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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.
Thursday, 14 Sivan 5773 – May 23, 2013
The Torah in
Parashat Behaalotekha (9:1-14) tells of the group of people who were
temei’im (ritually impure) at the time of the paschal offering, and were thus unable to
offer the sacrifice at its proper time.
God commanded that they should instead offer the sacrifice one month
later, on the 14th of Iyar.
The Gemara in
Masekhet Sukka (25a-b) famously identifies these
temei’im as people who came in contact with a dead body for the sake of a
mitzva.
One view identifies them as the bearers of Yosef’s coffin, which was
taken with
Benei Yisrael out of Egypt and brought to
Eretz Yisrael for burial. Another opinion is that
these were Mishael and Eltzafan, Moshe’s cousins who were instructed to tend to
the remains of Nadav and Avihu, Aharon’s sons who perished on the day of the
Mishkan’s inauguration. A third view cited in
the Gemara claims that these
temei’im had buried a
meit mitzva – a deceased person who had no family members to tend to the burial. According to all three opinions,
these
temei’im allowed themselves to contract
tum’a despite knowing that this would prevent them from offering the korban pesach. The Gemara thus views this episode as the
Biblical source of the famous rule of oseik be-mitzva patur min ha-mitzva,
which absolves one from a mitzva obligation while he is occupied with a
different mitzva. These
temei’im were not required to take their looming korban pesach
obligation into account when deciding whether to tend to a burial, thus
demonstrating that one’s current involvement in a mitzva takes precedence over a
mitzva that surfaces subsequently.
Among the many
interesting issues that have been addressed concerning this halakha is
whether or not it extends to
mitzvot kiyumiyot –
meaning,
mitzvot that are not technically obligatory.
The
Netivot (72:19), for example, raises this question in the context of
gabba’ei tzedaka – the officers assigned over a communal
charity fund. Would they be exempt
from other
mitzvot while tending to their duties as the charity officials? The
Netivot rules that they would not receive the exemption of
oseik be-mitzva, since there is no technical obligation to
serve in this capacity. It goes
without saying that one who assumes responsibility for the communal charity
performs a valuable and important mitzva by assisting
the needy of his community. However,
in the view of the Netivot, since a gabbai tzedaka accepts this
position voluntarily, and is under no personal halakhic obligation to take on
this role, his charitable work does not exempt him from other mitzvot. As such, even when he is involved in
his work, he must break to attend to other mitzvot that present
themselves.
Rav Meir Auerbach, in
Imrei Bina (O.C. 13:3), disagrees with the Netivot’s ruling. He notes that the Gemara in Masekhet
Sukka (26a) applies the rule of oseik be-mitzva even to soferim
who are busy writing Torah scrolls, tefillin and mezuzot. Clearly, there is no personal
obligation to take on the role of scribe, and yet soferim are granted an
exemption from other mitzvot while they tend to their work. This would seem to prove that the
oseik be-mitzva exemption is not limited to those involved in strictly
obligatory mitzvot.
An interesting observation is made by the Aderet (Rav Eliyahu David
Rabinowitz Teomim), who noted that this issue might depend on the aforementioned
debate concerning the identity of the
temei’im
who were unable to offer the korban pesach. As mentioned, one view identifies
these people as the bearers of Yosef’s ark.
Nowhere is there any indication that this job was specifically assigned
to a certain group of people, and we might reasonably assume that the
pole-bearers volunteered for this role.
(The same can be said about the third view, identifying the temei’im
as people tending to a meit mitzva.)
Yet, despite the fact that they were not strictly obligated to perform
this mitzva, their job yielded an exemption from the
mitzva of korban pesach, seemingly proving that the
oseik be-mitzva exemption applies even to voluntary mitzvot. By contrast, Mishael and Eltzafan were
specifically instructed by Moshe to tend to the remains of Nadav and Avihu
(Vayikra 10:4). If these were the
temei’im who forfeited the
mitzva of korban pesach, then
we might limit the exemption to those involved in a mitzva in which they
are strictly obligated. (Based on Umka De-parsha, Parashat Behaalotekha 5769
Rav David Silverberg |
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