Haftorah This Week
Welcome to Haftorah This Week, the place where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on this week's Haftorah.
HAFTARAT EMOR
(Ezekiel 44:15-31)
Ideals do not exist suspended above the world. They are embodied in the real people whose task it is to live them. In this Haftarah, it is the priests, the Kohanim, who embody Israel's covenantal search for holiness and divine service. Later, in the rabbinic period, this will change, making available a wider, more accessible and democratic sense of holiness. But, for the moment, the people as a whole have, it seems, a very limited role to play in rendering the details which made holiness perceptible.
As before, holiness means being "special," set aside for something of exceptional worth. It means being completely a part of the divine realm, having no "holding" in Israel because, as the Divine voice in Ezekiel says,"I am their portion." And being special dictates uncommon acting: eating differently, wearing particular clothes, creating a distinctive physical appearance, and following more restrictive marital practices.
How do Kohanim pursue holiness? They sanctify space by serving in the Temple. There, at the sacred center of the cosmos, they connect and reconcile the human and Divine. They sanctify time by protecting the divinely ordained "fixed occasions" and Sabbaths. They make Israelite culture holy by preserving the divine teachings, judging lawsuits and deciding what is in accord with divine rules.
Kohanim are, all at once, peacemaking hierophants, masters of religious ritual and wise judges who make the world right. Their cultural responsibility is the struggle to distinguish the sacred from the profane. It is they who must discover what can be brought close and what must be kept separate if Israel is to be worthy of a sanctuary in which the Divine presence dwells.
It does not matter that priests had this responsibility only because of their historical circumstances. After all, the responsibility for representing holiness always falls to those whose historical situation allots it specifically to them and not to others. What is important is not to miss the chance when that task is given to us.
(Tsvi Blanchard)
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