Category: Dvar Torah

Just Say No to Evaluating People

PLEASE NOTE: Because of the timing of the end of Pesach, Behukotai is the Parasha this week in Israel and next week in the Diaspora.

By Rav Uri C. Cohen

The last chapter of Leviticus is all about erkhin (evaluations) of pledges to the Temple. (The word is technically pronounced arakhin.) Startlingly, it deals with the erkhin of people! What if someone makes a vow to donate the erekh (value) of a living person? For example, “I donate my daughter’s erekh” or “I pledge what I’m worth.”

The Torah presents something like an actuarial table, with an official value for males and females of four different age groups. But this doesn’t answer a basic question: is it a positive or a negative thing to pledge people’s value? While both approaches appear in the commentaries, in the limited space here I want to accentuate the negative. (I latch on to the affirmative here.)

DON’T VOW, JUST DO IT!

One objection to the erkhin of people is actually an objection to nedarim (vows) in general. Since the halakhah considers a pledge to be binding (whether to charity or the Temple), making a pledge is creating an unnecessary obligation for yourself.

The Netziv suggests that this objection is implicit in the unusual verb that introduces the subject. The word “yafli,” while usually translated “make a vow,” is related to the word “pele,” which means amazing or astonishing. According to the Netziv, the Torah means it is astonishing that a person would obligate himself in something that God doesn’t want! He notes that the midrash here (Vayikra Rabbah 37:1) cites a verse which declares it is better not to vow at all than to take a vow and not fulfill it (Ecclesiastes 5:4). According to Rabbi Yehudah in the midrash, the verse means that you should never obligate yourself with a vow; if you want to donate a sheep to the Temple, skip the vow and just bring it.

It reminds me of the 1980 hit by The Police, “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.” The song begins with a startling stanza:

Don’t think me unkind / Words are hard to find

They’re only checks I’ve left unsigned / From the banks of chaos in my mind

And when their eloquence escapes me / Their logic ties me up and rapes me

These jarring lyrics by Sting seem to accord with the position of Rabbi Yehudah. In the case of an erekh or any other neder, merely verbalizing the commitment is like tying yourself up. (I have a quibble with Sting’s allegory, though. Words you said are more like checks you did sign, which is why you have to pay up.)

2 4 6 8 – WHO SHOULD WE EVALUATE – NO ONE!

Abarbanel argues that the erkhin of people is a dangerous idea. If the Torah had followed the logical implication of donating a person’s value and had instructed the kohanim to appraise each person individually, that would have caused jealousy and resentment. Let’s say one person received a high evaluation because of her intelligence, and another person received a low evaluation because of his nearsightedness; she would become arrogant, his self-esteem would suffer, and their relationship would be poisoned.

Fortunately, the Torah refuses to go along. As the Gemara points out in a different context, “Who says that your blood is redder?” You can’t possibly know whose life is worth more. Instead, says Rav Hirsch, the Torah offers a kind of equality – within each category, such as men from 20 to 60, everyone is assigned the same value. This way, nobody has any illusions that one individual is worth more than another.

HUMAN LIFE IS PRICELESS

A third problem with the erkhin of people is that since human beings are all created in the image of God, evaluating them is intrinsically degrading. (Abarbanel adds: “as if they were a horse or donkey.”)

According to the Ra’avad, the money paid for this pledge is not categorized as damim (a standard monetary obligation) but rather as kenas (a fine). The subtle message is that God is not happy with it (Biur, p. 425). More explicitly, according to Rav Elchanan Samet, the reason that the Torah bases an erekh on actuarial criteria (rather than evaluating each individual) is to convey the message that a donation cannot represent an individual’s value, because the true value of a human life is infinite.

We have seen three objections to pledging people’s value: it creates an unnecessary obligation, it’s corrosive, and it’s degrading. On the flip side, we can conclude that people should do the right thing rather than make promises, do their best rather than compare themselves to others, and realize that their life is of infinite value. LeChaim!

 

To sponsor a weekly dvar Torah, please contact us.

