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 in the land which the Lord, your God is giving you to possess, lying in the 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 the field. The betrothed girl had cried out, but there was no one to 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 you shall not corrupt the land in which you live, for the blood corrupts the land, and the blood which is shed in the land cannot be atoned for except 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 not shed this blood, nor did our eyes see [this crime]. Atone for Your people Israel, whom You have redeemed, O Lord, and lay not [the guilt of] innocent blood among your people Israel." And [so] the 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 Your Sword Upon Them You Will Have Profaned Them" - Altar and Sword are Antithetical

...And so it is written [regarding the stones of the altar] (Devarim 27): Do not wield an iron tool over them and 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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