Deeper Than the Skin
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“And, behold, if the appearance thereof be deeper than the skin” (Leviticus 13:30) Your body is a map of roads Your skin enfolds what All your past is bored into it For, you know But A vast space |
“וְהִנֵה מַרְאֵהוּ עָמוֹק מִן הָעוֹר” גּוּפֵךְ מַפָה שֶׁל דְּרָכִים עוֹרֵךְ עוֹטֵף אֶת כָּל עַבָרֵךְ נֶחֱקָק בּוֹ הִנֵה יָדַעת אַךְ מֶרְחָב גָּדוֹל |
In our contemporary world, scrutinizing someone else’s body is a practice reserved for lovers and doctors. But in this week’s parashah, in the world of the tabernacle and temple, it is the priest who is instructed in all the myriad ways a body might be formed, deformed, and reformed. The detailed focus on such a mundane thing as the human body may seem odd for a man tasked with the maintenance of God’s dwelling place. It might also draw attention to gender questions as we—readers of this parashah—follow the temple official as he is introduced to the taxonomy he will perform (also) on women’s bodies.
Either way there is something uncomfortable about this image—be it of a holy priest bothering himself with such earthly matters or of an (always male) official vested with divine power to inspect and quarantine women’s bodies. The question I had in mind in writing this poem was whether we can (or should) “redeem” this image—whether a way to do that would be to reduce the priestly practices, typologies, and scrutinies to a kind of metaphor, to a synecdoche of a lover.
