Here is the draft of my D’var Torah for April 18, 2026, Parashiyot Tazria-Metzora.
Mr. Feldman comes to see the rabbi one day, and he says: Rabbi, I’d like you to make me a kohen.
The rabbi says: That’s not something I can do. You either are a kohen or you’re not a kohen.
Feldman says: I was thinking, I could bring lunch for the Torah class and make a donation to your discretionary fund, and you could make me a kohen.
The rabbi says: I’m sorry Mr. Feldman, that’s a lovely thought, but really there is nothing I can do to make you a kohen.
Mr. Feldman says: Rabbi, I can’t help but notice that every week there is yet another bucket on the floor somewhere in the shul to catch the rain coming through a new hole in the roof. If you make me a kohen, I will make a substantial contribution and we can finally replace the roof.
The rabbi pauses for a beat. He thinks to himself — Would it be such a scandal if every few months Feldman has the first aliyah to the Torah? Then he says to Feldman: We can do it Thursday.
On Thursday Mr. Feldman comes back to the rabbi’s office. Some words are said in Aramaic, the rabbi puts his hands on Feldman’s head and then invites Feldman to put his hands on the rabbi’s head. “Mazal tov, you’re a kohen!” Mr. Feldman gives the rabbi the check, and they sit together and enjoy a little slivovitz and kichel together.
The rabbi says: You know, Mr. Feldman, I neglected to ask you — why is it so important to you to be a kohen?
Oh rabbi, says Mr. Feldman, this has always been so important to me! My father was a kohen, my grandfather was a kohen….
Get it? You are either a kohen or not, because the kehunah (biblical “priesthood”) is a family thing, the biblical priestly lineage passed down by fathers going all the way back to Aharon, the brother of Moshe.
Kohen jokes are actually sort of an ancient thing. Don’t worry kohanim in the room, this will get better. But we have in the Bible Eli Ha-Kohen who ran the shrine in Shiloh, who is made fun of in the book of Shmuel because he can’t figure out the difference between someone who is praying and someone who is drunk.
The Rabbis of the Talmud saw themselves as the new-improved version of religious leadership, who could do kohen-like things in a more up-to-date and democratic way. They report in the Talmud (or possibly made up) some stories of how the kohanim did not have a firm grip on how to run the rituals in the Temple, which should have been their wheelhouse. In one case on Sukkot, a certain kohen performed one of the water rituals incorrectly and the people pelted him with their etrogim. At least that’s how the Rabbis tells it. To be both anachornistic and Ashkenocentric about it, the rabbis saw themselves as the Litvaks and the kohanim as mere Galitzianers.
How much trouble am I in with kohanim and Galitzianers? Don’t worry — I come to teach you why the role and ethics of the kohanim were so important and why the book of Leviticus and even our difficult parshiyot today have some essential things to teach us.
If we can get past the details of rashes and animal entrails, we can see the kohanim as the first visiting nurses, community health workers, and pastoral counselors in our tradition. They made house calls, in addition to their more obvious roles receiving people, judging cases, and conducting rituals.
The book of Leviticus begins with a list of types of offerings, korbanot, and we can easily see this as arcane and lose the thread in the midst of all the details of their preparation and execution. But each offering is in fact the response to a basic emotional and spiritual state.
There is the olah, the fully-offered offering given away completely — for those few remarkable times when completely transcend ourselves and put other people and the big picture at the center.
Or the olah is often translated as the completely burnt offering, reflecting our times of inner burnout, or the frustration toward things we wish we could destroy completely.
There is the mincha, the tribute-offering — when we can acknowledge something greater, someone to admire or strive to be like or to follow.
The todah, the gratitude offering. The shlamim, the offering from wellbeing and wholeness, or of the yearning for peace. The chattat and asham, offered when we realize we have fallen short, when we feel guilt or shame — specified differently for one person, for a leader, or for the whole community.
Each person would bring these korbanot at the Mishkan (desert tabernacle) or the Temple as a way to name these spiritual emotions in real time, and to process these reflections and experiences as they happened. You had to walk from your part of the camp, from your tribe — to walk and maybe be seen walking toward the Mishkan in the center. That kind of visibility, no one could do it if there weren’t a kohen there to receive you. To hear you say why you had come there with this flour or this animal.
You could sit alone at home in gratitude or wellbeing or guilt, or you could take that and elevate it further, or cleanse yourself of it. For that you had to walk, to come in. That requires someone to welcome you and help you turn your inner state whatever it is into a special meal, lifted up and shared by someone who has heard it all. That’s who a kohen was.
And in our parasha, the kohen was also the person who came to you. This business of a rash that caused one to be excluded, the kohen was the person trusted with managing this isolation, figuring out when it was necessary and when it should end. Later on, the tradition said this was not only about infectious disease but about gossip, about infectious speech that could also harm the community if it wasn’t quarantined.
The kohen was the community health worker in this scenario, for physical and spiritual health. Charged to leave the office and go out to diagnose the danger, from the center, and then making the house call to formulate a care plan and a discharge plan, though this time in reverse — bringing the person back, making a visible show of restoring someone to the group. The Torah emphasizes this movement by the kohen over and over– v’yatza, “he shall go out”, and we know this is intense language, the language of the Exodus transformation, and it’s not just about going out but being seen going out.
Rabbi Zohar Atkins teaches: “The very person who is supposed to be an emblem of purity is placed on the front lines with those considered highly contaminated. Despite placing a high premium on order, cleanliness and decorum, the Torah apparently disrupts its own system to ensure that those afflicted by plague are given dignity and respect. By going outside the camp, the priest signals that there need be no shame at the margins…. Accompanying the vulnerable is the highest service, as elevated an act as approaching the Temple altar.”
This is the role of the kohen – to help people come in, to name and talk about our most primal and profound emotions, and to move with them or through them; or to go to people and to bring them in.
And not to forget the Galitzianers, that’s who many of the great chasidic rebbes were and this is exactly how they saw themselves too.
The great Zionist thinker Ahad Ha’am taught that the role of the priest was to take the transformative ideas of the prophets and make them usable on a routine basis. Leviticus comes after Exodus. After the big visions of liberation and covenant, the Torah shows us ways to look at ourselves, our basic makeup, the parts we will use to make the vision real. That’s why it’s in Leviticus where we find our detailed ethical laws and the 7-year plan and 50-year plan for maintaining a just society.
In the Torah, the person who helped us one by one was the kohen — teacher, counselor, visiting nurse and social worker all wrapped up in one. Anyone want to become a kohen now? I don’t have that power. But you do. When we all stood at Har Sinai, we were told the big goal — that together we should become mamlechet kohanim, an entire realm of kohanim.
Shabbat Shalom!
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