If the
daughter of a priest defiles herself through harlotry, she has disgraced her
father and is put to death through burning. (Leviticus 21:9)
We are all familiar with the horror of so-called “honor killings”:
Hiyam
Souad, 23, of Gaza was strangled by her father and brother in their home
because she was there with a young man who lived nearby.
Nilofar Bibi,
22, of India was forced into an arranged marriage at the age of 14. She
escaped. Her brother found her, dragged her into the street, and decapitated
her saying, “She sinned and had to be punished.” The family supported his
effort to uphold the family “honor.”
In
Kingston, Ontario, an Afghani couple and their 18-year-old son brutally drowned
the couple’s three teen-age daughters (ages 19, 17, and 13) and the husband’s
first wife in a polygamous marriage because the girls weren’t obeying all the
rules that had been set for them.
Unfortunately examples abound. I cannot imagine anything more dishonorable than killing one’s own child. It is violence erupting from ego, from concern for one’s image above all else — even above human life. It is narcissism at its absolute worst.
The verse with which we began does not
use the word “honor” (kavod in
Hebrew), but the defilement (m’chalelet)
it speaks of affects the father’s honor. When the verse says “harlotry” (liz’not) it could mean prostitution (see
Genesis 38:15 and Leviticus 19:29) or promiscuity (see Genesis 38:24 and
Deuteronomy 22:21). In either case, Torah makes it clear that the daughter’s
unseemly behavior reflects poorly on her father who is a priest. Two
observations: First, burning is rare in Tana”kh (the Bible). We find it in
three other cases: Judah demands that Tamar be executed by fire; Leviticus
20:14 stipulates burning for a man who marries both a woman and her mother; and
we are told that the Israelites both stone and burn Achan and his household for
appropriating spoils that had been dedicated to God (Joshua 7:25). The very fact that burning
is so rare tells us that Torah considers the kohen’s daughter’s crime
enormously significant. Second: the punishment (burning) is not commensurate
with the crime. Prostitution and premarital sex are not punishable crimes, and
burning is not prescribed for adultery. The concern clearly is, as the verse
states, her father’s honor.
We are long past the period of the
active priesthood. That ended in 70 C.E. with the destruction by the Romans of
the Second Temple. No doubt, if there were a Temple standing today, only the
most fanatical and psychopathic among us would even suggest that such a “law”
could be carried out. For those who insist that we must obey the requirement of
the verse, as well as those who are troubled that the verse exists at all, I
offer the old and reliable Jewish staple: interpretation. Here is how Rabbi
Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev explains this deeply troubling verse in his
commentary Kedushat Levi:
We
already know that when someone in our domain of the universe commits a sin that
this leaves a corresponding “stain” or defect in the celestial domain. In
practice this means that sins committed on earth strengthen the forces of the kelipot (peels), that is, the forces
that surround holiness and thereby make it less effective or ineffective, much
as a peel prevents us from getting at the fruit within it. The best remedy
available to repair this spiritual damage is by burning it in fire. “Burning”
need not be a physical process but can be service to the Lord with so much
enthusiasm that it bursts into “flames.” (Kedushat
Levi, Emor on 21:9)
Levi Yitzhak reads the verse as an allegory. The “daughter”
represents a person’s soul that is subject to the influences of the yetzer tov (inclination to do good) and
the yetzer ra (inclination to do
evil). “Harlotry” happens when we give in to the yetzer ra and make wrong choices. Our choices do not affect us
alone; there is a ripple effect to everything we do because everything is
interconnected. Ultimately the entire universe suffers the effects of the evil
each of us does.
Kabbalists describe God’s holiness, which they understand as
having been shattered in a cataclysmic cosmological explosion, as a myriad sparks
of divine light or holiness or goodness, each trapped within a kelipah (pl. kelipot: peels, shells, husks — something that traps its content
within). Kelipot are the evil that
conceals holiness. Another way to think about kelipot is that they are the spiritual, emotional, and
psychological obstacles that separate us from our better selves.
Kelipot are often
identified with idolatry. In the case of those who engage in violent and
despicable “honor killings” the object of their idolatrous worship is themselves
and their images: pure narcissism. They hold their self-image more valuable, more important,
more sacred than even the life of their child.
It is easy to condemn “honor killings” but how many of us
are tainted (as Rabbi Levi Yitzhak put it) with this sort of idolatry? How many
of us worry that our children will not reflect well on us, and out of this
primacy speak to, pressure, and direct them in matters of love, marriage,
education, and career in ways that serve our
purposes more than theirs? How many
of us worry how our spouse or partner reflects on us? Or how our house, car,
clothing, or other material possessions reflect on us?
In the end — after all kelipot,
facades, and excuses are stripped away — the only thing that reflects on our honor
is us: our choices and our behavior. Are we reinforcing kelipot, and preventing God’s holiness from shining into our lives,
or are we obliterating the kelipot and
freeing holiness to enter the world, thereby adding to the stock of goodness in
the world? Remember that ripple effect? It happens as much with good as with
evil.
© Rabbi Amy Scheinerman
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