{"id":75483,"date":"2020-06-02T10:21:44","date_gmt":"2020-06-02T07:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=75483"},"modified":"2020-06-02T10:21:44","modified_gmt":"2020-06-02T07:21:44","slug":"separate-but-equal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/separate-but-equal\/","title":{"rendered":"Separate – But Equal?"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[],"acf":{"old_id":"75483","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":64460,"related_cahpter":"494","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"The challenges of holiness\r\n\r\n","content":"

Rabbinic literature is famous for the way in which it melds the axiological and the practical, even subsuming the former in the latter. Rather than making explicit theological statements, a rabbinic text will usually focus on a concrete issue of law or practice. For the careful interpreter, however, a legal ruling is rarely <\/span>just<\/span><\/em> a legal ruling \u2014 more often than not, the theology of the Rabbis is discoverable there, just beneath the surface of a seemingly mundane question.This tendency to embed the theoretical within the practical has its origins in the Bible, and a good example is to be found in our chapter for today.<\/span><\/p>\n

The prophet Ezekiel was also a priest, and his book shows a close connection to those parts of the Torah which are particularly concerned with the priestly caste and their service in the Temple. At the end of the 42nd chapter \u2014 which is given over to a minute description of the physical layout of the future Temple \u2014 we find the following: \u201cThus he measured it on the four sides; it had a wall completely surrounding it, 500 [cubits] long on each side, <\/span>to separate the consecrated from the unconsecrated<\/span><\/em>\u201d (42:20).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The final phrase is something like the motto of the priests. An almost identical formulation occurs in Book of Leviticus after the death of Aaron\u2019s sons, when the priestly vocation is summed up thus: \u201cThis is a law for all time throughout the ages, you must distinguish between the sacred and the profane, and between the unclean and the clean; and you must teach the Israelites all the laws which the LORD has imparted to them through Moses\u201d (Leviticus 10:10, with parallels in Leviticus 11 and 20). According to this theology, the act of making distinctions is in some sense constitutive of holiness. For Ezekiel, it is expressed in the very stones of the Temple compound.<\/span><\/p>\n

This priestly ethos of division has had a profound impact on the history of Jewish thought \u2014 the formula from Leviticus 10, quoted by Ezekiel, forms the basis of the <\/span>havdalah<\/em> <\/span>blessing with which we end the Sabbath, and as the text from Leviticus 20 emphasizes, Jewish self-identity is closely tied to the idea of being separated out from the nations of the world. Many interpreters, Jewish and non-Jewish, have asked challenging questions: is it possible to believe in the inherent importance of separation without attributing differences in value? Does the idea of a chosen people necessarily imply supremacy?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

It is notable however that this particular affirmation of <\/span>havdalah<\/span><\/em> occurs in the book of a prophet who at other moments voices some of the most radically universal sentiments to be found in the Bible \u2014 in his treatment of individual responsibility, for instance, and his vision of foreigners integrating into the tribal structure of Israel. For Ezekiel, apparently, these values were not necessarily incompatible. Perhaps for us as well they need not be.<\/span><\/p>\n

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