Don’t Be Hurtful, Be Flexible

PLEASE NOTE: Because of the timing of the end of Pesach, Behar is the Parasha this week in Israel and next week in the Diaspora.

By Rav Uri C. Cohen

One of the mitzvot that’s easy to miss is the prohibition of hurting people with words. Within the span of a few verses (from Leviticus 25:14 to 25:17), the Torah seems to command the same thing twice: “lo tonu,” do not mistreat each other. The Gemara (Bava Metzia 58b) clarifies that one of the mitzvot refers to hurting with money (onaat mamon), and the other refers to hurting with words (onaat devarim).

DON’T MINIMIZE, APOLOGIZE

A number of years ago, I researched the topic of apologizing before Yom Kippur. As I went through the early and late sources about when there’s an obligation to apologize and when there’s an obligation to forgive, I expected to find sources saying something like this: “If what you did was so inoffensive that nobody reasonable would be bothered by it, and the person you offended is just thin-skinned, you don’t need to ask them to forgive you.” But I never found any such source. Apparently, Jewish law is so concerned about hurt feelings that even if the other person is being unreasonable, you had better apologize if you want your sins to be forgiven on Yom Kippur.

Too bad there isn’t any advice on how to avoid hurting people’s feelings. Or perhaps there is…

WOW, ARE YOU UGLY!

One of the classic Talmudic stories about hurtful language is the one I cited in my dvar Torah on Parashat Metzora. Once again, we’ll quote the first part of the story and skip the second part. But this time, we’ll add the line that precedes the story and appears again at the very end:

The Rabbis taught: “A person should always be soft like a reed and not hard like a cedar.” 

Once R. Elazar the son of R. Shimon was coming from his teacher’s house in Migdal Gedor, riding on a donkey. He was traveling along the bank of the river with a feeling of great joy and a sense of arrogance, because he had learned a great deal of Torah.

A very ugly person happened upon him. The ugly person said: “How are you, Rebbe?”

R. Elazar did not respond. [Rather,] he said: “Empty one – how ugly this fellow is! Are all the people of your town as ugly as you?” 

The ugly person responded: “I don’t know, but you should go to the craftsman who made me and tell him how ugly is the vessel that he made.”

R. Elazar knew that he had sinned. He got off the donkey, prostrated himself before the other fellow, and said: “I have pained you. Forgive me!”

. . .

R. Elazar immediately entered [the study hall] and taught: “A person should always be soft like a reed and not hard like a cedar” (Taanit 20a-b, as translated by Rav Yitzchak Blau).

THE JOY OF FLEX

Let’s focus on the moral of the story. (There’s not much ambiguity when the story begins and ends with the same message.) I can understand the value of being flexible (like a reed) and not rigid (like a cedar). But this is a story about insulting someone and hurting his feelings. If there’s a moral, we might have expected it to be something like “Don’t say your nasty thoughts out loud,” or “Ugly people have feelings too!” Why then is the moral, “Be flexible”?

Rabbi Dr. Yossi Ives answers this question in an epilogue to an article called “Informing Our Interventions with the Wisdom of the Sages: Biblical and Rabbinic Inspiration for Fostering Sensitivity Towards Individuals with Disabilities” (p. 69). He points out that according to the Gemara, the ugly guy “happened upon him.” Rabbi Elazar was so preoccupied with his Torah thoughts (or pride at his Torah thoughts) that he was taken by surprise. Shocked by the unpleasant sight of a disfigured face, he blurted something out which he soon regretted.

In this light, Rabbi Ives continues (p. 70), we can understand why the lesson learned by R. Elazar is the importance of flexibility. The problem is not being prejudiced towards people with disabilities per se, but rather having rigid expectations and reacting badly when they are not met. With the analogy to the cedar and the reed, Rabbi Elazar is telling us, “Don’t be fixed in your thinking; be open-minded about people.”

If we go with the flow, we can deal with people as they are (as opposed to how we would like them to be). With this flexibility, we are less likely to blurt things out which hurt people’s feelings. Hence the moral of the story: “Be flexible. Be the reed!”

