ACHAREI MOT & KEDOSHIM
We have another combined parsha this week. Acharei Mot (after the death) is Chapters 16-18. Kedoshim (holy) is also short, only Chapters 19 and 20. All the chapters contain a broad spectrum of laws and the occasional ritual, rather than any kind of coherent story. In contrast to the combination of Tazriah and Metzorah, these two parshiot cover mostly different territory. I will mention a few significant laws or rituals by chapter as a device to organize what might otherwise be seen as disorganized material.
Chapter 16 describes the ritual of the scapegoat where the sins of the people are transferred to the goat who is then sent into the wilderness. (16:2-28). We also have the establishment of the holy day of Yom Kippur (16:29-33). Chapter 17 has the demand for the centralization of sacrifice at the mishkan, (and later at the Temple in Jerusalem), declaring that anyone who offers sacrifices outside of the proper context “will be cut off from among his people.” (17:2). There’s also a prohibition against sacrifices to se’irim or goat demons to whom they used to sacrifice. (17:7). The basis for part of Kosher slaughter where all the blood is drained from the animal lies in the demand that blood not be eaten because blood is life (17:14).
Chapter 18 includes a famous series of laws covering with whom one can have sex, including the prohibition of male homosexuality “You shall not lie with a male like lying with a woman.” (18:22). These prohibitions almost all are written about what males can or cannot do (the exception is “a woman shall not stand in front of any animal to mate with it.” (18:23). It also includes the prohibition of having sex with menstruating women. Friedman argues that this chapter is the beginning of the mixing of ritual and ethical laws and the idea that observing the laws are the path to a good life (commentary on 18:5). I agree with his view.
Kedoshim offers us a broad mix of mostly negative laws (don’t do this) with punishments. The most frequent punishments here being death or being cut off from the people. There’s a concern for equitable weights being used, for keeping the sabbath and behaving respectfully towards your parents. There’s a broad range of proscribed sexual misconduct, including adultery and a repetition of the proscriptions against male homosexuality, sex with menstruating women and sex with animals. There are prohibitions against practicing divination or being friendly with ghosts.
The parsha also contains some laws that provide a foundation for important aspects in Jewish environmentalism and social justice. This is the parsha that contains the law to leave the corners of the fields for the poor (19:9-10). This is a core teaching for both teaching us about not being greedy and taking everything, but also a prescient comment against the kind of fence row to fence row agriculture we practice today. We are commanded to not oppress the stranger because we were strangers in Egypt, a core social justice teaching. (19:33-34). There’s a favorite piece of great advice to not place a stumbling block in front of a blind person. (19:14). Lastly there is a commandment against not mixing kinds, which SHOULD BE, but isn’t, a basis to declare GMO foods unkosher. (19:19)). A true smorgasbord.
I would discuss the whole idea of no longer making sacrifices to goat demons if I could find anything about any kind of native worship of them. However the commentators are all stumped by the reference.
I want to discuss four themes, two from each parsha.
The ethics of sending our sins to the wilderness
Polluted and pure land
The cultivation of humility as present in the recognition that we were aliens in Egypt and in leaving the corners of the field unharvested.
The prohibition against mixing species
Is it morally acceptable to dump our sins into the more than human world? This is a different question than the efficacy of rituals such as the purification ritual in Metzorah that we discussed last week with the bird flying off with our sins, or the scapegoat ritual of this parsha where our sins are transferred onto a goat who is sent off to the wilderness (16:22) There’s a brilliant essay by L. Teal Willoughby entitled “Ecofeminist Consciousness” in a book entitled Ecofeminism and the Sacred where she points out that we are treating the more than human world as a thing when we perform rituals that ask the more than human world to take away our sins without first asking permission. Is Aaron any different than the myriad of companies that dump toxic chemicals and leave the rest of us to clean up their mess? Are we any different when we put our sins onto a piece of paper and burn it? The “inaccessible land” to which the goat is sent is being treated as a dumping ground, rather than a “thou” (to use Buber’s language) or a living being with agency. Indeed the sentience and agency of at least domesticated land is something that is affirmed later on in this parsha, as discussed below.
Do you believe that all of the more than human world has moral agency? Do rocks and lizards have the same rights as deer and bodies of water? How do you work with the more than human world in your ritual practice, if at all?
“And the land vomited out its residents.” (18:25). Why? Because it became polluted (tameh) by proscribed sexual conduct such as homosexuality, sex with menstruating women and female sex with animals. Indeed, the ancient Israelites were expelled from the land, first in the Babylonian exile after the destruction of the first Temple, (586 BCE) and then scattered to the four winds after the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans. (70 CE)
It is obviously possible to read this metaphorically and not literally. Our conventional belief is that land is just some inert thing that cannot vomit. Modern western belief denies any possible agency of the land. Reading it metaphorically is both the traditional reading and the only possible one if you reject the Animist orientation that extends sentience and agency to the more than human world as a whole. I invite you to consider reading the text literally.
We have here a new meaning of the term tameh that I have been translating as “polluted.” Tameh has meant, to this point, ritually polluted such that someone who is tameh is ineligible to offer sacrifices. As we saw last week, tameh can extend to beings that can’t offer sacrifices, such as clothing and houses in the discussion of tzara’at, scale disease. What’s different here is that the land becomes tameh because of moral misconduct, rather than ritual misconduct. The concept of tameh, pollution, is now taking on a moral dimension that it did not have before.
