Like much of Leviticus, Parashat Emor opens with yet more of these rules. But now the Torah needs to acknowledge that even when everything is in the right place, there is still death. What’s a priest to do when tragedy strikes? “Speak [Emor] to the priests, the sons of Aaron,” God tells Moses, “and say to them: None shall defile himself for any [dead] person among his kin, except for the relatives that are closest to him” (Lev. 21:1). In order to stay pure, priests are limited in terms of when they can come near a dead body; even though they may mourn the death of another, the Torah says that they can only be near the corpse of a close relative. After a few terse verses about mourning practices, the Torah enumerates further rules that are meant to keep the priests and High Priest pure, with the upshot being that a priest is “holy to their God” (21:7).

As anyone following along in Leviticus until now knows—the priests are special. And in a ritual system in which impurity abounds and priests must remain on call to serve God, it is unsurprising to see the Torah set extra strictures to keep them pure. But what do we make of such passages today? While many of the practices listed at the opening of this week’s parashah are still observed by Jews who maintain priestly lineage, they can feel remote to the rest of us—rules for a religious elite in a Temple-era world that no longer exists.

R. Mordechai Yosef Leiner (1801–1854), the founder of the Izhbitza-Radzyn line of Hasidic rabbis, read this passage in a way that allows it to speak not only to the priests, but to anyone. In his book the, “the Izbicer” reads this passage allegorically. First, the word “priest” can be understood—based on —not merely as a descendant of Aaron, but as anyone “who seeks to serve God,” an Oved Hashem.

Having made this first move, the Izbicer then reads the passage at the start of this week’s parashah as speaking not just about the specifics of corpse impurities, but about the challenges that face a religious person when they encounter death or other tragedies. “A person like this,” the Izbicer says of the Oved Hashem, “can become angry with God’s actions.” By contrast, someone who “thinks the world operates by chance” cannot be truly angry with God, “because they can say,” when dealing with a tragedy, that “it’s just happenstance.”

The Mei ha-Shiloach explains that this capacity for anger—for frustration with the way things are—is not a failure of faith but is actually an expression of faith. This is a striking inversion of how religious anger is often perceived. We tend to think of protest as a sign of weakened faith. The Izbicer suggests the opposite: that the person who cannot be angry with God has simply stopped believing that God is responsible for anything.

The frustration of the Oved Hashem comes from a place of care. To challenge the order of things is to believe not only that they can be different but that they should be, because ultimately there is an overarching ethics according to which the world should operate, that even God should be held to. Only someone who takes God seriously, who believes the world is ordered with intention and purpose, can be genuinely outraged when that order seems to fail. Indifference is the luxury of those who expect nothing.

As an educator teaching in a world full of ever more injustices, my greatest fear is not that my students will be upset with the order of things, but that they will stop caring at all. True faith carries with it the burden of expectation, and with expectation comes the possibility of disappointment. The Izbicer reminds us that we should hold on to that disappointment. Our disappointment—our own and that of our students—should inspire us to do good: to remain invested enough in the world to be troubled by it, and to fight and strive for something better.

Leviticus imagines a perfectly ordered world—one in which everything is in its right place. The Izbicer would say that the person of faith has internalized that vision. They know what the world should look like, and so when it doesn’t, they cannot simply shrug. To be frustrated with the world as it is, is to believe in the world as it ought to be.

The chapter begins with a striking heading: “God said to Moses: Speak to the entire assembly of the Israelites and say to them: ‘Be holy, for I, the Lord your God, am holy.’” The text lends this chapter special weight when it instructs Moses to gather the entire people to hear it, something that does not often occur in Leviticus, which is mostly directed at the priests. Indeed, many of the instructions laid down in  would, if observed, produce a society of very high standards: Respect your parents; leave part of your harvest for the poor and the stranger; do not steal, embezzle, or lie; don’t oppress your fellow man; don’t delay payment to your employees; don’t curse the deaf or trip the blind; don’t pervert justice; don’t go around bearing tales; don’t nurse a grievance, take revenge, or hold a grudge; respect your elders and protect the stranger; don’t cheat in business; and, in the middle of the chapter, the ringing and nearly impossible challenge to love your neighbor as yourself.

But the chapter doesn’t begin “Be moral, for I the Lord your God am moral” or “Be righteous, for I the Lord your God am righteous.” It begins “Be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Indeed, everything that surrounds  is about holiness. Our double parashah begins by instructing Aaron not to enter the most holy precinct of the Tabernacle whenever he chooses but only once a year, under particular conditions and pursuant to particular rites, subject to a penalty of death; it seems that the holy is not only an ideal state to be strived for but a force to be treated with caution. The laws of prohibited sexual relations are tied to holiness, for they are preceded and followed by the admonition: “Make yourselves holy and be holy, for I am the Lord your God” () and “Be holy for me, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Holiness seems to involve both a moral and a ritual state: it is to be pursued, in some cases; and to be avoided—or at least, treated cautiously—in others.

The dangers inherent in holiness are mentioned often in the Torah. The warning to Aaron about not entering the holy site builds on the shocking account of the death of his two sons () that resulted from their unauthorized entry into the holy place to make an unauthorized offering of incense (). The Torah does not say that God struck them down; it says that fire emerged from God’s presence—i.e., from the sanctuary itself; they were killed by a force that seemed to be triggered automatically, like an electric shock. And to drive the lesson home, God explains their death by stressing its connection with His holiness:

Through those nearest me will I be shown to be holy,
And before the people as a whole, I will be shown to be glorious. ()

Thus, the Torah commands us to be holy, but it also warns us to beware of the holy.

