TORAH SPARKS
Parashat Aharei Mot-Kedoshim
April 24, 2021, 12 Iyyar 5781
Torah: Leviticus 16:1-20:27; Triennial 17:8-19:14
Haftorah: Amos 9:7-15
Restricted Access
Ilana Kurshan
The first parsha we read this week, Aharei Mot, takes its name from a reference to the death of the sons of Aaron, who brought a strange fire into the Holy of Holies. The parsha begins with the laws governing the high priest s service in the Temple on Yom Kippur, which are followed, one chapter later, by a list of illicit sexual relations. What is the connection between the death of Aaron s sons, the Yom Kippur rites, and the prohibition on uncovering the nakedness of various individuals? And how can the juxtaposition of laws about sacred space and sexuality speak to the sanctification of intimacy in our own lives?
We might start by looking to the Yom Kippur liturgy, where the two parts of our parsha are also juxtaposed. The first part, about the death of Aaron s sons and the priestly rituals of Yom Kippur, are chanted as the Torah reading on the morning of Yom Kippur; the second part of the parsha, about forbidden sexual relations, is the afternoon reading, as prescribed in the Talmud (Megillah 31a). Rashi comments that the afternoon reading was chosen so as to warn people not to sleep with those who are forbidden to them, because sexual sin is so prevalent. This does not explain why this reading was chosen for Yom Kippur in particular, and here Tosafot step in, explaining that women dress up on Yom Kippur and so it is especially important to warn men not to succumb to their wiles. According to this understanding, the afternoon reading was not chosen simply because it follows the morning reading in the Torah, but because it serves as a much-needed warning on this particular day. Yet shouldn t this kind of sin be furthest from our mind on Yom Kippur, a day on which all sexual intercourse is forbidden? A close reading of our parsha suggests otherwise.
The beginning of the parsha draws a connection between the death of Aaron s sons and the prohibition on entering the Holy of Holies at all times (16:2). Since God appears in a cloud in the Holy of Holies, Aaron must enter only when specifically authorized to do so, which, as we learn from the end of the chapter, was in the seventh month on the tenth day of the month (16:29), namely Yom Kippur. When entering the Holy of Holies, Aaron had to first bathe and dress in specific sacred vestments, bearing specific sacrificial offerings to atone for himself, his household, and the whole congregation of Israel. These detailed instructions, following immediately after the reference to the death of Aaron s sons, suggest that Nadav and Avihu failed to observe the highly specific regulations governing entry into the Holy of Holies, whether by entering at the wrong time, wearing the wrong clothes, or bearing the wrong sacrifices.
The Talmud adds that the entry into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur was a moment of such trepidation that the High Priest would make sure to offer only a short prayer (Yoma 52b), lest the people waiting outside grow frightened that something terrible had befallen him inside the sacred precinct. Since only the High Priest could enter, the maintenance of the Holy of Holies posed a particular challenge; how could anyone get inside to clean it out? The Mishnah (Middot 4:5) relates that there were trapdoors in an upper chamber opening into the Holy of Holies by which workmen were let down in baskets so that they would not feast their eyes on the Holy of Holies. This most sacred chamber of the Temple was a place of highly restricted access, with very specific rules governing who might enter and when.
It is against this backdrop that we can read the laws of forbidden sexual relations in our parsha, which are also about restricted access. Just as it was forbidden for the High Priest to enter the Holy of Holies at all times, it is also forbidden by the laws of Niddah for a man to sleep with a woman at all times. And just as not anyone could enter the Holy of Holies, so too not anyone is permitted sexually to everyone else. A man may not sleep with his mother, or his father s wife, or his son s daughter, etc. The Torah uses the phrase uncovering the nakedness to describe these prohibitions, reminiscent of the prohibition on the workers feasting their eyes on the sacred shrine. Not everything is meant to be flaunted and out in the open; the most sacred spaces, like the most sacred connections, are for certain individuals only. Perhaps this is why the Talmud, in describing the plundering of the Temple by the Romans (Gittin 56b), relates that Titus entered the sacred shrine and committed an act of rape suggesting that violating the Temple, for the rabbis, was as much an abomination as violating a woman.
Of course, the gendered language of these texts may seem foreign if not outright offensive to our modern sensibilities. The priest is always male, and the Torah s laws about uncovering nakedness are addressed to men alone. But to dismiss these texts on account of their sexist rhetoric is to ignore their message for our own time, when we aspire to more egalitarian relationships. Yom Kippur, a day of supreme intimacy between human beings and God, is an occasion to focus on other intimate connections as well. As Bonna Devora Haberman z l has eloquently argued, entry into the Holy of Holies can be a model for sexual intimacy, which should not take place at any time, with any person. The rabbinic term for marriage the exclusive partnership between two individuals is Kiddushin, meaning sanctity. The Yom Kippur rites, with their emphasis on exclusivity and restricted access to sacred space, precede the laws of forbidden sexual relations to remind us we can elevate our most intimate relationships to the level of the sacred.
