This is in the merit of my Grandmother, Esther bat Mazal. May she have a speedy and complete recovery.
Question
Why in this week's parsha does the Torah repeat much information mentioned in last week's parsha? Pay attention to the differences in organization.
The Halachist and the Mathematician
While researching more on the topic of offerings, I looked into my Sim Shalom Siddur (Conservative) and noticed that they removed the prayers for restoration of the Temple Service without giving a source. Since it has been my experience with the Conservative Movement that they rarely do things without having some sort of something to rely on, I contacted a local conservative Rabbi in Baltimore hoping for something intelligent. He sent me a short essay written by somebody which was quite disappointing. (The essay and my short comments are below for those who want to read it.) This devar Torah will focus on one passage of this essay:
“Some see the renewal of sacrifices as a matter of immediate urgency and would go so far as to precipitate a major conflict with all of Islam in order to restore the Temple service. They go to great lengths to study how sacrifices should be brought and to reproduce the Temple vessels.”
It is indeed true that there is a group who would like to demolish the Dome of the Rock and start offering animals despite the fact that this would necessarily lead to war. Since the leading halachic authorities from across the religious world have forbade Jews from even ascending the Temple Mount (let alone restarting the Temple service), this group is quite small and quite fringe. (There is most unfortunately a much larger group which believes starting a war with the Arabs with bring the messiah and restore the Temple and this group has even received approval from some scholars from the Religious Zionist world. This sad fact is outside this devar Torah.)
However, learning the laws of offerings and the Temple service is a completely different matter. These laws are discussed in the Mishnah and analyzed in the Gemara, codified by the Rambam in his Mishnah Torah, etc. In fact, in Halakhic Man, Rav Soloveitchik spends several pages (23-29, and endnote 27 found on pages 147-148) discussing just a small fraction of scholars throughout the ages who learned, taught, and wrote on all areas of Torah, including those which are not applicable today because our sins have prevented the Temple’s rebuilding. Why would such bright people “waste their time” learning all this? Rav Soloveitchik compares halacha to math and provides us with a deep answer.
There are fundamental laws of math which govern even the laws of nature and mathematicians spend their lives attempting to comprehend these laws. These laws extend farther than Euclidian geometry into realms where the shortest distance between points need not be geometric lines.
So too with the Torah! It is the revealed will of G-d and it is the Law par excellence which underlies the spiritual reality. When a halachic man looks at the word, he does so through the eyes of Torah and halacha. Does this pool of water qualify as a mikvah? Has the sun set low enough to recite evening prayers? etc. (see pages 19-23) (This does not mean that one should not enjoy nature, this topic is discussed in The Lonely Man of Faith.)
Moreover, since the Torah is G-d’s will, when one learns and comprehends Torah, even if the law or concept cannot be immediately realized, he or she grabs hold of a piece of the infinite, a piece of G-d’s revealed will! This connection to G-d is at the heart of the concept of kedusha (holiness).
In Rav Soloveitchik’s own words:
“Kedusha is generated only by closeness to God. Who is holy? Whoever is touched by the Holy One, by God's hand. But, the question arises, how can man exist in the proximity of God? The gemara (Ketubot 111b) asks, "Is it possible for Man to cleave to the Holy Presence? Is it not a 'fire devouring fire?'" The gemara answers that we should associate with talmidei chachamim, with Torah scholars. How can one feel the hand of God resting on one's shoulder, feel the breath of eternity on his face? - through the Torah! Halakha does not favor mystical union, in which one's identity is negated. How can one get close to God and yet preserve the full sense of personality, of encounter? The answer is through knowledge, the study of Torah.
