WHEN YOU REAP THE HARVEST OF YOUR

STRANGER: I AM THE LORD.

(Vayikra

19: 9-10)

Anyone who leaves the gleanings, the forgotten sheaf and the edge of

sacrifices therein.

(Rashi

on Vayikra 23:22, based on Silberman

trans.)

Do Gifts for the Poor Serve the Interests of the Giver? Of the Receiver? Of the World?

For God wants his Chosen People

to be bedecked with every good and precious virtue, and that they possess

blessed souls and magnanimous spirit. I have already written that deeds

influence the soul, making it good and allowing God's blessing to rest upon it.

There is no doubt that when someone leaves part of his produce out in the field

so that the needy may take it freely, his soul shall be satisfied and his

spirit blessed and proper, and that God will satisfy him with His bounty and

his soul shall dwell in goodness.

(Sefer

Ha-Hinukh Mitzvah #213)

You shall leave them for the poor and the stranger – It is evident that these laws are not made

for the direct purpose of the actual maintenance of the poor. Even the poor man

himself has to leave his gleanings, the forgotten sheaf, and the edge

of the field from his own field to other poor people! It is clear that, at

once at the harvest, at the moment when a person takes home that which Nature

and his own hard-work has yielded to him, and puts the proud and far-reaching

words "my own" in his mouth, these laws are to remind every member of

the Nation, and to demand an act of recognition from him, of the fact that this

"my own" includes for everybody the duty of caring for others who are

needy… that in God's holy state the care for the poor and the stranger

without property is not a matter which is left to the greater or lesser

soft-hearted feelings of sympathy… but is raised to a God-given right to the

poor, and a God-ordained duty to the owners of property from God.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Vayikra 19:10, Isaac Levy translation)

Laws for the Sake of Humans

Ariel Rathaus

Aharei Mot (literally,

after the deaths) is the only parasha whose

very name mentions death. And yet, smack in the middle of it, we find a

powerful statement of the connection between Torah and life It is a

verse which we are used to reading every year in the Minhah

service of Yom Kippur just minutes before the recitation of Sefer Yonah, a story whose

fundamental message is that God spares the lives of Nineveh's many inhabitants.

The passage from our parasha reads:

You

shall keep My laws and My norms, by the pursuit of which man shall live, I am the Lord (Vayikra

18:5).

It

would appear that the verse's meaning hardly required stating – i.e., that the

Torah's commandments are geared towards shaping the Israelite life-style, and that

the Israelites are required to live in accordance with them. Alternatively,

a more midrashic reading (found in Sifra on the verse) has it that the commandments gain life

in the world to come

for those who observe them. However, the Sages went way beyond these

interpretations, and pinned a number of powerful messages upon the verse.

One

of these homilies is concerned with the study of the Torah by gentiles. The

Talmud repeatedly attributes it to Rabbi Meir, while

some midrashic sources attribute it to the tanna Rabbi Yirmiya, a

member of Rabbi Yehudah Ha-Nasi's

circle. It would appear to be among the most resolutely "humanistic"

statements in the entire rabbinic corpus, and it deals with the universal

connotations of the word adam (a human),

which is used in our verse instead of less inclusive phrases, such as any

man of the house of Israel (Vayikra 17:10),

or any Israelite (17: 13):

Rabbi

Meir would say: From whence do we know that even an idolater

who is occupied with Torah [study] is like a High Priest? Because it says by

shall live – it does not say Priests, Levites, or Israelites, but rather, adam. From this you learn that even an idolater who

is occupied with Torah [study] is like a High Priest. (Sanhedrin 59a)

This

exegesis is quite radical in its overturning of the exclusive relationship

between the People Israel and the Torah of Israel. It announces that the divine

message of Scripture is addressed to adam

qua humanity in general. Not surprisingly, the Talmudic Sages drastically limited

its meaning and application. The Gemara juxtaposes to

it an antithetical statement of Rabbi Yohanan, saying

that "a gentile who occupies himself with Torah [study] incurs the death

penalty." (It seems that this harsh dictum was expressed in reaction to

Christian attempts to appropriate scripture for themselves, the "True

Israel" See E. E. Urbach's The Sages: Their

Concepts and Beliefs, pp. 489-90 in the original or pg. 550 in

Israel Abraham's English translation) At the end of the day, the Talmud harmonizes