Our tradition has resolved the tension between the command and the warning by pointing to another meaning of the word kedoshim, the word normally translated “holy.” In many passages in the Bible, words that mean “holy” imply separating or distinguishing. Relying on this usage, tradition explains “You shall be holy” (kedoshim tihyu) as meaning “You shall be separate” (perushim tihyu) (e.g. Sifra Kedoshim 1:1). This usage can be observed in the laws of the Sabbath: when we are commanded to make the Sabbath holy, the meaning is that we are to separate the Sabbath day from weekdays through special observances.

By analogy, when we are told “Be holy, for I, the Lord your God am holy,” the meaning would be that we are commanded to separate ourselves from bad practices, such as the forbidden relations listed twice in our double parashah. The injunction could imply separating ourselves from other nations, in accordance with the heading of Chapter 19: “Do not do the kinds of things that are done in the Land of Egypt where you formerly dwelt, and do not do the kinds of things that are done in the land of Canaan to which I am bringing you.” The injunctions to be holy would imply that, as God is separate and different from the world and everything that is in it, we are expected to be different from the other nations in holding ourselves to a higher standard.

But there is another line of rabbinic interpretation. To be separate, some ancient rabbis explained, means that to be holy, we should separate ourselves, i.e., abstain, even from things that are permitted to us. The law permits us to drink wine, but that does not mean that we have license for drunkenness; the law permits us to have sexual intercourse with our spouses, but should practice it in moderation; the law does not explicitly forbid foul language, but we should avoid it out of our own sense of holiness. (e.g., Ramban) The Pharisees of antiquity were a sect of Jews who adopted stricter rules of ritual purity and obligatory gifts to the priests and Levites than those observed by most Jews. Tradition explains the name of the sect as deriving from parush, “separate,” the very word that the Rabbis used to explain kadosh, “holy.”

Pushed a little further, this idea of holiness could devolve into asceticism. The satisfaction of going the extra mile in serving God, particularly in the form of self-denial, is appealing to a certain religious sensibility and is attested in the history of Jewish religious practice. For spending thirteen years in a cave studying the Torah, the second-century rabbi Simeon bar Yoḥai has come to be considered a saint; his tomb in the Galilee is revered to this day. There were pietists in antiquity who observed a second day of Yom Kippur, resulting in a forty-eight-hour fast. Medieval European Jewish pietists imposed upon themselves extreme mortifications that were similar to those of the monks of medieval Christendom. Kabbalists since the twelfth century have undertaken extreme fasting and periods of isolation from human contact. A person who undertook such restrictions was known in Yiddish as a ��ó�������, a “separated one.” Most rabbis historically, while showing respect for persons who went beyond the law’s minimal demands, have preached moderation. But the ascetic trend in Judaism, though not mainstream, has been continuous.

Not everyone agreed that asceticism was a good thing. The author of Ecclesiastes advocates moderation even in matters of religion, saying, “Do not be overly righteous; why should you make yourself desolate?” Most of us moderns probably incline more to Ecclesiastes’s view than to the views of the ascetics. For it is not only themselves that the too-holy make miserable by choosing to miss out on so many of life’s healthy and permissible pleasures. We have all observed the tendency of the too-holy to take pride in their piety and to look down on the rest of us, even on those who strive to be merely holy. There is even an English word for the smug too-holy: sanctimonious, derived from the Latin word for holy, sanctus. They are a social type from which the rest of us are happy to be separated! Perhaps it was these extremists to whom Hillel addressed his admonition, “Do not separate [tifrosh] yourself from the community” ().

But the holiness that is enjoined on us cannot simply be an avoidance. God’s holiness radiates outward, so can the holiness that He expects of us be merely a turning away? God’s holiness is a positive; can ours be merely a negative? We are commanded not merely to avoid something but to do something. Our chapter’s injunctions to love one another and to love the stranger must be a start in the direction of holiness. But the danger that radiates from the holy suggests that something more than mere obedience, more than even fastidious obedience, more even than love is implied in the command to be holy.

God’s holiness is surely not merely a set of restrictions and requirements but the power that created and sustains the universe and that has the capacity to bring it crashing down. We cannot achieve that kind of power, of course—and woe betide the one who thinks he can! But insofar as it is compatible with our powers as human beings and the capacity of social institutions to tolerate it, we are to emulate this force by living actively, engaging positively and intensively in whatever we do, however we live, whatever choices we make.

This commentary was originally published in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

When a person has on the skin of his body a swelling, a rash, or a discoloration, and it develops into a scaly affection on the skin of his body, it shall be reported to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons, the priests.

The idea that others would examine and report on intimate details of our bodies—that such things would be of communal concern, and subject us to institutional regulation—may seem archaic. But as transgender people know, when it comes to gender, this kind of surveillance is alive and well.

Every trans person has experienced gender surveillance—the ongoing scrutiny of bodies, clothing, voices, and gestures to determine if we are male or female. Gender surveillance happens in stores, on the street, in the work place; it is conducted by strangers and friends, bosses and employees, police and people who are homeless, doctors and accountants. Wherever we go, whomever we encounter, others, consciously or unconsciously, are looking at us to determine whether we are male or female—which is why the therapist who helped me through gender transition instructed me to always carry a letter, addressed “To whom it may concern,” in which she assured whoever was reading it that I was not presenting myself as a woman in order to defraud or otherwise harm others.