How does the study of Torah unite man with God, the human being with his Maker? How can it bring together finitude and infinity, temporal transience and eternity? The Rambam develops the idea of "achdut hamaskil ve-hamuskal" (the unity of knower and known, the subject and the object of knowledge). This is not only found in the Moreh Nevuchim, but in the Yad Hachazaka as well (Hilkhot Yesodei Hatorah, and, by implication, in Hilkhot Teshuva). The Sefer HaTanya writes about this doctrine of the Rambam that "all the sages of the Kabbala have agreed with him." I will not go into the philosophical explanation of this principle now, but we may immediately draw one conclusion. If the knower and the object known are merged into one, then two knowers whose minds are concentrated on the same object are also united. If a=c, and b=c, then a=b. People with common thoughts cannot long remain strangers, indifferent to each other. Wherever there is unity of thought, purpose and commitment, there is also personalistic unity. The Rambam (Commentary to Avot) concludes that the highest form of friendship is the unity of knowledge - "chaver ledei'a." In a like manner, when man becomes completely absorbed in God's thought, in His revealed WORD, then he is indeed united with God, there is friendship between man and God. The Tanya writes, "When a man understands with his intellect, and comprehends and digests the infinite and inscrutable will of the Almighty, there is the most marvelous union between God and man." The link between man and God is thought. God is the originator of thought, man embraces it. This is the great bond uniting man and God, finitude with infinity.” (http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/humility.htm)
Translating this into emotional terms and practical expectations, Rav Soloveitchik’s son in law, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, writes beautifully:
“The attachment to Torah must be brimming with love, yearning, and passion - specifically for that which has not yet been learned. One who labors at three orders of the Talmud must feel that he is missing the other three; the emotional attachment to and longing for Torah consumes him simply by virtue of its being Torah, given to Moshe and to each individual Jew by God. The thirst for Torah, to be connected with it, to acquire it, should exist with respect to many things which appear distant, as it were, no less than with respect to those things which are, practically speaking, closer. One should feel with all his heart and soul that he is no more exempt from Uktzin [laws of the impurity of fruit stalks] than from Bava Kama [laws of damage]. Of course, not everyone achieves the same amount. But woe to the person who feels that he is exempt from aspiring to expand his horizons, utterly exempt from an entire subject. The spiritual attachment - the interconnectedness with and cleaving to Torah, the joy, the involvement - is the foundation of any serious effort to discover the truth that is in the Torah, to find the imagination within it. This is one pillar, one aspiration of the ben-Torah.” (http://vbm-torah.org/archive/sichot66/06-66ben.htm)
I believe we have adequately shown the basis for attempting to master all of Torah.
Of course, we should start from the beginning and that there are priorities. But Torah is Torah and it is there for us to learn.
“You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it” (Pirkei Avos 2:21).
Have a good Shabbas,
Mordechai
The essay:
[My comments will be in brackets.]
[Readers should note the utter lack of citing sources to back up ideas. This fact is most disturbing and raises many eyebrows and questions; I have, where I could, filled in sources. Readers should also note that it does not actually answer my question about the changing of the liturgy.]
When we read this week’s Torah portion of Tzav, we become aware of exactly how difficult the tasks of the kohanim, the priests were. We see them cleaning up the ashes, slaughtering the sacrificial animals, cutting up the meat and dashing the blood, a far cry from the more pleasant tasks of kohanim today who dispense blessings and participate in pidyon haben ceremonies. Of course it has been nearly two thousand years since they were called upon to offer sacrifices.
The question arises: How relevant is the sacrificial system to us today? For those who do not see in the Torah or mitzvot a binding way of life, the answer is obvious. But within the community of believers there are also differences of opinion. Some see the renewal of sacrifices as a matter of immediate urgency and would go so far as to precipitate a major conflict with all of Islam in order to restore the Temple service. [See above] They go to great lengths to study how sacrifices should be brought and to reproduce the Temple vessels. [See above. Also, it is worth noting that this specific idea of kohanim (priests) learning so that they can perform the Temple service was greatly pushed by the saintly Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagan]
Others believe that the system will be restored again in one way or another but only in the future, in God’s good time. Yet others believe that, as important as sacrifices were, they are not appropriate for our time and should not be reinstated. To paraphrase Rabbi Haim Hirschensohn, a culture cannot go backwards. [Please provide source. See http://www.biblical.edu/images/connect/PDFs/Restoration%20.pdf for this idea’s use by a Protestant scholar] Therefore it is unimaginable that we could return to sacrifices as our primary method for worshiping God.
There is no question but that sacrifices were an integral part of worship in ancient days. However, regardless of how we feel about their relevance for today, we would do well to examine carefully the question of their importance and their role in the fabric of Jewish observance. I believe we would then discover that they were not the essence of Judaism but only one part of Judaism’s system of religious living, and not the most important at that. [It would appear from Pirkei Avos 2:1 that one cannot truly make such a comparison. Though there are rules of what takes priority, this is hardly the same thing as importance.]
