Torah Teachings

This week’s parasha, Emor, continues the themes in Leviticus that, in many ways, echo ideas first articulated in the Book of Deuteronomy, which says: “See, I set before you this day life and prosperity, death and adversity” (Deut. 30:15).  In response to those choices, the Torah offers a clear directive: ba’charta ba’chaim — “you shall choose life” (Deut. 30:19).  According to the tradition of Torah redaction, the Deuteronomic text (D) was written before the Priestly material of Leviticus (P), which would suggest that Leviticus is shaped, at least in part, by Deuteronomy’s framing of the covenantal choice between life and death. This helps us understand why Leviticus frequently contrasts life's value with death's presence, not merely as a physical end, but as a condition lacking vitality.

This yin-yang relationship between the concepts of death and life would inspire the words of the 2nd century Rabbi, Judah HaNassi, who from Pirkei Avot (Avot 2:1) teaches: “Which is the straight (right) path that a person should choose for oneself?”  Implicit in this question is a profound truth: the path we walk can either align with vitality—with spiritual life—or border on the absence of it, which the Torah understands as death.  However, the Torah’s focus on death does lay not in the rhetorical question of the Psalmist, “What human can live and not see death” (Ps. 89:49), our King Solomon who writes, there is “a time for being born- and a time for dying” (Ecc. 3:2).  The Torah wants us to ponder and recognize the tension of their coexsistance.

Borrowing from the Emor teaching of Rabbi Tali Adler (Hadar Rabbinical School, NYC), she points out that while the learning of the Mishkhan (the Tabernacle in the Wilderness) continues regarding the requirements for the Priests, a new tabernacle - of sorts - is presented in Leviticus 23:42-43 where we read: “You shall dwell in sukkot seven days; all that are home-born in Israel shall dwell in sukkot; that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in sukkot, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord, your God.”  The building of the Sukkah and the existence of the Mishkan are also a part of the relationship between the idea of the vitality of life and the presence of death, thus the tension of their co-existence. 

Rabbi Adler makes this distinction by saying that “The mishkhan is God’s dwelling place on earth … a place reminiscent of paradise,” a place that represents only life: this is why the ritual priests conceptually were limited in their contact with a dead person (Lev. 21:1-6), let alone the nature of their chosen wife or personal physical health (Lev. 21:14,18-20).  Regarding the Sukkah, the Rabbi goes on to say that this “creates a space where, as long as we stand within its walls, we can dream of a world of permanence,” meaning that like the weekly Shabbat, the Sukkah reflects a world we desire and not the world in which we live.  The world we desire is one where peace, justice, and goodness lead the way, as opposed to the world we live in, where the “suffering and pain” of war, injustice, hate, and human inequality persist.  For Torah, that type of “suffering and pain” represents “death” in contradistinction to the vitality of “life.” 

While the Mishkhan and the Sukkah represent the world we prefer, there is also a clear distinction. The Mishkhan was to be a “protected space,” like our synagogues are to be as well, places where daily life within differed from the norms of outside, albeit where we work, school, in the shuk (the market), or the halls of government.  The Sukkah, in contrast, was a seven-day reminder, once a year, that while within its walls we could dream and imagine the world as it could be. Yet, the Sukkah’s “temporary nature” asks us to recall the difference: life and death co-exist, so always, no matter what, ba’charta ba’chaim, you choose life!
Choosing life, then, is not a naïve denial of death or suffering. It is a courageous affirmation despite them. The Torah calls us to choose life because death exists, to pursue good because evil is real, to seek justice because injustice persists. This is the essence of free will. Likewise, this choice is not merely a passive acceptance of fate, but an active and conscious decision to align oneself with the path of righteousness in pursuit of the best version of ourselves (see Avot 2:1 above; also Lev. 19:2 and 19:18).  Yet still, we must do so in a world where the tension of life and death, unfortunatly, must co-exist. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Adam Ruditsky