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Double Mitzvah – Emor

By on April 26, 2013

Double Mitzvah Jewrotica Parsha

Written by guest contributor Tiferet Gordon. Tiferet is a first-time Jewrotica writer.

Tiferet is happily finishing her rabbinical and education training at Hebrew College in Newton, MA. She believes in the power of Am Segulah and being of the Purple People. Tiferet has spent a good deal of her time at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in the Berkshires of New England getting to know goats, eating yummy kosher organic farm-to-table food and growing as a person from the amazing teachers that come through there.

Check out last week’s post in this series, Double Mitzvah – Aharei Mot.

Rated PGThis past week I sold my Pokemon coin bank on Amazon. It was never opened and the box was pristine, so it qualified as a “collectible.” I was not a big fan of Pokemon, but Squirtle’s round head and big eyes reminded me of my first boyfriend. I bought the thing and treasured it while we were together. Eventually, he and I gifted our virginities to one another. As the years passed, this Pokemon toy came to be a zecher, a remembrance, of giving my virginity away (I never lost my virginity; I always know where it is).

Parshat Emor begins with laws protecting the purity of the Kohanim, the priests. Leviticus 21:3 teaches us that a regular Kohein can only defile himself for his sister’s death (i.e. go to her funeral) if she was a virgin. Further on in verse 13, we learn that the Kohanim can only marry virgins, thereby excluding widows, divorcees and “promiscuous girls” (sorry Nelly Furtado). This is not the first time that we encounter the importance of virginity in the Torah. Here, a virgin is the best of the best, the crème de la crème.

In our Jewish tradition there are very few things that we cannot remedy. Most transgressions could have been corrected through sacrifices, but since we are not slaughtering animals at the Temple anymore, we correct our misdeeds through teshuva. This is the process of acknowledging a misdeed, apologizing, trying to correct it and trying not to do it again.

Even in Temple times, though, one could not bring a sacrifice to become a virgin again. Nor will any amount of teshuva bring back a hymen. Yet there are times in our lives when we yearn for the innocence of virginity. These times usually come after a negative sexual experience, or a number of negative experiences where we are unhappy, mistreated, disrespected, or worse. Instead of processing these experiences, we too quickly try to move on. Psychology teaches us that we have to address these issues if we hope to heal and not bring their effects into every sexual relationship afterward. I call this process of healing sexual teshuva and it can work no matter what your gender. The root of the word teshuva is “return.” At the end of the process, one returns to a spiritual virginity, once more to the “crème de la crème” of oneself.

I went through a similar process after my divorce at age 25. After looking for love from all of the wrong people, I discovered two books that started me on the process. The first was Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. I found this book so inspirational, that I began buying this book for everyone I knew and handing it out like candy (it was only 75 cents used)! My lady friends recommended another book by Katherine Woodward Thomas titled Calling in the One. The tagline is “7 Weeks to Attract the Love of Your Life.” IGNORE THAT! The tagline should be “A 7-week journey to a whole you.”

To make this return to sexual wholeness, I believe it necessary to cut oneself off from romantic relationships for a time in order to hold a mirror up to oneself. Using art, journaling, poetry, and meditation as mirrors, we can identify the places of pain, neglect, and unfair treatment within us, done to us either by others or ourselves. This is the process of returning, of naming hurts, looking their scars in the face, learning from mistakes or experiences, owning them and being empowered by them.

Since this is a spiritual cleansing, going to the mikvah and washing away negative energy in the water is a physical action that can aid in this teshuva process. I also took on a new Hebrew name to reflect my striving toward a healthy balance between sharing the loving side of myself with those who are worthy and withholding that loving part of myself from those who are not: Tiferet. The moral of this story for me was that the first person I should be looking for love from is myself.

Sexual teshuva as a quest for spiritual virginity requires honest reflection on your sex life. Bring a friend along on the journey with you. Good friends make good mirrors. The process of returning may be a long and possibly painful one. Sometimes it is hard to look at our reflections in the mirror. Yet it is worth it to bring yourself wholly (shalem, like shalom) into each encounter with others.

Tiferet is happily finishing her rabbinical and education training at Hebrew College in Newton, MA. She believes in the power of Am Segulah and being of the Purple People. Tiferet has spent a good deal of her time at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in the Berkshires of New England getting to know goats, eating yummy kosher organic farm-to-table food and growing as a person from the amazing teachers that come through there.
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