ON SIX DAYS WORK MAY BE DONE, BUT ON THE SEVENTH DAY THERE SHALL BE A SABBATH OF COMPLETE REST, A SACRED OCCASION. YOU SHALL DO NO WORK; IT SHALL BE A SABBATH OF THE LORD THROUGHOUT YOUR SETTLEMENTS.

(Vayikra 23:3)

 

Thus Israel too is called holy: Israel is holy unto the Lord (Jeremiah 2:3); and the Sabbath is also called holy: and you shall keep the Sabbath for it is holy unto you (Shemot 31:14). But if the holiness of human beings consists in nothing else but in being unswervingly ready to do their duty, then the holiness of objects, places, and times, only arises from their purpose to raise us above everything that opposes this readiness for duty, and to make and keep us alert to do that which is right. So that every [reference to the] kadosh [holy] is really a mikra kodesh [holy occasion, literally a holy calling], it calls us away out and up, out of stagnation, and out of being held by the influence of our senses in the neglect of our duties and in pursuit of wrongful aims, up to the height of completely unreserved devoted readiness to our duty. And the holy [item] works by means of the power of that particular fact which it represents, and which is its meaning and teaching.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Vayikra 23:3, Levi translation)

 

 

The stranger who was alienated from the encampment:

A victim turned criminal

Pinchas Shifman

There came out among the Israelites one whose mother was an Israelite and whose father was an Egyptian. And a fight broke out in the camp between that son of an Israelite woman and an Israelite man. The son of the Israelite woman pronounced the Name in blasphemy, and he was brought to Moses. Now his mother's name was Shelomit bat Divri of the tribe of Dan. (Vayikra 24:10-11)

 

On Holiness and Its Desecration

At first, superficial glance, the many topics dealt with in parashat Emor seem difficult to string together along a single thematic thread. What do the priests have to do with the festivals, and why is a tale of blasphemy thrown in? And what does all of this have to do with the other portions of the book of Vayikra? It appears that parashat Emor, with its various concerns, can be unified around and find its place in the leading motif of Vayikra, i.e. the motif of holiness. God's holiness forms the basis for the demand made of human beings: Be holy for I the Lord your God am holy. The notion of holiness extends to places, such as the holy land or the Temple, to times that should be granted significance of holiness - the Sabbath and festivals - to holy actions such as the sanctification of the Divine Name, to people whose role makes them holy, such as the priests, and also to events whose standing and contents grant them a holy status, such as the wedding ceremony. Some bits of reality are given a separate status, not because they are intrinsically holy, but rather because they play some role in the performance of a religious obligation. Holiness can be desecrated by the entire congregation or by the majority of its members, as happened in the sin of the Golden Calf, and as is warned of in parashat Behukoti, or it can be desecrated by an individual, such as the blasphemer of our own parasha. The common element of desecration of holiness found in the story of the blasphemer as well as in the story of the man who desecrated the Sabbath by gathering wood explains their surprising literary and thematic similarities. In both stories a man is placed under arrest while God is consulted to give judgment, and in their broader contexts, they both tie together the elements of the Sabbath and of disgracing God.

 

The Stranger who is like a Bastard

Scripture does not explain what led the blasphemer to commit his grave deed, nor does it describe the background of the fight that broke out in the camp. The Tannaitic midrash halakha, Sifra (also known as Torat Kohanim) fills in these gaps:

There came out... one whose mother was an Israelite - Where did he come out from? From Moses' court of law, where he had [made a request to] pitch his tent in the camp of the tribe of Dan. They said to him: "By what personal qualification should you [be allowed to] pitch your tent in the camp of the tribe of Dan?" He told them: "I am descended from the daughters of Dan. They said to him: "Scripture says: The Israelites shall camp each with his standard, under the banners of their fathers' house (Bamidbar 2:2)." He entered Moses' law-court and left after losing his case, and he stood up and blasphemed. And whose father was an Egyptian - even though the institution of bastards [mamzerut] was not yet established he was like a bastard. Among the Israelites - this teaches that he had converted.

