Emor

Emor – Levi Lauer

Levi Lauer lives in Jerusalem and is a rabbi and Founding Executive Director of ATZUM.

The power and significance of the spoken word is central to Jewish religious sensibility. Parshat "Emor" ("Speak to the priests...") emphasizes that by its seemingly prosaic name, and by the concern with which it concludes.

Only seemingly prosaic, for neither miraculous suspension of nature's laws, nor a physical image or totem of magical potency, but the spoken word is the quintessential revelatory agent. "God declared, 'Let there be light, and light resulted.'" God speaks to convey biblical commandments that form the foundation of later definitive, interpretative tradition; ten central proclamations of divine presence and moral insistence are annunciated verbally, and known forever as "Aseret haDibrot", ten verbalizations of the heart of the matter. Once the sanctuary is irreplaceably destroyed, the presence of a scroll of words, read aloud, denotes sacred place. We kiss pages, bindings and scrolls that record spoken words.

The good news is we're word intoxicated, and need listen carefully. Every conversation is fraught with infinite potential: you have little or no idea what I'll say; I have equally minimal sense of how you'll respond. We are so preoccupied with words that committee meetings proceed ad infinitum; we believe words can change reality. Thus, the absence of speech creates both pedestrian discomfort (we too easily recall those so awkward silent pauses in the discussion) and moments of profound religious import. God recapitulates the revelation at Sinai/Horev (I Kings 19) and reveals himself in "a sound of frail silence" (kol dmama daka) --- even silence has voice to our hearing. The Kotzker Rebbe (a 19th century Chassidic leader), master of spiritual paradox, understood that "Nothing is as whole as a broken heart, nor cries more loudly than silence."

The bad news (brought by Coleridge in George Steiner's Real Presences) is that the beauty of words, and other aesthetic exercise, can lead to emotional catharsis that dulls us to the real pain of the flesh and blood street. The libretto, the poem, the speech was so moving we ignored the anguish it sought to address. Zionism, by the way, understands that failing, juxtaposes the power of the sword to the power of words (note the anagram), and creates a revolution of Jewish living that brings with it new high hope, and despicable abuse of our words' best aspirations.

"Emor", saying, concludes (Vayikra 24:13-23) by imposing capital punishment on one who "curses God". There is debate as to what such cursing entails. But in any case, is this God really so vulnerable as to be threatened, to death, by a few mere words? Unless, there are no "mere" words; unless, cursing God dangerously assaults His existence as the ground of all meaning --- "because there is God, there is meaning." (Steiner) To undermine the ground of meaning would bring cynical, nihilist ruin to a people that revere God as creator of humankind, of beings uniquely capable of speaking so well as to "parse a grammar of hope". (Steiner)

At all costs then, we would not curse God and relinquish hope. We would not despair of our words' capacity to make a difference for good, so that we might teach and learn and speak a Torah that bring words to fruition, to adamant concrete doing as we address urgent human need.