Luke Ford

I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs Mondays at 7:00 pm PDT on my cam and on YouTube. Facebook Fan Page.

This week we study Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21:1-24:23).

* A friend of mine is old. He’s a cohen (priest). The Torah prohibits him from marrying a divorcee. My friend is not particularly religious. Should he allow this Torah prohibition to prevent him from finding love? What priority would you give this mitzvah? Couldn’t he just take the spiritual lesson of not marrying a slut and then do as he pleases? Rabbi David Wolpe has a liberal position on this mitzvah.

* Those of us who are not Cohenim (priests), what’s our excuse for not getting married? We are permitted to marry prostitutes. For me, once I’ve seen a girl get done on video, I don’t feel like she’s a jewel. I can’t marry her.

* Do you have any particular expectations for cohenim (Jewish priests)? I don’t. They could be gangsters and I wouldn’t be surprised.

Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “Part of the problem of leadership is that one who achieves position and prominence is always held to a higher standard of behavior and accomplishment than we ordinary humans. In this week’s parsha the Torah sets out special and stringent rules for the descendants of Aharon, the kohanim/priests of Israel.”

* Would you like to see us bring back stoning for blasphemers? I think Islam has the death penalty for blasphemy. Is Islam like Judaism without western civilizing influences?

* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “It is interesting to note that the Torah in this week’s parsha lays down many rules about the actions and behavior of the kohanim regarding their own personal lives. Apparently, nowhere does the Torah deal with public policy issues and the national direction in which the kohanim are to lead the people of Israel.”

“That is why throughout Tanach we find the leaders of Israel being judged not so much by their public persona, policy decisions or by their wars and victories and reverses, as much as by their private behavior and interpersonal relationships and actions.”

* I need a lot of sex. How can I be sure that the woman I marry wants a lot of sex too? Many women have sex drives that equal men’s for about a year, their first year together, but after that it drops away.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister says: “Going back over the past century, women’s sexuality has changed in a variety of interesting ways while men’s desires have remained more constant.

“Young women in the mating phase, this is a period of high sexual interest in both genders. There is a period when they get close.

“What happens over and over again if you track couples, when they fall in love, and their sexual interests match closely and they both think I’ve found someone who’s close to me and we’ll go on having sex every day. A year or two later, after the commitment’s made and they’re married, they revert back to their separate baselines.

“If married people have conflicts over sex, more than 90% of the time the men want more sex than the women. The women seem to lose sexual interest in their partner after a couple of years and the man, and the woman, often don’t understand what’s different.

“Women are not catching up to men in the illegal stuff. Men have a higher sex drive and are more likely to do illegal or immoral things to get sex.”

* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “Kohanim are held in high regard in the Jewish world and are entitled to certain special privileges and honors in the Jewish religious society.”

Not among the Jews I know. We couldn’t care less who’s a cohen except for when it comes to calling people out to the Torah and other ritual matters that few Jews I know give two turtledoves about.

* Rabbs, there’s nothing wrong with you that two turtledoves couldn’t fix. And there’s nothing wrong with me that two black (Ethiopian Jewish) women couldn’t fix.

* Rabbi Wein writes: “Though it seems that it is permissible for a kohein to waive some of those privileges if he so wishes, preferred behavior dictates that he not do so.” So if you’re a cohen and you want to marry a divorcee, can you waive your cohen (kahuna) status?

Rabbi Wein writes: “Not every person who claims to be a kohein is really a kohein. Since true pedigrees are very difficult to truly ascertain today, the halacha adopts a position that who is really a kohein is a matter of doubt. Therefore great rabbinic decisors, especially in the United States, have often, in cases of dire circumstances, “annulled” the kehuna of an individual.”

How much does it cost to get your kehunna annulled?

* Rabbi Wein writes: “In the confusion of immigration to the United States at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries there were people who disguised themselves as kohanim in order to earn the monies of pidyon haben – the redemption of the first born son from the kohein. These people were charlatans, but many other simple Jews assumed that somehow they were kohanim without any real proof of the matter.”

Did you know that an Australian penny weighs as much as a dime and therefore you can use Aussie pennies to trick public telephones? Is this permitted by the Torah?

* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “Is it not sufficient that he perform his duties – especially his detailed Yom Kippur duties – in a competent and efficient manner? After all, is not one entitled to a private and personal life, even if one holds high public office? Apparently the Torah does not feel so. Being the High Priest is not a job. It is not even what our non-Jewish
friends refer to as “a calling.” It is rather a position of moral leadership and a role model stature in Jewish life.”

* Did Rabbi Rabbs feel like God called him to be a rabbi to minister to the people Israel?

* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “One of the signs of corruption that doomed the Second Temple Commonwealth of Judea was the unethical behavior of many of the High Priests who served in the Temple during that period of Jewish history. The Talmud teaches us that many of them died when entering the Holy of Holiness because of their unworthy private behavior.”

I’ve often felt like God was going to strike me dead after I stepped into a shul after engaging in unholy behavior. Sometimes I’ve had much more guilt stepping into a church than a shul.

