parshat emor – leviticus 23
Join Geoffrey Stern and Rabbi Adam Mintz for an afternoon tea and Torah at 2:30 Eastern on Wednesday May 15th on Clubhouse. We usually think of Tishrei and the Fall as a marathon of Jewish holidays, but if you count Rabbinic and Israeli holidays, the seven weeks of Spring win the holiday race with ease. Pesach, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmut, Pesach Sheni, Lag ba’Omer, Yom Yerushalyim and Shavuot. We use Leviticus 23 which has the most complete summary of Biblical holidays to explore the dynamic of adding new holidays and adding meaning to existing holidays.
Sefaria Source sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/564540
Transcript:
Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern and at Madlik we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish Text or Tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on clubhouse every week and share it as the Madlik podcast on your favorite platform. This week’s parsha is Emor and it has the most complete summary of Biblical holidays. If you count Rabbinic and Israeli holidays, the current seven week period wins the Jewish holiday marathon with ease. Pesach, Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmut, Pesach Sheni, Lag ba’Omer, Yom Yerushalyim and Shavuot. Today we explore the dynamic of adding new holidays and adding meaning to existing holidays. Join us for Ki ba Moed – The time has come.
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Well, Rabbi, I sent out the notice of the podcast this week, and my son said you’re missing Yom Yerushalayim. So you can see I put in Yom Yerushalayim. How could I miss a holiday like that?
Adam Mintz: It’s not coming up for a few weeks, so we’re okay.
GS: Okay. But, you know, really, I think the reason why we complain or we notice so much the high density of holidays between Rosh Hashanah and the end of Sukkot is because they’re biblical, on many we can’t – we have prohibitions.
1:32 – GS:
We can’t ride, we can’t turn on lights, but if you just look at the number of it and if you look at it from the point of view of missing days of school or missing days of work, boy, this time of year is chock full of these holidays. As I was reading the portion, I noticed for the first time in Leviticus 23, you really have the best synopsis of all of the holidays. I had never noticed that before.
2:02 – AM:
Yes, that’s this week’s parasha. Basically, the Torah does this twice. It does it here, and it does it in the Book of Devarim, in the Parsha of Re’ei. And you know, that’s what often happens, is that the Torah repeats itself. The Ten Commandments repeat themselves in Devarim as well. So these are two places the Torah lists all of the holidays.
2:24 – GS:
So I was trying to look this up, but I know because once in a while I get called into Layn, read the Torah in the synagogue, and for some reason I thought that on certain Chagim you read a parsha
2:39 – AM:
that lists all of the Chagim.
AM: So I’ll tell you, on each of the Chagin, I’m sorry, on Pesach and on Sukkot, you read this Torah reading from this week’s parasha. So on the second day of Sukkot, just a few weeks ago, we read these holidays. Sorry, on the second day of Pesach, just a few weeks ago. On Sukkot, on the first days of the holiday, you read this Torah reading. So this is a very familiar Torah reading.
3:09 – GS:
Okay, so I was correct, but it is really complete and we’ll see in a second that I had always thought that really there were kind of two calendars that had to be merged together because there were the agricultural holidays and then there are holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur which aren’t really agricultural and as we’ll see in a second, This is one place where, in a masterly way, it kind of combines and has the whole calendar, which might explain why, as you say, we read it on Pesach, so forth and so on.
3:47 – GS:
So let’s go to Leviticus 23.
4:05 – GS:
These are the fixed times which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions. So here comes the first surprise. On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a Sabbath of complete rest, a sacred occasion. You shall do no work. So Rabbi, how many sermons have you given where you describe the difference between Shabbat, which comes whether we invite it or not, it comes by the calendar every seven days, and a Moed, which is like an Ohel Moed, it’s a meeting place.
4:38 – GS:
We have to look up at the moon, we’ve got to decide when the new moon is, so forth and so on. And this just puts a puncture in that whole thing. It includes Shabbat in the list of Moedim, and that struck me is strange.