I am not only an object of gender surveillance; I participate in the communal monitoring of gender. When I see someone, I immediately try to determine if they are male or female, because so many of my habits of understanding and relating to others are premised on determining who they are in terms of binary gender. I have lived my entire life engaging in gender surveillance, subjecting everyone—myself included—to that binary-enforcing gaze.

The spate of “bathroom bill” legislation in North Carolina, Texas, and elsewhere—laws designed to force trans people to use the restrooms that correspond to the sex on our birth certificates—has drawn national attention to gender surveillance. “Bathroom bills” require people whose bodies visibly vary from the norm to undergo intensive, intrusive examination and, if our differences are officially found to be defiling, to be expelled from communal spaces and publicly stigmatized.

 commands similar responses to bodies whose differences are officially deemed “leprous”:

As for the person with a leprous affection, his clothes shall be rent, his head shall be left bare, and he shall cover over his upper lip; and he shall call out, “Impure! Impure!” He shall be impure as long as the disease is on him. Being impure, he shall dwell apart; his dwelling shall be outside the camp ().

In , the Torah expands the range of bodies that are to be expelled because they are considered defiling:

The Lord spoke to Moses, saying: Instruct the Israelites to remove from camp anyone with an eruption or a discharge… Remove male and female alike; put them outside the camp so they do not defile the camp of those in whose midst I dwell. The Israelites did so, putting them outside the camp (vv. 1-4).

The image of organized searches for those whose bodies may “defile” their society may seem like an outgrown relic of Iron Age notions of ritual purity. But as Jews found out during the Holocaust, and, as Latino communities in the U.S. targeted for immigration “sweeps” can attest to today, human beings have never left such practices behind.

To my knowledge, trans people have never been subjected to this sort of formal “removal” process. Until recently, most of us have lived in hiding or “below the radar”: too few and too scattered to inspire formal searches and “removals.” But many trans people know what it’s like to be seen as defiling our families, homes, workplaces, and communities, and forcibly removed as a consequence—expelled, sometimes violently, because the “eruptions” of our transgender identities are seen as a threat to communal health, harmony, religious life, or social order.

The removals of defiling bodies commanded by the Torah are in many ways less harsh than the removals many transgender people endure. The Torah’s commandments target temporary physical conditions that may affect anyone, rather than singling out a specific minority for discrimination. Unlike today’s gender-based removals, the Torah’s laws don’t stigmatize those who are removed from the camp, or suggest that they are guilty of moral failing, sin, or crime. (While leprosy was later interpreted and stigmatized as divine punishment, “eruptions and discharges” are common events.) And while the Torah allows those who have been removed to rejoin the community after completing rituals of purification, such as those detailed in , many transgender people are exiled for years, decades—sometimes for the rest of our lives.

The Torah is often cited as the basis for religious communities to exclude, exile, and stigmatize transgender people—and even to deny us urgent medical care—but the Torah never commands, approves, or encourages such things. Even when Moses declares that those who cross-dress are “abhorrent” to God, he does not claim that God demands that they be “removed from camp.” Though there have always been people who do not fit into the categories of male and female, the Torah says nothing about us. It does not portray us as a threat or an abomination; it doesn’t declare us unclean or unfit to participate in communal worship or activities; it doesn’t demonize us, curse us, punish us, relegate us to the margins or the shadows, order gender surveillance to guard against our entry into the community or the Tabernacle, or organize searches to locate and expel us.

The Torah’s silence opened the door for the rabbis of the Talmud to adapt halakhah to enable intersex Jews to participate in Jewish communal life, and, more recently and locally, for Yeshiva University to tolerate my presence as an openly transgender professor. But because the Torah does not acknowledge that there are human beings who are not simply male or female, it shrouds us in silence and incomprehensibility.

The Torah’s detailing of defiling physical differences ensured that these differences could be recognized, spoken of, and understood by communities as part of being human. In order to fully include transgender people, Jewish communities have to follow the Torah’s example—to speak frankly about transgender identities, to recognize and pragmatically address our differences, and to face up to, and change, the communal policies, practices, and habits that, intentionally or not, lead so many of us to be removed, or to remove ourselves, from the camp.

When this d’var Torah was first published in 2017, so-called bathroom bills—laws criminalizing trans people’s use of public restrooms that fit the gender with which we identify—were relatively new and, to me, surprisingly unpopular. Now, nine years later, this kind of anti-trans legislation has metastasized. Thousands of trans people and their families have become internal refugees, moving from state to state in search of health care, equality, and safety; others, including me, have either fled or are preparing to flee the country. All of us are waiting to find out if we will be subject to the invasive processes described in Leviticus 13 and Numbers 5: inspecting our bodies, officially designating us as “unclean,” and forcibly removing us, as lepers and other “unclean” Israelites were, from American society. 

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Moses’s response is to state that he now understands something God had said in the past:

Then Moses said to Aaron, “This is what the LORD meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, And gain glory before all the people.” And Aaron was silent.()

What is Moses trying to convey to his brother in this moment of sudden tragic loss? Does he mean this to be comforting? Or is he simply musing to himself in the shock of the moment, much as Robert Oppenheimer did on July 16, 1945, in the aftermath of the Trinity nuclear test at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds” (paraphrasing Bhagavad Gita 11:32). Is it not a moment so pregnant with power and potential, triumph and tragedy, that only such words will do?

