Torat Cohanim, Then and Now

1:35 – Rabbi Adam Mintz:

Not only did I hear about it, but Sharon and I were on this website and there were over 50,000 people just on this one YouTube channel who were watching it all together saying Shema. So, you can imagine how many people were really there. Yeah, I think the president of Israel led everybody, which was really very powerful, I thought.

1:56 – GS:

Amazing, just amazing. It’s always wonderful when the Jewish people are together. You can’t disagree with that. So here we go. We are starting a new book tonight. In English, it is called Leviticus. In Hebrew, in this particular case, we follow the first word that’s used, Vayikra, which means, and God called to Moses. And as I said, we’re going to see fairly soon that in the Rabbinic literature, It is called Torah Kohanim, which is a lot more similar to Leviticus. Leviticus is based on the word Levi for priest, and so here we are.

2:36 – GS:

I have a long-time listener of Madlik, a friend named Henry, and he goes, “Vayikra oy vey”. It’s so just full of temple practices and sacrifices, things that seem very strange to us Moderns. But we are going to focus on how this book and these strange laws have evolved in our Jewish tradition. So, let’s continue a little bit on the name. The reason it’s called Torah of the Kohanim, the Torah of the Kohanim, is later in Leviticus, in Chapter 6, 18, it says, Speak to Aaron and to his son, saying, This is the Torah of the sin offering, Zot Torah ha-chatat.

3:27 – GS:

And in the Mishnah in Megillah, for instance, we’re very timely here. It says, on the first day of Passover, the congregation reads from the portion of the festival of Leviticus. But in Hebrew it says, תּוֹרַת כֹּהֲנִים So the rabbis really did call it the Torah of the Kahanim. Which already puts us into a little bit of a state of mind that more than any other book of the Torah, it was to be studied. And maybe we’ll see what that means. In the Talmud in Menachot 110a, Rabbi Yitzchak said, what is the meaning of that which is written?

4:12 – GS:

This is the Torah of the sin offering. Zot Torat H’chatat. And this is the law of the guilt offering. These verses teach that anyone who engages in studying the law of a sin offering is ascribed credit as though he sacrificed a sin offering. And anyone who engages in studying the law of a guilt offering is ascribed credit as though he sacrificed a guilt offering. So, Rabbi, right from the get-go, even though we’re just talking about a name, the rabbis seem to address the need to explain how this book is treated differently, and from the get-go, it seems to be something that is studied more than, may I venture to say, maybe than done. Because clearly in the rabbinic period there wasn’t much to do with these laws. So the focus started to be on study. Do I have a leg to stand on here?

5:13 – AM:

You sure do, and I’m going to tell you an amazing practice that they had basically in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust, and that is that the little children, when they used to study chumash, they used to study from the book of Vayikra. Because this is the book of holiness, and that made them holy. Now, it seems ridiculous because it’s the least understood book, but it’s this idea of studying about holiness makes you holy. We don’t have sacrifices to make us holy, but we study these rules, and it’s as if we are holy.

5:52 – AM:

I’ll tell you something else. There’s a part of davening in the morning that is called the karbonot, we say the order of the sacrifices that were given each morning. Most modern Orthodox synagogues skip that part of the davening. It’s not relevant. You have to go to kind of an old-fashioned Hasidic shul to say it. But if you go and you look in the Siddur, the paragraph that we say in the Siddur is, we ask God, consider our saying or studying of these verses to be as if we gave these sacrifices.

6:32 – AM:

Exactly what you said, right? The study is as if we did it, which is absolutely remarkable.

6:49 – GS:

So we have a lot of that material in the source sheet. We’re going to come back to it. I think the source for that practice of Eastern Europe. Is I found it in Yalkut Shemoni. And what’s interesting about this practice of children starting from Vayikra is that it is part of a contextual discussion. So I’m going to go up a few lines and start from Rav Acha in the name of Rabbi Achar Bar Papa said, when the temple existed, we would sacrifice all the sacrifices of the Torah. Now, what is the use of them? The Holy One, blessed be He, said, since you are studying them, I will raise you up as if you were sacrificing them. So exactly as you said, study replaced action.

