Committing to Commitment

Overcoming Self-Sabotage at the Altar in Emor

And when any party offers, from the herd or the flock, a sacrifice of well-being to the Lord for an explicit vow or as a freewill offering, it must, to be acceptable, be without blemish; there must be no defect in it. (Leviticus 22:21)

Why would a person deliberately bring a blemished animal sacrifice to God? One possibility is that when the sacrifice is rejected the person can say, “You see, it’s because I didn’t bring a good sacrifice,” thus shielding himself from the sting of rejection. It’s not personal. God doesn’t reject me, just my offering. Alternatively, a person who makes a vow and wants to get out of it might point to the original moment and say “Look, I gave a blemished animal. This proves that my heart was never really in the vow.” In both cases, the blemished animal is a kind of insurance policy, or hedge, allowing the devotee to reap the upside of divine acceptance while protecting against the downside of divine rejection. This is forbidden. When it comes to worship, commitment, and the hard work of personal transformation, one must be all in.

If you don’t want to change, then going through the motions won’t help. The first step to growth is sincere reckoning with the question “What will I have to give up to become a new person? Am I willing to part with my old way of being?” In a budding relationship, one party must take the first leap of saying “I love you.” A blemished “I love you”—one that would allow the utterer to retract it by following up with “I was just kidding”—is void from the onset. The best things in life require a leap of faith, and can’t be gamed. The way to defeat the prisoner’s dilemma is to be the courageous one.

A purely spiritual orientation would require the devotee to go through some therapy or meditation process to prove sincerity, and surface any internal conflict about approaching the altar, but Jewish law is biased towards action. Thus, there is no sincerity that precedes the approach. Rather, sincerity is manifest in the integrity of the animal. If you are sincere, then you will demonstrate it. A bias towards action has this profound advantage: you don’t need to make up your mind in advance; as long as you show up, that proves it, and, more likely, tips the momentum in your favor. There is no theoretical way to decide if you want to change. The question is more practical. What are you doing to change?

A skeptical reader will argue that my hypothesis is too apologetic. After all, the prohibition on bringing a blemished sacrifice is downstream of the prohibition on serving as a blemished priest. A priest can’t help having a mum, a defect, and so the law is harsh. We are concerned with the aesthetics of show-business or even sales in which “fit and finish” are paramount. The deformed priest and the blemished animal interrupt the show because they are too real, not airbrushed enough. You can certainly read it this way. God, so to say, requires “conscientiousness” and the mum-ified priest is judged to lack it for literally superficial reasons. But when we read the case of the disqualified priest more metaphorically, we see that we are not with the question of outward appearance, but with a different topic, namely self-sabotage and low-self esteem. If you are going to the altar, believe in yourself, and present yourself accordingly.

The person who brings the faulty animal engages in a form of self-destruction. The person who identifies as a mum, a defective person, expresses that in the way they present. Mark Zuckerberg’s black t-shirt and jeans uniform not withstanding, would you greet an important, stately person in a state of dishevelment? The person who seeks to meet God must give God no reason for God to reject them than the fundamental matter at hand. Or to put it less theologically and more psychologically, the person who seeks to become their more evolved self is required to do so whole-heartedly, accepting the risk of the unknown and the uncertain. One may not sacrifice on the basis of Pascal’s wager.

The most important word in our parasha, Emor is not mum, defect, but l’hakriv, meaning both to sacrifice and to draw close. The Torah instructs us to remove those obstacles that get in our way and in the way of the other of “drawing close.” Some obstacles cannot be removed, and that is well and good, too. There is no obligation for the person bringing the free-will offering to bring it. By definition, this is an act of choice. Likewise, for the one who takes a vow. A vow is an act of agency and discretion.

When Revelation proved intense, the people designated Moses to receive the Torah on their behalf. Not all people are cut out for intimacy with God. And not all of our relationships with one another are intimate, or equally so (and this is how it should be). But if and once intimacy is desired, particularly with the divine, there are no fractional shares. You are either in or out. Thus, the Torah is about commitment, and the need, when making a commitment, to commit both to the particular commitment and to commitment itself. Ironically, the Torah presents this is as a choice. One can choose not to commit, but one cannot choose to half-commit. In some ways, this message applies not simply to the case of the free-will sacrifice, but to the Torah and the covenant, more generally.

This is not to say that a single mitzvah is meaningless or that a single transgression invalidates the entire endeavor (God forbid), but that we have a meta-requirement to aspire. One cannot be self-satisfied with keeping the covenant in a half-hearted way. One cannot be self-satisfied being only partially engaged in a relationship that requires commitment and intimacy. One might practice religion for all kinds of positive secular reasons from the impact it has on one’s sense of community and belonging to the impact it has on one’s moral character. But one cannot use God for “spiritual experience.” Religion presents us with unique spectacles and feasts, opportunities to feel awe and catharsis. But God is not the same as religion. The Holy One seeks connection. How will we show up?

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh