Take the blasphemer outside the camp, and all who heard [his blasphemy] shall lean their hands on his head. And the entire community shall stone him. (Vayikra 24, 14)

 

The place of execution had to be outside the Israelite camp (Sanhedrin 42b, "outside the three camps"), outside the city. If the law court itself was outside the city, the place of execution had to be some distance away from it, so that it should not appear as if the court considered its highest attribute to be "the sword of justice." Altogether the essential character of the criminal court was to direct its efforts to finding reasons for freeing the accused rather than for pronouncing him guilty. The verdict of "guilty" was already before the court in the warning of the accusing witnesses and the real task before the court was to test and examine this pronounced sentence, and to find out if there were not some mitigating reasons for a "not guilty" verdict. Another reason, given there, for having the place of execution at a distance from the court is so that some time must elapse between the pronouncement and the carrying out of the sentence (the sentence had to be carried out immediately after the verdict), in which time some fresh reason for reconsidering the verdict might arrive. For while the condemned man was being taken away a man stood at the door of the court with a flag in hand, and a mounted messenger was posted just within sight; should one of the judges find some fresh reason in favor of the criminal, the one waved his flag and the other galloped off at full speed and held up the proceedings. More, even if the condemned man himself, on the way to the execution, declared he had something fresh for his defense, he was taken back even four or five times provided that, in the opinion of the two judges who accompanied him for this very eventuality, there was some foundation, however slight, for his assertion.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Vayikra 24:14)

 

The Kohanim, sons of Aaron

Pinchas Leiser

Dedicated to my dear father-in-law

R. Israel Hollander

Upon his 90^th birthday

May he enjoy many further pleasant and healthy years.

Since the destruction of the Temple and beginning with the period of the Sages, the priests - the Kohanim - have undergone a change of status. Back in the days of the Temple they played a central role in spiritual leadership and worship, but today they serve no significant function in leading the people and they do not enjoy a monopoly in any other important area of life.

It is interesting to note that the central prohibitions mentioned in the beginning of our parasha - the prohibition against becoming ritually impure from contact with a corpse, the prohibition against marrying a divorcee - remain in force today. The Kohanim also give the Priestly Blessing and play a crucial role in the pidyon haben, the ceremonial redemption of a first-born son. It is also customary to reserve the first aliyah of the Torah reading for Kohanim out of consideration for darkhei shalom, "ways of peace."

Despite all the above, when the Sages set about formulating the spiritual hierarchy that has clear halakhic implications in situations where lives must be saved, they said (Mishnah Horayot 3:8): "[When dealing with] a scholarly mamzer [man of illegitimate birth] and an ignorant High Priest; a scholarly mamzer comes before an ignorant High Priest." That is to say, those spiritual achievements which determine one's rank for society depends on one's personal efforts and not on one's family pedigree. The Talmud (Yoma 71b) relates an incident in which a group of people left the High Priest in order to accompany Shmaya and Avtalyon:

Our Rabbis taught: It happened with a high priest that as he came forth from the Sanctuary, all the people followed him, but when they saw Shemaya and Avtalyon, they forsook him and went after Shmaya and Avtalyon. Eventually Shmaya and Avtalyon visited him, to take their leave of the high priest. He said to them: May the descendants of the heathen come in peace! [Shmaya and Avtalyon descended from gentiles, according to tradition they descended from Sannacherib] - They answered him: May the descendants of the heathen, who do the work of Aaron, arrive in peace, but the descendant of Aaron, who does not do the work of Aaron, he shall not come in peace! (based on Soncino translation)

This story gives clear expression to the revolution that had taken place in the Sages' notions of honor and social distinction. The sage, the Torah scholar, took pride of place over the Kohen, and the Sages further established (Bava Batra 12a) that, "A sage takes precedence over a prophet." The social hierarchy had changed.

The deterioration of the priestly status can already be found in Scripture when Eli's sons misused their position; similarly, the Kohanim were often puppets of the kings in the days of the monarchy. The Hasmonean kingdom also degenerated, a phenomenon that gives cause for concern not only about overly close links between government and finance, but also between the spiritual leadership and political power.

