friday

Yom Ha-Atzmaut

Thursday, 3 Iyar 5768 – May 8, 2008

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.

The opening section of Parashat Emor introduces the prohibition of tum'at kohanim, which forbids kohanim from coming in contact with a dead body. As we discussed earlier this week, in the case of the kohen gadol the Torah extends this prohibition even to situations where a kohen loses an immediate family member: "he shall not become impure [even] for his father or mother" (21:11).

The Gemara in Masekhet Nazir (49a) seeks to explain why the Torah found it necessary to specify that a kohen gadol may not contract tum'a (ritual impurity) even for the purpose of burying his deceased mother. Once the Torah establishes that this prohibition applies even to a case where the kohen gadol loses his father, it seems obvious that this holds true if his mother dies, as well. The Gemara explains that had the Torah established this rule only in the context of the kohen gadol's father, one might have attributed this law to the fact that a person cannot know his father's identity with absolute certainty. It is perhaps only due to this factor of uncertainty, one may have reasoned, that the Torah does not allow a kohen gadol to compromise his stature of sanctity by coming in contact with tum'a. This would not necessarily apply in the case of the death of his mother, whom he knows to be his mother with absolute certainty, and for whom he should perhaps then be allowed to become tamei in order to tend to her burial needs. For this reason, the Gemara explains, the Torah had to clarify that this halakha applies to both parents of the kohen gadol.

A similar comment appears in Torat Kohanim regarding an earlier verse (21:2), where the Torah allows an ordinary kohen to become tamei upon the death of a parent. Torat Kohanim remarks that had the Torah specified only the kohen's mother, one might have surmised that this permission is restricted to the case of a mother's passing, given the certainty of her identity as the kohen's mother. When a kohen's father passes on, however, one may have assumed that he may not become tamei, since he cannot definitively ascertain that the deceased is indeed his father.

Many writers have noted what appears to be an obvious flaw in this line of reasoning. If, indeed, we take into account the slight degree of uncertainty surrounding the presumed father's identity, then this should only serve to give more reason to allow the kohen to attend the burial. After all, the entire prohibition against contracting tum'a is due to a kohen's priestly status, which he bears only on the assumption that his presumed father is indeed his father. Hence, questioning the presumed father's identity should serve as a basis for allowing, rather than forbidding, the kohen to become tamei upon the father's death.

The Rashba, in one of his responsa (27), cites this question – and an answer – in the name of Rav Yitzchak Tzarfati. Rav Yitzchak Tzarfati suggested that the Gemara perhaps refers to a case where the presumptions of the individual's kehuna and of his being his father's son stem from two independent sources. Meaning, two witnesses testified to his being a kohen, and at some later point a man arrived claiming to be his father and then passed away. In this situation, the son's status as a kohen has been determined independently of the father's status. As such, it is conceivable that we would uphold his presumed status as a kohen even if we question whether the man who called himself his father was in fact his father.

The Or Ha-chayim suggests a different answer, namely, that Torat Kohanim addresses not the permissibility of becoming tamei on the occasion of a family member's death, but rather of the obligation to become tamei in such a case. A kohen whose immediate family member passed away is required to give honor to the deceased by attending the burial, and may not decline in order to avoid contact with tum'a. One might have thus argued that should a kohen's father pass away, and at the same time he comes upon a different mitzva to perform, he should perhaps perform the other mitzva. Given the degree of uncertainty regarding the status of his presumed father, one might have considered affording precedence to the second mitzva. The Torah therefore specified that the obligation to tend to the burial of one's father is on equal halakhic footing as the corresponding obligation concerning one's mother, despite the slight degree of uncertainty regarding the father's identity.

It should be noted that this explanation might suffice for the passage in Torat Kohanim, but will not resolve the difficulty that emerges from the Gemara's discussion in Masekhet Nazir. The Gemara addresses the prohibition for a kohen gadol to become tamei upon a family member's death, and raises the possibility that this would apply only to a father, whose identity is subject to some uncertainty. In this context, what is clearly at stake is not the obligation to become tamei upon a family member's death, but rather the permissibility granted to a kohen gadol to become tamei, and thus the Or Ha-chayim's solution cannot be applied to the Gemara's comment.

David Silverberg

Comments are welcome.

7 days of SALT in one file - for this Shabbat's parsha - enjoy!

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

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