4:51 – AM:
Yes, but Shabbos is the grandfather, is the foundation of all the holidays. Now, you’re right, there’s a difference. Mekadesh ha-Shabbat. God makes Shabbos, because Shabbos happens every seven days. But holidays are Mekadesh Yisrael ha-Hazmanim. Jewish people make the holidays because it’s dependent on the seeing of the new moon. But you’re 100% right.
5:20 – AM:
You could have not included Shabbos, but Shabbos is considered to be part of it. And each of the holidays is called Shabbat Shabbatot, right? So each, and that means a day of rest. Now we’ll talk as you go through these about what the difference is between Shabbos and, you know, and the holidays. Let’s get there. Let’s take one step at a time.
5:40 – GS:
But I’m going to make the case that what you and I just said in terms of the difference between Shabbat and a holiday is true at one level, but from the perspective of this chapter, and it’s a complete chapter in Leviticus where it’s just mapping out the calendar, so to speak, maybe as a rudimentary or trivial perspective of these are days that you’re off from work. These are days that you don’t do certain things.
6:15 – GS:
They are similar, and I think what we have to do maybe is step back a little bit and understand that a day off, a holiday, in and of itself, they do have a similarity, and they are part of the pattern of Jewish life. So, we’re not going to read the whole thing, but it starts by talking about in the first month on the 14th day of the month, it talks about the Feast of Unleavened Bread. You shall eat unleavened bread for seven days.
6:45 – GS:
And then it goes on and speaks to the Israelite people in verse 10. And say to them, when you enter the land that I’m giving you and you reap its harvest, you shall bring the first sheaf of your harvest to the priest. He shall elevate the sheaf before God for acceptance in your behalf. The priest shall elevate it on the day after the Sabbath.” And correct me if I’m wrong, but this is really the Omer, this is the beginning of the counting of the Omer.
7:17 – GS:
It says, until that very day, until you have brought the offering of your God, you shall eat no bread or parts grain or fresh ears. [Which would be an agricultural reason for not eating bread .. hamaskil yavin). This is the new crop. It is a law for all time through the ages. And from the day on which you bring the sheaf of elevation offering the day after the Shabbat, you shall count off seven weeks. So here I forgot to mention that we are counting the Omer, which you could also say is kind of quasi-calendrical holidaying, if you will, but the point is that it ties Pesach to Shavuot, which we always knew there was a connection, but it ties it from the perspective of the first…
7:56 – AM:
The second day of Pesach, Mimacharat HaShabbat, that’s the first day of the counting of the Omer. At the second Seder, you start counting the Omer, because that’s when they gave this sacrifice. In Israel, there’s only one day of festival, so on the day after the first day of festival, they used to bring this special sacrifice.
8:18 – GS:
And of course, the fact that it says Memacharat HaShabbat speaks to the point you made seconds ago, which is that Shabbat festivals are called Shabbat as well. And so that’s how it could say Memacharat HaShabbat, the day after the first day of Pesach, you begin this counting. But again, it does connect Pesach to the agricultural calendar as well. And then it goes on in verse 21, you shall hold a celebration.
8:50 – GS:
It shall be a sacred occasion for you. No work. It is a time for throwing your settlements throughout the ages. And when you reap the harvest, you shall not reap all the way to the edges of your field. Field. So again, it mixes in agricultural rules to this kind of description of the agricultural holidays.
9:13 – AM:
Now you do know, I mean, you’ll get there, but Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are included, even though they’re not agricultural.
9:21 – GS:
Absolutely. And where did I miss Shavuot here? It says that you shall count those seven weeks and then you shall bring an offering of new grain. You shall bring from your settlements two loaves of bread. So again, we’ve gone through Pesach, we’ve gone through the counting from the first day of Pesach till Shavuot, and then we get to, as you say, Speak in verse 24, speak to the Israelite people thus, in the seventh month, on the first day of the month you shall celebrate complete rest, a sacred occasion commemorated with loud blasts, so that’s the shofar, you shall not work in your occupations, so that is Rosh Hashanah, which as you say, is really not an agricultural holiday.