In any event, as Jews who are loyal to halakhic tradition we continue to observe the prohibitions mentioned in the parasha: we give a Kohen the first aliyah, we reserve the Kohen his place in pidyon haben, and we pray that God should "return the Kohanim to their worship."

I believe that this question goes beyond the relevance of the Kohanim's status or the relevance of a "born aristocracy" in a modern society which has adopted - at least in principle - the notion that all human beings are born equal and should be judged by their accomplishments. (Of course, it remains undeniable in our own times that a person's place of birth and ancestry can play an important role in determining his social status).

Are we to treat the preservation of the priesthood as a necessary remnant of earlier days which reflects the universal presence of some kind of "aristocracy" or another in every society? I don't think such explanations relate with sufficient seriousness to the biblical verses and rabbinic traditions which took pains - despite the radical revolution within Judaism - to preserve something of the priestly status.

As I mentioned above, this question is not restricted to the status of Kohanim; it also touches upon everything we say in our prayers longing for the Temple service and the sacrificial rite.

When three times each day we say, "and return the service to the Devir ['Holy of Holies'] of Your House," are we really looking forward to an early restoration of the sacrificial rites as the were practiced in the First and Second Temples?

Even HaRav Kook, who appears to have taken care to study Seder Kedoshim together with the Hafetz Hayyim in case the Temple were rebuilt, wrote in his commentary on the Siddur that in the future all the sacrifices will be of vegetable matter.

The Gemara (Ta'anit 17a) mentions the view of Rabbi, who prohibited the Kohanim of "our days" from ever drinking wine, just in case the Temple might be rebuilt and there will be an immediate need for fit Kohanim to perform the services there.

Other rabbis, such as R. Haim Hirschenson, thought that the renewal of sacrifices was unimaginable, since that form of worship is not suited to our age.

In his Guide for the Perplexed, RaMBaM views the worship of God through sacrifices as a necessary but temporary developmental stage that took into account the people's early spiritual condition in which they were unable to think in terms of any other form of worship. He thought that prayer constituted a more highly developed mode of serving God than that of sacrifice.

I think that we should adopt the RaMBaM's attitude regarding the Messianic Age (Hilkhot Melakhim 12:2):

No one is in a position to know the details of this and similar things until the have come to pass. They are not explicitly stated by the prophets. Nor have the rabbis any tradition with regard to these matters. They are guided solely by what the Scriptural texts seem to imply. Hence there is a divergence of opinion on the subject. (Yale translation)

We do not know how human society will develop. Any description we offer of the future expresses our current experience of the world. As a result, we are unable to have clear knowledge of the character of the worship of God in the Messianic Age and what role the Kohanim will play in it.

Nevertheless: I think that it was important to the Sages who shaped the halakhic tradition to preserve some of the symbols which tie us to earlier generations. The Kohen, who represents memory of those early days when he served a central role, is one such symbol. By way of the Kohen, who represents the Temple, we connect to roots which can nourish us with inspiration to undertake further spiritual development. I think that a similar idea is expressed by the puzzling rule that Purim must be celebrated on the 15^th of Adar in cities which were walled specifically "from the days of Joshua ben Nun." That rule honors the Land of Israel, which lay in ruins at the time of the rule's formulation.

The halakhic culture shaped by the Sages requires us, on the one hand, to connect with the memory of the past, but it also demands that we not become frozen in that past; it also insists that we be aware that we don't really know what the future will bring.

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom, is a psychologist

 

 

Our Is A Torah Of Life

And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to the Kohanim, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: Let none [of you] defile himself for a dead person among his people.

(Vayikra 21:1)

 

Antique and modern heathenism like so very much to associate religion and religious matters with death and thoughts 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)

 

Readers respond

Writing in his article, "What Kind of Religious Innovation is Desirable?" (Parashat Shemini issue of Shabbat Shalom), Aviad Stolman makes a connection between the sin of Nadav and Avihu and what he calls "religious innovation" in order to try to draw a line between desirable and undesirable religious innovations.

