A few weeks ago, my fellow chaplains and I learned with author and chaplain, Rabbi Elliot Kukla, about something called “ableism.” He defined ableism as a form of discrimination based on impairment. On reading this week’s Torah portion, our conversation lead me to ask myself, if the priests are supposed to model the highest aspirations of the Israelite community, wouldn’t [the] set of prohibitions [here] instead lead to an intolerant society, one that leaves behind, or sees as less holy those who don’t meet this exclusive set of physical standards?

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