 

To sponsor a weekly dvar Torah, please contact us.

Seeing the Disabled as People

PLEASE NOTE: Because of the timing of the end of Pesach, Emor is the Parasha this week in Israel and next week in the Diaspora.

By Rav Uri C. Cohen

While we now have more accessibility for the disabled than in previous decades, there is still a long way to go. If inclusion is so important, why does the Torah (Leviticus 21:16-23) exclude disabled kohanim from the avodah (Temple service)? While there are a number of answers, I’d like to focus on one: that the Torah’s exclusion reflects society’s exclusion of the disabled.

RAMBAM: PEOPLE ARE SUPERFICIAL

Rambam thinks that people’s superficiality is the reason for the exclusion of disabled kohanim, as well as for the emphasis on beautiful bigdei kehunah (clothes for the kohanim). He elaborates:

[I]n order to exalt the Temple, the rank of its servants was exalted, the priests and Levites were singled out, and the priests wore the most splendid, finest, and most beautiful garments: “Holy garments … for splendor and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2). And it was commanded that someone who has a blemish should not be employed in the divine service; not only one who is afflicted with an infirmity, but also those afflicted with deformities are disqualified from being priests…. For to the multitude, an individual is not rendered great by his true form, but by the perfection of his limbs and the beauty of his clothes; and what is aimed at is that the Temple and its servants should be regarded as great by all (The Guide of the Perplexed III:45, translated by Shlomo Pines, p. 579).

While Rambam does not explicitly condemn people’s superficiality, his disapproval is implicit in his attributing it to “the multitude.” This superficiality did not start in the time of Rambam. Much earlier, in the time of Tanakh, God told Shmuel that “A person sees the appearance, while God sees into the heart.” Nor did it end in the time of Rambam. If anything, physical appearance plays a larger role now than it did before television and the internet. Could 300-pound William Taft get elected President today? Definitely not.

To return to the avodah, we can compare it to the centuries-old Changing the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace. If the throngs of tourists ever noticed that one of the soldiers was limping or otherwise physically imperfect, would they shrug it off? No, their awe of the palace would become imperfect too. If such a soldier were transferred to serve the Queen in a less public position, would it show insensitivity to the disabled? No, it would show sensitivity to the image of royalty.

THE EXCEPTION FOR BIRKAT KOHANIM

The exclusion of disabled kohanim from offering korbanot is Biblical, but there is a rabbinic parallel – the exclusion of disabled kohanim from doing birkat kohanim (the priestly blessing, the only part of the avodah that we still do). But this parallel has an interesting exception which might shed light on the Biblical case as well.

The Mishnah rules that a kohen who has a glaring problem with his face or hands is not allowed to do birkat kohanim, because people will stare at him; however, the Gemara mentions an exception: if the kohen is a local resident and everyone is used to him, he is allowed. (The rule is based on the assumption that people can see the kohanim’s faces and hands. Where the kohanim cover their faces and hands during birkat kohanim, as we do, the Shulchan Arukh says that the rule does not apply.)

In a fascinating Hebrew article, Rabbi Shai Piron makes an interesting observation. It seems from the exception that excluding someone from birkat kohanim does not depend on something objective (the disability of the kohen) but on something subjective (the response of the community). Do you see a person, or someone disabled? If you see a person, then that person can bless you. But if you’re so distracted by the disability that you overlook the person, then he cannot bless you.

Once we change the way that we relate to the disabled, halakhah can reflect that change. But an honest look in the mirror shows that we still have a long way to go. We need to make sure the disabled are on our radar, see them as people, and respond to them with inclusion and accessibility. Then, to paraphrase birkat kohanim, God will enlighten us with His presence and bless us with peace.

 

To sponsor a weekly dvar Torah, please contact us.