The interpretation which links the deed of Nadav and Avihu (it should be said that it is not clear their deed was actually a sin!) with halakhic changes or innovations is well-known and even accepted. However, I think it is far-fetched to make a connection between an event which is recorded as having occurred thousands of years ago in the Tabernacle and today's cultural-religious climate.

Were they really engaged in "religious innovation"? Is an action that does not conform to a command a matter of innovation or is it an illegal action? Does Scripture suggest (as would be implied by the comparison) that people should pay for such "innovation" with their lives? Is this a justification of the severe punishment? (In any case Divine anger is difficult to explain, all the more so if we project the biblical story on our own times).

Later he writes that their sin was not innovation, but rather that they allowed "themselves to be dragged into religious enthusiasm by emotionalism and psychological tendencies." Is the religious message implied by the story that coldness and rationalism are the qualities required of a religious person? (And the author gathers together RaMBaM, HaRav Soloveitchik, and Yeshayahu Leibowitz in support of this view).

One must ask whether innovation must necessarily be unthinking and hasty or can it be thought-out and level-headed. If the problem was that they did not first consult with someone in authority (in the story, these would be Moses and Aaron), one must ask whether authoritative institutions even exist today to decide the ways of Torah or whether free people today choose their own religious path in accordance with their own understanding of its values and tradition.

Shall we teach our children that Providence metes out immediate punishment to those who break the law, or should we leave aside such quick and baseless comparisons and concentrate on the plain meaning of Scripture in its own context?

The passage itself points to at least one possible context. The story may be compared to the story of Korah and his congregation and the 250 people who offered incense and were burnt by divine fire (Bamidbar 16:35). This would imply that Nadav and Avihu wanted to replace Moses and Aaron's place and actively take over the priesthood - an interpretation that jibes with a midrash cited in the article.

Of course, I do not claim that to be the correct or unique explanation, but I do think it is worthwhile to be careful with explanations and interpretations that are overly linked with current issues. Besides the difficulties involved in such explanations, they tend to cheapen the scriptural message and drag the debate into the realm of the current short-term.

Meir Zalevsky, Jerusalem

 

Aviad Stolman, author of the article, replies:

Meir Zelevsky claims that, "we should be careful with explanations and interpretations that are overly linked with current issues... they tend to cheapen the scriptural message and drag the debate into the realm of the current short-term." The body of drashot which I have delivered and written shows that I clearly reject Zelevsky's approach. It is not at all "far-fetched to make a connection between an event which is recorded as having occurred thousands of years ago in the Tabernacle and today's cultural-religious climate." Quite to the contrary; I believe that it is the darshan's job to forge links between Scripture and current events. In his lecture on aggadah which he delivered in 5694, H. N. Bialik that there was a time when the Maskilim [members of the "Jewish Enlightenment"] complained about and scorned those darshanim who failed to take account of the plain meaning of Scripture, who "inject alien intentions into it, while the rationalist Maskilim and the dry Mitnagdim always clung to the plain meaning, that is to say, they tried to know the verses in terms of their old meaning." To this Bialik responded: "It was not - God forbid - out of disrespect that they did not take account of the old meaning. Rather, they grew out from it an additional new meaning, they raised up the old meaning to a higher sphere, because the truth is that the eternal visions include within them - beyond plain meaning and drash - also remez [allusion] and sod [mystery]... they expounded upon Scripture, all in accordance with the spirit of the time, in accordance with the spirit of the place, and in accordance with the spirit of nature. If so, I say, there is nothing wrong in that they sometimes remove verses from their plain meaning or force them to say what they wish. What is a verse? It is an accepted idea that changed into a rule for life and we rely on it even when we want to take a new leap into another field. Then we must rely [on it], to lean on it in order to jump from it to a new point." In my approach I see myself as a minor continuation of my venerable grandfather, Rabbi Yitzhak Stolman, z"l, who would expound upon the drashot of the Sages, drawing from them new and stimulating insights for his generation. My teacher and rabbi, R. Hayyim Sabato made an important point when he said that his famous grandfather was unusual in that he knew how to discriminate between academic interpretation and a drasha delivered in the synagogue: "A drasha was not like a lecture, and not like a story, and not like a conversation, and not like a speech - it was a drasha."

 

 

 

 

 

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