Making sense of the sedra: Emor
Sacred time in a world of uncertainty
Parshat Emor gives us the blueprint of Jewish time. Shabbat. Pesach. Shavuot. Rosh Hashanah. Yom Kippur. Sukkot. Sacred days — moments in the year that aren’t just pauses in time, but peaks in meaning. They’re not merely for remembrance; they’re for proclamation. “These are my appointed festivals,” God says, “which you shall proclaim as sacred assemblies.”
Two weeks ago, I landed in Israel on a Wednesday morning. Fires were breaking out across the hills on the way to Jerusalem. The roads were closed. Smoke clouded the air. And for a time, we didn’t know if we’d make it to the city. Days later, on Sunday, we were due to fly back — just as a missile struck within the perimeter of Ben Gurion Airport. Again, uncertainty. Again, the feeling of instability — of plans, of movement, of peace itself — hanging by a thread.
And yet.
That Friday night, we stood at the Kotel with thousands of Jews. Soldiers in uniform. Families from across the country. Tourists. Locals. Survivors. Children. In a surreal way — despite the heartbreak of thousands of families still grieving the tragedies of October 7th and the ongoing war — we sang. We danced. We prayed. We celebrated Jewish life in the land of Israel in a way that perhaps our ancestors could only have dreamed of. Not because there was no pain. But because there was still purpose.
This is the lesson of Emor. Sanctity is not the reward of peace and calm. It is the response to a world that rarely offers either. The Torah teaches us to proclaim these days in the wilderness — before Israel, before the Temple, before security. We sanctify time because the world is uncertain. Not in spite of it.
In many cultures, sanctity is rooted in space — in temples, shrines, or land. In Judaism, holiness lives in time. We had no land for centuries, but we had Shabbat. No Beit Hamikdash, but we had Yom Kippur. No king, no army, but we had a calendar, and we had each other.
And now, we are in our land again. A nation reborn. But it is still a world on fire. Our moments of joy are still laced with sorrow. Yet Emor reminds us: light the candles anyway. Gather the people anyway. Say the bracha anyway.
We didn’t ignore the suffering that Friday night at the Kotel. It was in our hearts, in our tefillot. But we chose — as Jews always have — to proclaim the sanctity of that moment. Not because everything was whole, but because it wasn’t.
Emor is a quiet but firm statement of Jewish resilience: no matter what burns around us, we will keep our sacred times. Because even when the world shakes, Jewish time holds.
Rabbi Benjy Morgan is chief executive of the JLE
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