7:29 – GS:

Then it continues, and there is a little gap in between. Rabbi Asi says, for what reason do we begin instructing children in Torat Kahanim? They should begin with Bereshit. Begin at the beginning of the book. But the Holy One, Blessed One, said, Since children are pure and sacrificial offerings are pure, so should the pure ones engage in study about the pure matters.

7:58 – AM:

So I want to say, first of all, you get a lot of credit for finding that. I never knew that, Yalkut Shimoni. that’s fantastic.

8:04 – GS:

But it’s fascinating to see it within context, because I am going to go out on a little bit of a limb here and say that while pure, definitely the simpl meaning is exactly as you say. Children are holy. The laws of Leviticus, of the temple, all have to do with the holiness code, with creating holiness through sacrifices. I want to suggest a nuance on that, and that is that children have no experience. Children are a blank slate. Nothing that they are studying is impacted by experiences that they have, so forth and so on.

8:52 – GS:

So I think, again, within the context, while clearly pure means tahor and it means holy, It also means, again, as we’re kind of talking about studying for study’s sake, studying in, I wouldn’t say an academic sense, but almost in an abstract (theoretical) , unexperiential sense. This is segregated from real life. It’s not as though these laws are going to come up in the shukh tomorrow, as are the laws of whether it’s mekkah or memchah (buying and selling) of Baba Batra, or it’s the laws of Shabbat. But in any case, the emphasis seriously is on (theoretical) study.

9:37 – GS:

As you said a second ago, and this is all in the source sheet, which I suggest that you all go to in the Safaria source sheet, I have from the Siddur, we make the blessing over learning Torah. And then there’s a bunch of Torah that we learn, and a bunch of it is Karbanot. It’s the second section of Karbanot. And in it, Rabbi, exactly as you said, for the chatat, the guilt offering, it says to teach us that when one studies the law of the sin offering, it is considered as though he had actually brought it on the altar.

10:17 – GS:

Now I had always thought that prayer took the place of action, but if you focus, it’s the study, the Torah of karbonot in this regard that takes the place of action, which I think is fascinating. It goes on with a Yehi Ratzon, which asks God to pardon us for all of our transgressions, and may You (God) build the holy temple quickly. And this is going to come into our conversation a little bit later. It’s not, and I am not suggesting, that the people who said study, study, study when it came to these laws were against having a temple or didn’t wish to have a temple, but they did not believe it was their job to make a temple.

11:06 – GS:

It was their job to either study or, as we’ll see in the next section, where we get to the Tamid, it says, may it be thy will, God, our Lord, and the Lord of our forefathers, that the speech of our lips will be valued and accepted and welcomed before you, as though we have sacrificed the Tamid sacrifice in its time and stood on our post. So again, the nuance here is that, number one, we do pray that God will create this temple, but either through prayer or through study, this has, in fact, replaced the actual ability to do the temple.

11:57 – GS:

And I will interject even here Whereas if it was impossible for me to do a certain commandment, you could say it’s my job to create the context where I could do the commandment. You can see already a certain thread in Jewish thought. For, I would say, passiveness (inaction). I would say the idea is that it is not our job to build the temple. That is up to God. God has told us, according to the Midrash, that as long as there is no temple, this is what you should do. You should study, and you should mouth the words.

12:38 – GS:

But that is the commandment from God at this time. What do you make of all this so far?

12:43 – AM:

I mean, I think this is fascinating. I think there needs to be one thing that we add. You know, the fact that we have three prayers every day, in the morning, the afternoon, and at night, that corresponds to the fact that there were three sacrifices that were given. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, then the evening, the afternoon sacrifice stayed on the altar all night long. So this idea that accept our words as if we gave the sacrifice, it’s really what all prayer is about.

13:22 – AM:

Actually, we’re like hyper-focused on the sacrificial service. Now, we don’t give sacrifices, but in their place, everything we do, all of the prayer services that we have, have these sacrifices in mind.

