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: