In this week’s parashah, Emor, we learn many of the laws regarding the priesthood, the duties of the priests, and who qualifies for priesthood. In that context, we read in Vayikra 21:17-18:
“God spoke further to Moses: Speak to Aaron and say: No man of your offspring throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of his God. No one at all who has a defect shall be qualified…”
I get stuck on these words. I read them over and over and become frustrated. I think it’s wrong to thing about human differences as ‘defects,’ and I believe even more that they shouldn’t disqualify people from spiritual worship and connectedness with God. As a strong advocate for special-needs inclusion, I struggle on how to make this ruling meaningful.
The rabbis of the Talmud (Megillah 24b) also struggled with this apparently. In their layers of conversation spanning decades, they offer various scenarios of priests that had these ‘defects’ the Torah speaks of. They articulate that because the priests held a public role in blessing the Israelites, these defects would be distracting and would therefore interfere with the blessing. Realizing the difficulty in this, they teach us that these defects don’t matter, however, if the person is known in their town. If people are familiar with them, if they understand the uniqueness of that individual, they are certainly allowed to act as a priest.
These words are moving to me because they imply that the onus for understanding differences in human beings is not on the individual themselves but on the community as a whole. We must work to see each person as a full human, a spiritually capable individual, even if they have elements to their personhood we might initially see as different. If we are unable to work to get to know them, to become familiar with who they are, we are the problem - not them.
There’s a teaching that says that in the Messianic era, nothing in any human will be considered a blemish or deformity and that every priest will be able to serve. It is only our perception of these issues as blemishes that prevents us from interacting with these individuals as channels for a spiritual experience. Particularly on this Shabbat where we honor all of our learners of all ages, I’m thinking about the need to see each individual for who they are. May we live in - and cultivate - a world in which we strive to know each person for their essence, where we create avenues for accessing spirituality for every person regardless of their differences, and where we take on the responsibility of deeply getting to know each individual.
