Timeless TorahActions Count (1:2)
The laws of sacrifices that dominate the early chapters of the book of Vayikra are among the hardest in the Torah to relate to - for it has been almost 2,000 years since the Temple was destroyed and the sacrificial system utilized. Still, Jewish thinkers have striven to understand the eternally relevant, spiritual significance of the animal offerings even if their physical use was no longer allowed.
Among the most profound insights is the one introduced by the first Rebbe of Lubavitch, which is based on an oddity in the second line of this week’s Torah section. If the verse were constructed according to the normal rules of grammar it would have read, “Adam mikem ki yakriv - When one of you “offers a sacrifice to the L-rd, the sacrifice must be taken from the cattle, sheep or goats.” However, in the original Hebrew the order of the sentence actually states, “Adam ki “yakriv mikem “- When one offers “a sacrifice of you.” “ The essence of sacrifice is that we offer ourselves. We bring to G-d our faculties, our energies, our thoughts, and our emotions. Hence, the physical animal offered on the altar is only an external manifestation. The real sacrifice is Mikem - of yourself.
Let us pursue this idea further. The Jewish mystics speak about the two souls each of us has - the animal and the G-dly. On the one hand we are part of nature. We have physical needs: food and shelter. We are born and we die. Both animals and man breathe the same air. We are both mortal and fleeting.
Yet we are not merely animals. We have within us immortal longings. We can, by speaking and listening, reach out to others. We are the one life form in the universe that can formulate ideas and be moved by high ideals. We are not governed by biological drives alone. Though, physically, we are almost nothing; spiritually, we are brushed by the wings of eternity. We have a G-dly soul.
The nature of sacrifice is now clear. What we offer G-d is not just an animal, but the animal soul within us. One set of sacrifices, chattas - the sin offering, /brought for inadvertent mistakes, warrants particular attention. These sacrifices resulted from one of two scenarios: either (a) the person did not know the law (for example, that cooking is forbidden on Shabbat) or (b) he did not know the facts (for instance, that today is Shabbat).
This type of blunder stands midway between intentional sins (where you knew what you were doing was wrong) and involuntary action (where you were not acting freely at all: it was a reflex action, or someone was pointing a gun at your head). Intentional sins cannot be atoned for by sacrifice. Involuntary actions do not need atonement. Thus, the sin offering is confined to a middle range of cases, where you did wrong, but you didn’t know you were doing wrong.
The question is obvious: Why should unintended misdeeds require atonement at all? What guilt is involved? The sinner did not mean to transgress. Had the offender known the facts or the law, he would not have done what he did. Why undergo a process of atonement? To this, the commentators give a variety of answers.
Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch is straightforward. Ignorance is a form of negligence. Exercising vigilance is a fundamental obligation. Abrabanel explains that the sin offering was not a punishment for what had been done, but a solemn warning against future sins. The bringing of a sacrifice, involving considerable effort, expense and public embarrassment, was a vivid reminder to the individual to be more careful in the future. Ramban suggests that the sin offering was brought not because of what led to the act, but rather because of what followed from it. Sin, even without intention, defiles. The animals offered were there to scour the ‘stained’ soul.
Our Rebbe (Rabbi Schneerson, a direct descendant of the first Rebbe of Lubavitch quoted above), offered a unique interpretation. Even inadvertent sins testify to something wrong on the part of the person concerned. Bad things do not come about through good people. The Sages said that G-d does not allow even the animals of the righteous to do wrong; how much more so does He protect the righteous themselves from error (Yevamos 99b; Kesubos 28b). Something must have been wrong with the individual for the mishap to have taken place.
This view shares more than a passing similarity with the proverbial Freudian slip where remarks or acts that seem unintentional often betray unconscious desires or motives. Indeed, the unconscious is often more revealed at such moments than when the person is acting with deliberation. It is this ‘hidden’ fault which lies beneath the threshold of consciousness, which requires atonement.
Whichever explanation we follow, the sin offering represents an idea familiar in law, but strangely unfamiliar in Western ethics. Our acts make a difference. Unfortunately, we have come to believe that all that matters, as far as morality is concerned, is our intent. If we meant good, then we are good, regardless of what we actually do. Judaism also recognizes the difference between good and bad will, which is why deliberate sins cannot be atoned for by a sacrifice, whereas unintentional ones can.
Yet the very fact that unintentional sins require atonement tells us that we cannot disassociate ourselves from our actions by saying: ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’ Wrong was done, and it was done by us. Therefore we must perform an act that signals our contrition. We cannot just walk away as if the act had nothing to do with us.
Unfashionable though this is, a morality that speaks about action, not just intention is more honest, just, and compelling.
Click here to download this class- Login to post comments