Parashat Shemini - take 2 - No Travel Ban Here!

רפואה מן התורה
Healing from the Torah

Parashat Shemini

Leviticus 9:1-11:47

By Adam Ruditsky

     Last week I clearly lost track of time, and blew past the Passover parsha, doing Shemini a week premature.  Okay, let me get back on the bike and try again so to speak.  But this week is not like last week, not only because we had not yet begun the Chag (holiday) of Passover, but this week we are on the 6^th day of the counting of the Omer.  The counting of the Omer is one of those traditions from Torah that many people pass by, not all, but many do.  In fact, pick up a siddur and it just says after the blessing … “today is the first of the Omer, today is the second day of the Omer, today is the third day of the Omer, etc., etc., etc.  Travel seems to be a part of the Jewish narrative that began with the wandering of Adam and his family after they left Eden, the 40 days that Noah and his family spent on the ark, Abraham leaving his home for a long trip on foot to Cannon or how about the 40 years that the Jews/mixed-multitude wandered in the wilderness before reaching the promised land of Israel. And while not as long, we are now on a 49 day journey that connects Passover with Shavuot.  During this 49 days we count the Omer, and during that 49 days we make meaning to that counting.  Making meaning to this Omer based journey is exactly like making meaning to our Seder today, which goes beyond just gathering to say some prayers or reading a story of something that happened long ago.  Regarding the Omer Rabbi Jonathan Sacks writes, “Time is not a series of moments traced on the face of a watch, always moving yet always the same.  Instead it is a journey with a starting point and a destination, or a story with a beginning, middle and end.  Each moment has a meaning, which can only be grasped if we understand where we have come from and where we are going to.  This is time not as it is in nature but as it is in history.”

     That history is about a people who are asked to embrace and maintain a higher value of living, a value based on the ethics of Torah.  The Omer for the Kabbalists saw each day as a way to achieve what R’Sacks called “a starting point and a destination” in the history of our tradition. Thus in the Kabbalah that 49 day period consists of the “49 gates” of impurities that Israel picked up while in Egypt.  We learn in the Zohar that if Israel had taken one more step after reaching the 49th level of tumah, or impurity, they would have fallen to the depths of depravity and would have been irredeemable since those crimes were just like the Egyptians; idolatry, adultery and other terrible transgressions.  The counting of the Omer according to the mystics were so the 49 gates of impurity were reversed.  Upon the pathway of the Omer the lower 7 of the 10 sefirot were embraced and practiced, those being Chesed (Loving-kindness), Gevurah (Justice and discipline), Tiferet (Harmony, compassion), Netzach (Endurance), Hod (Humility), Yesod (Bonding) and Malchut (Sovereignty, leadership).  Still, that is only 7 so it is 7x7 of the daily meditations.  The first day would be the chesed of chesed, the second day being the gevurah of chesed,  the 8^th day being the chesed of gevurah followed by the gevurah of gevurah, the 15^th day being the chesed of tiferet followed the gevurah of tiferet and so on.  Each day the Omer journey directs us to look at those attributes of loving-kindness, justice, harmony, endurance, etc.,  asking us to look within and take personal stock of our own characters as we connect the counting of the Omer with the purity of our neshoma.  Perhaps that is a way we can understand Psalm 42:8 that says, תְּהוֹם-אֶל-תְּהוֹם קוֹרֵא, the deep calls to the deep, the counting of the Omer is asking us to spiritually go beyond what we see. 

     Parashat Shemini, the 8^th day, followed the time when Aaron and his sons came were in seclusion for seven days in the Mishkan (cf. Lev. 8:33) to prepare themselves for their service before God on Israel’s behalf.  We then have the story of Nadav and Avihu, two of Aaron’s sons, who come near the Alter improperly and died, followed by several laws about how to approach the Alter correctly.  In the final section of Shemini there are the biblical laws of kashrut, laws that deal with animals on the land, birds in the air and the fish in the water, both in terms of eating and touching but also in how it will effect cloths and utensils.  The result of a kosher based infraction was to be put outside the camp till evening in order to cleanse oneself and return in symbolical purity.  Kosher laws were about the pure (טהור, tahor) and impure (טמא, Tamai), really meaning the permissible and forbidden.  Rashi commenting on the impure says that “everything” that comes in contact with such a vessel (the body, utensil or oven) makes that vessel impure and calls for its destruction because of its contaminated “interior space” (see Rashi on Lev. 11:33).  The kosher laws have a message of separation, separating not only from what is wrong but also separating to what is good.  The counting of the Omer is asking the same, thus by looking at our attributes we learn to separate from what is keeping our middot (soul-traits) from reaching their highest level of purity, as we pray every day, “The soul that You, my God, have given me is pure.”
     The Omer reminds us that the middah (soul-trait) of פישות  (ph’risoot), or separation, is not the same as הבדיל  (hivdiel), or distinction, such as Shabbat and the rest of the days of the week.  The middah of פישות  (separation) is not to be confused with the kosher laws themselves, which only ask us “to make a distinction (להבדיל, l’havdiel) between the unclean and the clean,” yet its larger lesson is also there for the taking.  As such, Rashi teaches that kashrut is so a person would “recognize” the need to distinguish between the pure and the impure, something that would have helped Nadav and Avihu to separate from their wrong and separate to a better way.  In the end we can learn from this parsha that when we place a value on what we deem to be Holy or Sacred, we must separate ourselves (spiritually, physically and emotionally) from what impedes us to reach the destination of our higher self.
     We have 43days left till we reach Shavuot where we celebrate the giving of Torah.  During this time we should strive to make that journey from bondage to true freedom one of great value, although we must also be reminded that in Torah Israel's journey took place as they wandered in the wilderness; something that is very real for us right now.  We might be at home but we never stop traveling.  Please stay safe.    

Mo'adim L'simha and Shabbat Shalom!