It’s been a while since a parashah actually moved the story along, hasn’t it? These last few parshiyot full of exacting rules and procedures about purity and impurity have been a bit of an interlude, and in this week’s parashah, while we still don’t really move on, it becomes clear how poignant of a moment we had reached for a pause and an aside.

Three parshiyot ago, we had the fairly terrible moment of Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, making an “alien” offering and being instantly consumed by fire. They had barely even had time to become priests at all. The tension between Mosheh and Aharon after this happened was about as thick as it ever gets. And that was the moment the Torah chose for an extended aside into ritual purity laws, making clear that it’s quite easy — and common — to render oneself unfit for ritual service at the Mishkan, and that appearing at God’s altar while unclean has serious consequences. Will this change our perspective on what happened to Nadav and Avihu as we return to the action?

It is the narrator who reminds us of the context at this point; the standard “And God spoke to Mosheh” formula that usually marks the beginning of a new topic in this middle part of the Torah is explicitly modified to say “after the death of the two sons of Aharon,” et cetera. Interesting translation note here: The popular JPS English translations say that they died for drawing “too close” before God, but the Hebrew really just says, “when they came close to God and died.”

Then it becomes clear that something has changed in God’s relationship with the brothers. Many of the previous sections since Mosheh came back down the mountain began with “And God spoke to Mosheh and Aharon.” Here God has gone back to just speaking to Mosheh, even though it’s to deliver a bunch of precise ritual laws personally concerning Aharon.

God tells Mosheh to tell his brother he is not to enter the Shrine behind the curtain on pain of death except when garbed in specialized linen vestments and bringing animals for the primary offerings. The text also seems to be concerned here with a specific time at which Aharon should do this; the prohibition at the beginning says he should not enter “בכל-עת,” “at any/every time,” and then it goes on to describe a specific communal expiation ritual which happens once a year, on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. This is the holiest day of the year, and the High Priest’s entrance into the Holy of Holies for it is the essential framework for the way this day is observed to this day.

The signature part of the High Priest’s Yom Kippur ritual here is the practice from which the term “scapegoat” is drawn. After making the prerequisite standard offerings, the High Priest brings two he-goats to the entrance of the Tent of Meeting and places lots upon them, one marked for יהוה and one marked for עזאזל (’Azazel). The commentators say that ’Azazel is the name of a place, perhaps a particular mountain, and that the important thing about it is that it is physically and spiritually cut off from the places where everyday life happens. There is certainly also tradition for understanding עזאזל to be an epithet for a dark entity, a demon or devil-type being.

First the High Priest offers a bull for the expiation of himself and his family. Then he scoops coals from the altar and uses them to burn incense behind the curtain, so that the cloud of smoke obscures the Ark of the Pact, whose glory will kill him otherwise. Then he dashes the bull’s blood on the cover, sprinkling it seven times. Then he slaughters the goat designated for יהוה as a sin offering for the people, and he does the same dashing with the goat’s blood. After that, the Tent of Meeting has to clear out, so the High Priest can purge the Shrine of the impurity and transgressions of the people, followed by the whole Tent of Meeting. He does this with more blood from both offerings, this time applying it to the horns of the altar as well.

When the purge is complete, the goat for עזאזל is brought forward. The High Priest lays both hands on the goat’s head and confesses all the people’s sins on their behalf, transferring their burden to the goat. A specially prepared person then leads the goat out into an inaccessible region of wilderness and sets him free.

With all the burnt offerings happening here, it is so interesting that this one animal is set free. What is the significance of this for our understanding of how sin and expiation work? The Ramban says this is because עזאזל has no power to effect pardon or atonement, as יהוה does, so the goat sent to עזאזל carries the sins into עזאזל’s domain intact, and עזאזל must respond “Amein” unwillingly. Maybe this is about a fate an infernal being deserves — to live amongst the discarded sins of the people. Or maybe it’s a way of saying that though the people’s sins are forgiven as a regular matter of course, they aren’t erased. We still have to remember them and work to improve, to give less and less to עזאזל every year.

After the scapegoat is released, Aharon returns to the Tent of Meeting and removes his linen vestments donned for this purpose, bathes in the holy precinct, and puts his regular priestly garb back on. Then he comes back out and offers the burnt offerings of public expiation.

After this whole atonement ritual is fully described, this is when the timing of Yom Kippur is established. In the seventh month (that is, since the beginning of spring, when the Passover festival happens), on the 10th day of the month, a day of fasting, resting, and atonement shall be held in the community, applying to both the children of Yisra’el and any foreigner residing amongst them. The Torah calls it a “שבת שבתון,” a “Shabbat of Shabbats,” meaning it is an even more holy day than the seventh day. And the institution of this ritual establishes a critical Jewish religious principle: While our sense of law, right and wrong, and sin is quite strong and exacting, no eternal damnation can come of it. Every year, the community is ritually forgiven and made pure.

That’s in the eyes of God, though. Guilt and punishment for transgressions in the eyes of the people are another matter.

The next section turns its attention to offerings made by regular people, which, while there may have been more wiggle room about this in ancient times, is definitely becoming tightly controlled now that there’s an official Mishkan and priesthood in town. If a regular Israelite slaughters an animal as an offering, whether inside or outside the camp, and does not bring it to the Mishkan, that person has essentially committed murder, it sounds like, and they shall be cut off from the people. God wants to bring the people’s offerings in now; no more offerings out in the open to goat-demons or whoever. The prohibition against consuming blood — a desecration of the life force — is restated here, suggesting this was part of the old way of doing things, sacrificially speaking.