These words which come to explain what drove that man to blasphemy also suggest discomfort over the way he had been treated. The son of the Israelite woman was not allowed to join his mother's camp: tribal membership is established by one's father and not by one's mother. Since his father was not an Israelite, he was banished from the camp. He had reached an inescapable trap: while bearing a Jew's obligations, he was denied a Jew's right to be part of the community. He was not a bastard, but they treated him as if he were. Let us not forget that one of the explanations of the term mamzer [bastard] is one who is alienated [mizar]. Thus, the immediate association brought to mind is with the plain meaning of the verse: no bastard shall enter the congregation of the Lord: they kept him out of the community even though he was among the Israelites. Indeed, Midrash Rabbah ad loc strengthens the connection of the son of the Israelite woman with the bastard, who is viewed as having been wronged:

There came out... one whose mother was an Israelite - elsewhere it is written: So I returned and saw all the oppressed (Kohelet 4:1) Daniel the Tailor interpreted this verse as referring to mamzerim: "And lo, the tears of the oppressed - the fathers of these have sinned, but of what concern is it to these unfortunates [i.e., why should they be punished]? The father of this child participated in a forbidden union, but how has the child sinned, and what concern is it of his? And they had no comforter, but their oppressors had power - [this is] the Great Sanhedrin of Israel, which comes upon them with the power of the Torah and drives them away, because [it is written in the Torah that] no mamzer shall enter the congregation of the Lord. And they had no comforter - the Holy One blessed be He, says: It is upon me to comfort them. For in this world they are impure, but in the world to come... they are all pure gold." (Following Michael J. Harris's translation in his Divine Command Ethics, pg. 80)

The connection with the mamzer invites comment. The fate of the son of the Israelite woman is similar to that of the mamzer: they used the power of the Torah against him to expel him. However, he had the status of a ger [convert], which, in scriptural language, refers to one who dwells [mitgorer] among the Jewish people. Since he was a ger, Moses did not know how to judge him and whether he bore the grave responsibility of any other Israelite. That is why he received the answer: Any person who curses his God shall bear his sin... there shall be one law for you, stranger and native-born alike, for I am the Lord your God. As Rashi explains: "The God of all of you - just as I attach my Name to you, so do I attach it to the strangers" (Silbermann translation).

Indeed, the midrash learns from the phrase among the Israelites that he had "converted." This interpretive move is difficult to make sense of in Talmudic terms: if his mother was an Israelite, why did he have to convert? Several answers to this question have been suggested. In his commentary on Sifra, R. Shimshon MiShantz explains that it was his father who had converted. Others say that before the giving of the Torah, personal status was determined paternally rather than maternally. The RaMBaN holds that the man converted in the sense that he followed his mother and joined the Jewish people. In any event, it is precisely the emphasis placed upon his conversion which implies discomfort with his rejection, the rejection which turned him into a blasphemer.

 

The Public's Indirect Responsibility

The fight which broke out following the ger's rejection is reminiscent of another midrash. Following the sin of the spies, Scripture tells us that the people mourned grievously. Seder Eiyahu Rabba 27 (starting with sha'al Moshe) says the following:

...At that very hour God told him: Moses, go and comfort those poor people, they have lost heart.

He said to Him: Master of the Universe, how shall I comfort them?

He said to him: Go comfort them with words of Torah - When you enter the land in which you shall settle... and you present a burnt offering to the Lord... the person who presents the offering to the Lord shall bring, etc. (15: 2-3).

At that very hour there was a dispute between Israel and the gerim.

God said to Moses: Why do these disagree argue with each other?

He said to Him: Master of the Universe, You know!

He said to him: Did I not say, Congregation! There shall be one law for you and for the ger, etc. There shall be one Torah [and one law, etc.] (15:2-4).

The midrash continues and praises the gerim and says that they must be loved and that it is prohibited to cheat them. It even cites the verse: Let not the foreigner who has attached himself to the Lord say, "The Lord will keep me apart from His people." But the main point of these midrashim is the refusal to treat the ger equally, and the fights that resulted from discrimination against gerim, just like the fight mentioned in our parasha - a fight broke out in the camp - which made a ger become a blasphemer after he was rejected by the congregation. That his rejection was a sin may be learned from the commandment given before his execution: those who heard him shall place their hands upon him. The Sifri states: "They place their hands upon him, saying to him, 'Your blood is on your own head, for you have caused this.'" The placement of hands is the appointment of a replacement, and when it is performed upon the head of a sacrificial offering it constitutes an act of atonement that transfers the sin from the sinner to the one upon whom his hands have been placed. What was the congregation's sin? It seems that the sin consists of their rejecting him from the congregation, resulting in his blasphemy. Their utterance, "Your blood is on your own head" is nothing other than an expression of their troubled conscience and their need to clear themselves of indirect responsibility. They may be compared to the elders of the court who wash their hands of responsibility for an unsolved murder by saying, our hands did not shed this blood and our eyes did not see. They do not say this because there is any thought that they might have actually killed the man, but rather to say that "they did not send him on his way without food, forcing him to rob people, for which he was killed (Rashi Sotah 45). This teaches us that when there is a lack of social solidarity, the public is responsible for the prevalence of criminals. The victim of social distress becomes a criminal, and the criminal again becomes a victim.

