The Blemished Priest

Question: What do Isaac, Jacob and Moses have in common?

Great wisdom? Beards? Jewish mothers?

Answer: None of them would have been qualified to serve as a “Kohen,” a priest in biblical Israel.

In the words of this week’s Torah portion:

“Whoever he is of your seed with any defect, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whoever has a defect, he shall not approach; a blind man, or a lame, or he who has a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, a man who is broken footed, or broken handed, or crook backed, or a dwarf, or who has a blemish in his eye, or is scurvy, or scabbed, or has his stones broken, no man who has a blemish shall come close to offer the offerings of the Lord” (Leviticus 21:16-21).

Isaac was blind, Jacob was lame, and Moses suffered from a speech defect. They would not have been qualified to serve in the Holy Tabernacle. Of course, others were disqualified as well. It goes without saying that women were not eligible for priestly service, and “Kohen” was an inherited designation, based on lineage rather than merit.

The rules for priestly service are detailed throughout this portion. We have already been informed that a priest may not defile himself for any dead person among his kin except for close family relations, he must not marry a harlot, or one divorced, and only a virgin of his own kin may he take to wife. (Leviticus 21: 7-15) A blemished priest, we are told, may eat his portion of the sacrifice, but, “He shall not enter behind the curtain or come near the altar, for he has a defect. He shall not profane these places sacred to Me, for I the Lord have sanctified them” (Leviticus 21:23).

I read this and am horrified. How can a human being, blemished or not, profane a Holy Space? Are we not all created in God’s image?

My instinct is to close the book, or at least skip over this piece of offensive Torah. This section always feels like “The Blemished Torah,” a portion that is to be shut out, ignored, relegated to ancient cultures and behaviors.  Surely, we do not follow these precepts in our modern Judaism. There is no sacrificial meal to be eaten, by priests or anyone else. No one cares if our lamb has a mote in its eye; now there are no sacrifices other than our heartfelt prayers. Judaism has survived because of our ability to redeem texts such as these, as part of what the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, called an “evolving Jewish civilization.” Judaism has changed. We have changed.

But have we? The rabbinic world, as reflected in the Talmud, reinforced the biblical priestly prohibitions. We are told that an imbecile, deaf person or a minor lack legal status. Those with poor vision or learning disabilities were usually not educated and often left out of synagogue life.

One does not have to be a Kohen to be a rabbi, but the rabbinate was not open to women or homosexuals until the 20th century. Even today, body image often affects our choice of Jewish community leaders. A rabbi who is obese or a hunchback or even blind or deaf will have an uphill struggle in gaining employment. The Americans With Disabilities Act now mandates that synagogues be fully accessible. A ramp to the bimah, however, does not guarantee that those with special needs will be included in the vibrancy of synagogue life.

The word “emor” means to speak, and it is time to speak out, to heal the remnants of exclusion in Judaism. Sexual orientation or gender should no longer be a consideration in our hiring of clergy. Inclusion, rather than exclusion, must guide our programing if we are to serve the needs of all of our community.

Every child deserves to participate in the ritual of bar or bat mitzvah, for example. In our synagogue, as in many other synagogues in Los Angeles, we have celebrated b’nai mitzvah with congregants who are pre-verbal, affected by cerebral palsy and other physical disorders or who have learning disabilities. Our synagogue also has a weekly after-school peer buddies program called Hand in Hand, which provides an opportunity for mainstream students and those with special needs to socialize in a Jewish setting. The Los Angeles Jewish community has made great strides in gender balance and inclusion, but there is still much work to be done.

I am forever indebted to my beloved teacher Rabbi Jonathan Omer-Man, who taught me that all of us are “disabled” in some way, and it is only through working with our particular challenges that our soul can reach its full potential. Omer-Man contracted polio in Israel in his 20s, and for the last 60 years he has been teaching from a wheelchair.

“While the circumstances of the disabled person’s life may appear more dramatic than those of other people,” Rabbi Omer-Man explains, “the truth is that they are merely more external, more visible.” We are all blemished. There is a crack in everything.

And that’s how the light comes through.

Rabbi Judith HaLevy is the rabbi of the Malibu Jewish Center & Synagogue and immediate past president of the Board of Rabbis of Southern California.