AND MOSES SAID TO THE LORD, "THE

PEOPLE CANNOT ASCEND TO MOUNT SINAI, FOR YOU WARNED US SAYING, SET BOUNDARIES

FOR THE MOUNTAIN AND SANCTIFY IT.' "

(Shemot 19:23)

The Holiness of a Place is not Essential

Holiness

When the sound of the ram's-horn is drawn

out, they may go up on the mountain

Our Sages intended to tell us that actually the main principle of the

religion is to uproot all matters of idolatry from the hearts of the Children

of Israel, and to show them that they saw no visualization, for there exists

no holiness in anything created – only the Creator, Be He Blessed (is

holy), Therefore the midrash said not to imagine that

the mountain is holy, and because of it God revealed Himself upon it. Not so

the Children of Israel. For, When the sound

of the ram's-horn is drawn out, they may go up on the mountain – the

mountain becomes the abode of beasts and cattle. Only when the Divine Presence

is upon it, it is holy by virtue of the Creator's holiness. Therefore it is

said that "The location of man does not do him honor, but the man does the

place honor" (Taanit 21b) This is an important concept. Therefore, in

the Beit Olamim, whose

holiness is forever, no one should think that the actual building is holy;

therefore behind it it is permissible to touch all

impurity and even that made impure by contact with corpses … to demonstrate

that only Him Who has caused his Name to rest in this building are you to fear.

Inside it is holy, but not behind, for within are the Tablets and the

Testaments and the Sanctuary… we shall further see, as we have clarified in

various places, that God never sanctifies anything, only humans sanctify it.

For that reason we must interpret the verse in which you warned us that day,

saying, Set boundaries for

the mountain and sanctify it

not as meaning that God commanded Moses to sanctify the mountain, but rather it

refers back to God, Who will sanctify it by settling down upon the mountain

before the eyes of all Israel. It is not a command, but

rather a future description (past tense becomes future when the letter vav is attached to the beginning of the verb). [Translator's

note: here the Meshekh Hokhma

is stating that the mountain's sanctification was a temporary by-product of God's

presence upon it]. We also see that this is why they said (Sukka

5a), "The Divine Presence

never descended lower than [a height of] ten [handbreadths], and the place of

the Glory was higher than ten [handbreadths], therefore the mountain's soil was

not sanctified."

(Meshekh

Hokhma, Shemot 19:13)

We Shall Not Murder

An Attempt to Contemplate the Torah's Attitude toward Bloodshed

Eliaz Cohen

In

our parasha, at the very climax of the revelation at

Mount Sinai, after the festive introduction and the appropriately exemplary

language of the first five commandments, arrive the five curt prohibitions – at

once clear, crystalline, and laconic. They leave no room for escape:

Do

not murder! Do not commit adultery! Do not steal! Etc.

I

can imagine to myself the excited crowds of people standing around the mountain

at the moment those absolute commands came crashing down upon their heads. Certainly

the great event itself kept everyone from trying to figure out for themselves

why God chose to make such a sharp change of rhetorical style at the most

central moment of the revelation. Neither would they have thought about the

word retzah [murder], now finding its

very first mention in Scripture, a word whose very sound contains more hardness

and cruelty than other Hebrew roots that can be used to denote killing, such as

harag, shafakh,

yakeh.

After

that moment, however, adjacent in time to that climax, we find our ancestors quarrelling

and getting into trouble, murdering and being murdered, just as the very first

murder followed immediately upon the first glorious moments of Creation.

Brothers in the Field – take one

There

too, after that first intimate encounter, which included Cain's original human

gesture, followed by that of his brother Abel, and God's challenging and

discerning response, after these came the great fall: And when they were in

the field, and Cain rose up upon his brother Abel and killed him (Bereishit

4:8). The voice of the blood

crying from the ground did not cease. It boils and rolls towards us again in

the next story about the twin brothers, who were also a shepherd and a man

of the field. There too, the choice of and preference for one led the other's

jealousy and readiness for killing: And Esau said in his heart: "The

days of mourning for my father draw near, then I shall kill Jacob my brother"

(Bereishit 27:41).

Brothers in the Field – take

two

A

father's preference for one of his sons reoccurs once more in the next

generation. Compared to his brothers he is treated as a first-born, which

awakens jealousy and hatred that here too lead to a desire and willingness for

killing. Joseph is sent by his father to check up on his brothers and the

flocks. He wanders into a field near Shechem and

arrives at the fields of Dotan. There, when they see

him, his brothers take to plotting: "Now, let us go and kill him and

throw him into one of the pits" (Bereishit 37:20).

