CHOCHMAS NASHIM: TALKING HEADS: EMOR
By: Suri Davis
It is interesting that the name of this week’s torah portion is the command of Emor/say. The parshah starts with G-d’s commandment to Moshe to tell Aaron and his sons the laws of purity as they serve G-d in His holy temple, and the Torah discusses the intricacies of the laws of purity for the High Priest and other priests as they serve G-d in the temple.
During the weeks between Passover and Shavuoth, we read Ethics of Our Fathers, a compilation of wise thoughts shared by Jewish sages regarding positive and negative personal traits which one should either develop or stay far from in his personal development and growth. One of the sayings is Emor meat v’aseh harbeh/Say little and do a lot, i.e., don’t talk about the good deeds you want to do or have done, rather dedicate yourself to getting good deeds done.
It reminds me of a sentence in the letter Nachmanides wrote to his son, whereby he adjures his son that after learning torah, he should search to perform that commandment about which he learned, so that we take the educational/theoretical mitzvah/commandment and actualize it in real life.
The parshah ends with the story of the Egyptian man, the son of Shelomit be Divri of the tribe of Dan. This Egyptian man curses G-d and is ultimately punished for doing so. It is instructional to understand who this man was and why this story and the description of this man is instructional and brought down in the Parshah.
The man was the son of the Egyptian who Moshe struck down in Egypt Exodus 2:11. The Egyptian taskmaster used to take pleasure in beating one particular Jew. One morning, the Egyptian woke the Jew before dawn and had him start work early, and the Egyptian returned to the Jews tent and slept with his wife, who thought it was her husband. The Jew discovered what had happened; when the taskmaster realized that the Jew knew what he had done, he began beating him all day. The Jew’s wife’s name was Shelomit bat Divri. Lubavitcher Rebbe
Fast forward to this week’s parshah, the man who was born of his mother and the Egyptian, is the man about who the Torah tells us that he cursed G-d. Says the Rebbe, that what is it about this woman that attracted her attention to the Egyptian? Her excessive chattiness, and it is with words that her son, who cursed G-d, was deserving of death.
Talking for the sake of holiness and Torah is worthy, but even talking for Torah is not as worthy as performing the words of the Torah by doing good deeds and commandments. Talking excessively about the mundane, can lead to sin, and improper talking can lead to death.
Let’s daven for a Nechama for the families of those who died in Meron last night and for the hundreds who were injured. Hashem yerachem. On this, L’ag B’omer the day we celebrate the end of the plague that killed 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students for not behaving well towards each other, let us redouble our efforts during this counting down towards Shavuoth, when we received the Torah from G-d, to unite and pray for our complete and ultimate redemption.
Meaningful L’ag B’omer
Shabbat shalom.
-Suri