By Lauren Newman

This week in Acharei Mot, Moses and Aaron find themselves dealing with the loss of two of Aaron’s sons. In this loss they turn to God and God takes his usual tough love approach of dealing with an issue by doling out some commandments. He starts out simple by instructing Aaron to make the proper sacrifices and then (classic) begins to make things a bit more complicated. The follow-up to the sacrifice is the initial presentation of the idea for Yom Kippur. God says that on the 10th day of the 7th month of the year, “you shall practice self-denial.” God describes what is basically a Shabbat with a streamlined purposed of focusing only on what it means to deny one’s self of basic necessities in order to atone for your sins and the sins of the people Israel (nbd). Then, casually, God condemns cannibalism and all variations on incest. God then, continuing with that casual tone, states that you can’t sleep with women during their period, followed by that (dare I say infamous? I think I’ll say infamous) bible verse, “Do not lie with a male as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination” and closes it all out with forbidding bestiality. God says gives us these commandments because as the Jewish people it our job to follow God’s laws and God’s norms so as not to defiled in God’s eyes

Now, I hope it’s understandable that my tone changes between the summary of Yom Kippur and the condemnation of certain sexual practices. It’s not unlike a Torah portion to jump around a bit, but reading this, frankly, sets a certain pit in my stomach. That the holiness of Yom Kippur sitting directly beside the unholiness of “abominable” sexual practices, to me is very challenging. These are the set of bible verses that give extremist groups their validation against “unclean practices” and Yom Kippur is a holiday that entirely devoted to pivotal cleansing. I don’t know, it’s hard, HDNA.

It’s hard to be proud of a book of Torah that preaches self-denial and denial in the same breath. It’s hard to be proud of a piece of text we’ve been forced to label as dated so we can love who and how we want and still call ourselves Jewish.

But from week to week we see all of the extremely positive messages that have been extrapolated from the Torah and it’s clear that from the way we collectively practice Judaism as a movement that our religion is not a one-size fits all thing. Yes, I believe this parashah to be a blemish the religion that can be sacred, empowering, and beautiful. And I am deeply apologetic to anyone who believes otherwise. But to me, what being a progressive youth movement is about is not adhering to the norms we feel we shouldn’t, despite who set the standard.

What I think we should take away from this Acharei Mot through the lens of HDNA is that we should practice Yom Kippur in the way that is most personally meaningful and we should carry out or romantic and sexual relationships in a way that are equally as meaningful.