But the mystery here is greater than at first glance. Even accepting Moses’s reverie as a natural human response, we are still left with the question: What was God’s original statement? There is no verse in the Torah that directly corresponds to Moses’s statement. So what did God say? And why had Moses been confused by it? How did the death of Aaron’s sons clarify it for him? The answer to these questions is the subject of a dispute in the  where two verses are proposed as candidates for Moses’s conundrum. By looking at the Talmud’s two suggestions as to what God’s confusing statement was, we can gain insight into Moses and Aaron, understanding their reactions to this moment better. 

The first possibility the Talmud presents is that Moses is referring to God’s commandment in :

The LORD said to Moses, “Go down, warn the people not to break through to the LORD to gaze, lest many of them perish. The priests also, who come near the LORD, must stay pure, lest the LORD break out against them.”

Here God warns Moses that the people should not ascend Mt. Sinai during God’s revelation upon the mountain. The power and presence of Divine glory is so great, and the human form so weak, that the bodies of those who approach will be overwhelmed and destroyed. It does not seem that there is any moral quality to this prohibition, but simply anxiety over uncontrollable danger. God seems unable to hold back the inherent radiating power that Divine presence evokes. Like getting too close to the sun, or perhaps to a source of ionizing radiation, those who get too close to God’s immediate presence will inevitably perish because of the tremendous force of the radiating Glory.

This is very much akin to the story of Uzza ben Abinadab recounted in  and :. Uzza and his brother were charged with driving the cart carrying the ark when David first tried to bring it up to Jerusalem. On the way, the animals driving the cart stumbled, leading the ark to slip, and Uzza reached out, catching the ark, and dying instantly on the spot. David was afraid to bring the ark any further and delayed bringing it into Jerusalem for three months. Uzza committed no moral transgression, only an instinctual error, and died from direct exposure to God’s power. If we accept this understanding, Moses means to tell Aaron something like: “Working this close to so much power is dangerous, and those closest (i.e., most physically proximate) to God will be the most exposed to the danger.” In other words, God’s power cuts both ways. It can grant great benefits, but it can overwhelm us and destroy us as well if we fail to take care.

The second possibility the Talmud presents is :

. . . a regular burnt offering throughout the generations, at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting before the LORD. For there I will meet with you, and there I will speak with you, and there I will meet with the Israelites, and it shall be sanctified by My Presence (kevodi).

Here God alludes to the Divine glory (kevodi) as the “power source” of the desert sanctuary, namely God’s presence. What does Moses find mysterious or confusing about this? Well, even in the desert, God is represented by the kohanim; they make up at least a portion of God’s glory.  Can humans truly sanctify the Divine, when the Divine is already entirely holy? Here, the Talmud suggests that we read the word kevodi (lit. “My-glory”) as mekhubadai (“those who glorify me”). In other words, God’s presence is one and the same as the human beings who attempt to approach God. Those who reach out to God can come to represent God so completely that they are equivalent to God’s own presence.

With this interpretation, the Talmud links the act of Nadab and Abihu in bringing strange fire with more typical acts of martyrdom. The Talmud seems to be claiming that the two sons of Aaron chose to serve by dying for God in order to dedicate the sanctuary with their lives. This act of self-sacrifice would show the power contained in the sanctuary and make it a source of awe among the people. While this may be troubling to us, the Talmud’s interpretation attempts to fully demonstrate the strength of Moses’s words to Aaron: “Your sons did no wrong. They died doing a good thing, sanctifying the Divine name among the people.”

The raw, visceral potency of this understanding is undeniable, and I find its call a primal one. Though I know there will be many who find this second interpretation deeply disturbing, its demand that connection with God is worth giving up one’s life raises the stakes in religious life. When we fail to see that this power, majesty, and glory is one of the things that consistently attracts people to religion, we put ourselves in a very dangerous position. At some level, the tremendous mystery which awakens within us fear and trembling can be properly taken as the Divine voice calling out to us. On the other hand (and this is the thing that disturbs us so deeply), what we think to be a great mystery can simply be a moment of self-delusion, leading us into acts of nihilistic self-destruction.  One of our most central tasks as religious people is to sort out magical thinking and wish-fulfilling fantasy from God’s true demands, demands that lead to authentic holy deeds and actual moral imperatives.

I think this last thought is more aligned with the Talmud’s first interpretation, that all power, especially religious power, can be overwhelming and dangerous, and it needs to be contained in order to be safely employed for the betterment of the world. This is what happened at Mount Sinai when God told the people they should not ascend the mountain lest they die. Can we understand the purpose of the desert sanctuary similarly? Must we not keep Divine power contained in the midst of the people? If we are able to do so, becoming a community both containing and embodying holiness, we can approach God without fear. My blessing for us all is that we have access to God’s power, but safely and beneficially, not as a mighty storm, but as a gentle rain.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