The underlying purpose of the creation of the Tabernacle was not to enable sacrifices to be brought but so that God would dwell in the midst of the people. “Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell amongst them”. [At best this is a vast oversimplification]
As the incident of the golden calf demonstrated, Israel was in desperate need of a physical symbol of the Divine Presence. The religious revolution that banned idols or any physical representation of God was difficult enough for a people that had lived for centuries in the very center of a civilization based upon such physical representations. To expect them to do without anything tangible, that assured them of God’s Presence, was impossible. [This comes from the Kuzari]
Similarly, at that time, worship without sacrifice was a virtual oxymoron. [This comes from the Rambam’s Morah Nevuchim. It is worth adding that the Rambam in hilchos Me’ila 8:8 and in his introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah says explicitly that the offerings will be reinstated in the future. When viewed along with what he writes in these sources, his statement in the Morah Nevuchim becomes far more clear. I want to thank my Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Pesach Wolicki, for showing me these sources.] Some of the Sages taught that the command to build the Sanctuary came only after the sin of the calf as a way of expiating that sin. [Some, see Nechama Leibowitz, New Studies in Exodus II, pages 469-470, note 5, for statements from Chazal which say the Tabernacle was not a response to sin but rather the ideal.] Had Israel not sinned, they would not have needed either the Sanctuary or the sacrifices. [Cain, Able, Noah, Abraham and othes offered offerings long before the golden calf] Sacrifices were taken for granted, but were not the heart of Israelite religion.
The Torah is filled with commandments and norms of life. Sacrifices are only one group of them, and hardly the most important. The laws of justice and civil norms are expounded before the sacrificial laws are detailed. [The laws of offerings however proceed the law to love your neighbor. It is clear that something coming first proves nothing.] The Ten Commandments give us the basic terms of the covenant and never mention sacrifices. [In Brachos we see Chazal setting down laws to combat such beliefs] As we all know so well, the prophets made it clear that justice and righteousness were far more important to God than sacrifices and that without them, sacrifices were utterly useless and even offensive to God.
Our society is so far from having attained the ideals of the Torah and achieving a life of morality and holiness that it seems ludicrous to spend so much time fantasizing about the sacrificial ritual [Briefly mentioning them in prayer is “so much time” and “fantasizing”?] when we should be concentrating on building the just society that the Torah describes. I do not mean to exaggerate, but for all the good things that we have achieved, and they are considerable, we still have a long way to go to become the society the Torah envisions.
Every day we see examples of lack of respect for other human beings, which is lack of respect for God since humans are created in God’s image. Our society is plagued with violence, with husbands killing their wives, with sexual predators and incest, with drivers who prefer speed to safety, with politicians who use their offices for personal gain. We have people living in poverty, homeless people wandering the streets, youth in danger, drug abuse, hatred of one group of Jews for another, women imported and sold as sex slaves, foreign workers mistreated by their employers.
The list of our failings is longer than we would like to think. If ritual is our concern, the most basic Jewish institution, Shabbat, is being called into question. [?] All of these demand our attention and should have priority in our concern.
I have the profoundest respect for the Torah’s descriptions of sacrifices. Israel’s sacrificial system was worlds apart from those of other groups and represented a monumental advance in human worship and in the concept of God. But I also believe that it must be seen in proportion and the lack of sacrifices must not be viewed as some cosmic catastrophe that must be corrected immediately regardless of the consequences.
What we have to correct is what the sacrifices stood for: a desire to draw close to God, a feeling of living with God in our midst, a recognition of the need to be grateful for all God has given us and a desire to share God’s bounty so that there will be no poverty and no suffering among us. Let us put our energies into the creation of that kind of a society that will itself be an expression of holiness on earth. Then God will indeed dwell amongst us.
[One should read http://www.masorti.org.uk/24-04-99.htm and see the mental gymnastics performed by the Conservative movement in an attempt to cope with this issue.]
Question
Why in this week's parsha does the Torah repeat much information mentioned in last week's parsha? Pay attention to the differences in organization.