Dan Le-Khaf Zekhut: Two Practical Tips

PLEASE NOTE: Because of the timing of the end of Pesach, Kedoshim is the Parasha this week in Israel and next week in the Diaspora

By Rav Uri C. Cohen

Last week, I mentioned that there is a Torah obligation to judge people favorably (dan le-khaf zekhut). Since it is mentioned in Pirkei Avot 1:6, I used to think that it is like much else in Pirkei Avot – a good middah (trait) to which we should aspire. (After all, Avot 2:4 recommends not judging someone until you are in their place – a beautiful ideal, but clearly not an obligation.)

I was wrong. A pasuk in Parashat Kedoshim states, “Judge your fellow fairly” (Leviticus 19:15), and Rambam counts it as one of the 613 mitzvot! It’s not just a good idea; it’s the law.

At the same time, the halakhah does not require us to judge favorably all the time. (I addressed this in Session Eight of my MythBusting course at WebYeshiva.) Sefer Chofetz Chaim clarifies that the obligation to judge someone positively applies only if their action can equally be judged positively or negatively; if the negative possibility seems much more likely, judging positively is no longer obligatory, though it is still preferable. What the Chofetz Chaim doesn’t address is how to judge favorably under those circumstances. If someone did something wrong, and especially if they did something wrong to me, how exactly can I convince myself that it isn’t so bad?

GOOD INTENTIONS

One tip, presented by Rashi in his commentary on Shabbat 127b, is that if I should tell myself, “He meant well.” The person definitely hurt me – there’s no point in pretending otherwise – but he may have had good intentions. Rabbi Dovid Siegel elaborates:

Let’s be honest. We constantly come up with loads of excuses for our own less-than-exemplary behavior. I was tired, I was ill. I was under stress. I was thoughtless or careless, saying something without thinking. Isn’t someone else also entitled to excuses?

Sooner or later, I mess up. Afterwards, I might rationalize that it was an honest mistake and I didn’t mean to hurt anyone. I should apply the same logic to other people’s mess-ups. This is the first tip to judge someone favorably while knowing that what they did was wrong.

DON’T GET MAD, FEEL BAD (FOR THEM)

Another way to judge favorably appears in an unlikely source: Murphy’s Law Book Two (p. 52). This little book is full of cynical observations about life. One of them, formulated by Robert J. (Bob) Hanlon, is a philosophical razor, namely a rule of thumb that allows some explanations to be shaved off:

Hanlon’s Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

This guideline, whose sentiment has been expressed in earlier variations as well, is a remarkable hybrid of cynicism and optimism. While expressing something negative about the other person, the net effect is the same as our first tip – to assume good intentions. True, this is still negative about the other person, so I recommend making sure not to formulate it out loud (or else it would be lashon ha-ra or another interpersonal violation). Nevertheless, the overall judgment is positive. If I imagine the other person to be malicious, I will probably feel anger or resentment. But if I imagine that they are just incompetent or negligent (nothing to do with me), I might feel pity for them instead. And pity is much better than anger, for both of us.

Similarly, Rabbi Yaakov Yehoshua Blekherovitz, in his Tiferet Yehoshua commentary on Avot 1:6 (p. 101), advises the use of pity in being dan le-khaf zekhut. Rabbi Noach Weinberg comes to the same conclusion, comparing the offender to someone who is visually impaired:

The next time your parent, in-law, co-worker, or neighbor does something to make you crazy, picture them wearing dark glasses and holding a white cane. They are blind. They can’t see that they are doing wrong. Help them, guide them, and show them gently the error of their ways. But don’t expect them to change. A blind person can’t see overnight. It takes time, and sometimes they will never see. Feel sorry for them! (As cited in Lori Palatnik & Bob Burg, Gossip: Ten Pathways to Eliminate It from Your Life and Transform Your Soul, pp. 72-73.)

To be honest, I did not discover these rabbinic sources until years after I had been using Hanlon’s Razor to help me judge people favorably. Rashi’s tip (assume good intentions) and Hanlon’s tip (assume incompetence) can both be extremely useful in fulfilling the mitzvah to be dan le-khaf zekhut.

 

To sponsor a weekly dvar Torah, please contact us.