There are numerous points of entry, including the haftarah for this week, which points to the interrelationship between Passover itself and Shabbat Hagadol. Without making a case for precedents and influences, let us note that this haftarah (Malachi 3:4–24) concludes with an explicit reference to Elijah (vv. 23–24): “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the LORD. He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents…” Now, I think that reconciling parents and children is a wonderful task, but that is a subject we shall leave for another day. In rabbinic interpretation, one of Elijah’s responsibilities was held to be in reconciling halachic disputes that occurred in antiquity and concerning which no resolution was ever recorded. It is one such unresolved dispute that provides us with a wonderful point of entry for Elijah into our Passover experience and his mysterious cup of wine

Some modern scholars have taken a kind of anthropological approach to note Elijah’s presence in our liturgies at particular “liminal moments.”[i]  Taken from the Latin limen, or “threshold,” the term was developed by 19th and early 20th century anthropologists, such as Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner, to refer to rites of passage or moments of transition that were felt to be dangerous. Jewish liturgies created for such moments thus invoked Elijah as a kind of “heavenly protector” to help the participant transition from the “before” to the “after.” A brit milah is one such type of moment (potential danger to the newborn son); Motzei Shabbat is another one (one Jewish belief holds that God takes away at the end of Shabbat, the “second soul” with which God has endowed us at the onset of Shabbat, and the fear is that God will accidentally take away our primary soul, as well).

In this context we must recognize that Passover was often an especially dangerous time for Jews. It takes place during the same season as the one in which Christians mark the crucifixion and was therefore also a time at which—until quite recently— that Christian tradition charged ancient Jews. Christians would take out the responsibility for this upon contemporary Jews living in their midst. Pogroms would often break out during Passover/Christian Holy Week. And so, during the seder, when Jews would go see if Christians were in the vicinity, they invoked Elijah as a protector at that time, as well. Some liturgies incorporate the singing of Eliyahu ha-Navi at this time; others incorporate the tradition of reciting verses such as שְׁפֹךְ חֲמָתְךָ אֶל הַגּוֹיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא יְדָעוּךָ וְעַל מַמְלָכוֹת אֲשֶׁר בְּשִׁמְךָ לֹא קָרָאוּ, “Pour out Your fury on the nations that do not know You, upon the kingdoms that do not invoke Your name” (Psalm 79:6), which is thus to be understood as what might be recited “when the coast was clear.”

Returning to idea of Elijah as a mediator, we need to look at a central passage concerning God’s promises to the Israelite nation while it was still suffering under Egyptian bondage:

Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the LORD. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, the LORD, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians (Exodus 6:6-7).

In various midrashim (e.g., Talmud Yerushalmi Pesahim 10:1), the sages consider this passage to be the passage of the arba leshonot ge’ulah, “four expressions of redemption,” because it was felt that by means of the four verbs contained in this passage, God had promised redemption Israel four times. Now, you may recall that the Mishnah (Pesahim 10:1) ruled that a person should drink no fewer than four cups of wine during the seder (וְלֹא יִפְחֲתוּ לוֹ מֵאַרְבַּע כּוֹסוֹת שֶׁל יַיִן). Moreover, according to some authorities, this requirement was based on the arba leshonot ge’ulah passage from the Book of Exodus. However, other Sages pointed to the verse that immediately follows this passage (Exodus 6:8) and which contains an additional “expression of redemption,” והבאתי: “I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I the LORD.” According to the logic of these sages, even though God has not yet brought the entire Jewish people into the Land, none should drink fewer than FIVE cups of wine at the seder to commemorate what were, in effect, not four but five expressions of redemption!

Now, if one thinks about a dispute such as this one, with one rabbinic position holding that one should drink no fewer than four cups, and the other position holding that one should drink no fewer than five cups, one can see that, despite the dispute, both sides agree that four cups should be drunk. And that becomes the halacha: we drink four cups of wine—and pour the fifth, but do not drink. And that fifth cup becomes the “Cup of Elijah,” not because Elijah comes to each celebrating Jewish home and drinks some wine from “his” cup, but because of the role the figure of Elijah plays, according to rabbinic lore, when two groups of opposing rabbis cannot agree on what the halacha is, but know they must establish a rule to follow. And that role is established by a midrash on the verse from Malachi that we read as part of the haftorah for Shabbat Hagadol, and that I cited earlier: “Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the LORD.  He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents…” (Mal. 3:23–24). In this sense, the reconciliation that Elijah is to bring about is not between literal family members, but members of the broader rabbinic family. Moreover, even the Aramaic word that is found in the Talmud to mark such irreconcilable disputes ( תיקו literally, “let it—the dispute—stand”) was taken to be an acronym for Malachi’s promise of a deliverance that would be heralded by the Prophet Elijah: תשבי יתרץ קושיות ובעיות tishbi yitaretz qushiyot u-va’ayot, “Elijah will resolve difficulties and problems.”

And now that we have traced the route through which Elijah visits our seder, I will close this essay not with additional analysis, but with a prayer: May we soon come to live in a world that merits Elijah’s arrival, a world that is marked not by strife but by amity. And may we welcome Elijah into our seder both with honest and ritualized memory of terrible experiences the Jewish people have endured, but also with the hope that one day—soon, we hope!—we may experience peace and reconciliation.

[i] See Lawrence A. Hoffman, Beyond the Text: a Holistic Approach to Liturgy (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1987), pp. 20–45 (for the role of Elijah, see pp. 24–27; on liminality, see pp. 42–43).

