Handicap in the Time of the Bible

One of the hardest passages for me to read in the Torah is the one in this past parshah, Emor, that discusses handicaps, or blemishes that invalidate one from serving in the temple.

It is in stark contrast to Lazarus's words, engraved on the base of the "Statue of Liberty:" “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

The Torah gives one example after the next of the people whose service is not sought, desired, or accepted in the temple. In fact, the Chinuch writes that all together, there are 140 different blemishes, or defects, that make a person unfit to serve. The rationale is, the Chinuch writes, that when a person comes to the Beit Hamikdash, he seeks perfection in action, appearance and deed. It was the glory - like a Communist military parade - that drew people, brought them closer, dazzled them, and enabled them, writes the Chinuch, to be pure inside. Yet, over and over in the words of the sages, we see a different mottif, "Hashem (who is called Rachmana, the merciful one), seeks the heart." Seeks the inner, unadulterated voice, like the prayer of Hannah, from whom we learn all the laws of prayer until this very day. 

And yet, this paradox is ever so stark. Some say that the reason there are more eating disorders, and depression amongst youth today is because of social media; teenagers see an ideolized image of a person, pictures that are touched up and altered, and then feel that their looks pale in comparison. I can say that I taught at a secular school this year, and that in the middle of the year, all the staff for each and every class sat down and reviewd a PowerPoint, with one slide for each and every student. Some students were so afraid of sharing their picture that they wrote the personal description, their goals, one thing their teacher should know about them, but were too abashed to share a picture. One of the students, who was engaged in cosmetics, shared a picture where she was sheerly unrecognizable; besides the homeroom teacher, of a staff of 10 different teachers (Math, English, Hebrew, Physics etc. etc.) nobody recognized the picture, nobody knew who the girl was. 

Thus, as paradoxical as it may seem, we are supposed to come to the Beit Hamikdash, and like Hanna pour out our wretched hearts in supplication, and do so by seeing the most handsome of the cohanim, the priests, the models, those without blemish, who are the perfect image of aesthetic purity, and thereby connect with an inner-self, one that is at times sad, at others broken, and aspire for greater heights.