Session 19: Parashat Emor

"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July," Frederick Douglass, July 4, 1852

Parashat Emor includes instructions for when and how the Israelites should observe Shabbat and celebrate the central holidays of the Jewish year–Pesach, Shavuot, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot. Holidays are meant to be annual expressions of communal values, with rituals serving as metaphoric declarations of central principles. Unfortunately, anyone who takes a religion seriously recognizes when a ritual is hollow, an obligatory observance that fails to inspire, or worse, feels empty and hypocritical.

In the summer of 1852, Frederick Douglass, already a national figure and celebrated orator at the age of 35, was invited to give the keynote address at the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society’s celebration of Independence Day in Rochester, New York. In his remarks he uses July 4th, the day on which our nation celebrates the signing of the Declaration of Independence, to confront the country’s failure to live up to the values enunciated in that document.

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