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Parashah Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

There are several distinct covenants with God in the Tanakh, including with Noah and all humanity; with Abraham and his descendants; with the Jewish people through the giving of the Torah; with Aaron and his priestly descendants; and with David and his royal House.

And in our parashah, the (somewhat lesser-known!) covenant of salt:

וְכָל־קָרְבַּ֣ן מִנְחָתְךָ֮ בַּמֶּ֣לַח תִּמְלָח֒ וְלֹ֣א תַשְׁבִּ֗ית מֶ֚לַח בְּרִ֣ית אֱ-לֹהֶ֔יךָ מֵעַ֖ל מִנְחָתֶ֑ךָ עַ֥ל כָּל־קָרְבָּנְךָ֖ תַּקְרִ֥יב מֶֽלַח׃

You shall season your every offering of meal with salt; you shall not omit from your meal offering the salt of your covenant with God; with all your offerings you must offer salt. (Lev. 2:13)

The law here is clear: the grain offering and all other (i.e. animal) sacrifices have to be made with salt. The use of the word covenant (berit) is puzzling and an exploration of this phrase can teach us about the nature of covenants with God and beyond.

A similar phrase (berit melakh, rather than melakh berit) appears two other times in the Bible:

All the sacred gifts that the Israelites set aside for God I give to you, to your sons, and to the daughters that are with you, as a due for all time. It shall be an everlasting covenant of salt before God for you and for your offspring as well. (Num. 18:19)

Surely you know that the God of Israel gave David kingship over Israel forever—to him and his sons—by a covenant of salt. (2 Chron. 13:5)

Unlike in our parashah, in these contexts the subject matter isn’t about salt at all—so what is this “covenant of salt” in Numbers and Chronicles?

Ramban suggests on our verse in Leviticus that the phrase refers to the requirement for salt in sacrifices as a covenant itself, and that the other verses are compared to it to emphasize their long endurance:

“because there is a sacrificial covenant, the Torah also uses this covenant as a model for other covenants, as both the priestly covenant (Numbers 18:19) and the Davidic covenant (2 Chronicles 13:5) are called “covenant of salt” because they are upheld just as the sacrificial covenant of salt.” (Sefaria Community translation by Zev Prahl)

The notion of an enduring covenant—one that continues through the generations in particular—is important in both Numbers (where the verse specifically discusses Aaron’s descendants) and in Chronicles (where this is part of a demand by David’s great-grandson, Abijah, that a challenger submit to his authority). But it’s not immediately clear why this “covenant” of salt on sacrifices is so quintessentially enduring.

I suspect that as covenants broadly have a link to salt, the word “covenant” was added in Leviticus because the emphatic requirement regarding salt brought this link to the author’s mind. So, what is the connection between salt and covenants that endure? One quite intuitive suggestion is that it is due to salt’s preservative qualities. The Midrash on the passage from Numbers states:

“The covenant was made with Aaron with something that is not just healthy [i.e. resistant to decay], but maintains the health of other things.” (Sifrei Bemidbar, Korah, pis. 118, ed. Horovitz)

Similarly, on 2 Chron 13:5, the Metzudat David commentary of David Altschuler explains the phrase “covenant of salt”:

“The establishment of the enduring covenant [with David’s house] is like salt, in that it endures and does not rot.”

Salt is in fact mentioned in reference to covenants in several ancient Near Eastern sources beyond the Bible, and this may well be because “its preservative qualities made it the ideal symbol of the perdurability of a covenant.” (Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, 191)

Salt also played a less figurative role in some ancient covenants as it was a key ingredient in meals that were eaten on the establishment of a pact:

What is fundamental is that “the communion partaking of salt is a sign of friendship and a symbol of communality.” [from Wilhelm Rudolph’s  Handbuch zum Alten Testament volume on Ezra and Nehemia] The same was true for the Greeks and Romans. . . .

Binding mutual commitments result from the hospitality of table fellowship. … The “covenant of salt” transfers to the divine covenant the notion of hospitality associated with table fellowship, with its subsequent commitment to loyalty and solicitude; Israel is to keep its covenantal obligations, although God, too, is to provide for the election and rights of the covenantal partner  . . . . (Hermann Eising, Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament, s.v. salt)

Sitting down and eating a proper meal together (salt seems to make the meal “proper” in some of the ancient world) forms a bond. And it’s worth noting that the priestly families literally shared sacrificial meals with God! Biblical scholars often compare the covenant between God and Israel to political arrangements between leaders of greater and lesser powers. That kind of geopolitical framing can obscure the personal, even intimate nature of these covenants. (Indeed, political leaders today still have state banquets as acts of foreign relations.)

A kabbalistic connection between salt and covenant can also be found in Rabbenu Bahya (on Lev. 2:13), who conceptualizes salt as the product of sea water and the heat of the sun. Therefore,

“In the essence of salt is the power of water and the power of fire, which signify two of the [Divine] attributes on which the world is established: the attribute of Compassion (midat rahamim) and the attribute of Justice (midat hadin), and for this reason . . . it is called “the salt of your covenant with God” . . . . And just like [the Rabbis] said [in Midrash Bereshit Rabbah], God saw that it [humanity] could not endure with Justice [alone], so God combined it with the attribute of Compassion. Relatedly, salt preserves and destroys, it preserves meat for a long time and gives flavor to food, and it also destroys, as vegetation cannot grow in a place that is very salty.”

