – and feel — like a godly person has remained an integral part of Jewish culture.

After the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., the Jews were persecuted by the Romans for practicing their faith. After the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, when half a million Jews were killed by the Romans, all of Jerusalem was plowed under. Jews were permitted to enter Jerusalem only on Tisha B’Av, when they were allowed to lament at the Wailing Wall (now called the Western Wall). The Romans had left this retaining wall of the destroyed Temple standing so that the Jews could see what had become of their city.

Without a Temple, without an altar, sacrifices became a thing of the past. Instead, with the gradual growth of rabbinic Judaism, the Talmudic rabbis of the first and second centuries C.E., forbidden to teach Torah, taught about the prophets, what became the Haftarah. They instituted the practice of prayer as a means of drawing near to God, and the donation of money to substitute for sacrifices. It took time for these rabbis, who secretly gathered at first in their own homes as a network of small, like-minded groups, to gain influence, but eventually they did. Their suggestions have held sway as means of keeping – and growing — Jewish communities together until this day so many centuries later.

“Jew and Judaism survived despite the many sacrifices people had to make for it,” writes Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the former Chief Rabbi of Britain. “In the eleventh century, Judah Halevi expressed something closer to awe at the fact that Jews stayed Jewish despite the fact that…they could have converted to the majority faith and lived a life of relative ease (Kuzari 4:23). Equally possible, though, is that Judaism survived because of those sacrifices. Where people make sacrifices for their ideals, the ideals stay strong. Sacrifice is an expression of love” [emphasis mine]. (“Understanding Sacrifice,” Tsav 5776).

At Passover, people tend to marvel at the Hagaddah’s discussion of the five rabbis of old —  Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar the son of Azaria, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarphon — who met at B’nai Brak and stayed up the entire night of Passover discussing the Exodus, the liberation of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. How could they find so much to discuss, their students wondered, calling them because it was time to recite the morning Sh’ma? Perhaps the rabbis stayed up so late because they were also discussing their own situation in regard to Roman persecution, and how they could keep their own communities alive without a Temple. Maybe that was when they settled on prayer and donations as substitutes for sacrifices. Maybe they realized that sustained prayer – and monetary gifts to the needy — could bring people close to God. The Talmud tells us that “Rabbi Elazar would give a coin to a pauper, and only then would he pray” (Baba, Batra 10a)

©️Corinne Copnick, Los Angeles, 2018. All rights reserved.