the apparently contradictory views of Rabbi Meir and

Rabbi Yohanan It concludes that Rabbi Meir's statement applies to a gentile who limits his Torah

study to the seven Noahide commandments which he is

required to observe. However, if he studies the other parts of the Torah that

are intended solely for a Jewish audience, he will indeed deserve the death

penalty. (It should be mentioned that the poskim

viewed Rabbi Yohanan's ruling as completely

theoretical, and it really functions as a kind of aggadic

statement. See the RaMBaM's (Hilkhot Melakhim

10:9) opinion, which says that

if a gentile studies areas of the Torah beyond the Noahide

commandments "they flog him and punish him, and tell him that he deserves

to die for his actions, but he is not killed.")

A

different drasha referring to our verse expresses a

less extreme view than that of Rabbi Meir. Although it treats an entirely different issue and in much less

strident language, it still springs from a philosophical foundation similar to

that of Rabbi Meir's dictum. This world-view

finds one of its most impressive and exalted expressions in Rabbi Akiva's famous statement:

Adam

is beloved, having been created in the [Divine] image. He is especially beloved

to have been informed that he was created in the [Divine] image. (Avot 3:14)

The

second drasha on our verse comes in connection to the

explication of the roots of a central principle of Jewish law, i.e. "Pikuah nefesh [regard

for human life] pushes aside the Sabbath." Yoma

85a-b brings several different opinions regarding the scriptural basis for this

principle, and it is worth mentioning the two views which seem most

antithetical to each other; those of the tanna

Rabbi Shimon ben Menasiya

and of the amora Shemuel.

According

to Rabbi Shimon ben Menasiya,

the verse the Israelite people shall keep the Sabbath (Shemot 31:16) underpins the rule of pikuah

nefesh, that the Sabbath must be violated when

necessary in order to preserve human life. It is as if the Torah were telling

us: "violate one Sabbath for his sake, so that he may be able to keep many

other Sabbaths." Paradoxically, this argument demonstrates that, contrary

to what we usually suppose, the principle of pikuah

nefesh does not unequivocally voice a humanistic

outlook. Here we see that concern for the preservation of human life does not

automatically imply that human life is itself an absolute value, overriding all

other values. It appears that for Rabbi Shimon ben Menasiya, the truly ultimate value is the Sabbath itself,

and the preservation of Jewish life is instrumental for the realization of that

value: a dead person cannot observe the Sabbath. In order for their to be a Sabbath in the world, there must be living

people to observe it.

Shemuel's stand

is completely different. He finds the source for pikuah

nefesh in the verse from the parasha

which I have been discussing; by the pursuit of which man shall live. He

is especially concerned with the two final words. The verse says ve'hai bahem (in

which [man] shall live) – and not she'yimot bahem

(in which he shall die). In other words: The mitzvot

are intended to strengthen life and not to destroy it. This is a

straight-forward demand that human life should be taken as an ultimate value. For

all its importance, the Sabbath is subordinate to the value of human life not

only at the pragmatic level, but also in principle. This we hear from Rabbi Yonatan ben Yosef:

"It [the Sabbath] is given into your hands, and you are not given over to

the hands of the Sabbath."

Shemuel's drasha interprets the words ve'hai

bahem as setting forth a clear order of

preferences regarding the observance of the mitzvot

that opens the way for a view of the entire Torah as a basis for the

fulfillment of man's aspiration to a proper human life, where the words "proper

human life" are understood in the plainest and most down-to-earth sense. (This

aspiration should supplement, rather than contradict the great metaphysical

goal of the establishment of a kingdom of priests).

From

amongst the medieval exegetes, RaMBaN best expressed

this notion. He extended the application of the Talmudic discussion described

above beyond the technical limits of pikuah

nefesh, commenting on our verse as follows:

Plain

interpretation should take the words and my norms literally, i.e., as

including all of the laws stated in parashat Mishpatim, and in the entire Torah. That is why it says by

the pursuit of which man shall live – for these laws were given for the

sake of human life through the building up of countries and of human

well-being, that no one should harm or kill his neighbor. And so, Ezekiel

repeated this phrase many times, by the pursuit of which man shall live (Ezekiel 20:11, 13, 21)… and our Rabbis said [in which man] shall live and not

[in which man] shall die, to teach that pikuah

nefesh overrides the Sabbath and the

commandments.

