Aimee
Mullins has a dozen pairs of legs which give her a range of height from 5’ 8” to
6’ 1”. Her legs are made of silicone, solid ash, optically clear polyurethane,
and woven carbon-fibre. The silicone legs are nearly indistinguishable from
human legs; they even have veins. The solid ash legs are carved with grape
vines and magnolias. Aimee’s several pairs of polyurethane legs are whimsical.
And her woven carbon-fibre legs, called “cheetah”
legs, are for running races; Aimee ran the 100-meter sprint in 17.01 seconds
and jumped 3.14 meters in the long-jump at the 1996 Paralympics in Atlanta. But
that’s not all. Aimee Mullins is also has an extensive career as a fashion
model and actress.
Mullins
was born without fibula bones. At the age of one, both legs were amputated
below the knee. This did not prevent her from participating in athletics nor
winning a full academic scholarship to Georgetown University.
It is
not so long ago that Aimee Mullins would have been considered a poor, little
disabled girl and her accomplishments on the track field, as well as in modeling and
acting, all but unthinkable. There is a long history going back at least to the
Bible, but probably much further, concerning the “perfect” human body. We
find it writ large in this week’s parashah, Emor.
Emor opens with the restrictions placed on the priests
descended from Aaron who served in the Mishkan (Tabernacle) and brought
sacrifices to the altar. Contact with the dead was forbidden unless the
deceased was an immediate relative. Priests were not permitted to shave their face,
cut the side-growth of their beard, or mar their bodies with gashes. They could
marry only a virgin (widows, divorcees, or harlots were “tainted” with
imperfection). And finally, they were disqualified from serving in the Mishkan
if they had a mum (bodily defect):
Adonai spoke further to Moses: Speak
to Aaron and say: No man of your offspring throughout the ages who has a defect
shall be qualified to offer the food of his God. No one at all who has a defect
shall be qualified: no man who is blind, or lame, or has a limb too short or
too long; no man who has a broken leg or a broken arm; or who is a hunchback,
or a dwarf, or who has a growth in his eye, or who has a boil-scar, or scurvy,
or crushed testes…shall be qualified to offer Adonai’s offering by fire…He
shall not profane these places sacred to Me, for I Adonai have sanctified them.
(Leviticus 21:16-23)
Etz
Hayim, struggling to explain what
we, in the 21st century, find morally repugnant in this text, tells us:
The reader may be troubled by these rules, disqualifying physically
handicapped kohanim [priests] from officiating in public. Perhaps their
disfigurements would distract the worshipers from concentrating on the ritual
and, like the offering of the blemished animal [which is also forbidden by
Torah; see Leviticus 22:21–25], would compromise the sanctuary’s image as a
place of perfection reflecting God’s perfection… Today we might well consider
the religious institution that is willing to admit its own imperfections and is
willing to engage physically handicapped spiritual leaders as being better able
to welcome worshipers who are painfully aware of their own physical or
emotional imperfections… (Etz Hayim, p. 719)
The
suggestion that “disfigured” officiants would be distracting and “compromise
the sanctuary’s image” might reflect the sensibility of the biblical world—I
don’t really know—but the supposition that the Mishkan was a “place of
perfection reflecting God’s perfection” is anachronistic. The idea of God’s “perfection”
is an ideal that came into vogue later, long after the Mishkan, and the Temples
that succeeded it, were gone from the scene.
Our
struggle today is to transition from seeing some people as “disfigured” and “handicapped,”
whose value is measured primarily by how they make others feel (are they not
valuable in and of themselves?), to recognizing that the diversity in God’s
creation is just that: diversity. There is no perfection except in our
imaginations. The religious obligation and goal is to recognize the Divine
value of everyone and not to judge how far from “perfection” anyone falls.
Aimee
Mullins recounts that some years ago, a friend said to her, “You know, Aimee,
you’re very attractive. You don’t look disabled.” Some years later, she arrived
at a party sporting legs that made her 6’ 1” tall and encountered an old friend
who said, “But you’re so tall! Aimee, that’s not fair!” Many would see this as
progress, but I cannot help but wonder: Doesn’t the second comment still
reflect the same standard of beauty as a function of so-called human perfection? Perfection is a
perfectly dreadful idea.
© Rabbi Amy
Scheinerman
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