Reaching for Holiness Amidst the Dangers of the Profane Parshat Emor, 2024

חָלַל (v)

[One meaning of root is:]

to wound (fatally), bore through, pierce, bore

• (Qal) to pierce

• (Pual) to be slain

• (Poel) to wound, pierce

• (Poal) to be wounded
• (Piel) to play the flute or pipe
  

“The widespread practices of cutting the bodies and shearing the hair of the living after a death were originally designed to gratify or benefit in some way the spirit of the departed; and accordingly, wherever such customs have prevailed, they may be taken as evidence that the people who observed them believed in the survival of the human soul after death and desired to maintain friendly relations with it. In other words, the observance of these usages implies a propitiation or worship of the dead.” (Folklore in the Old Testament; Chap. IV, pp. 397)

From, Folk-Lore in the Old Testament (Macmillan 1923) by Sir James Frasier (who also wrote The Golden Bough)

נָקַב (v) heb

1. • to pierce, perforate, bore, appoint
     • (Qal)
       • to pierce, bore
       • to prick off, designate
     • (Niphal) to be pricked off, be designated, be specified
   • (Qal) to curse, blaspheme

Shelomith 1: Bible by Tikva Frymer-Kensky

Daughter of Dibri of the tribe of Dan and wife of an Egyptian, Shelomith is the only woman mentioned by name in the Book of Leviticus. She appears in the narrative about her son, a man who pronounces the name of God in blasphemy during a fight with another Israelite man. Her unnamed son is brought to Moses and placed in custody to await the decision of God.

God then commands Moses to take him outside the camp and have the whole community stone him. At this point, a general policy is set forth, proclaiming that all who blaspheme God’s name, “aliens as well as citizens,” will be punished by being stoned to death (Lev 24:16). Stoning in ancient Israel was the penalty for very serious offenses—ones considered to endanger the universe.

This story may have served a pedagogical purpose by showing that blasphemy was a direct trespass on the holy and that stoning was sanctioned by God through special instruction to Moses. Other stories, such as the tale of the man who gathered wood on the Sabbath day (Num 15:32–36), carry the same message. Such stories also indicate the way a precedent might have developed into a general law.

The fact that the story, whether true or invented, presents a precedent for an important law may explain why it provides details of the man’s parentage: his father’s identity as an Egyptian and his mother’s name and lineage. The fact that the father is Egyptian helps justify the law’s application to non-Israelites (“aliens”) as well as Israelites. His mother’s name, along with her father’s name and tribe, is important in establishing him as an Israelite, perhaps because one’s lineage was usually reckoned through the father’s family. Shelomith’s name may have been preserved because she does not serve as an example of women in general.

A Tribute to the Blasphemer’s Mother: Shelomit, Daughter of Divri by Prof. RabbiWendy Zierler

Rashi (on Leviticus 24:11) takes this midrashic tradition one step further, suggesting that Shelomit’s explicit naming designates her not just as a gossip or flirt but as a strumpet:

And his mother’s name was Shelomit the daughter of Divri: It is to praise Israel that her name was publicized, to say that she, and only she, was a harlot.

In other words, Shelomit is mentioned by name, and not merely called “an Israelite woman,” to distinguish her from the other women of Israel, who do not share her bad character.

How crushing to think that the Torah takes the trouble to mention this mother’s name only to label her a whore!...

Shelomit as a Struggling Single Mother

How is it that in the case of the son of Shelomit bat Divri the effort to speak goes so terribly wrong? Building on the rabbis’ desire for a credible backstory to explain this cryptic, troubling tale, I’d like to offer my own backstory about Shelomit bat Divri and the son she bore with an Egyptian man. The terse narrative of the Bible offers us no details on how this son came to be born and raised within the tribe of Dan. It is because of this lack of context that some of the midrashic authors supply accounts of harlotry. But given the context of Israelite enslavement in Egypt, is it not possible that Shelomit, like so many African American slaves who were raped and impregnated by their masters, might have been abused and used by a slavemaster or overseer, and that is how she came to give birth to the son of an Egyptian man?

According to this reading, Shelomit bat Divri was a struggling ex-slave and single mother, who labored against all odds to raise her son and shield him from the prejudices of the surrounding community. Alas, the son—whom the text presents as a בן, a “son” or “boy,” rather than an איש, a “man,” hinting, perhaps, at his not-yet or barely emergent manhood—went out of his mother’s tent and discovered that the world around him was not what he expected. He saw that he was a second-class citizen in a society of former second-class citizens, that he was not wanted among his would-be brethren. His mother may have attempted to counter and to diffuse his youthful anger when it flared. Befitting her name, Shelomit—from shalom, “peace”—she may have tried on any number of occasions to bring peace and calm and to shore up her son’s bifurcated identity.

But when איש הישראלי, a full-fledged “man of Israel,” told her son he didn’t belong, and when Moses ruled that the son’s status as perpetual outsider was ordained by God, the son succumbed to rage and cursed the God who had banished him from his assumed place among the Israelites. As Bat Divri, a daughter of speech, Shelomit may have endeavored, just like the daughters of Zelophehad, to speak up, defend her son, and demand justice for him. But tragically, she failed in her bid to save him.

Shlomit and the Dangers of Perfection by Susan Sered phd

The image I carry away from this parasha is of the women named ironically or cruelly named Perfection, daughter of Speech, of the tribe of Judgment, forever mourning her son who, judged by God and man, was stoned to death because of the words he used when he could no longer bear the burden of his imperfection.