Prof. Shifman is a professor of family and inheritance law.

 

 

Our Is A Torah Of Life

Antique and modern heathenism like so very much to associate religion and religious matters with death and thought of death. For them, where Man ends is where the Kingdom of God begins. For them death and dying are the real manifestations of their godhead, who to them is a god of death and not of life. A god who kills and does not animate, and sends death and its forerunners, illness and wretchedness, so that men should fear him, realize his power and their impotence. The places which they dedicate to temples are therefore round about graves, the foremost place of their priest is there with the dead...

Not so is the Jewish priest because not so is the Jewish teaching of God, the Jewish religion. The God, Whose Name assigns the Jewish priest to his office is a God of life. His most sublime manifestation is the elevating power of Life, freeing, animating, raising Man to free will and to eternal life, not the crushing power of death. Not how one is to die, but how one is to live, how, living, one has victoriously to conquer death, death in life, how he will overcome thralldom, enslaved by one's physical urges, moral weakness...

When Death summons the people to come to busy themselves in acts of love with the empty body of nefesh, a soul which God has called home, the Kohanim have to remain away, and by standing away to keep aloft the Standard of Life next to the corpse, and by the thoughts of what life really is prevent the thoughts of death overpowering the truths that the real Man himself is morally free and not subject to forces which kill his power over his own moral free will... they shall strengthen in their hearts the idea of Life, lest they be conquered by the idea of Death.

(Rabbi S. R. Hirsch on Vayikra 21:5. Halevi translation)

 

Whoever desires to be a hassid... let him observe that which is written in Pirke Avot

(Bava Kamma 30a).

 

Shmuel HaKattan [the Lesser] said: If your enemy falls, do not exult; If he trips let your heart not rejoice, lest the Lord see it and be displeased and avert His wrath from him (Proverbs 24:16-18).

(Pirke Avot 4:19)

 

Rabban Gamliel said to the sages: Is there anyone who knows how to formulate the prayer against the heretics? Shmuel HaKattan composed it. At a later date, he forgot it.

(Berakhot 28b)

 

Whom did Rabban Gamliel ask [to compose the prayer against the heretics]? What did he ask of the man whose mind uplifted him to come and coin this prayer?...

The man whom Rabban Gamliel appointed to formulate the prayer against the heretics was totally devoted to hessed - to kindness and benevolence. Hessed flowed from him with force and courage. If the unfortunate events of the period caused the Sages of Israel to deviate from the line of mercy and love for all, and to stand up with bravery and amazing mettle against an inflexible and corrupt movement which perverted the face and the nation and the faith, the permission to attack was given only to a man whose soul drew from roots of heavenly kindness and not from the sources of power. Only this man, whose entire soul and might were planted by the streams of giving and of mercy, in whose soul welled up the fountain of hessed, only he was authorized to compose the prayer against the heretics and to ask of his Father in Heaven the eradication of evil and the destruction of the evildoers. They searched and found Shmuel HaKattan, whose life's goal was expressed in the aphorism from the book of wisdom If your enemy falls, do not exult: If your enemy falls, do not exult. Shmuel, the righteous and the humble, the meek and the unobtrusive, who had never tasted the taste of hate, who never longed for measure-for-measure retribution, who never complained about another nor bewailed insult and injustice caused him, he was chosen for this assignment which was essential for the generation.

(From: Rabbi Y. B. Soloveitchik: B'sod HaYachid v'HaYachad - The Remnant of Their Scholars,

edited by Rabbi Dr. Pinhas Peli)

 

 

 

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