Menachem Mirski
Thoughts on Parashat Emor
Our perception of what is just and moral evolves over time and it has been the case for thousands of years. Our Torah portion for this week contains a pretty brutal story which, when juxtaposed with its rabbinic reception, is a good example of how our perception of events and moral principles attach to them evolve:
There came out among the Israelites a man whose mother was Israelite and whose father was Egyptian. And a fight broke out in the camp between that half-Israelite and a certain Israelite. The son of the Israelite woman pronounced the Name in blasphemy, and he was brought to Moses—now his mother’s name was Shelomith daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan—and he was placed in custody, until the decision of יהוה should be made clear to them. And יהוה spoke to Moses, saying: Take the blasphemer outside the camp; and let all who were within hearing lay their hands upon his head, and let the community leadership stone him. And to the Israelite people speak thus: Anyone who blasphemes God shall bear the guilt; and one who also pronounces the name יהוה shall be put to death. The community leadership shall stone that person; stranger or citizen—having thus pronounced the Name—shall be put to death. (Leviticus 24:10-16)
This story, on the literal level, is self-explanatory: that man who blasphemed was put to death because according to the law that immediately follows the story everyone who blasphemes or desecrates the Divine name shall be put to death. The story seems to be an anecdote brought to reinforce the following law. Yet our Sages didn’t simply accept this simple, openly stated reason. They really struggled with this story and felt compelled to find additional reasons to remove their cognitive dissonance caused by the fact that this brutal punishment is included in the holiest of Jewish texts – the Torah. Thus, they came up with a lot of additional reasons for this punishment so that they could connect their sense of justice with this story. These additional reasons they brought include: that this man was a son of the Egyptian man (ben ish Mitzri) whom Moses had killed and besides (probably resentful) blaspheming he was seeking for revenge; that the argument escalated into a fight in the matters concerning their encampment (and perhaps that could bring something much worse to the Israelite community); that his mother used the word Shalom, which is one of the Divine names, all the time and regularly in vain; or that his mother was a harlot – the only harlot in the Israelite community (which I will leave with no comment…) and so on…
Two things are evident here: that our rabbis already struggled with this story and that the additional arguments they brought to justify this punishment seem still insufficient, perhaps even in their eyes as well (that would explain why they brought so many explanations). This whole thing proves that the moral and intellectual culture the Rabbis of the Talmudic and post-Talmudic period was much different that the one of the ancient Israelites, which in itself is hardly a discovery but it shows something: a continuous cultural and moral development of the Western World, despite the fact that this development has been regularly disrupted and had its ups and down. This can lead us to conclude that the current crisis of our Western culture and values,
even though it shows signs of a continuous downfall tendency towards a complete disintegration, is merely a disruption, after which new, better cultural and moral models will emerge, constituting a synthesis of old, good and proven moral and cultural patterns with new answers to the needs of the modern world.
Shabbat shalom, Rabbi Mirski
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