This commentary serves to highlight two important features of covenants: that they are very powerful forces, and that they must be held in balance to harness their forces for benefit and not for harm. The illustration given by Bahya is instructive: that God had to compromise on God’s initial plan to allow a place for humans in the world. The notion that both parties have to compromise in order to have a successful relationship is familiar from human relationships, but radical when ascribed to divine ones!

Covenant is a form of committed relationship—and the facets of the covenants revealed by the efforts of commentators traditional and modern to explain this curious reference in our parashah can be instructive to us as we think about the relationships in our own lives (including our relationships with God). How will we make them endure? Will they have impact beyond our own lifetimes? What intimate activities seal and reseal our commitments—especially during a time when physical proximity is limited? How can we keep them in balance and thereby harness their power instead of being consumed by it?

The Ben Ish Hai notes that there was a custom amongst the Jews of Baghdad to put salt on the dish that they used to gather pieces of bread whilst searching for hametz before Pesah. One of the reasons he suggests for this tradition is that it might be an omen for fulfilling this mitzvah for many years to come as the Torah refers to salt as an “eternal covenant.” (Halakhot, Year 1, Tzav, 6)

As we prepare for our upcoming sedarim, when we hope to sit down for a ceremonial meal together with some of those with whom we are in relationship, and as we continue to celebrate the ongoing relationship that God established with our ancestors, may we remember (perhaps as we taste the salt water) to reconsider, reseal, and strengthen all the covenants in our lives.

This commentary was originally published in 2020.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Rituals of closure are common in both the secular and religious realms. An example of the first is the sounding of retreat and the lowering of the flag marking the end of the official duty day on military installations. An instance of the second is the siyyum, a liturgical ritual and festive meal that is occasioned by the completion of the study of a Talmudic tractate. Closure rituals relate not only to the past but to the future as well. On the one hand, the temporal demarcation of a past event facilitates the emergence of its distinct identity, internal coherence, and significance, thereby providing insight, understanding, and, at times, a sense of accomplishment. At the same time, by declaring an end, a closure ritual creates space in which one can—and must—begin anew; the past is to be neither prison nor refuge.

Immediately after the final verse of Shemot, the book of Exodus, is chanted this coming Shabbat we will call out to the reader, “Hazak, hazak, venit-hazek”, which might be translated as, “Be strong, be strong, and we will take strength from you.” (For some reason, it has not become the custom to modify the above declaration and use the gender appropriate “hizki, hizki” when a woman is reading the Torah.) The “hazak” declaration is a closure ritual, a performative parallel to the graphic demarcation in the Torah scroll of Shemot’s conclusion by means of four blank lines. It announces that the first part of the national saga has come to a close with the construction and completion of the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. In that endeavor all of Israel was united in dedication to a common goal; each contribution of resources, talent, and effort was vital, while none was sufficient.

The Mishkan was of course of no worth without the presence of its designated occupant: the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence. “For over the Tabernacle the cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in [the cloud] by night in view of all the house of Israel in their journeys” (). With the advent of the Shekhinah’s presence the inert structure is animated and a new story begins: “The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting” (). Shemot’s static image of the Mishkan as a place of rest is replaced with Vayikra’s dynamic one: the Mishkan is to be a place where God and humanity meet, where God and Moses converse and where Aaron is to enter the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur.

Clearly, a closure ritual is appropriate as we conclude the reading of Shemot. But why choose “hazak” as the ritual? Why the need to urge the reader to be strong and to wish strength for ourselves? A moment of completion is a complex one. We may feel sad that the end has come. In addition, in the moment of completion we often allow ourselves to feel the exhaustion that we have denied in the pursuit of closure, rendering us unready and perhaps unwilling to face the next challenge that lies before us.

So too, with the completion of Shemot. The reading ends with a crescendo, and yet it will be followed by the blessing recited at the end of every aliyah. We the listeners are afraid that, as with the seven lean cows who ate the seven fat ones in Pharaoh’s dream, the drama and power of the words we have heard will be swallowed up by the ordinariness of the blessing that follows. We also know that more lies ahead, including the tragic death of Aaron’s sons, () which will mar the dedication of the building the construction of which has been described so lovingly in Shemot. Therefore, we need strength. We need to be saved from the depression that accompanies endings and we need strength to face and navigate the stories that will follow.

Yet let us ask further: Why do we not simply declare, “Let us all be strong”? Why single out the reader? A teaching of Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, the mid-20th century author of Mikhtav Me’eliyahu, a collection of mussar essays, provides enlightenment. As we all know, says Rabbi Dessler, there are takers and givers. It turns out, however, that some give in order to take and some take in order to give. Suppose that someone agrees to donate a million dollars to a synagogue but then attaches all sorts of conditions to his gift, conditions that serve the needs of his ego but not those of the congregation. This man is giving in order to take; he’s a giving taker. On the other hand, let’s imagine a dedicated doctor who works night and day to spare his patients from illness and pain. One day, he tells his patients that he is suffering from exhaustion and will be taking a week’s vacation. Only a fool or an ingrate would see this as selfishness. This doctor is taking in order to give; he is a taking giver.

So too with us and our Torah reader. She is our Moses, declaring God’s word to the congregation. Reading Torah is a demanding and exacting task, even for those who have years of experience. (Not incidentally, Vayak-hel Pekudei is the second longest of the weekly Torah readings.) The reading is over, the reader is exhausted. We say: you give us inspiration through your chanting of the Torah. We wish you strength, both out of love for you and because we rely on your strength. You can give to us only if we also give to you.