10:09 – GS:
Then it says mark the 10th day of this month as the day of atonement, we are all aware of that. And then it says in verse 33, Hashem spoke to Moses saying, say to the Israelite people, on the 15th day of the seventh month, there shall be the feast of booths to Hashem to last seven days. The first day shall be a sacred occasion. You shall not work at your occupations. Seven days you shall bring offerings by fire to God.
10:39 – GS:
And the eighth day you shall observe a sacred occasion, bring an offering to fire to God. It is a solemn gathering. We talked about atzeret in a previous podcast. And then it concludes, these are the set times of God that you shall celebrate as sacred occasions, bringing offering by fire, and you would think that we’re finished. But, in verse 39, it kind of starts again, and it says, Mark, on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the yield of your land and you shall observe the festival of God seven days, a complete rest on the first day.
11:21 – GS:
We’ve done this already. On the first day you shall take the product of Hadar. So this is the palm banches, the bows of leafy. This is the arba minim, the etrog and the lulav, and you shall observe it as a festival of God for seven days, and in verse 42 it says you shall live in booths seven days, all citizens in Israel shall live in booths. In order, and here’s the key, in order that future generations may hold that I made the Israelite people live in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt, I, your God, so Moses declared to the Israelites the set times of Hashem.
12:05 – GS:
So, it does seem, and of course if you go to theTorah.com, you will see that in the textual critical higher criticism academics will look at this last paragraph beginning in 39 and say, why does it repeat over what it has already said about the ending of Sukkot, and their argument is that the editor is trying to make this wonderful not only catalog and travelogue through the calendar of the annual calendar, but he or she is also trying to take agricultural holidays and integrate them into the Rosh Hashanah and the Yom Kippur, and take Sukkot, which is putting these booths out in the field during the time of harvest, and connect it to Yetziat Mitzrayim, to leaving Egypt.
13:06 – GS:
And I, as I always will say, is you don’t have to be a higher biblical critic to notice, number one, what is happening here, and to ask yourself, what is the Torah doing? And so that’s kind of the first question I want to have is what do you think is happening here when it repeats it over and all of a sudden it gives a reason for this sitting in booths that gives new meaning to it.
13:37 – AM:
So, I think that there are two aspects of each of these holidays. One is the agricultural aspect and one is that we should remember that God, that the Jews were in booths when they left Egypt. One is the historical and one is the agricultural. And you see it in Sukkot because the Torah repeats the holiday twice. Once the agricultural and once the historical.
14:01 – GS:
And I think, in a sense, you’re agreeing with me to say that you don’t have to be a higher biblical critic to see that the text is trying to take us somewhere. Whoever wrote the text, whatever the tradition of the Mesora, it’s clear that when we repeat something over in Leviticus that maybe is going to be also put in Devarim, there’s a goal, there’s a motivation. And I think from that perspective, as you said a second ago, what they’re trying to do is take agricultural holidays that might have even been preexistent.
14:39 – GS:
It’s clear that when you harvest, you have to be in the fields day in and day out. You want to make sure that you harvest before the first rain. You don’t want to leave any time for travel. And it’s also pretty clear that every culture has a Thanksgiving type of celebration when the harvest is over. It’s so natural, hazorim bedima b’rina yiktzaru, you sow in tears and hard labor and you reap in joy.
15:10 – GS:
So, that is obvious, but I think what our text does for us is now bring it into the historical context. And the biblical critics can say, what do you mean they dwelt in sukkot, in booths, when Bilaam cursed the Jewish people, he said, Mah Tovu Ohalecha Yaakov, we only have tents, we don’t have booths. But the point is, that’s exactly the point. It’s trying to make a connection. It’s trying to give new meaning to an existing holiday, for a new generation, for history going forward.
