Forget Your Perfect Offering
He shall not enter behind the curtain or come near the altar
for he has a defect (moom).He shall not profane these places
sacred to Me, for I Adonai (yhvh)have made them holy.
(Leviticus 21:23)
Last week, the Torah called us to be holy. This week, it says you have to be perfect to access the holy. I mean, first you have to be born male into an elite priestly family, and then you have to be perfect, at which point you can dare to dart through the curtain and be in the room where it happens - the Holy Place in the Temple. Here, a most profound spiritual practice occurs, the transformative magic of ritual offerings, linking the earthy world of cows (etc.) and the lofty imaginative spheres of the divine. Here at the altar, you can access Connection, Purpose, Meaning, Love, Success, Insight, Belonging. But again, only if you have no "defects".
In order for the Torah to be relevant in a time with no Temple, this instruction manual for the priests must be read as if we are all priests, and we can in some way strive to enter into the holy space where all of our greatest fears melt away and our deepest yearnings well up. Parshat Emor presents a difficult path, one that might turn us away altogether. There are so many voices in the world telling us we are not enough, we don’t belong, for a hundred different reasons. It is painful to turn to Torah for sustenance only to see exclusivity, elitism, patriarchy, ableism, and apparent divine sanction for all of that right at the center of this book’s spiritual vision.
There have been beautiful teachings in past centuries seeking to help us walk through the curtain and access joy and meaning in this text. One that I’ve recently studied comes from the 18th century Hassidic rabbi Avraham Dov Auerbach of Avritch, in his book Bat Ayin (Emor 40):
And this is what the verse says: “[A priest] who has a defect (moom) shall not approach…” Moom in gematriya is elohim. This interpretation means that each priest who had a moom [in fact had within himself] the aspect of elohim, which is the aspect of judgment, the aspect of contracted mind, the aspect of divine hiddenness. The interpretation of “...shall not approach…” is that the priest is unable to approach God, because they don’t have wholeness of service until their essence clings to the soul-trait of lovingkindness (chesed).
The Bat Ayin transforms moom from physical imperfection to a lack of lovingkindness. This flips our natural first reading on its head - because now judgments about falling short of imperfection (rather than imperfection itself) are exactly what disqualify the priest from his holy station. Kindness is the key to wholeness, not precise perfection.
For the past 18 months, I’ve been training to be a facilitator with the Jewish Studio Project, along with my wife, Rabbi Laura Rumpf. At the core of what we are learning is the Jewish Studio Process, designed by Rabbi Adina Allen and building off the work of her mother and colleague Pat Allen. And at the core (you might imagine this as the Holy of Holies) of the Jewish Studio Process is art-making. For me, making art is one way to encounter the image of my own imperfection. When I grasp a paintbrush, I also grasp every weapon of judgment there is - an armory of ugly assertions about my worth not just as an artist but as a rabbi and human. And - when I bring kindness to those voices and firmly tell them, I’m going to make art anyway, the paintbrush starts to feel just a little bit holy. I am stepping into my wholeness when I embrace imperfection.
Rabbi Adina Allen teaches what she calls a “Torah of Creativity”:
God’s first act is one of creativity. Only a few verses later we read that humans are created b’tzelem Elohim (“in the image of God”). If God is, first and foremost, a creator, and we are created in God’s image, then we too are created to be creators. Each of us is endowed with creative capacity simply by being human.
Daring to be creative means by default asserting that what is still needs transformation. Surrounding the art-making in the Jewish Studio Process are four rules that hold a safe container for us to encounter hard voices, to play and explore, to transform materials and ourselves.
No commenting
Follow pleasure
Notice everything
Keep going
For the month of May, I plan to share in each week’s newsletter interpretations of Torah and our world through the lens of one of these rules. And if you want to experience the full Jewish Studio Process - please join us this Thursday night for our final monthly Kavana Art MakerSpace this programmatic year! We will learn Torah, and we will make art, but all you need to bring or know is your wonderfully imperfect self.
Rabbi Adina says in a forthcoming book, “We bring our struggles, our questions, our longing or our pain to the page and invite forces beyond ourselves into our process. Without fail, the universe will give us back a gift: understanding, insight, comfort, connection. It will always weave us back into the fabric of all of life. Our art is our offering on the altar, it brings us back into relationship with ourselves and with that which connects us all.”
Art is our offering on the altar…an altar every one of us has access to, that requires no perfection, only the brave willingness to tolerate and learn from imperfection.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Jay LeVine
