#torah commentary

Sometimes, oppressive texts are subtle about their hierarchies of exclusion, requiring careful analysis to fully elucidate their awfulness. Sometimes, tho, they just hit you in the face with it. Emor falls decidedly into the latter category.

As part of the instructions for the priests, G-d tells Mosheh אִישׁ . . . אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בוֹ מוּם לֹא יִקְרַב לְהַקְרִיב לֶֽחֶם אֱלֹקַיו | ish . . . asher yihyeh vo mum lo yiqrav ləhaqriv léḥem eloqav | “a man in whom there is a defect shall not come near to bring near his G-d’s food” (Vayiqra 21:17). And lest anyone think that this might be referring to a defect of character, the next verses clarify that the “defects” in question include being blind, being lame, and having limbs the “wrong” size.

“Defect” is obviously a stigmatizing translation, but I don’t really know that it’s worth looking for a less stigmatizing one. The problem here isn’t with using one term or another, it’s with the very concept the verse expresses: It’s not ableist because it uses an outdated term, it’s ableist because it explicitly ranks disabled bodies as worse than abled ones.

Before anyone suggests that, this legislation being aimed at priests serving in the Temple, it no longer matters today (when we have neither priests nor Temple), the spirit of ableist exclusion is alive and well in our communities. Sometimes it is more passive — synagogue buildings that have no wheelchair access, services offered without interpretation or captioning — and sometimes more active — halakhic decisions banning blind Jews from leyning Torah [a], congregations rolling back masking policies that reduced the transmission of airborne pathogens — but it is widespread and pernicious.

[a] Rabbi Daniel S Nevins, “The Participation of Jews who Are Blind in the Torah Service”, approved by the CJLS in 2003. I don’t mean to pick on the CJLS in these recent divrei, it’s just that they sit at a unique sweet spot where they both operate in a halakhic framework that generates regular təshuvot on many issues and in a social framework that leads them to publish those təshuvot online in English for free. They are useful references, but obviously not the sum total of Jewish thought.

And it seeps its way outward, too. As part of his deeply homophobic 1992 təshuvah (which he doubled down on in another homophobic təshuvah from 2006 [b]) against legitimizing gay relationships, Rabbi Joel Roth cites the Torah’s prohibition on disabled priests to justify his anti-gay position. If the Torah could exclude some members of the holy community based on (potentially) unchosen and unchangeable facts of their lives, then he could be justified in excluding other members of the Jewish community for similar reasons [c].

[b] Still not rescinded by the CJLS, de jure! [c] He doesn’t cite Vayiqra 21:17 explicitly, but the reference is very clear. The pertinent passage appears on p 644 of “Homosexuality”. You can find the PDF on the CJLS website, but I feel I should flag that it’s a long and infuriating document where he repeatedly advocates for conversion therapy. (And here it feels worth noting the direct historical ties between anti-gay conversion therapy and anti-autistic conversion therapy. These issues are all tied up together, always.) He protests vehemently that his halakhic conclusion brings him anguish, and maybe it even did, but I can’t say I can bring myself to care. As with other bigotries, homophobia is often less a question of inner feeling than of power and its exercise: To have power and to use it to position straightness above queerness is, definitionally, homophobic. It also feels worth noting that Rabbi Roth left his faculty position at the Jewish Theological Seminary twice in ten years (once in 1984 and then again in 1993) because he sexually harassed students. (He resigned his position on the CJLS in disgust when they finally adopted a təshuvah partially legitimating gay relationships in 2006. He felt that doing so crossed a point of no return against the integrity of the halakhic system, a set of priorities that is, again, transparently homophobic, no matter what was in his heart.) Outside of being a conversion therapy–boosting sex pest, Rabbi Roth is perhaps best known for authoring the təshuvah that paved the way for the Conservative Movement to begin ordaining women. It’s a complicated təshuvah, and one that I think specifically forecloses some of the more radically gender-egalitarian possibilities that were before the CJLS in favor of leaving the patriarchal substructures of traditional halakhah undisturbed. I am, in case it isn’t obvious, not his biggest fan.

Of course, the ableism here would be a problem even if it were entirely self-contained, with no outward spread, even if it never led to any problems for anyone else ever. It feels mind-warping to have to say it, but given the persistent ableism of our communities, it seems it must be said: Ableism is bad! We must reject it utterly! We cannot and must not exclude disabled Jews from our congregations! And, paradoxically, this verse itself tells us that.

Mum, the word for “defect” in this verse, has a value of 86 in gematria. So does eloqim [d], the word for “G-d”. Read this verse, then, not as a comment on those with a “defect” in them, but on those with G-d in them. Cut disabled Jews out of your community, and you will cut G-d out of your community. You may build a pure community, but it will be pure with the sterile purity of an ultraclean room: no life will go in and no life will come out. G-d will not be found in your midst.

[d] The non-censored version, with a ה instead of a ק. The rules for Divine Names makes this one a little tricky to write about, sorry!

Vayiqra 21:17 is not a commandment, it is a warning. It is long past time more of our communities heeded it.