15:45 – GS:
And I think that is important to recognize, because ultimately, at the end of the day, when we talk about holidays, we have to admit that holidays have different, multiple meanings. They are complex. And they also have meanings that change over time and are different to different generations and different times in history. And I think that is clear from this text.
16:12 – AM:
You know this clear from this text what about in the Hagaddah when we say in every generation we have to see ourselves is that we left Egypt right is it not the same thing that we need to take the historical and we need to make it modern or contemporary for every generation I think that makes exactly your point
16:59 – GS:
absolutely but here it’s a pasuk! When I was preparing for last week’s discussion on Yom Hazikaron. I did a search, I started looking, I knew from my yeshiva days that there was controversy regarding making new holidays, making Yom Hatzma’ut, Independence Day, into a new holiday. And you know, there are halachic implications. On certain days, you say tachanun, you request God to accept your teshuvah. On happy occasions, you don’t say tachanun. On some days, you say half hallel. On some days, you say full hallel.
17:32 – GS:
So when I grew up, that was the big question about Yom Ha’atzmuth. Do you say tachanun today? Do you say hallel today? So, these have halachic implications. I did a search and I came across this Peninei Halacha. Peninei Halacha is in Sefaria. It’s written by Eliezer Melamed. Who’s a rabbi..
17:58 – AM:
A rabbi who’s living now. He lives in a community on the West Bank called Har Bacha, but he’s contemporary. He’s modern. He’s 60 years old. He’s part of this generation.
18:09 – GS:
He is at 16 volumes and literally it is used to bring understanding, he quotes Sephardic customs, Ashkenazi customs. So, I looked him up and we’re gonna read a little bit, I don’t know if you would put this in the category of a teshuva, responsa literature, but we’re going to read a little bit from him apropos of how do you make a new holiday? And are you allowed to make a new holiday? And it is appropriate.
18:40 – GS:
So he writes, there is a mitzvah to establish a holiday of rejoicing and praising God on a day when the Jewish people were saved. It was on this basis that the sages established Purim and Hanukkah as permanent holidays. Even though one may not add mitzvot to the Torah, so here there’s this This straw dummy out there, someone would argue that you can’t make new holidays, and he is coming to create an argument explaining how we are, in fact, not only allowed, but sometimes commanded to make a new holiday.
19:18 – GS:
And he uses a Talmudic law of exegesis called a Kal Vachomer to prove that yes, you can make a new holiday and since the law of exegesis is biblical, he argues, you can almost say it is biblical. So, what he says is that Purim is a biblical holiday since the rabbis created it. The exact things that you do on it might not be biblical, but that you have to have a holiday celebrating the redemption of the Jews of Persia, that you can definitely have.
20:00 – GS:
And the same thing goes for Hanukkah. He says, many Jewish communities throughout the ages kept this mitzvah, instituting days of joy in commemoration of miracles that they experienced. Many of them, including the word Purim, were naming these days, like Purim Frankfurt and Purim Tiberius. I had never known that. I had always done around Thanksgiving research to see. I knew there was a concept of Sudat Hoda’ah, and here I finally found it, and it’s according to this rabbi, it’s based in law.
20:37 – AM:
That is fascinating. Wow. And I just want to tell you that this Pnei Halacha is studied in all the daati leumi, the religious liberal high schools in Israel that are part of the state. They study this book, Pnei Halacha.
20:54 – GS:
So this is the rule. And that’s what makes it so fascinating. And I suggest that all of you look at the source notes and read it in full. Because again, you always hear me say the expression, when we see halacha being made in front of our eyes, this is one of those examples. And you can only just imagine in your mind that he is making an argument against a really large population, the Haredim for sure, who would argue, no, no, we have enough holidays, you can’t just go about making new holidays whenever you want.
21:32 – GS:
So, he makes that argument, but where I really became fascinated was when he moved to Yom Hazikaron, the day that we talked about last week with Menachem Bombach in terms of the Haredim, but here he starts by saying, from a halachic standpoint, there is no need to institute a general memorial day for the holy soldiers who were killed in battle. And typically, after you read an argument like this, you’d expect the “but” to follow, but we do it anyway.
