Inner Fine-ness

This week’s Torah portion is Emor, which means, speak. God asks Moses to speak to the priests about contamination and ritual purity. Priests are not to come into contact with the dead except for the necessity to bury very close relatives. People with certain blemishes or disabilities are not to serve as priests; contaminated people may not eat the sacrifices and blemished animals may not be sacrificed. The cycle of yearly holidays is described and the law that the punishment must fit the crime, almost always applied as monetary damages, is restated, similar to its first appearance in Exodus.
This is a difficult portion for us moderns to read. We don’t agree with excluding people with blemishes or disabilities. So the task is: how to find meaning in a section of the Torah that speaks about a society long gone, a priestly class and sacrificial system abolished 2,000 years ago, and values we no longer affirm? The sage, S’fat Emet quotes Psalm 12:7, “the words of God are pure words, like purified silver, clear to the world, refined.” This verse speaks of purity, refinement; of having standards and of using our powers of discrimination to make certain distinctions. It is, for me, understandable that God would not want us to offer blemished animals for sacrifice. Giving up animals that no one wanted because there were sick, lame, or defective is not a sacrifice at all. It would be giving our worst and not our best. So God wishes us to give our best. The Eternal is asking us to give only that which has value to us, only that which represents the highest in us; and this holds true on a deeper level as well as on the simple, physical level. We are asked to develop standards for ourselves but not necessarily for others; to develop a certain inner fine-ness and to maintain standards of behavior and practice, judging ourselves but not falling into the trap of judging others. There are at least two reasons to develop standards. The Torah says, (Levit 22:9) “They shall guard my safekeeping and they shall not bear a sin over it. And die because of it, for they will have defiled it. I am God who sanctifies them.”
The first reason seems to be protection – our protection. The priests had a dangerous job to do. They worked among the Holy objects in the Tabernacle, upon which the Divine Presence rested. It was important for them to know how to protect themselves. Aaron’s two sons had died perhaps because they had not known how to keep themselves safe from contact with God’s holiness. So when we are indignant about the rules in Emor, one thing to remember is that they may be there for human protection; so that the priests did not make fatal mistakes that would have caused them to come into contact with more power or purity than their humanity could handle.
The second, deeper reason for developing standards is an inner one. A standard can be exclusionary, excluding certain people or groups, or it can be inclusion-ary, a personal goal to strive toward. Now that there is no Priesthood, we are all meant to be priests, as it says in Exodus, “You shall be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.” Our standards can bring us to find our inner fineness, our inner perfection. When we use our ability to make distinctions to sanctify ourselves by setting inner goals, we do as the S’fat Emet wrote: we bring the precious out of the ordinary. This process of self-refining is holy work. It is the way to make contact with the Godliness in ourselves and the universe. Awe: inner fineness is that quality that Rashi calls accepting upon oneself God’s Divinity. In the Zohar it says, “Wholeness comes to those who have awe of God.” When we strive to express what is highest and finest in ourselves, we cause completion; a wholeness to flow from our actions. Then we feel connected to God and to each other, the deep connection that is really there. There is so much work for us to do in the world: tears to dry, smiles to bestow, love and help to give. To be open to that work heals us and helps us. God asks us to give of our best, for our own benefit. Should we really give anything less?