Parshat Emor 5778-The influence of the ‘street’

Based on a shiur from Rabbi I.Bernstein zal given in London in 1993

א  וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל-מֹשֶׁה, אֱמֹר אֶל-הַכֹּהֲנִים בְּנֵי אַהֲרֹן; וְאָמַרְתָּ אֲלֵהֶם, לְנֶפֶשׁ לֹא-יִטַּמָּא בְּעַמָּיו.

1 And the LORD said unto Moses: Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them: There shall none defile himself for the dead among his people;

In this verse the commentators are puzzled by the double use of the word אֱמֹר/ וְאָמַרְתָּ.

Rashi comments:

אמר אל הכהנים. אמר ואמרת, לְהַזְהִיר גְּדוֹלִים עַל הַקְּטַנִּים (יבמות קי"ד):

אמר אל הכהנים SAY UNTO THE PRIESTS [… AND THOU SHALT SAY UNTO THEM] — “Say" and again “thou shalt say unto them" — this repetition is intended to admonish the adults about their children also — that they should teach them to avoid defilement (Yevamot 114a).

Here there is a special exhortation to remind the priestly parent to warn his son about the dangers of becoming ‘impure/tamei.’There is a  question on Rashi’s interpretation, found based on two other occasions when the Torah issues a similar exhortation.

In the Talmud, the prohibition to eat ‘sheratzim’/creepy crawlies  and blood is also presented as a warning for parents to their children. In those cases however the Torah achieves this warning with one word/phrase (‘lo tochloom becomes lo ta’achiloom-do not eat and do not feed to your children. With the prohibition on blood the Talmud expounds the words’kol nefesh’).Why in our parsha does this warning about ‘impurity’ require a double expression of ‘amira’ unlike in the parsha of sheratzim/blood?

Rabbi Zalman Sorotzkin zal (d.1965 in Israel, formerly the Rav of Lutsk in Poland)) in his magnum opus ‘Oznaim Letorah’ answers this question with a very valuable life observation.( I once heard Dr Josef Burg zal, the famous Israeli politician, explain why the Oznaim Letorah is so unique ,because in his introduction Rabbi Sorotzkin shows tremendous humility by saying that he considers his explanations’betorat oolai’ meaning they are suggestions which may perhaps answer the questions, but with a recognition that there may be other more definitive answers).He explains that a child has two sources of education, the parents ( or their ‘agent’- the teacher) and the ‘street’ i.e. the surroundings in which the child lives and socializes. Chazal warn that bad neighbors can do much harm and in Pirkei Avot they advise to find a good neighbor and a good friend. The child may even learn more from his neighbors and surroundings than from his parents. A parent is very fortunate when he can back up the values that he wants to instill in his child by living in a conducive surrounding neighborhood. If a parent encourages Shabbat observance and the child sees his friends outside the home not keeping Shabbat, their influence can be overwhelming. This is what happened to a whole generation of Jews who grew up here on the Lower East Side or in London’s East End neighborhood, and very few children remained observant in these circumstances. The parent has one option in this negative environment and that is to continually warn his children not to be influenced by the surroundings and repeat these warnings in a loving way whenever he can. If other parents do the same, then the ‘street’ can become a support to the parent’s wishes as other children hear the same ideas and conform as well out of respect to the parents.

This is a plan which works well until you get to the problem of the priestly father teaching his son not to come into contact with ‘impurity’. There the ‘street’ will not be supportive, as there are few other children with the same restrictions (Kohanim are a minority).In such a case the double exhortation is emphasized, as this may be the only way that the son will take his father’s instruction seriously. There is no support from the street and the doubling of efforts is even more important to transmit this important religious value and practice. This is why the warning here is unique and expressed in the double form to emphasize how challenging this issue of impurity can really be for Kohanim, without any real support from the surrounding area.

I would just add that in Israeli society today, there are many young people from observant homes who enter the army and come out 3 years later ‘without the kippah’ and totally unobservant. In New York there is a whole organization called ‘Footsteps’ which helps Chassidic men and women to integrate into the secular world after leaving their religious lives behind

(from Brooklyn, Monsey etc). These are great challenges for many observant parents, as to how to handle this situation without alienating the ‘child’ further. I have always believed that one of the most important methods of coping is by keeping the contact with an OTD (off the derech) child, even if it means that the child may attend a Shabbat meal but leave immediately after , without observing Shabbat as the parent would wish. Keeping the contact alive is a form of ‘emor veamarta’ as we explained above, in that the channel of communication remains alive. In later years the child may very well come back to a more religious lifestyle, and keeping the ‘channels’ open is a really important part of this process. This is a true challenge of the 21st century in many religious homes and our parsha gives us an insight as to how to react in such a

situation .Never lose contact.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Ian Shaffer

Cherry Hill NJ/SCW