Disability and the Celts - Emor - Mythic Torah

Nuada Silver-Hand

Welcome back to Mythic Torah, my regular article investigating monsters, heroes and gods in the weekly Torah reading. This week's reading is Emor, the 8th reading of the book of Leviticus, that includes further instructions for the Priests as well as the major festivals of the Jewish year.

As a religious Jew, and particularly as a future rabbi, I come to the Torah looking for wisdom and guidance. I expect the Torah to speak to me with a voice of holiness and divinity, a voice that calls me to be better than I am.

But there are sections of the Bible, and the Torah in particular, where this set of assumptions is hard to maintain, where it is very difficult for me to see the perfect voice of holiness that I look for.

Emor contains one of those sections.

After beginning with instructions about the Priests avoiding dead bodies, God gives Moses instructions about priests with physical disabilities:

16 The Lord said to Moses, 17 ‘Say to Aaron: “For the generations to come none of your descendants who has a defect may come near to offer the food of his God. 18 No man who has any defect may come near: no man who is blind or lame, disfigured or deformed; 19 no man with a crippled foot or hand, 20 or who is a hunchback or a dwarf, or who has any eye defect, or who has festering or running sores or damaged testicles. 21 No descendant of Aaron the priest who has any defect is to come near to present the food offerings to the Lord. He has a defect; he must not come near to offer the food of his God. 22 He may eat the most holy food of his God, as well as the holy food; 23 yet because of his defect, he must not go near the curtain or approach the altar, and so desecrate my sanctuary. I am the Lord, who makes them holy.”’
-Leviticus 21

טז וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָֹה אֶל-משֶׁה לֵּאמֹר:
יז דַּבֵּר אֶל-אַהֲרֹן לֵאמֹר אִישׁ מִזַּרְעֲךָ לְדֹרֹתָם אֲשֶׁר יִהְיֶה בוֹ מוּם לֹא יִקְרַב לְהַקְרִיב לֶחֶם אֱלֹהָיו:
יח כִּי כָל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר-בּוֹ מוּם לֹא יִקְרָב אִישׁ עִוֵּר אוֹ פִסֵּחַ אוֹ חָרֻם אוֹ שָׂרוּעַ:
יט אוֹ אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר-יִהְיֶה בוֹ שֶׁבֶר רָגֶל אוֹ שֶׁבֶר יָד:
כ אוֹ-גִבֵּן אוֹ-דַק אוֹ תְּבַלֻּל בְּעֵינוֹ אוֹ גָרָב אוֹ יַלֶּפֶת אוֹ מְרוֹחַ אָשֶׁךְ:
כא כָּל-אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר-בּוֹ מוּם מִזֶּרַע אַהֲרֹן הַכֹּהֵן לֹא יִגַּשׁ לְהַקְרִיב אֶת-אִשֵּׁי יְהוָֹה מוּם בּוֹ אֵת לֶחֶם אֱלֹהָיו לֹא יִגַּשׁ לְהַקְרִיב:
כב לֶחֶם אֱלֹהָיו מִקָּדְשֵׁי הַקֳּדָשִׁים וּמִן-הַקֳּדָשִׁים יֹאכֵל:
כג אַךְ אֶל-הַפָּרֹכֶת לֹא יָבֹא וְאֶל-הַמִּזְבֵּחַ לֹא יִגַּשׁ כִּי-מוּם בּוֹ וְלֹא יְחַלֵּל אֶת-מִקְדָּשַׁי כִּי אֲנִי יְהוָֹה מְקַדְּשָׁם: 

It's important to understand what is not being said here. The priests who are disfigured, injured or disabled are not disqualified from being priests. They keep their priestly titles, and all the priviliges that come with that status, such as eating from the holy food in the temple.

Yet anyone who is not physically perfect is forbidden from performing the temple rituals.

Why? Surely God, who is beyond all physical form, does not care about our bodies. If the priest is able to conduct the service despite his disability, why should he be prevented from doing so? Isn't it what's on the inside that counts?

Celtic Mythology
Interestingly, there is a similar idea in a very different mythology, that of the Celts of Ireland. In the first battle of Magh Tuireadh, the gods of the celts, called the Tuatha De Danann, fought against the Fomorii for control of Ireland. While the battle was won, it was not without cost as Nuada, king of the Tuatha De, lost his hand in the battle:

   In that battle, moreover, Nuada's hand was stricken off - it was Sreng son of Sengann that struck it off him,  so Dian Cecht the healer put on him a hand of silver with the motion of every hand; and Credne the brazier helped the healer...
   A contention as to the sovereignty of the men of Ireland arose between the Tuatha De Danann and their women; because Nuada, after his hand has been stricken off, was disqualified to be king...

The High King of Ireland that lost a limb in battle had to abdicate the throne, despite his victory and the strength of the silver hand that replaced his original. Like in Emor, the Celts believed that only a physically unblemished person was suitable to represent the nation.

But unlike in Leviticus, in the story of the Irish gods this rule is a source of great tension, as Nuada is replaced by Bres of the Fomorii people as a bid for peace between the nations, and the result is terrible. Bres ruled for seven years and enslaved the Tuatha De Danann, forcing them to chop wood and dig ditches. Eventually, he is defeated by a newly whole Nuada, who has his silver hand replaced by a new one made of flesh and bone.

The physically impaired Nuada is replaced by the morally impaired Bres, and yet the story requires Nuada to be physically whole once more before he can return to rule as High King. There seems to be a critique here of the desire for physical perfection, yet it isn't as fully realised as we might hope.

The Temple as a Miniature World
At some level I can understand the mythic idea, that the representative of the people should be a perfect specimen of humanity but it seems so limiting to me that the Bible understood perfection to lie in physical wholeness, rather than spiritual or ethical perfection (though the rabbis at least understood ethical perfection to be implied by these verses as well).

Leviticus views the Tabernacle and the Temple as microcosms of the universe, and just as the creation of the universe is wholly good, as God pronounces its goodness over and over again, so too the Temple should be a space of goodness. If the shabbat at the end of creation is the time in which we look at the world as if it were already perfect, the temple was the physical space that represented the same idea.

Yet to understand this mythically is to ignore the human beings behind the physical bodies, just as I am criticising our tradition for doing. Human dignity should not be sacrificed for the sake of mythic symbolism.

The only way I can understand the prohibition on those with physical disabilities from serving is as a concession to the people at the time.

When the Temple still stood, perhaps the people were unable to see past the physical limitations to the person behind them, to the perfect soul that God created in the divine image. Perhaps they were unable to see such a person as reflective of that wholly good state of the universe that the Temple was meant to conjure, just as the Tuatha De Danann couldn't imagine a maimed man serving as High King in sacred marriage to the earth goddess.

Physicality Today
I'd really like to think that we have changed, that humanity has improved since then, that we can now see the person, not the body.

But honestly I don't know if that's true.

I think we are, in many ways, still in the same place that Emor thinks we are, still limited by the physical bodies we are seeing. The main difference I think, is that we can now be aware of this problem in our society, and being aware of it, we can strive to change ourselves and the world.

Emor may not speak to me with the voice of holiness that I expect from the Torah, but it nevertheless challenges and places demands upon me. Are we still in this place of viewing others through their physical limitations?

And if we are still in this space, then which of us is truly impaired?