Emor
Holidays
Jews –
even modern Jews – study texts because they are our way into (a Divine)
conversation. In opening up these books
and exploring their meaning with other human beings, we join the timeless
dialogue about whom and what we want to be.
Those are the questions that serious Jewish education would have us
ask. Our tradition suggests that
becoming “Jewishly educated” is not merely becoming
familiar with holidays, traditional texts, Jewish philosophy, or culture; it is
a matter of bringing these traditions, texts, metaphors, and insights to bear
on our modern and timeless struggle to discover who we want to become.
Daniel Gordis (Contemporary)
In this
week’s Torah portion…we learn about the Jewish holidays…If we are not careful,
we begin to forget that Torah is not measured in amounts of knowledge but
rather in degrees of holiness, that the inner Torah is not the Ketuvah but the relationship at which it insistently
points. The study of Torah, ideally,
opens up space in the ecopsyche for God to become
present…
Mordechai
Finley
Jewish
Law does not recognize redemption. The
project it sets for man is permanent and endless. No religious attainment may be considered
final; the project is never completed.
Observance of the Torah in its entirety is merely the training of man
for continuation of its observance. No
religious achievement can change the human condition or the task…Jewish law, as
an expression of a religiousity which rejects all
illusion, does not entertain man with the vision of some target at which he may
aim and which, once attained, constitutes the fulfillment of his tasks…One
follows the path beyond without advancing beyond the point of departure…
Yeshayahu Leibowitz (20th Century)
The key
to Chasidic exegesis generally, in line with the premises of Jewish mystic
thought, lies in an all-encompassing dichotomy between the external and the
inner, between the surface and the interior with its dimension of depth. In all the world, as
in the self, beyond the exterior there lies the inner essence of all things,
and while the former is material in nature, the innerness of all being is
spiritual. The worldly, the profane, is
but a garment concealing the holy which is present as the source of its being,
and that inner holiness is identified with the Divine.
Aryeh Wineman (Contemporary)
The very
holiness of the holy days in our calendar is itself dependent upon the holiness
of the souls which comprise the people of
Yehuda Leib Alter (19th Century)
The
Jewish festivals mark a celebration of time within time, in order to transcend
the confines of ordinary time. They
release humans from the strictures of the linear order of past-present future,
to confront the realm which is above and beyond this order. Instead of being ruled by time, the
sanctification of the Sabbath and all other chosen times to become festivals
gives humans the power to rule over time, to hold on forever to events and
moments which occurred in time, but rose above it to transcend it. The festivals enable us to touch eternity and
be touched by it.
Pinchas
Peli (20th Century)