Torah portion

from DJN April 29, 2021

Danny Raskin

SPIRIT

TORAH PORTION

Good Leadership Must Include Love

ways and God’s glory, insofar to answer halachic questions. as these concepts may be at all This self-imposed “exile” came understandable to mortals, is about because when he was a “A God of love, a compassion- student in Slobodka, his mothate, powerful One who gives er had made a long trip to see grace freely, long-suffering, him, but he was so involved filled with lovingkindness and in extra Yom Kippur Katan truth” (Exodus 34:6). prayers and Talmudic studies

What is the most festivals and the prohibitions of This passage is the very that he had no time to see her. important quality the Sabbath. source for the oral law and the He was haunted by her last for a reli- One of the greatest way it is to be applied. The words, “I have a son, a tzadik gious leader — a sharp transgressions a Jew can Talmud declares, “He who has [righteous man]” because he mind or a sensitive heart, commit is bitul zman, Torah learning without good feared that these words were a commitment to study wasting or nullifying deeds is as if he is bereft of said not with pride, but rather or a commitment to time. Conversely, one of God.” with sarcastic irony. lovingkindness? This week’s parshah Rabbi Shlomo the greatest accolades the Talmud can bestow upon Our response literature, from Rabbi Moshe Isserles to Rabbi I believe that the Kohanim, descendants of Aaron, the High opens with the laws Riskin anyone is that “their Moshe Feinstein and Rabbi Priest, who “loved all creatures applying to the Kohanim, the religious, ritual Parshat Emor: Leviticus mouth never ceased from studying” (lo pasik Ovadia Yosef, is replete with amazing examples proving the and brought them closer to Torah,” must bless the congreleaders of Israel. The 21:1-24:23; pumey mi’girsa). importance of humane com- gation “with love” in order to reading provides their Ezekiel There are many bib- passion as an overriding factor stress the importance of love in quintessential leadership 44:15-31. lical and talmudic state- in halachic decision making. meting out religio-legal judgrole: to direct the Jewish ments which strengthen Haim Grade, in his moving ments. people in areas of the sacred the need for humane sensitivity novel Rabbis and Wives, tells of and mundane, the ritually pure as a critical subtext for any a great Torah scholar known and impure, the teachings and leader’s decision. For example, as the porush (the separated the statutes, the details of the the Biblical definition of God’s one) of Vilna, who refused

Rabbi Shlomo Riskin is chancellor of Ohr Torah Stone and chief rabbi of Efrat, Israel.