This allows for a strident monolatrous segue. “אני יהוה אלהיכם,” God reminds us — “I am יהוה your God.” The people are enjoined specifically not to copy the practices of Mitzrayim, where they came from, or of Kena’an, where they’re going, nor shall they follow their laws. It’s only יהוה’s laws and practices from now on — “אני יהוה אלהיכם,” again.

Two more rapid-fire injunctions are given, each ending with the formula “אני יהוה.” The first is a restatement that the people shall keep God’s laws, by which they shall remain alive. Makes sense in light of the last part. The next one says that men shall not uncover the nakedness of anyone related to him. Kind of a weird transition. And then follows a rather long and uncomfortable series of specific incest prohibitions, so okay, here’s that.

It begins with no viewing of the nakedness of your mother or your father’s wife, which it takes care to remind you belongs to your father. This is uncomfortable to a modern view, to be sure, but I’d just like to sprinkle in that it’s not just a statement of simple misogyny but is probably supposed to be an implication about the relatedness issue; i.e. a man may be looking for an exception to the incest rules because he reckons it according to his paternal line, but that doesn’t fly because his father’s wife is still related to him for these purposes.

Moving on: No sister’s nakedness (even for half sisters). No granddaughters’ nakedness, which the text says is “yours” in the same way your mother’s nakedness is “your father’s,” which I feel like means it’s, like, extra perverted to check out your granddaughters? Ugh, sorry, moving on. No stepdaughter’s nakedness. No aunt’s nakedness on either side, nor of your brother’s wife. No nakedness of both a woman and her daughter, nor can you marry them both; they are related, and that would be depraved. No marrying or nakedness-seeing of a woman as a rival to her sister within the sister’s lifetime. No nakedness of a menstruating woman (we’ve covered this). No sleeping with your neighbor’s wife (the 10 commandments covered this). No allowing your children to be offered up to Molekh or other such idolatrous perversions.

So, so far, I submit that while these are all from a chauvinistic perspective, the underlying prohibitions are pretty understandable? But now comes a pasuk that every liberal-minded person who loves the Torah simply wishes weren’t in there. I’ll quote it in full so as not to appear in any way to avoid it:

וְאֶ֨ת־זָכָ֔ר לֹ֥א תִשְׁכַּ֖ב מִשְׁכְּבֵ֣י אִשָּׁ֑ה תּוֹעֵבָ֖ה הִֽוא׃
“Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abhorrence.”
— Vayikra 18:22

No way around that. Now, we’ve covered why contemporary religious morality that uses the story of Sedom to prohibit homosexuality is illiterate and stupid. This situation is not so easily dealt with. It is not ambiguous what the text is saying, and I don’t think there is any point in trying to parse it and make it okay. If a person wants to keep the moral laws of the Torah as written, according to both their plain meaning and the ongoing tradition of their interpretation — at least until extremely recently and in very tiny slivers of the Torah-observing public — that person has to conclude from this that men are forbidden from having sex with men.

So I think the question that leaves you with for me, as someone doing this project of trying to demonstrate the relevance of the Torah and its teachings to not just contemporaries but our descendants on down through the ages, is, how do I plan to contend with this?

And my response is simply, it’s very obvious that we don’t keep the Torah’s morality preserved forever on down the ages. There are many equally straightforward statements of right and wrong in here that the rabbis themselves willingly overturn because they and their contemporary societies found them barbarous, whether they’re about slavery or stoning children to death or whatever else. People change, societies change, and even as the Torah says “Thou Shalt Keep My Laws For All Time” over and over again, that isn’t done literally by anyone. Jewish tradition is a practice of rigorous interpretation of not just what the Torah says but how the Torah could say this to us and mean it, given what we know about the world and our place in it and how that knowledge differs from the knowledge the ancients had. Our job is to approach the text with sincerity and understand what its moral lesson for us is, and to take it to heart.

Obviously, for someone whose tradition and frame is that homosexuality is immoral, the lesson to take from this pasuk is very simple. Abhorrent as it may be to try for those of us with different traditions and frames, can we find and take to heart a different moral lesson from this? I believe we can.

This pasuk is included after a litany of incestuous acts, right after one that seems to be about child sacrifice, and right before a prohibition of bestiality, which the text makes clear — unlike in the other cases! — also applies to women. Clearly, the bias in the culture who wrote this down is that male homosexuality is a perversion. Following these prohibitions, the text explains that these were the practices of the other nations God is casting out before the children of Yisra’el — another Torah justification we see regularly — so, great, now it’s also racism. What are we going to do??

We’re going to have to understand that the essential job the text — the priesthood, God, the Torah, whoever it is we relate to as speaking — is doing here is trying to raise moral standards for these people. The homosexuality prohibition jumps out at us because we — if I may presume who is reading this — don’t believe that specific act lowers us. But I have a feeling I can safely say the prohibition against looking at your granddaughters naked isn’t so controversial. We as a species spanning countless cultures and generations may be terrible at articulating what it is, but there is something to the idea that the sex drives of human beings must be prevented from running the show, or else terrible things can happen to people.

I am not asking anyone to accept the Torah’s teaching about gay sex at face value. Personally, I would ask everyone to do the exact opposite of that! But what I am asking is for all of us to allow the possibility that there is some moral reason… not to abstain from sexuality but to channel sexuality for divine purposes, and that this is the underlying point of what the Torah — imperfect as any text is — is trying to do here.

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