The Halachist and the Mathematician
While researching more on the topic of offerings, I looked into my Sim Shalom Siddur (Conservative) and noticed that they removed the prayers for restoration of the Temple Service without giving a source. Since it has been my experience with the Conservative Movement that they rarely do things without having some sort of something to rely on, I contacted a local conservative Rabbi in Baltimore hoping for something intelligent. He sent me a short essay written by somebody which was quite disappointing. (The essay and my short comments are below for those who want to read it.) This devar Torah will focus on one passage of this essay:
“Some see the renewal of sacrifices as a matter of immediate urgency and would go so far as to precipitate a major conflict with all of Islam in order to restore the Temple service. They go to great lengths to study how sacrifices should be brought and to reproduce the Temple vessels.”
It is indeed true that there is a group who would like to demolish the Dome of the Rock and start offering animals despite the fact that this would necessarily lead to war. Since the leading halachic authorities from across the religious world have forbade Jews from even ascending the Temple Mount (let alone restarting the Temple service), this group is quite small and quite fringe. (There is most unfortunately a much larger group which believes starting a war with the Arabs with bring the messiah and restore the Temple and this group has even received approval from some scholars from the Religious Zionist world. This sad fact is outside this devar Torah.)
However, learning the laws of offerings and the Temple service is a completely different matter. These laws are discussed in the Mishnah and analyzed in the Gemara, codified by the Rambam in his Mishnah Torah, etc. In fact, in Halakhic Man, Rav Soloveitchik spends several pages (23-29, and endnote 27 found on pages 147-148) discussing just a small fraction of scholars throughout the ages who learned, taught, and wrote on all areas of Torah, including those which are not applicable today because our sins have prevented the Temple’s rebuilding. Why would such bright people “waste their time” learning all this? Rav Soloveitchik compares halacha to math and provides us with a deep answer.
There are fundamental laws of math which govern even the laws of nature and mathematicians spend their lives attempting to comprehend these laws. These laws extend farther than Euclidian geometry into realms where the shortest distance between points need not be geometric lines.
So too with the Torah! It is the revealed will of G-d and it is the Law par excellence which underlies the spiritual reality. When a halachic man looks at the word, he does so through the eyes of Torah and halacha. Does this pool of water qualify as a mikvah? Has the sun set low enough to recite evening prayers? etc. (see pages 19-23) (This does not mean that one should not enjoy nature, this topic is discussed in The Lonely Man of Faith.)
Moreover, since the Torah is G-d’s will, when one learns and comprehends Torah, even if the law or concept cannot be immediately realized, he or she grabs hold of a piece of the infinite, a piece of G-d’s revealed will! This connection to G-d is at the heart of the concept of kedusha (holiness).
In Rav Soloveitchik’s own words:
“Kedusha is generated only by closeness to God. Who is holy? Whoever is touched by the Holy One, by God's hand. But, the question arises, how can man exist in the proximity of God? The gemara (Ketubot 111b) asks, "Is it possible for Man to cleave to the Holy Presence? Is it not a 'fire devouring fire?'" The gemara answers that we should associate with talmidei chachamim, with Torah scholars. How can one feel the hand of God resting on one's shoulder, feel the breath of eternity on his face? - through the Torah! Halakha does not favor mystical union, in which one's identity is negated. How can one get close to God and yet preserve the full sense of personality, of encounter? The answer is through knowledge, the study of Torah.