We want our leaders to give us what we need and desire. Too often we are oblivious to their needs and to the limits of their time and energy. They want to give but unless we give too they will ultimately have nothing to give us. Let us make our leaders strong, through love, encouragement, and material assistance, so that we can be strengthened by them.

This commentary was originally published in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Parashat Ki Tissa either supports or challenges Ha’am’s words. This week’s parashah relates one of the lowest moments in Israel’s story—the sin of the golden calf—in which Israel dances before a god of their own making. Coming down Mount Sinai with the stone tablets inscribed by God’s finger (Exod. 31:18), Moses sees Israel’s frenzy and smashes the tablets. Moses spends the rest of the parashah picking up the pieces and working to restore Israel’s relationship with God. The parashah ends with God giving a new set of tablets to Moses. The holy covenant between God and Israel is restored.

The great sin (חטאה גדלה, Exod. 32:21) of the golden calf is packaged tightly within the magisterial details related to the building of the Mishkan, Israel’s portable temple. In Exodus 25–31, God outlines the plans for the Mishkan, replete with precious metals and incense recipes. Exodus 35–40 chronicles the building of the Mishkan. Notably, at the core of this sumptuous description are laws related to the observance of Shabbat, Exodus 31:12–17 and 35:2–3. In this literary way, holy time appears to lie at the center of holy space. The Rabbis suggest that the Torah’s structure prohibits labor on Shabbat by revealing that even God’s house cannot be built on Shabbat (Mekhilta Derabi Yishma’el 35:1).

The sin of the golden calf and its aftermath rests between the laws of rest. Why? Why is this shameful story framed by the laws of Shabbat? Its placement could challenge Ahad Ha’am’s message by showing that Shabbat, in fact, cannot keep the Jews. In this reading, Israel’s shocking apostasy is a disruption that shatters sacred time and proves it to be too abstract a concept for young Israel to embrace. Israel needs hard shiny objects like the golden calf to worship.

I suggest that the framework of Shabbat encompassing the great sin supports Ha’am’s words. I don’t see the sin as a disruption of sacred time. Rather, I see sacred time, Shabbat observance, as a means to contain the sin. The Torah frames Israel’s sin in this way to convey how Shabbat can protect us from our basest selves and comfort us when we are our basest selves. Even when we behave terribly, as Israel did with the golden calf, Shabbat reminds us of God’s holiness and our holiness. It is a sign of who we can be, as the Torah says: “It is a sign between Me and you for all generations that you know that I, God sanctified you” (Exod. 31:13).

Of course, Shabbat does more than prevent us from being base. It also elevates us, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel beautifully wrote: “It is one of life’s highest rewards, a source of strength and inspiration to endure tribulation, to live nobly . . . The Sabbath is the inspirer, the other days the inspired” (A.J. Heschel, The Sabbath, 22).

I offer this reading because it reflects my experience of Shabbat. I did not grow up observing Shabbat. It was a struggle when my husband and I decided not to cook or travel on Shabbat, and it still is. Let me say loudly and clearly, Shabbat is not entirely restful. Beating the Shabbat clock, hosting family and friends, is work. But it’s work with great personal rewards:

Shabbat sensitizes me to the rhythms of the natural world. I live in New York City where I cannot see the night sky, and yet I know precisely when the sun sets and feel the seasons change as Shabbat grows shorter and longer.

Shabbat connects my family and friends. I host a party once a week, complete with bread, wine, and chocolate. Family and friends enjoy hours of meaningful and frivolous conversations, laughter, and some song and heated debate. My children have grown closer through Shabbat. They talk to each other, enjoy one another and, amazingly, have learned to talk to people of all kinds and opinions. Oh, and did I mention the chocolate?

Shabbat provides me with precious time for self-reflection and self-indulgence. I go for walks and, now that my kids are older, even take naps. Shabbat is also the only day that I spend hours reading for pleasure.

Shabbat sustains my spiritual life. As Rabbi Heschel writes: “The Sabbath is the presence of God in the world, open to the soul of man” (The Sabbath, 60). On Shabbat, I think about and pray to God, and am more aware of God’s presence in the world, in my life, and in myself.

As the world around us digitalizes and anxieties and rage increase, I am more and more grateful for what Shabbat gives me. I need Shabbat. I think the Jews need Shabbat. In fact, the world may need Shabbat.

Dying from cancer, neurologist and author Oliver Sacks remembered observing Shabbat as a child and wrote in the New York Times: “The peace of the Sabbath, of a stopped world, a time outside time, was palpable, infused everything, and I found myself drenched with a wistfulness . . . I find my thoughts drifting to the Sabbath, the day of rest, the seventh day of the week, and perhaps the seventh day of one’s life as well, when one can feel that one’s work is done, and one may, in good conscience, rest” (“Sabbath,” Aug. 14, 2015).

As it did for Israel in the Torah, even at its darkest moment, Shabbat frames my life. Shabbat provides me with fellowship, family memories, and intimacy. It centers me, rests me in good conscience, and restores me. It opens me to the holy and reminds me of my holiness. It inspires me to live a noble life. I am grateful that I keep Shabbat because I know the ways that Shabbat keeps me.

This commentary was originally published in 2018.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).