I was walking down the hall the other day here at KI and there was a pre-school class approaching me. They were supposed to be walking in a line – I think. They were walking in their version of a line. As they got closer, we all said hi to each other. I stopped to talk with them and they asked me a hundred questions about where I was going and what I was up to. After a minute, I noticed that they were all wearing their pajamas. I said ‘oh my God I had no idea today was pajama day. I’m not even wearing my pajamas! I’m so embarrassed. What should I do??’

And one little girl said to me, like an angel, ‘that’s ok rabbi you’re perfect just how you are.’ It’s a true story. Well I just melted into the ground, as did the teachers. What a moment. Thank God for the angels in our midst.

Perfection, as you and I know, is an illusion. It’s a myth. There is no perfect school or perfect student or perfect car or perfect house. There isn’t a perfect place. There’s no such thing as a perfect friend and or perfect book. Even the things we label as objectively perfect are often not exactly perfect, like a perfect game in baseball, in which case maybe the weather wasn’t perfect or your hot dog wasn’t quite right or who knows what else. Incidentally there have been only 24 so-called perfect games in Major League Baseball history, out of the 240,000 games ever played.

We hold ourselves to a super high standard, often an unreasonably high standard and are painfully tough on ourselves when we fail to reach that standard. All the more so our kids and teens do this. I see this too, the stress and angst that comes with trying to get all A’s and take every AP course.

Of course the goal in Judaism is never perfection, it’s wisdom, it’s perspective, it’s compassion, it’s the pursuit of justice. There’s not even really a Hebrew word for perfection. ‘Shalem’ means ‘whole.’ ‘Shleimut’ means ‘wholeness.’

So many of us know the story of Rav Zusya, the great sage, who arrives at the gates of heaven and apologizes straightaway to God, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t more like Abraham. I’m sorry I couldn’t be more like Moses.’ God tells him, ‘I didn’t want you to be more like Abraham or Moses; I only wanted you to be more like Rav Zusya.’ That is, to be yourself. To not compare ourselves to others, but to be our fullest selves. That’s the message of the story.

I bring this up in part because our Torah portion this week, Emor, has a lot to say about the incredibly high standards that the priests were to maintain. They were those tasked with overseeing the innerworkings of the sacred temple and thus they were to keep themselves in a state of utmost purity: in what they wear, in how they appear, in who they spend time with and where they travel. In the words of the Torah, no one ‘who has a defect shall be qualified.’

As they were thought to have direct access to God, they were to present themselves in this state of ultra-heightened wholeness.

When the Temple fell in the year 70, so did the notion of the priestly class, and all of its impossible criteria, almost entirely. Who stepped in to the rescue? The rabbis!

Along came the rabbis and instead of one Temple in Jerusalem we now had synagogues all around Israel and the surrounding lands. Theirs is the Judaism we inherit. It’s a Judaism in which we pray together, study together, take part in acts of tikkun olam, all have access to God and Torah and the widest breadth of Jewish life, no matter your race or sexuality or background, no matter your gender or your point of view, whether you were born Jewish or only came to Judaism later in life.

This story, the Jewish story, access to God, access to Torah, engagement with Israel, is as much yours as anyone else’s. This new Judaism, this rabbinic Judaism as it’s called, was a radical departure from the Judaism of those early Cohanim.

It was radical and it was necessary and yes Judaism has so often been about change, maybe it’s one of the reasons we’re still here, my Judaism isn’t exactly my parents’ and my parents’ isn’t exactly their parents.’ I’m guessing you’d say the same.

Let’s not compare ourselves to others. Let’s not aim to be all that was. Let’s be good to ourselves, give ourselves some grace and stop aiming for perfection. Be your own version of Zusya.