Emor
The Lord spoke
further to Moses: Speak to Aaron and
say: No man of your offspring
throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of
his God. No one at all who has a defect
shall be qualified: no man who is blind,
or lame, or has a limb too short or too long; no man who has a broken leg or
broken arm; or who is a hunchback, or a dwarf, or who has a growth in his eye…
Even Kohanim whose external
appearance is esthetically displeasing are included in the list. Blemishes
which are not normally invisible…are also a cause for disqualifying the Kohen
from performing most priestly functions…this means that regardless of whether
the Kohen has suffered from the blemish from birth or whether the blemish
occurred during his lifetime, he is unfit to perform service in the
Rabbeinu Bachya
(13th Century)
We ask ourselves: Is this holiness – which is specific to the
Kohanim and is transferred by inheritance from one generation to the next as
descendants of Aaron the Kohen Gadol –something innate in them? Or must we say here as well, that this
holiness is only a special obligation imposed upon them? And indeed, the key word to all matters of
holiness is the term “to be holy to their God” – and not “they will be holy to
you.” The Jewish people do not have to
treat the Kohanim status as something which is holy…
Yeshayahu Leibowitz
(20th Century)
The holiness attributed to the
Kohanim is conditional on their being holy in their behavior; and they are not
holy by nature. They are not to consider
themselves as holy, but must regard themselves as obligated to be holy…Outside
the Temple, the Kohanim are like any other people, and they should dress as any
other person, and should look like any other person. If they do attempt to look holy and special
and separate from the people even outside and beyond their work in the
Netziv of Volozhin
(19th Century)
Those who have special functions
related to the service of God – and as we have no Temple and no sacrificial
ritual, the functions of serving God today can only be through studying the
Torah and teaching the Torah and observing the mitzvot
– those to whom this applies, or who are accepted as ruling on halakha, are only special in terms of this function which
they fulfill. Beyond this function, they
are as any other man
Yeshayahu Leivowitz
(20th Century)
Perhaps in the exclusion of what
is broken, bent or damaged one could have seen the value of wholeness and
unbroken integrity that seems so symbolically appropriate to a people whose
body politic was always threatened by outside forces. Perhaps those perfectly formed, unblemished
men and animals passing before the eye once called to mind not only the need
for moral and spiritual integrity, and not only the perfect wholeness of the
creator who had formed them, but also physical, spiritual and political threats
that could destroy wholeness and that were familiar to every worshiper – givens
of ordinary experience…Perhaps their loss then, shouldn’t matter to us.
Janet Burstein (Contemporary)