22:07 – GS:
He takes a while to get to that “but” So now he’s on the other side of the debating table, if you will. And he’s now going to make an argument for not creating a holiday or commemoration for our fallen soldiers. He says, rather, one should do what the Jewish people have always done for any Jew who dies. On the Yortzeit, a memorial prayer is recited. The deceased son or relatives recite Kaddish, they study Torah, give charity.
22:40 – GS:
Those who go beyond this hold a full memorial service with Torah lectures to elevate the deceit soul, like we do for my dad once a year. We have fought many wars throughout our long history, often losing more soldiers in one war than the IDF has lost in all of its battles combined. Nevertheless, the Sages never instituted a Memorial Day for those killed in battle. When we were victorious, we celebrated, and when we lost, we mourned individually.
23:14 – GS:
There is something bothering him here about Yom Hazikaron, about changing the way we mourn, and it almost reminded me at the beginning of the parasha where it talks about not ripping out your hair and not doing tattoos. Don’t mourn the way the non-Jews mourn. But he goes on, the only tragedy for which the sages institute public mourning, and then he goes on to talk about a Tisha B’Av, and then he says, oh, and you may raise the question about the fast of Gedalia, it too was instituted because of the destruction of the temple, and he argues that the destruction of the temple is totally different because it was a National catastrophe , universal, it was so intimately involved with the Jewish people.
24:05 – GS:
But he’s having a problem with Yom HaZikaron, and that too is fascinating.
24:10 – AM:
Yeah, that is fascinating. Like, like, like, what’s the basis? Like, where does it come from You know, that’s always that’s always interesting when you read these things. The halachic, you know, when you want it, when you want to source everything in halacha, sometimes it just doesn’t work so well, right? Being sometimes there just is no source in halacha. And what do you do then?
24:36 – GS:
Well, it’s a little bit like a litmus test, a little bit like a Rorschach Ink Blot. We all see our own ideology, our own feelings, and we come to our own conclusions. But thank the Lord he actually explains what’s on his mind, what’s bothering him. He says, sadly, people who lack faith, who do not understand the Jewish people’s past or its mission, have seized control of Israel’s media and cultural life. In the beginning, the secularists still possessed an inkling of Judaism, based on what they heard in their parents’ home.
25:14 – GS:
But over time, alienation from Torah values took its toll, and they turned Yom Hazikaron into a day of weakness and defeatist. V’hem hafchu et Yom Hazikaron liyom shel chalusha v’tvoshtanut. It’s like, and “What do you really think?”
25:37 – GS:
Now he’s coming across very strong, and this is a, I was thinking if we had time to bring it up last week, but this is another, you know, this is a holiday that has stratified the population in Israel. Of course. This is not an argument that the Haredim are bringing up. They would argue something else, but what he’s saying, and as you say he represents religious Zionism in Israel, he brings up this thing of weakness and defeatism.
26:06 – GS:
Instead of honoring the memories of the fallen, trying to understand the essence of the nation of Israel and investing meaning into the soldiers’ self-sacrifice, they emphasize pain, despair, and destruction, portraying the deaths of these soldiers as meaningless. He’s really projecting a lot onto the secularists. They appear to be honoring the fallen, but in reality, there is no greater affront to the honor of these martyrs than the inappropriate character that these people have attached to Yom HaZikaron.
26:41 – GS:
The fundamental flaw in their approach is their disregard for the Jewish national destiny for whose sake the soldiers sacrificed their life. So, you can read the rest of this when going to the notes, but I think it’s safe to say that what the philosophical approach that he’s coming from is that he does see these soldiers as being part of an age-old tradition of being moser nefesh, of giving their lives for a higher meaning.
27:18 – GS:
He talks a little bit less that how can you mourn them when they have eternal life. They have given up a temporal life for eternal life. We’ve spoken about this in the most recent episodes that we’ve had.