If we read this text more literally, we have the idea that inhabited land can become polluted by the deliberate sins of its inhabitants. Read this with the scapegoat ritual and we have the idea that it is OK to dump our unintended sins into the wilderness because somehow they will stay there and not come back to bite us in the behind, but if we deliberately sin through sexual misconduct, we will pollute the very land on which we depend for our physical lives and the land will exile us. Thus we are making a dramatic differentiation between wilderness which can absorb our sins, and worked land which may or many not be able to absorb them, but is unwilling to accept them and thus will vomit us out.
Do you believe that the more than human world can become polluted by our moral failings? Do you believe in its ability to take action against the humans who sin against it? Is that action a conscious choice on the part of the more than human world, or just some kind of automatic thing following scientific law? Does this distinction between inhabited land and wilderness make sense to you?
“When you reap the land’s harvest you shall not finish harvesting your field’s corner, and you shall not gather your harvest’s gleaning [the grain that falls to the ground during the harvest]. And you shall not strip your vineyard, and you shall not collect the vineyard’s fallen fruit. You shall leave them for the poor and for the alien.” (19:9-10). “And if an alien will reside with you in your land, you shall not persecute him. The alien who resides with you shall be to you like a citizen of yours, and you shall love him as yourself, because you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” (19:33-34)
There’s an ethic of humility in these four verses that is sorely missing in our society. On one hand, these first verses can be read simply as a way to take care of the poor that every society has. Don’t try to get every last dime of profit out of your customers or your workers but have a system that at least meets minimum needs for everyone. Why? Not just because it is good public policy (which it is), but because we were aliens in the land of Egypt, because we were brown skinned people struggling to survive with harsh taskmasters. The world would be a different place if we could truly incorporate “there but for the grace of God go I” into our actions. That’s a key lesson of this parsha and of Passover. Avadim Hayinu l’Paroah. We were slaves to Pharoah, so don’t be a Pharoah just because you can. Don’t farm fencerow to fencerow as modern farmers with enormous tractors do, just because you can (or at least think you can in the short term). Our modern farming leaves as little as possible for the rest of creation. It is a kind of farming that ignores, deliberately ignores, the claims of the more than human world, that denies the possibility of the other. Leave a little for everyone else dependent upon the harvest because we were all once slaves, even if today we are masters or free people.
I call this an ethic of humility because it is counter to the idea that we humans are all powerful, and all of creation is supposed to bow down before us. Mainstream society believes that whatever humans want, humans should have, ignoring what other beings may want or need. If we are to ever repair our relationship with the more than human world before we destroy the biological basis of human life, an ethic of humility is one place to start.
How do you cultivate an ethic of humility? How do you leave the corners of your fields unharvested? How do you remember that you were once a slave to Pharoah?
“Your animal: you shall not mate two kinds. Your field: you shall not seed two kinds. And a garment of two kinds, sha’atnez: it shall not go on you.” (19:19). This is the famous prohibition of wearing linen and wool together which stumped me as a kid and stumped my teachers who knew they weren’t wearing linen and wool together, but couldn’t tell you if their clothes were made out of cotton or polyester, had never seen a cotton plant, and couldn’t tell you a thing about how polyester is produced.
I think the fundamental orientation that this law seeks to capture is that there is a sacred order in the universe and you shouldn’t mess with it by putting two things together that don’t belong together. This, in my reading, is very akin to the laws surrounding which animals may be eaten—split hooves and chewing one’s cud belong together and having only one or the other is just wrong.
This law should (but doesn’t) make unkosher any food that comes from genetically modified plants. Round Up ready soybeans, corn and wheat are the basis of modern American diets and they come from genetically modified seeds that tolerate the herbicide in Roundup. They should be unkosher because the genetic modification of the seeds means that we have mixed things that don’t belong together. We need some more humility; just because we can make frankenfoods doesn’t mean we should.
I think we should be asking ourselves both what belongs together that isn’t present and what is together than shouldn’t be. When I was single and in my 30’s, I definitely felt like I was supposed to have a mate and a family, and I ached that I didn’t. When I travel around and see empty fields without cows, I always feel this sense of loss because pastures and herbivores go together and the absence of cows (or bison, sheep or goats), testifies to the hollowing out of rural America. On the other hand, strawberries that can resist deep frosts because they have a gene from a fish called Arctic flounder (https://prezi.com/jmpf9o_bt2my/frost-resistant-strawberries/) are just wrong.
What belongs together in your life that isn’t present? What is together in your life that should be separated?
QUESTIONS
Do you believe that all of the more than human world has moral agency? Do rocks and lizards have the same rights as deer and bodies of water? How do you work with the more than human world in your ritual practice, if at all?
Do you believe that the more than human world can become polluted by our moral failings? Do you believe in its ability to take action against the humans who sin against it? Is that action a conscious choice on the part of the more than human world, or just some kind of automatic thing following scientific law? Does this distinction between inhabited land and wilderness make sense to you?
How do you cultivate an ethic of humility? How do you leave the corners of your fields unharvested? How do you remember that you were once a slave to Pharoah?
What belongs together in your life that isn’t present? What is together in your life that should be separated?
