Dvar Torah on Parshat Emor

In this week's parsha, Emor, there is a difficult section: the laws forbidding priests with a "blemish" - מום - from serving in the temple. There is a list of these blemishes, and they include various types of disfigurement: blindness, broken bones, and other wounds and diseases. Many of us feel somewhat uncomfortable with this section, living, as we do, in a world which, thankfully, tries to see beyond people's handicaps and make it possible for them to participate fully in daily life. I am very happy about the efforts in Israel, and elsewhere, of course, to guarantee access to handicapped people, and to try to enable them to participate actively in normal activities. This being so, the laws excluding blemished or wounded priests from the temple service feel somewhat mean-spirited and exclusionary.

The Sforno makes a facinating comment about these disqualifying wounds. He quotes from the section in the Book of Esther which tells us that Mordechai, upon hearing about Haman's decree to exterminate the Jewish people, put on sackloth and ashes, and went into the city crying out in anguish. The Megillah tells us that he came to the gate of the king's palace but did not enter, " because it is forbidden to enter the king's gate wearing sackcloth." Similarly, the Sforno implies, a Cohen  with a physical blemish or infirmity would be an inappropriate person to stand in the Temple ("the king's gate") and perform the service.

The fact that the Sforno compares a physical imperfection with inappropriate clothing would seem to tell us that, although our parsha feels that physical perfection is called for in the priests, we need to understand that physical perfection is an external consideration, and not indicative of a moral trait. It is like clothing: external to the person, not intrinsically part of who he or she is. In fact, the sackloth is actually fine clothing, for its purpose - to indicate mourning - but inappropriate for the king's presence, just as a blemish is only a problem for us when it is found in the priest performing the service in the Temple, where he stands publically as a representative of the Jewish people before God. 

I think the Sforno's approach softens the apparent harshness of the laws of the handicapped priests. While the Torah does exclude them from participating in the temple service because of their physical condition, the Sforno explains that that condition is not who the handicapped person really is. His blemish is external to him, like clothing. Although how the Cohen looks is important, it is only as important as dressing right, similar to the laws of the priestly garments which must be worn in the temple, and is not an indication of who he really is.

This is a very important message for us, when seeking, on the one hand,  to be honest about the drawbacks of an infirmity, while recognizing that an infirmity is external, an article of clothing, as it were, and is not a true indicator of a person's worth or identity. More importantly, a handicap is not necessarily an unesthetic thing; it depends on the situation.  In the representative, public role of priest in the Temple, a higher esthetic standard may be called for, but in real, every-day life, this would not be the case, and it would certainly be more appropriate for us to look at and through a blemish or handicap and see the real, whole, person in front of us.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix