friday

Monday, Rosh Chodesh 30 Nissan 5768 – May 5, 2008

מלפני אדון חולי ארץ מלפני אלו-ה יעקב. ההפכי הצור אגם מים, חלמיש למעינו מים.

Please pray for the speedy release of Danny ben Edna and Yitzchak ben Edna Chalamish.

Please include Israel's captive soldiers in your tefillot: Zecharia Shlomo ben Miriam Baumel, Tzvi ben Penina Feldman, Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman ben Sarah Katz, Ron ben Batya Arad, Guy ben Rina Chever, Gilad ben Aviva Shalit, Eldad ben Tova Regev, Ehud ben Malka Goldwasser.

In Parashat Emor, God instructs Moshe to issue the following warning to Aharon and the other kohanim: "For all your generations, anyone from among all your offspring who approaches the kodashim [sacrifices] that the Israelites consecrate to the Lord while his impurity is upon him – that soul shall be severed from before Me" (22:3). God here warns the kohanim not to "approach" any sacrifices while in a state of tum'a (ritual impurity).

The word used for "approach" in this verse – yikrav – seems to indicate, at first glance, that the Torah refers here to approaching the Mikdash to perform the service. If so, then the Torah here speaks of the prohibition against performing the avoda (Temple service) while in a state of tum'a, and establishes karet (eternal excision from Am Yisrael) as the punishment for this violation. This is indeed Abarbanel's interpretation of this verse.

However, as Rav Eliezer Lichtenstein noted in his Shem Olam commentary to Sefer Vayikra (Warsaw, 1877), this is not the reading accepted by the Gemara. Towards the end of Masekhet Sanhedrin (83b), the Gemara explicitly establishes that performing the avoda in a state of tum'a is punishable by mita bi-dei Shamayim ("death from the heavens"), which differs from karet (a punishment which affects the soul's status after death). The Rambam codifies this halakha in Hilkhot Bi'at Mikdash 4:1. Thus, Rashi and the Rashbam, in their commentaries, explain "approach" in this verse as a reference to partaking of sacrifices. The Torah here forbids not "approaching" to perform the avoda in a state of tum'a, but rather "approaching" the sacrifices and eating them in a state of tum'a, a violation which is punishable by karet.

We might suggest an explanation for why the Torah chose to refer in this context to eating sacrificial meat with the term yikrav, a term that brings to mind the rituals in the Mikdash. The Torah perhaps sought to emphasize that even eating the korbanot is included in the framework of the avoda, and it is for this reason that it, too, requires a state of purity. Given the special status of sanctity that Halakha affords the sacrifices, even partaking of them assumes a certain quality of "avoda," and it therefore demands the same conditions that apply when the kohanim perform the service in the Mikdash. Hence, in the context of this prohibition, the Torah chose to speak of eating sacrificial meat with the term yikrav, emphasizing the fact that this act, too, is included in the broader concept of avoda.

David Silverberg

Comments are welcome.

(c) 2007 Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash, Yeshivat Har Etzion.

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