The week of and the days following Pesach, our minds are preoccupied with one thing: food. Yom Kippur may demand that we abstain from food, but I’m guessing most of us aren’t focused exclusively on the fast – at least not until late in the afternoon. We spend the day deep in prayer and reflection. We muse about the life we’ve lived and aspire to a better one. We consider the New Year and our hopes for ourselves, our communities, our world.
We have something akin to this with Pesach—there are powerful lessons, of course, about liberation, care for the vulnerable, power and faith. But since Passover frontloads its most salient ritual elements – the seders – those of us who abstain from chametz for the entire eight-day chag but may not come to shul each day, find ourselves focused (I suspect) less on grand themes and more on menu options. For the six final days of the holiday theology gives way to gastronomy. We plan our respective post-Pesach carbo-loading ritual: pizza, pasta or whatnot. Some of us pack up the Pesach dishes, schlep out the year-round utensils. And for next few days, if you’re like me, we’re focused on all the things we now get to eat and drink that we somehow survived without during the festival.
It happens to be, this year, that we also have a parasha appearing right after Pesach which, itself, is largely focused on food. Chapter 11 of Vayikra is our most detailed account of the Jewish dietary laws. Before your eyes glaze over, I don’t plan to talk about kashrut per se. Instead, I want to consider two verses toward the end of the catalogue of forbidden animals.
כֹּל֩ הוֹלֵ֨ךְ עַל־גָּח֜וֹן וְכֹ֣ל ׀ הוֹלֵ֣ךְ עַל־אַרְבַּ֗ע עַ֚ד כׇּל־מַרְבֵּ֣ה רַגְלַ֔יִם לְכׇל־הַשֶּׁ֖רֶץ הַשֹּׁרֵ֣ץ עַל־הָאָ֑רֶץ לֹ֥א תֹאכְל֖וּם כִּי־שֶׁ֥קֶץ הֵֽם׃
Anything that crawls on its belly, or anything that walks on fours, or anything that has many legs, you shall not eat from among all things that swarm upon the earth, for they are an abomination (v. 42).
And then in Verse 43: You shall not draw abomination upon yourselves through anything that swarms; you shall not make yourselves unclean therewith and thus become unclean. While there are a number of foods forbidden to observant Jews, there seems to be something especially problematic about the sheretz, creepy crawly things like lizards, snakes, scorpions, insects, etc. In fact, the word used to describe them, sheketz, is also used in describing idolatry, one of the cardinal Jewish sins.
Everyone seems to agree that if the Jewish people are to be a mamlechet kohanim v’goy kadosh, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” we must separate ourselves from certain behaviors of our ancient pagan neighbors. To be holy to God is to be distinctive, ritually and ethically. Distinctive gastronomic requirements remind us to be distinctive in other important ways.
But Verse 45 of Ch. 11 in our parasha implies something more about the sheretz specifically—that the physical lowness of such creatures, their proximity to the ground, is somehow antithetical to our higher aspirations. We know from the Passover holiday that’s just concluded we praise God again and again for having brought us out of Egypt. Asher hotzeiti me’eretz Mitzrayim. But our pasuk doesn’t say that, not exactly.
כִּ֣י ׀ אֲנִ֣י ה הַֽמַּעֲלֶ֤ה אֶתְכֶם֙ מֵאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרַ֔יִם לִהְיֹ֥ת לָכֶ֖ם לֵאלֹהִ֑ים וִהְיִיתֶ֣ם קְדֹשִׁ֔ים כִּ֥י קָד֖וֹשׁ אָֽנִי׃
Our verse doesn’t say “For I the LORD brought you out of the land of Egypt…,” it reads haMa’aleh etchem, who brought you up from the land of Egypt. This is strange, and the Rabbis pick up on the subtle difference. The context of the discussion in the Bavli, Mas. Bava Metzia (61b) is Sages’ discussion about God’s ability to make distinctions beyond human capacity. Rava, the 4th Gen. Amora asks (rhetorically):
אָמַר רָבָא: לְמָה לִי דִּכְתַב רַחֲמָנָא יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם בְּרִבִּית, יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם גַּבֵּי צִיצִית, יְצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם בְּמִשְׁקָלוֹת
“Why does the Merciful One mention Egypt (in Torah) in matters of interest, tzitzit, and honest weights and measures?” Rava’s suggestion is that if the Holy One can distinguished in Egypt between the drop of seed that became a firstborn and the drop of seed that did not become a firstborn in order to carry out the 10th plague, God can certainly make keen distinctions required to distinguish between real and fake techelet. This is a hermeneutic device called kal vachomer (a fortiori).
A couple generations later, Rav Hanina asks Ravina, co-editor of the Talmud itself, about our verse. Rav Hanina waits patiently as Ravina parrots back some version of Rava’s original statement. If God can distinguish between firstborn and second born in Egypt, the All Knowing One can surely make other distinctions. Rav Hanina, though, is not satisfied. “Ana hama’aleh ka kashya li!” I’m not asking about why Egypt is mentioned. I want to know why it’s a different verb in Lev. 11:45. Why does it say, in the context of creepy crawly things, “who brought you up from the land of Egypt,” and not “out of the land of Egypt?” What does Ravina answer? He cites the school of Rabbi Yishmael who taught, “Had I brought the Jewish people up from Egypt only for this matter, that would have been enough.”
I don’t recall this line from Dayeinu at the seder…but that’s the gist of Ravina’s answer. It would have been enough for God to redeem us only so that we would not become impure from eating the sheretz!
And here is where I want to leave you. The hyperbolic language is meant to say something less about food per se, I think. Less about kashrut specifically. This is symbolic. There is powerful symbolism in resisting the lowest common denominator, whether it’s bugs and snakes that crawl and slither around in the dirt or behavior that debases on degrades our sacred calling. Rashi puts it this way:
In all other places it is written, “I brought (you) forth”, and here it is written “who brought you up from the land of Egypt” …it should be regarded by them as an elevation for themselves — this is what is implied in the expression used here: מעלה (I raised you above the people of the land of `Egypt).
That is, you who were oppressed, made low, must now stand tall! On Chanukah we talk about being ma’alin bakodesh, elevating our chanukiot each night. On Yom Kippur, we abstain from food in order to ascend to the place of the high priest. We dress in white, in a kittel, a garment evocative of the one who stepped into the Holy of Holies. On Pesach we purge of domiciles of chametz. But when we depart not only from the Passover holiday but from Mitzrayim, Egypt itself, we step into a different way of being. We are what we eat, Torah seems to be saying to us in Parashat Shemini. What we put into our bodies says something about who we aspire to be.
I’m not here today to browbeat you about kashrut. The choice to become more observant is a complicated one, and Rav Tyler or I would be happy to discuss with you in private why we find it so meaningful. Rather, my goal here is to invite us into the consciousness of this period. If more of us are focused this Shabbos (as we were last week) on what we eat and what we don’t, might we lean into that awareness and consider the heights to which that awareness may take us. Today is the 9th day of the Omer, gevurah sh’b’gevurah, strength within strength, a double dose of courage! This year as we come out of Egypt, let’s also consider our parasha’s invitation to come up from Egypt. And in this symbolic aliyah, consider how we might stand tall, stretch upward toward something more holy and, through it, more fulfilling of our Jewish calling.
