Torah Portion Emor: Please Call Me By My True Names

Zionist, Post-Zionist, Cultural-Zionist, Liberal-Zionist, Anti-Zionist:When We See Each Other Only as Labels

In this video teaching on Torah portion Emor in the book of Leviticus, we hear over and over the cry from the Essence of All Life/Beingness: See me as I want to be seen, by acting toward me as I want to be seen. Call me, embrace me in everything you do. Otherwise, you will destroy yourselves and my creation by calling me a thing such as a blasphemer. At the horrifying end of this week’s Torah portion, someone whose name we never learn, who is labelled, fixed as “a blasphemer,” is stoned to death. It is the fixing of him as an unnamed “blasphemer” that kills him. Just as we dehumanize each other and then justify killing.

Some Commentary on this video:

In Islam, the Torah (Christian Old Testament) is called the Tawrah, which sounds like Torah, yes? The Tawrah, like the Torah, is seen as the holy book revealed by God to Prophet Musa (Moses in Arabic). The Quran specifically highlights the Torah and also recognizes other parts of the Hebrew Bible as earlier revelations given to the Israelites.

In this Torah/Tawrah portion Holiness calls upon us over and over, don’t kill. If you kill, you will be killed. And yet killing goes on in the story. Don’t kill a human in your actions or thoughts. And yet the punishing labelling of an unnamed person leads to him being stoned to death. How do we learn to call each other by the name each of us chooses, to see each other as we want to be seen? So that we don’t kill each other. So that divine love dwells in our midst, which is the project of the Books of Exodus and Leviticus in Torah? So that we call each other in? These weeks’ Torah portions cry out to us, you, all of you, you be holy.

We have forgotten that we are supposed to be holy, in how we see each other and care for the world.

As Thich Nhat Hanh writes in the poem below, when we see ourselves in each other , rather than as “an other,” and all of us interconnected as the whole fabric of society, the doors of our heart, the doors of compassion, stay open.

For more writings and another video on this week’s Torah portions:

Emor | An Exploration of Caste:
https://torahattheintersection.com/emor-caste/

Emor | The Surprising Purpose of Tamei
https://torahattheintersection.com/emor-surprising-purpose-tamei/

Please Call Me by My True Names – A Poem by Thích Nhất Hạnh

Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow —
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry
to fear and to hope
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.
I am the mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am the frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo,
with plenty of power in my hands.
And I am the man who has to pay
his “debt of blood” to my people
dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and my laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart
can be left open,
the door of compassion.

Nonviolent Communication Exercise:
Zionist, Post Zionist, Cultural Zionist, Anti-Zionist
Call Me By My True Names So We Don’t Stone Each Other to Death.

What is the “true name” that really transmits who you are? Beyond any limiting lable. The heart’s yearnings under any labels? Who your God is? Who your enemy is? This is the question posed in this week’s Torah portion.Emor. Emor, meaning say or speak, continues the series of instructions from the unpronounceable and unnameable, guiding energy of the universe to the Priestly cast, and the people, all still assembled in the wilderness of Mount Sinai. What are the words and actions, the labels and identities. And if you use any of these labels, about yourself or another, can you see under the label, to how they want to be seen? To their heart’s yearning?

NVC exercise

Bring to mind a person ( could be yourself) whom, in your mind and perhaps your actions you characterize in a fixed way, eg, He is a blasphemer ( from this week’s Torah), she is a pain in the xyz, they are a psychopath, racist, sexist, anti semite, cheapskate etc.Or, I am a Zionist, Post Zionist, Cultural Zionist, Anti-Zionist…

Write it out on a piece of paper:
XYZ is a ___________(fill in the blank)

How do you feel when you think this about them? (connecting with with your emotional and bodily feelings)

What needs/values/heart’s yearning of yours are met or unmet that generate these feelings ? (connecting with your needs)

What would you like to ask them to do that would meet your needs? (connecting with your requests)

Now ask yourself,

What is one thing you’ve seen them do or heard them say that supports your characterization of them? ( connecting with your observation)

How do you feel when you distinguish your observation of them from your characterization of them?

What need(s) of yours are present now?

Can you generate curiosity in you to guess their feelings and needs?

How do you feel doing this?

What needs of yours are met or not met by being curious about what’s going on in them?

How does this affect you?

Who do you think of as the blasphemer, or the… Fill in the blank? Translate that into your feelings and needs. Don’t make the other person into a the dash an object and you the subject. We are all subjects and it’s the unification of all subject that bring down the unified holy one.