Chukim & Mishpatim: A Perspective

PLEASE NOTE: Because of the timing of the end of Pesach, Acharei Mot is the Parashah this week in Israel and next week in the Diaspora

By Rav Uri C. Cohen

In 2007, I published a book review in Tradition. In it, I tried to put in perspective the debate in Orthodox communities about how to respond to Orthodox homosexuals. I’d like to present here an idea that didn’t make it into the book review.

A few years after my article, the debate went public: two manifestos, each garnering over 200 signatures, displayed competing responses to Orthodox homosexuals, one less tolerant and one more tolerant.

In any argument, it is tempting to assume the worst about the other side, tarring its adherents with nasty labels such as “homophobic” or “liberal.” But aside from the Torah obligation to judge people favorably, this is unfair. Today’s debate might very well depend on a classic machloket (argument), going back to Chazal, about whether the sexual prohibitions called arayot are considered chukim or mishpatim.

WHAT ARE THE ARAYOT – CHUKIM OR MISHPATIM?

The Chumash uses both words to describe mitzvot, and the standard interpretation is that mishpatim have understandable reasons while chukim don’t. (The Rambam argues that chukim can indeed be understood, it’s just that their reasons aren’t obvious.)

However, Chazal disagree as to which mitzvot are in which category. On the one hand, a short list of mishpatim in the Gemara includes the prohibitions of theft, murder, idolatry, and arayot (Yoma 76b). On the other hand, according to the Midrash, one shouldn’t say, “I don’t want to wear sha’atnez, eat pork, or have prohibited sex (arayot).” Rather, one should say, “I do want it, but what can I do? My Father in heaven has forbidden them to me” (Sifra, Kedoshim 9:12). This Midrash equates arayot with chukim.

Commentaries are ambivalent. Both Rambam and Ramban give rational explanations for arayot, and yet call them chukim. The Maggid of Slonim distinguishes among arayot, arguing that incest is a chok, while adultery is a mishpat.

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?

I used to consider the distinction between chukim and mishpatim to be purely theoretical. But the Rambam in Shemoneh Perakim says that in fact there is a difference on the human level. There’s nothing wrong with being tempted to violate a chok (as in the Sifra above). But only a bad person is tempted to violate a mishpat! Rabbi Benjamin Hecht elaborates that a chok is a technical obligation; we don’t understand it, but it’s God’s will. (Those who don’t keep kosher might be fine people. You can still be friends with them.) In contrast, a mishpat is a moral obligation. We should not violate it or even want to do so. (Those who steal or murder cannot be fine people. Stay away from them!)

APPLYING THIS TO HOMOSEXUALS

Rabbi Hecht concludes (and Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein concurs) that how we relate to Orthodox homosexuals may well depend on whether we view the prohibition of homosexual sex as a chok or a mishpat. Sometimes we see this explicitly, as when one rabbi posits that homosexual sex is prohibited on religious grounds only, not moral grounds, and another rabbi retorts that “Any simpleton reading this chapter (Leviticus 18) must come to the conclusion that a moral statement is being made by the Torah.” According to the opinion that it’s a mishpat, those who violate it are immoral, so tolerating them might be immoral as well. According to the opinion that it’s a chok, those who violate it are moral, so tolerating them might be a moral imperative.

CAN THE LINE MOVE?

Must there be an impasse? Not necessarily. Rabbi Hecht suggests that the very existence of the category of mishpatim is a vote of confidence in people, because the Torah’s morality is giving some weight to human morality. After all, while halakhah is absolute, ethical feelings can sway with the times. He asks, “Can the dividing line between [mishpatim] and [chukkim] also change?” He gives two examples of this change. First, to us, slavery is obviously immoral; yet it wasn’t obvious for most of world history. Second, circumcision is generally accepted in today’s society as reasonable, and perhaps even medically advisable. For most of history, though, brit milah was challenged and ridiculed by non-Jews, and Jews viewed it as a chok. So too, as society changes its attitudes to homosexuality, it may be that more Orthodox Jews will reevaluate the prohibition and consider it a chok rather than a mishpat.

While some will find this disturbing and others will find it comforting, I hope that all will find it thought-provoking.