A Brother in the Field – take

three (or, the Anonymous Corpse)

The

juxtaposition of field and death occurs next only towards the conclusion of the

Torah, in a scene that is future-directed: If a slain person be found

field, [and] it is not known who slew him (Devarim 21:1).

Perhaps from here, from the continuation of

the passage concerning the egla arufa ["broken-necked calf'], we begin to

understand the field's lawless essence. The very place of growth and life

becomes, when left unwatched and when no one takes responsibility for it, a

no-man's land where the most awful things can happen. As the

Torah explains in connection with rape: But if a man finds the betrothed girl in the field…for just as a man

rises up against his fellow and murders him, so is this case. Because he found her in

save her (Devarim

22:25-27).

To Cool the Boiling Blood

and to Fill a Legal Lacuna

The egla arufa passage can

be seen as designed to contend with a situation in which a legal-spiritual

lacuna has formed. The Noahides were already

commanded: Whoever sheds the blood of man through man shall his blood

be shed, for in the image of God He made man. The rationale offered by the

verses' conclusion marks the "three sides of the triangle": the

seriousness of murder, the sacredness of the victim, and the authority of the

judges.

This triad reappears throughout Israel's own

codex of law, starting from the revelation described in our parasha,

through the laws explicated in the following parasha

(But if a man plots deliberately against his friend to slay him with

cunning, [even] from My altar you shall take him to die – and many further

extensions of the strict commandment, Do not murder) , and in the

wonderful formulations, when the Torah emphasizes towards the end of Bamidbar: And

through the blood of the one who shed it (35:33).

That

is to say: there is a victim, a murderer and a judicial authority which is

required to make the murderer pay for his crime and thus gain atonement for the

blood spilled, for the land given to Israel, and for the community itself.

But

here – when the slain person is found in the field – everything is hefker – outside of responsibility. The murderer's

identity is unknown, no one has direct responsibility for the murder scene, and

no legal-moral authority has jurisdiction over it. What will cool the boiling

blood and grant atonement to land and the nation?

The

laws detailed in Devarim 21:1-9 and the procedural

instructions found in the ninth chapter of tractate Sotah

on the Mishnah and Talmudim,

the Midrashei Halakha and

in the works of the Rishonim and Aharonim

can be seen as coming to fill the lacuna by expanding the jurisdiction of the

neighboring city, especially of its priests and elders, so that there will

remain no vacuum in the legal-moral-spiritual space set up by the Torah. The

words of the priests and elders can be read in this light: "Our hands did

blood shall be atoned for them.

The words of the Mishnah (Sotah 9:9) can also be read in this light: "When murderers became abundant – the

egla arufa

was discontinued." Some of the commentators explain that they must have

simply known who the murderers were. (They remind us of our own situation, when

the kingpins of organized crime become some kind of "culture hero"…)

To Return Responsibility to

the Field

As I

read it, the egla arufa

passage comes to return moral responsibility to each and every one of us. I

think this carries a critical social message for the condition of Israeli

society in the year 5768, when the "murderers have become abundant"

both in quantitative and qualitative terms.

If

we were able to freeze the moment occurring in that shocking and arousing

ceremony when the priests' and elders' hands were dripping with the blood of

newly slaughtered calf, not yet washed in the waters of the stream, that

picture would be similar to iconic images that have been engraved into our

psyches in recent years. The words of the priests and elders, "Our hands

did not shed this blood" become focused and clarified against the

background of that frozen image. They wash themselves of blood and

responsibility, but in reality they take the responsibility upon themselves and

ask that the spilled blood be atoned, since the very opportunity for people to

be lawless and for a place to become lawless led to the situation of a slain

person found in the field. (The disagreement between the Babylonian and

Jerusalem Talmudim concerning the question of whether

the responsibility under discussion is for the murderer or for the victim whose

declining situation forced him into pursuing the dangerous profession of banditry.

Just think of this: how many "liquidations" in the criminal

underworld, which have become a daily affair, actually arouse our consciences

and our awareness of joint-responsibility, we "solid citizens"?

In effect, we can read the cry of the elders

as a cry echoing to the gates our own consciousness: Our hands did not shed

this blood!? Our eyes did not see!?

