Verse Lv15-25 discussing the ritual impurity of houses states
And the priest shall command that they empty the house, before the priest goes in to see the plague, that all that is in the house be not made unclean; and afterward the priest shall go in to see the house.
Notice how the meaning of the verse and the justifying reason are clear -
the house utensils are cleared from the house prior to the priestly inspection since
otherwise they would be declared ritually impure and unusable. The question remains why?
What non-verse values and goals does the underlying law reflect.
Rashi explains:
The effect of this law is that household utensils are spared from being
declared ritually impure which would render them unusable to the owner. We infer
that the Torah values not only life but even the property of Jews;
even petty monetary ownership of even sinful Jews.
Because this Rashi introduces values - God's regard for petty monetary ownership -
to explain a verse, we have classified it as using a non-verse method.
Advanced Rashi:
Rashi continues. ...But if certain utensils were declared impure then
an immersion ceremony could purify them making them usable. It follows that
the purpose of the law is to protect clay earthenware utensils that have no
purification process.
I could go further and add:The law also protects the owner against the
inconvenience of having to wait a day or two to use his utensils (after a
proper ritual immersion).
Such Rashis sometimes turn people off as being too technical. The approach
of this email list is that Rashi is not exhausting the meaning of the
midrash but rather clarifying/illustrating it!!! Rashi never denied that
the simple meaning of the text is that the Bible showed care for Jewish property
rights. However Rashi clarifies that the application of this idea applies
primarily to clay utensils whose purification would require destruction. By viewing
the Rashi as illustrative and clarifying vs. as identifying and exhaustive of total
meaning we obtain a richer Rashi experience.
Biblical chapter Lv13
discusses the ritual impurity of leprosy.
The atonement procedure for this ritual
impurity is discussed in Biblical Chapter
Lv14.
A full discussion of the rich and beautiful
symbolism of leprosy would require
applying the objective symbolic methods presented in
my article on symbolism. In this weekly
digest we simply sketch a few important ideas.
The atonement procedure for the lepor
is presented in Lv14 which begins
Then shall the priest command to take for him
who is to be cleansed two
birds alive and clean, and
cedar wood, and
scarlet, and
hyssop
Rashi explains the symbolism of each
of the underlined items.
- birds symbolize bird-like chatterers
- cedars symbolize lofty mighty people
- hyssops symbolize the lower classes
We could justify each of these symbolic
associations by citing verses where these symbolisms
are present. Instead we lightly sketch how Rashi
applies these symbolisms.
Rashi states: Leprosy is a punishment
for chattering like a bird which leads
to slander, the core of personality sins. The atonement
and remedy for slander is an awareness of the rich
spectrum of human personality from the lower hyssop-like
classes to the mighty cedar like upper classes.
Awareness of the full spectrum of human personality
prevents a person from slandering people since he understands
each individual's behavior based on where they are.
Advanced Rashi:Rashi does not literally
state the symbolic interpretation presented above. Rather
Rashi states
If a person feels high and mighty like a cedar
then let him lower himself till he feels like a hyssop.
However I believe that our interpretation of Rashi is consistent
with the above literal interpretation: We argued that Rashi is
interpreting the symbolism generally:
There is a full
spectrum of human personality. Rashi literally gives a specific
example of this very general idea: If you think you belong
on the upper class, the cedar part of the human spectrum,
then see those aspects of you that belong to the
lower class, the hyssop part of the human spectrum.
However Rashi would be fully comfortable to apply the cedar-hyssop
spectrum in other ways also. In other words we see the Rashi text
as an example of a more general symbolic interpretation.
In summary the full solution to slander and sinful
idle chatter is awareness of the rich spectrum of human
personality. There are many ways to apply this awareness
to avoid slander. For example if you see a person who
behaves like a rif-raf (like a hyssop) then do not
slander him - rather find his strong positive attributes, praise
him for them until he reclassifies himself among the cedars.
The following story of the Jewish expert on slander, the Chafetz
Chaim, illustrates
this point:
The Chafetz Chayim saw a certain person
cursing and abusing people. In other words he saw the hyssop
in the person. Everyone slandered the person and described him
as no-good. They committed the sin of bird chatter.
The Chafetz Chaim inquired: This person had been in the
Russian Army for 25 years since he was a child. The Chafetz
Chaim immediately saw the cedar like loftiness of the person.
The Chafetz Chaim approached the person and said: They tell me you were
in the Russian Army for 25 years and the only effect it had on you is that
you drink and curse a little more than most people. You must be some
type of saint that it affected you this little. Here the Chafetz
Chaim performed the atonement procedure for slander by taking/seeing
together in one person the cedar/hyssop the lofty and
low. The story has a happy ending - the person of repented. This repentance is in fact
symbolized by the ritual
purity conferred by the leprosy purification procedure.
Praise be Him who chose them and their learning.
|