How does the study of Torah unite man with God, the human being with his Maker? How can it bring together finitude and infinity, temporal transience and eternity? The Rambam develops the idea of "achdut hamaskil ve-hamuskal" (the unity of knower and known, the subject and the object of knowledge). This is not only found in the Moreh Nevuchim, but in the Yad Hachazaka as well (Hilkhot Yesodei Hatorah, and, by implication, in Hilkhot Teshuva). The Sefer HaTanya writes about this doctrine of the Rambam that "all the sages of the Kabbala have agreed with him." I will not go into the philosophical explanation of this principle now, but we may immediately draw one conclusion. If the knower and the object known are merged into one, then two knowers whose minds are concentrated on the same object are also united. If a=c, and b=c, then a=b. People with common thoughts cannot long remain strangers, indifferent to each other. Wherever there is unity of thought, purpose and commitment, there is also personalistic unity. The Rambam (Commentary to Avot) concludes that the highest form of friendship is the unity of knowledge - "chaver ledei'a." In a like manner, when man becomes completely absorbed in God's thought, in His revealed WORD, then he is indeed united with God, there is friendship between man and God. The Tanya writes, "When a man understands with his intellect, and comprehends and digests the infinite and inscrutable will of the Almighty, there is the most marvelous union between God and man." The link between man and God is thought. God is the originator of thought, man embraces it. This is the great bond uniting man and God, finitude with infinity.” (http://www.vbm-torah.org/archive/humility.htm)
Translating this into emotional terms and practical expectations, Rav Soloveitchik’s son in law, Rav Aharon Lichtenstein, writes beautifully:
“The attachment to Torah must be brimming with love, yearning, and passion - specifically for that which has not yet been learned. One who labors at three orders of the Talmud must feel that he is missing the other three; the emotional attachment to and longing for Torah consumes him simply by virtue of its being Torah, given to Moshe and to each individual Jew by God. The thirst for Torah, to be connected with it, to acquire it, should exist with respect to many things which appear distant, as it were, no less than with respect to those things which are, practically speaking, closer. One should feel with all his heart and soul that he is no more exempt from Uktzin [laws of the impurity of fruit stalks] than from Bava Kama [laws of damage]. Of course, not everyone achieves the same amount. But woe to the person who feels that he is exempt from aspiring to expand his horizons, utterly exempt from an entire subject. The spiritual attachment - the interconnectedness with and cleaving to Torah, the joy, the involvement - is the foundation of any serious effort to discover the truth that is in the Torah, to find the imagination within it. This is one pillar, one aspiration of the ben-Torah.” (http://vbm-torah.org/archive/sichot66/06-66ben.htm)
I believe we have adequately shown the basis for attempting to master all of Torah.
Of course, we should start from the beginning and that there are priorities. But Torah is Torah and it is there for us to learn.
“You are not required to complete the task, yet you are not free to withdraw from it” (Pirkei Avos 2:21).
Have a good Shabbas,
Mordechai
The essay:
[My comments will be in brackets.]
[Readers should note the utter lack of citing sources to back up ideas. This fact is most disturbing and raises many eyebrows and questions; I have, where I could, filled in sources. Readers should also note that it does not actually answer my question about the changing of the liturgy.]
When we read this week’s Torah portion of Tzav, we become aware of exactly how difficult the tasks of the kohanim, the priests were. We see them cleaning up the ashes, slaughtering the sacrificial animals, cutting up the meat and dashing the blood, a far cry from the more pleasant tasks of kohanim today who dispense blessings and participate in pidyon haben ceremonies. Of course it has been nearly two thousand years since they were called upon to offer sacrifices.
The question arises: How relevant is the sacrificial system to us today? For those who do not see in the Torah or mitzvot a binding way of life, the answer is obvious. But within the community of believers there are also differences of opinion. Some see the renewal of sacrifices as a matter of immediate urgency and would go so far as to precipitate a major conflict with all of Islam in order to restore the Temple service. [See above] They go to great lengths to study how sacrifices should be brought and to reproduce the Temple vessels. [See above. Also, it is worth noting that this specific idea of kohanim (priests) learning so that they can perform the Temple service was greatly pushed by the saintly Chofetz Chaim, Rabbi Yisroel Meir Kagan]
Others believe that the system will be restored again in one way or another but only in the future, in God’s good time. Yet others believe that, as important as sacrifices were, they are not appropriate for our time and should not be reinstated. To paraphrase Rabbi Haim Hirschensohn, a culture cannot go backwards. [Please provide source. See http://www.biblical.edu/images/connect/PDFs/Restoration%20.pdf for this idea’s use by a Protestant scholar] Therefore it is unimaginable that we could return to sacrifices as our primary method for worshiping God.
There is no question but that sacrifices were an integral part of worship in ancient days. However, regardless of how we feel about their relevance for today, we would do well to examine carefully the question of their importance and their role in the fabric of Jewish observance. I believe we would then discover that they were not the essence of Judaism but only one part of Judaism’s system of religious living, and not the most important at that. [It would appear from Pirkei Avos 2:1 that one cannot truly make such a comparison. Though there are rules of what takes priority, this is hardly the same thing as importance.]