The RaMBaN understands the word mishpatim

(norms) in our verse in accordance with its use in the beginning of parashat Mishpatim. There it

refers to the commandments regulating how human beings treat each other;

commandments which guarantee that proper relations prevail amongst the members

of the Jewish People. He adds that ve'hai bahem is here mentioned because the laws of the Torah as

a whole serve the sacredness

of life. They are intended in their very essence to serve as the basis for a

society in which man is not a wolf to man, a society in which it is possible

for one to live in peace and well-being. The law of pikuah

nefesh is the most salient feature of this ideal.

We have seen how Shemuel derived it from the words ve'hai bahem, but

this is not represented here as an abstract legal notion, nor

as having relevance only in extreme and unusual circumstances in which

observance of the commandments invites life-threatening danger. Rather, it

appears as an essential and integral part of the everyday existence which the

Torah wishes to establish for the good of man himself.

From

all of this we may learn that our aspirations for a decent society whose

members enjoy peace and in which no one hurts his neighbor does not stand in

contradiction to the Jewish People's other goals. In fact, the broad

interpretation of pikuah nefesh offered above may even grant priority to our

societal aspirations over other mitzvot. We can only

hope that, as in previous generations, more and more of the faithful among our

generation of Jews will become convinced of the great importance of the divine

command ve'hai bahem,

and that they will increase in their desire to base our Jewish existence in the

Land of Israel and in the world as a whole upon the love of life and respect

for all human beings who were created in the image of God.

Dr. Ariel Rathaus

is a literary researcher and translator

When a stranger resides in your land, you shall not wrong him.

(Vayikra

19:33)

The true moral test occurs "in your land"

We learned – Rabbi Eliezer HaGadol says: Why does

the Torah warn us thirty six times – some say: forty-six time – regarding

written, You shall not wrong a stranger or

oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt (Shemot 23:20)? They learned – Rabbi Natan

says: Do not point out your own shortcoming [i.e., having been a stranger

yourself] in others.

(Bava

Metziya 59b)

A stranger resides in your land: If he was a stranger in a foreign country where you too are a

stranger, it would only be natural to love him, for it is the custom of

strangers [i.e. aliens] to love each other (Pesahim 113),

and you sympathize with his troubles in order to avoid them yourself. But if he

lives in your land, in any case do not wrong him.

(Ha-Emek

Davar Vayikra 19:33)

And love your neighbor as yourself

And love your neighbor as

yourself – Rabbi Akiva says: This is the great principle of the Torah.

Ben Azzai

says: This is the record of Adam's line [When God created man, He made him

in the likeness of God] (Bereishit 5:1)

is an even greater principle.

(Sifra,

Kedoshim 2)

It cannot be understood

literally, since it is well-known that "your life takes precedent over

that of your friend." Rather, the RaMBaM (Hilkhot Avel

14) explains it as meaning "[doing

for your friend] as you would wish your friend would do for you." It is

obvious that no one would expect his friend to love him as much as he loves

himself, but rather to the proper extent taking into account good manners and

how close the people are to each other – to that same degree you must love

other people. That is why it [love your neighbor…] appears immediately

after the preceding admonition [You shall not take vengeance or bear a

grudge]. Just as in the case when you wrong someone, you would not want him

to take vengeance, but you would rather have him forgive your sin, so you

should treat your neighbor as well. This is how the juxtaposition of the

passages is to be interpreted according to the RaMBaM.

I learned another explanation of

their juxtaposition from the Jerusalem Talmud (Nedarim 9:4), which states:

It is

written; You shall not take vengeance or

bear a grudge against your kinsfolk How does this work? If one cuts meat

hand? And love your neighbor as yourself. Rabbi Akiva

says: This is the great principle of the Torah.

This means that one who takes

vengeance against his fellow is like someone who cuts meat. The hand holding

the knife is negligent and cuts the other hand. Could someone imagine striking

the hand that cut to avenge it? Similarly, love your neighbor as yourself

follows you shall not take vengeance Even though one's own life and

well-being take precedence over those of one's friend, in any case it is as if the

two were one in the same person – even though it be proper for one limb to

strike the other, in any case if the damage is already done there is no point

to taking vengeance against the offending limb. Similarly, one should not take vengeance

against one's fellow who has already harmed him, since he is just like you, all

of Israel being a single soul.

(NeTziV

MiVolozhon's Ha-Emek Davar, Vayikra 19:18).

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