One of the lessons we're taught in youth is the title of this post, or if you prefer another adage, "don't judge a book by its cover." The idea is simple and somewhat important. The true worth of an individual or an object is more than what is visible from the outside. It's a good moral lesson, and one that we as a society kind of suck at. And by "kind of," I mean, we really really suck at it. While overcoming our propensity to favor physically attractive people is a noble but difficult goal for a human, one might expect that a deity, unhampered by such proclivities, would more easily provide better determination of an individual's worth. This idea is pretty much at the heart of all the "life after death" scenarios offered up by the world's major religions. An individual gets judged by how good a person they were, not whether they managed to fool everyone about how good they were by being exceptionally charismatic.
So, what does the Torah have to say about this?
Requirements for Priesthood
This week's parsha discusses the various requirements for a kohen (priest) to serve in the Temple. It says (Lev 21:16-21):
16 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 17 Speak unto Aaron, saying: Whosoever he be of thy seed throughout their generations that hath a blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. 18 For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath any thing maimed, or anything too long, 19 or a man that is broken-footed, or broken-handed, 20 or crook-backed, or a dwarf, or that hath his eye overspread, or is scabbed, or scurvy, or hath his stones crushed; 21 no man of the seed of Aaron the priest, that hath a blemish, shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire; he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God.These are the Torah's characteristics for who is qualified to serve from among the descendents of Aharon. The Torah could have described some other characteristics, like humility or honesty. God, who presumably knows a person's true personality, could have instituted some divine test to provide the answer. Instead, the Torah describes the qualifications in purely physical terms. A person must look the part.
Various biblical heroes from baby Moshe (Moses) to Yosef (Joseph) to David are described as being handsome and good looking. It would be no surprise that humans would want to give these individuals characteristics that they think are important, highlighting their physical characteristics. But one might expect better from a deity.
For women it's far worse. A woman is almost entirely judged on her prettiness. But I'll have an entire post devoted to biblical misogyny much later on, so it's probably better to leave this topic for then.
Wasted Opportunities
One of the themes I will be focusing more in the last two books of the Torah, is that the Torah provides itself with many opportunities to give a good moral message, or an proof of its divinity, and repeatedly fails. Here is an example of one of these wasted opportunities. The Torah could have told us that we shouldn't be judging people on physical properties. Maybe then the Israelites wouldn't have elected Shaul (Saul) as king. Instead, it could have listed various properties that one should look for in a priest and a leader. Properties unrelated to whether they have a skin blemish.
One wonders whether the world would have been a better place if the Torah actually used these opportunities to provide good moral lessons. Would people have internalized them? Would western societies, that took it for the word of God, have improved? Would we have treat those with physical disabilities more humanely? We'll never know. God decided he only wanted to be served by the "pretty" people.
One explanation that I heard about the physical restrictions: an individual bringing a korban must be focused on the intent of the sacrifice. If they are staring at and thinking about that funny looking priest doing the sacrifice, it could invalidate the korban. (But not sure how he'd know about the dude's crushed testicles!)
ReplyDeleteAs for "good moral lessons", it's not fair to single out one section that doesn't seem to provide this according to your analysis - since others would quickly justify it as providing valuable moral lessons - but especially because the Torah IS replete with valuable moral lessons. Which has NOTHING to do with people internalizing the lessons, just as the prime directives against stealing has not dissuaded many, many "observant" people from committing fraud.
Thanks for the comments. As far as the first explanation, as to why this law exists, the one you offered feels very unsatisfying to me. I think it's analogous to the oft-heard tzniut idea that women must dress modestly so as not to distract men. It's oppressive to one gender and insulting to the other. I'll probably pick up these issues in a later post, so I'll drop it now.
DeleteThe second paragraph raises some good points. I agree that it's not fair to single out one section and give a blanket judgment on morality from it. Rather this is just one piece of evidence, it is to be joined with last week's "love your neighbor" and future week's posts to give a broader picture of what the Torah's morality is. The conclusion is that the morality of the Torah is pretty much spot on for what you'd expect for the time period and the region it came from. You can't get to that from this post alone, so you'll have to take my word for now on it. This is a set-up post for the future. Consider it as one example, and certainly not the best one, of a "bad moral lesson" in the Torah.
As far as your second half, I think there's a distinction to be drawn here. Yes, there are "Torah-observant" Jews who steal, and lie, and molest kids, and all sorts of immoral acts that the Torah proscribes. But these are a minority, and their actions are irrelevant of what the Torah says. The majority of people, observant or not, don't do these things. Furthermore, there are plenty of "observant" individuals who base their morality on the Torah itself. These are the people I was talking about. Just one example, the Torah prohibits the taking of interest on loans. This is an awful economic policy, but societies took this as a divine moral message, and that shaped a lot of Jewish history.
"Yes, there are "Torah-observant" Jews who steal, and lie, and molest kids, and all sorts of immoral acts that the Torah proscribes. But these are a minority, and their actions are irrelevant of what the Torah says. The majority of people, observant or not, don't do these things."
DeleteI'm going to take exception with that. I truly believe that the majority of the ultra-orthodox have no compunctions with defrauding the government and non-Jews. When one believes that only Jews have a "nefesh elokus" - an idea made popular by Chabad via the Tanya but accepted by the majority of hassidim and indeed many other charedi groups (Luzzato and others have similar ideas) - deceiving a non-Jew is not really looked upon as an aveirah. Nor does defrauding the government a problem to people who haven't internalized the difference between the historical memory of hundreds of years living under repressive governments and one in which their rights are protected as is the case in the USA.
You may very well be correct. My experience is more left wing of that (Modern Orthodox and mainstream Orthodox) where those views aren't all that prevalent. I honestly do not have enough experience with the Haredi communities to make a value judgement here.
DeleteA clarification to aforementioned post by me: "Luzzato" refers to the Ramchal, and not Samuel David.
DeleteI wote a very related post - http://altercockerjewishatheist.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-bible-priests-female-and-disabled.html Excerpt: “The requirement that priests bear no physical blemish is not limited to Israel but is attested universally.” (Milgrom)
ReplyDelete[The Torah missed a ‘golden’ opportunity to repudiate discrimination and superstitions regarding females, the blemished and the disabled. Surely, that is what they must have been for other cultures. Instead the Torah codifies discrimination and superstitions.]
Ah very nice. I think I missed that one. I considered bringing in the fact that David "hated lame people" but decided that was going a bit too far afield.
Delete@A Kefirah - Pls dont take my comment the wrong way. The more the merrier. Feel free to write a post about any topic regardless if I or anybody else has written something on it. Each person will make their own individual contribution to the topic. Good Post.
DeleteAbsolutely Kefira, but you needed to go a step further. The torah didn't merely miss an opportunity to be moral or kind, it actually took the opportunity to be immoral and abusive! How do we condemn Hitler for persecuting gays and the disabled, when the torah commands us to do the same? As Lacan put it best: "with god, everything is permitted! "
ReplyDeleteI'm looking forward to your future posts on the subject.
There is also an interesting Torah law regarding a males with testicle issues. They are not allowed to marry into the community per my recollection. If we interpret that sort of Torah law as part of these discrimination laws we get one result. But was there something else going on ? The idea of Fertility cults ? Or perhaps a prohibition against Egyptian practices ?
ReplyDelete