The underlying purpose of the creation of the Tabernacle was not to enable sacrifices to be brought but so that God would dwell in the midst of the people. “Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell amongst them”. [At best this is a vast oversimplification]
As the incident of the golden calf demonstrated, Israel was in desperate need of a physical symbol of the Divine Presence. The religious revolution that banned idols or any physical representation of God was difficult enough for a people that had lived for centuries in the very center of a civilization based upon such physical representations. To expect them to do without anything tangible, that assured them of God’s Presence, was impossible. [This comes from the Kuzari]
Similarly, at that time, worship without sacrifice was a virtual oxymoron. [This comes from the Rambam’s Morah Nevuchim. It is worth adding that the Rambam in hilchos Me’ila 8:8 and in his introduction to his commentary on the Mishnah says explicitly that the offerings will be reinstated in the future. When viewed along with what he writes in these sources, his statement in the Morah Nevuchim becomes far more clear. I want to thank my Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Pesach Wolicki, for showing me these sources.] Some of the Sages taught that the command to build the Sanctuary came only after the sin of the calf as a way of expiating that sin. [Some, see Nechama Leibowitz, New Studies in Exodus II, pages 469-470, note 5, for statements from Chazal which say the Tabernacle was not a response to sin but rather the ideal.] Had Israel not sinned, they would not have needed either the Sanctuary or the sacrifices. [Cain, Able, Noah, Abraham and othes offered offerings long before the golden calf] Sacrifices were taken for granted, but were not the heart of Israelite religion.
The Torah is filled with commandments and norms of life. Sacrifices are only one group of them, and hardly the most important. The laws of justice and civil norms are expounded before the sacrificial laws are detailed. [The laws of offerings however proceed the law to love your neighbor. It is clear that something coming first proves nothing.] The Ten Commandments give us the basic terms of the covenant and never mention sacrifices. [In Brachos we see Chazal setting down laws to combat such beliefs] As we all know so well, the prophets made it clear that justice and righteousness were far more important to God than sacrifices and that without them, sacrifices were utterly useless and even offensive to God.
Our society is so far from having attained the ideals of the Torah and achieving a life of morality and holiness that it seems ludicrous to spend so much time fantasizing about the sacrificial ritual [Briefly mentioning them in prayer is “so much time” and “fantasizing”?] when we should be concentrating on building the just society that the Torah describes. I do not mean to exaggerate, but for all the good things that we have achieved, and they are considerable, we still have a long way to go to become the society the Torah envisions.
Every day we see examples of lack of respect for other human beings, which is lack of respect for God since humans are created in God’s image. Our society is plagued with violence, with husbands killing their wives, with sexual predators and incest, with drivers who prefer speed to safety, with politicians who use their offices for personal gain. We have people living in poverty, homeless people wandering the streets, youth in danger, drug abuse, hatred of one group of Jews for another, women imported and sold as sex slaves, foreign workers mistreated by their employers.
The list of our failings is longer than we would like to think. If ritual is our concern, the most basic Jewish institution, Shabbat, is being called into question. [?] All of these demand our attention and should have priority in our concern.
I have the profoundest respect for the Torah’s descriptions of sacrifices. Israel’s sacrificial system was worlds apart from those of other groups and represented a monumental advance in human worship and in the concept of God. But I also believe that it must be seen in proportion and the lack of sacrifices must not be viewed as some cosmic catastrophe that must be corrected immediately regardless of the consequences.
What we have to correct is what the sacrifices stood for: a desire to draw close to God, a feeling of living with God in our midst, a recognition of the need to be grateful for all God has given us and a desire to share God’s bounty so that there will be no poverty and no suffering among us. Let us put our energies into the creation of that kind of a society that will itself be an expression of holiness on earth. Then God will indeed dwell amongst us.
[One should read http://www.masorti.org.uk/24-04-99.htm and see the mental gymnastics performed by the Conservative movement in an attempt to cope with this issue.]
posted by Mordechai18 at 2:23 PM
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