* I think a large part of the reason I am religious, maybe the biggest part, is that I am convinced I would destroy myself (and perhaps those around me) if I were not religious. That’s the primary reason I go to shul every day — not because I want to learn Torah or to pray to God or to do mitzvas, but to keep myself within the Torah corral. If it weren’t for shul, I’d be out chasing women.

* Rabbi Wein writes: “Holy and honest people inspire holiness and honesty in others.” This is so true. I am profoundly affected by the people I roll with. That’s why I go to shul every day. Otherwise, I’d be out chasing women, and some of them have low morals. The ones I’d bed would probably be bipolar, tatted up and have drinking and drug problems and try to charge me. Afterward, I’d be filled with self-loathing. It takes a special kind of woman for me not to loathe her after sex. Sometimes I just look at her and if she’s a mess and fat and smelly and slovenly and not very bright and disciplined and successful, and I just hate her and hate myself. I speak from experience. I think about the things I’ve just done to her and I think, what kind of woman would allow me to do such things? Only a slag. Oy, I fear my misogyny is coming out, just when I thought I had it all nicely contained. I need to get to a 12-step meeting.

On the other hand, I only feel like a man when some woman validates me. Oy, I’m very mixed up. It’s easy to get stuck in this cycle of perpetually going on the prowl to find validation in the arms of a woman and then to hate her and yourself afterward.

I wonder if I have been negatively affected by my Christian upbringing and have all this unnecessary shame and confused feelings?

* I used to be shomer negiya (would not touch the opposite sex). I’d have this woman up for the weekend. Friday and Saturday I’d lecture her about how I couldn’t touch her. And then Sunday, I’d give her a ride to the bus stop and on the way I’d lose it.

* Do you spend a lot of time in cemeteries? I find them sobering. I like to walk around in them. It puts things in perspective and they’re often great places to hide from the police.

* Rabbi Wein writes: “Even though we are all tamei today in non-Temple times, nevertheless there is an implied message here that no Jew should gratuitously allow one’s self to become impure unnecessarily. In kabbalistic thought, especially in the tradition of the Ari, visiting graves and cemeteries was discouraged because of the unholiness of the spirits that reside in the place where the dead are buried. This trend of thought has not gained wide popularity in Jewish life – witness the many thousands who make the pilgrimage to the grave of Rabi Shimon ben Yochai in Meron every Lag B’Omer – and graves of loved ones and of great holy people that play an important role in everyday Jewish life. Yet, this idea of not allowing one’s self to become tamei, as exhibited in the special commandment to the kohanim in this week’s Torah reading should at least give us pause and room for thought on the matter.”

* Whether we like it or not, we are each role models to someone and our behavior affects them. You can’t just say, “I’m not a role model.” It’s not a choice. It is thrust upon you, particularly if you host a Torah Talks show.

* Rabbi Wein writes: “Thus the kohanim represented the two most necessary ingredients for decent society – the devoted public servant and the moral educator and teacher.”

* Most of the Torah is not democratic. The more religious Jewish life, the more it is elitist. The more traditional, the less likely you are to march up to some rabbi you don’t know and start asking questions. When I bring secular Jews to shul, they often think that the Orthodox are so eager to make converts that they will welcome their questions and challenges. Not so much.

I remember taking this big magazine writer to shul and pointing out a great rabbi. So my friend marched over to the rav and asked him a question. The rabbi ignored him.

Out for a walk the other day, I ran into a rabbi I knew. So I slowed down to fall into step with him until I realized to my chagrin that he had no interest in walking with me.

I have this thing. I want to get close to a rabbi I admire but that carries with it responsibilities that I don’t want and so the rabbi usually ends up rejecting me. If I had just hung back all along, I could’ve kept my freedom and the arms-length relationship.

* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “The very concept of an elite class among Jews is somehow disturbing to our modern mindset and societal value system. Our slavish devotion to the ideal of democracy has forced many Jews to forsake all Jewish values and traditions in order to prove ourselves truly democratic.”

The undemocratic nature of Torah Judaism rubs most secularists the wrong way.

* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “For many centuries there was a concept of noblesse oblige in European and American society. The wealthy, the powerful, the talented and gifted were felt to have an obligation to work for the betterment of their society as a whole, simply because they were blessed with an unequal and favorable share in life’s bounties. This concept was based upon the foundations of Torah thought…”

* I had a therapist who encouraged me to work on my problems with other people when the emotional temperature was low. Once things heat up, it’s hard to make much progress.

* Rabbi Wein writes: “The Torah reading of this week concludes with a discussion of the sin of blaspheming the name of God. The Torah places this prohibition within an anecdotal context, describing an event that occurred in the camp of the Jewish people in the desert of Sinai. Two Jews had a quarrel that rapidly disintegrated into a public fight. The quarrel originally had to do with the ancestry of one of the Jews. When the quarrel between the two Jews finally went out of control, the act of blasphemy of God’s name took place.”