I think that the re-establishment of a

ceremony inspired by the egla arufa passage, led by the "priests and elders of

the generation" – educators, and leaders in the cultural, Torah, societal,

and creative realms – in every place where innocent blood is shed in this land

(and how much innocent blood is shed here!) could help return us, to some

extent, to the sacredness of life that was so central in our world and to our

solidarity from the days when the commandment thundered around Mount Sinai: Do

not murder!

Eliaz Cohen is a social

worker, poet, and editor. He is a member of Kibbutz Kfar

Etzion and an initiator of Masa

le'Hayyim – a campaign for awakening and tikkun in Israel of 5768

Yitro's Advice and the Giving of the Torah

Parashat Yitro does not begin with the giving of the Torah and the

revelation at Sinai, but rather with the arrival of Moses' father-in-law, Yitro, to Moses and the Israelite camp, and with the advice

he gave Moses, in accordance with which Moses instituted a system of national

government by appointing captains over thousands, and over hundreds to serve as

judges and magistrates.

This matter must be considered from a number of standpoints.

The passage implies that Moses did not originally intend to appoint a system of

national administration. Rather, he intended the people to be administered by

divine inspiration as transmitted through him – the man who knew God face to

face. He also attempted to execute this plan. We read that he sat from

morning until evening, judging the people through the holy

spirit within him.

Later he was to learn from his gentile father-in-law – who

had drawn near to Israel – that even divinely instructed leadership required

human instruments, drawn from the skills and abilities present within human

beings themselves. And so human beings are appointed to administer and judge

the people. They must posses very high moral qualities – men of valor,

God-fearing, men of truth, who hate [ill-gotten] gain (Shemot 18:21). These are rare human qualities, but they are human qualities. It is not demanded of them to be infused with

divine inspiration.

Thus, the Torah leaves administration and jurisprudence in

the hands of human beings to the extent of their knowledge and understanding of

God's Torah and their desire to preserve that Torah.

(From Prof. Yishayahu

Leibowitz z"l's He'arot al Parshiyot HaShavua)

A Treasured People – A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation

You shall be treasured to Me of all the Nations – Even

though the entire human race is more precious to Me than all the lowly

entities, since it is the only one amongst them that possesses intention, as

they said: "The human is beloved, for he was created in the [Divine]image" (Avot), in any event you will be the most treasured

of all.

For all the earth is Mine – And the differences between

you are a matter of gradations, since all the earth is Mine, and the

righteous of the nations of the world are certainly precious to Me.

(Seforno

Shemot 19:5)

The People Israel's uniqueness is not a matter of established fact,

but rather a mission. Israel is not an entity,

rather it is a function… The People Israel is not the Chosen People; rather

they are commanded to be the Chosen People. What does their being chosen

consist of? "Who chose us from all the nations and gave us His Torah."

The People Israel has no essential uniqueness; it is unique in the demand made

of it.

True, there have been those who disagree with this view because they

were incapable of achieving such a lofty belief. The first to dissent from it

was Korah, who proclaimed that all

of the congregation is holy, that the uniqueness of the

People Israel is an existing fact, that it is a holy nation in its very

essence. However, just three verses before Korah's

proclamation there is written, In order that you remember and perform all

of My commandments and you shall be holy – you

are not holy, but rather you are called upon to become holy.

(Prof. Yeshayahu

Leibowitz z"l, Emuna, Historia, ve'Arakhim)

"By Wielding

– Altar and Sword are Antithetical

…And so it is written

elsewhere (Shemot

20:21) it is written: By wielding your sword upon them you will have

profaned them; in what way does iron differ from other metals? It is

because the sword is symbolic of curse, whereas the altar symbolizes

atonement; the logic of kal va'chomer [a fortiori argument] dictates that a

symbol of curse must make way for an object of atonement; if an altar

constructed of stones which neither see nor speak nor eat nor drink – and

because they make peace between Israel and their father in heaven, the Torah says,

Do not wield an iron tool over them – then certainly Torah students, who

are an atonement for the world, all the more so! And similarly (Devarim 27): You

must build the altar of the Lord your God of whole stones – Stones which

bring peace to the world. We learn a kal

va'chomer: If such be the case with stones which

do not see nor hear nor speak nor eat nor drink, but make peace between Israel

and their father in heaven – if they must be whole before Me, Torah students,

who are an atonement for the world, certainly they must be whole before The

Holy One, Blessed Be He.

(Tractate Semachot 8b)

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