When Injustice Seems Justified
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Text: Vayikra 19:15
You shall do no corruption in judgment, you shall not favor the poor, nor defer to the great; in righteousness shall you judge your fellow.
● Whom do you think is responsible to prevent corruption in judgement?
● What might cloud the ability to judge fairly?
● What is the relationship of the opening phrase you shall do no corruption to the rest of the verse?
● What is the relationship of the closing phrase in righteousness shall you judge your fellow to the rest of the verse?
Commentary: Rashi Vayikra 19:15
You shall not favor the poor you shall not say, "This is a poor man, and the rich man has in any case the duty of supporting him; I will find in his favor and he will obtain some support in a respectable fashion.
Nor defer to the great you shall not say, "This is a rich man, this man is of noble descent, how can I possibly put him to shame and be witness to his shame? There is penalty for such a thing!"
In righteousness shall you judge your fellow Take this at its simple meaning. Another explanation is: Judge your fellow person with an inclination in his favor.
● In the argument presented by Rashi, the reasoning for favoring a poor person seems noble, so why is it forbidden?
● What do you think that Rashi means by suggesting that ruling against a great person would lead to a penalty?
● Does the judge stand to gain anything in the case of the poor or the rich person? Why is the judge ruling as s/he does?
● For the closing phrase of the verse Rashi offers two readings. Consider the first reading: Why would the Torah call the person being judged your fellow ? What does this phrase add to what was already said in the verse?
● In his second reading Rashi leaves the court room and moves into everyone s life. We judge others all the time, it is part of human interaction. How does Rashi suggest that we understand the word righteousness when applied to others?
Commentary: R. S.R. Hirsch Vayikra 19:15
A warning to the public: You shall do no corruption in judgement. The public, through the institutions of judgement, is in a position of power vis-a-vis the individual. This position should not be abused by judging unrighteously or arbitrarily.
● If you can read the verse in Hebrew: what gave rise to the idea that the beginning of the verse is intended for the public?*
● How might Hirsch s reading apply today?
* A little help: The verb in the beginning is in plural
form. The rest are in singular form.
Don t Sweat: The Details
Bex Stern Rosenblatt
It s a fairly audacious undertaking to try to describe in detail what a perfect world would look like. Yet this is precisely the work that is undertaken over and over again in the Tanakh, as God gives or we create excruciatingly precise rules for how to exist in a land that we will come to. The Torah opens, in Genesis 2-3, with a first attempt at a perfect world. We are given the Garden of Eden, if we can keep it. To no one s surprise, we can t. And yet, in the imaginings of what a perfect world will be in the rest of the Tanakh, over and over again we return to imagery and language pulled from that original story. We find it in the descriptions of the building of the Tabernacle, the construction of the Temple, and then again in our haftarah in the Book of Ezekiel.
The haftarah is part of a grand vision of Ezekiel, stretching from chapter 40 though chapter 48. Ezekiel tells the community in exile after the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple that a time will come in which God will not only rebuild the Temple but also restore the exiled people to their land, including even the long-lost tribes of the Northern Kingdom of Israel. In this vision, an angel describes to Ezekiel, in chapter 47, a river flowing through the land giving life to everything, much the same as the flow which arose from the earth and watered all the face of the land in the Garden of Eden. Likewise, Ezekiel 47 speaks of a great tree, similar to the tree of knowledge from Eden. Restored Jerusalem is the perfect world that once was, is the Garden of Eden realized again.
This time, however, there is one crucial difference: the people invited into the Garden. We have moved from Adam and Eve to a restricted group of priests. The haftarah begins by defining exactly who has entrance to this new Eden, who can be in the place where God will dwell. God declares that it is only the Levitical Kohanim from the descendants of Zadok who may approach God to serve God. The rest of the haftarah is devoted to a series of laws about how this group must act and refrain from acting in order to maintain its ability to serve God. In this description of a perfect world 2.0, Ezekiel attempts to leave no ambiguity – the laws of priestly behavior are exact and detailed such that perhaps this time we will not fail, we will not be kicked out of the Garden again.
The most intriguing detail included is found in the rules on what the priests must wear in the inner court of the Temple. Within the list of garments to be worn, we are told that the priests cannot wear anything that makes them sweat. If I were imagining my ideal world, I might very well include one with less sweat. But there is perhaps a deeper meaning here. The root word for sweat appears in only two places in the Tanakh – here and in the punishment given to Adam for eating from the tree of knowledge. Adam is told, by the sweat of your brow shall you eat food until you return to the ground from which you were taken. Ezekiel, by forbidding the priests to sweat while serving God, undoes the curse of Adam. He has restored the Temple as a new Eden and restored priests as a new Adam, an Adam that no longer must suffer in his work because his work is to serve God.
There is much debate about when Ezekiel was written and who the intended audience was – whether it was written in exile or after we returned to the land. But whenever it was written and for whomever it was written, it presented a vision of perfection in which the redemption was in the details.