27:55 – AM:
That is a remarkable thing that you found. I want to just say something. That’s remarkable. You know, last week, we had Menachem Bumbach, who really talked about how the Haredim embrace Yom Hazikarot, or how they need to embrace Yom Hazikarot. And now you have someone from the religious Zionist community who is suspicious of the secular way of remembering.
28:21 – GS:
Isn’t that remarkable? It is, and they both come down, and this is what really got me thinking. He ultimately comes down and says, look, everybody is commemorating this. We’re going to have to commemorate it too. Ein Poresh min Hatzibor is the word that he uses from the Seder night. You can’t separate yourself from the community. But when you do it, at least think in terms of you’re not mourning a dead soldier, you’re mourning, dare I say, almost celebrating someone who was Moser Nefesh for a higher good.
28:55 – GS:
But it is absolutely fascinating, and again, it ties into the parasha in the sense that we’re giving meaning to our existing holiday, and where does it go from there? And, you know, I was thinking to myself a little bit after last week, you know, the adage, be careful what you wish for. When we want the charedim to start celebrating Yom Hazikaron, and the next step on the slippery slope might be celebrating Chas V’sholem Yom Ha’atzmut, that’s going to impact, they are going to tweak Yom Hazikaron and tweak Yom Ha’atzmut.
29:35 – GS:
To fit their very religious worldview. And I hope that we’re all aware of that. But we’re going to have to do this together. If we’re going to embrace our holidays together, we’re going to have to reinterpret them together as well. I want to end. I have a friend. I believe he’s brilliant. He just started a substack. He made Aliyah during COVID. His name is Joe Schwartz, and he wrote Zionist Reflection on Yom HaShoah, and he argues as follows.
30:13 – GS:
He says, Jewish death is either justified or possesses some universal redemptive significance. For the Christians, we suffer as an enduring witness to our murder of Christ. For the Muslims, we suffer because we reject Muhammad’s prophecy. For traditional Jews, we suffer for our sins and for the sake of sanctifying God’s name. Only one group of people denies that the suffering of the Jews has a redemptive meaning at all, the Zionists.
30:42 – GS:
For us, the Jews suffer only because people mean us harm and because we are unable to defend ourselves, and therefore we must learn to defend ourselves. This seemingly modest, rational demural of the Jews, our bowing out of the economy of suffering into which we have been conscripted, turns out to be one of the most radical revolutions in Western thought. We see all around us this unfathomable to the rest of the world, to Jew and Gentile alike, that we are no longer willing to accept our suffering as the verdict of heaven and humanity, but intend instead to defend ourselves.
31:22 – GS:
B-b-b-but, they sputter, can’t you see that you are guilty, that you are deicides, kafirs, thieves, settler colonists, guilty of apartheid and genocide and countless other inhumane crimes, that you deserve this, all of this and more? To which we Zionists reply, no more guilty than any human being.
No, we will defend ourselves. I just thought it’s fascinating, because again, what he’s arguing for, and he has smicha (Rabbinic Ordination), by the way, what he’s arguing for is that there’s another interpretation.
31:57 – GS:
And the other interpretation is that the Zionists didn’t unintentionally take away some of the theological baggage or underpinnings that we read about in the Teshuvah. But they’re saying a Jew can just commemorate a fallen soldier because we need to defend ourselves. And I thought that was just added another aspect to this conversation, which we wouldn’t be having if it wasn’t for this amazing teshuva.
32:30 – AM:
Amazing. Thank you so much, Geoffrey I’ve been taking these ideas with me to Israel. We’ll talk next week about what we’re going to do next week, Parshat Behar. Shabbat Shalom, everybody. Enjoy this amazing discussion of this period during the year.
32:45 – GS:
Shabbat shalom. Nasia tova to Israel. Can’t wait to hear your impressions.
Sefaria Source Sheet: www.sefaria.org/sheets/564540
Listen to last years episode: Rounding the Corner