13:38 – GS:

And the truth is, on Shabbat, that extra service is musaf, which is the name of a sacrifice. Mincha, the afternoon service, is literally called the same name as the mincha sacrifice. I don’t think so much with shachrit and ma’ariv. But you’re absolutely correct. They both correspond, and in the case of Musaf and Mincha, they actually take their name from sacrifice. So there’s no question that even the word avodah, avodah initially always meant the service of the Temple. But when we talk about al shloshah devarim, that on three things the world stands on.

14:20 – GS:

And the avodah there is not—I mean, it could be taken to mean the avodah in the Temple, but it was enlarged to mean the good deeds, the mitzvot and the avodat HaShem. The service of God. So absolutely, Rabbinic Judaism took the temple and made it into words of study and words of prayer. What’s fascinating is if you go back to, for instance, Isaiah—correct me if I’m wrong—Isaiah prayed in the temple. He was co-existent with the Temple. He wasn’t a rabbinic Jew who was preaching after the Temple was destroyed.

15:12 – GS:

And he writes words that are revolutionary. I believe we read them on the High Holidays. What need have I for all your sacrifices? לָמָּה־לִּ֤י רֹב־זִבְחֵיכֶם֙ , says the Lord. I am sated with birthed offerings of ram, and suet of fatlings, and blood of bulls. I have no delight in lambs and he goats that you come to have here before me. Who ask that of you? Trample my courts no more, bring oblation is futile. Incense is offensive to me. New moon and Sabbath proclaiming solemnities, assemblies with iniquity, I cannot abide.

15:53 – GS:

And it goes on and on. They have become a burden to me. He’s talking about hypocrisy. He’s not limited to the service of the temple because he mentions the hypocritical keeping of the Sabbaths and the holidays in the morning and going to the shuk in the afternoon, but he says, cease to do evil, learn to do good, devote yourself to justice, aid the wronged, uphold the rights of the orphan, defend the cause of the widow. Hosea also, I believe, at the time of the Temple, says it a lot more concisely.

16:29 – GS:

Ki chesed חֶ֥סֶד חָפַ֖צְתִּי וְלֹא־זָ֑בַח . I desire chesed, goodness, not sacrifice. So the truth is that this tradition of, I would say, evolving, if one believes that would be the correct word, or certainly transitioning and moving from the actual sacrifices to deeds of good, maybe the lessons behind the sacrifice, those purities that we talked about in the children, this has a deep tradition within both prophetic Judaism and Rabbinic Judaism.

17:08 – AM:

It sure does. And I would say, you made an interesting point, that actually what the Prophet is worried about is hypocrisy. But he expresses that through the sacrifices. And that just shows how important the sacrifices are. That they’re the model for the Prophet. When he wants to make a bigger point, what he uses is the sacrifices. It’s like if we want to talk about something, we make a reference to sports. Because everybody knows sports, so you can make your reference in terms of sports.

17:41 – AM:

So they made their reference in terms of the sacrifices, because that, for them, was what everybody knew.

17:48 – GS:

Absolutely. And this is a thread, but I am arguing it is a very strong thread within prophetic and within rabbinic Judaism. Rabbinic Judaism, you could clearly make the point that this was because they had no temple, they had no other option, but sometimes they even punch that envelope. In Devarim Rabbah 5, it says, this is what scripture says. To do what is right and just is more desired by the Lord than sacrifice. He’s quoting Mishle; Proverbs. The Midrash goes on, Scripture does not say as much as sacrifice, but more than sacrifice.

18:30 – GS:

How is that? Whereas sacrifices could only function inside the temple, to do what is right and just is mandated inside and outside the temple. Another opinion. Whereas sacrifices could only atone for unintentional, accidental sins, acts of righteousness and justice atone even for intentional sins. Another opinion, whereas sacrifices are significant only in this world, righteousness and justice will remain a cornerstone in the coming world. [gs World to come… or in times to come… in the future?] And then it goes on. The end blew me away.

19:08 – GS:

If a person wanted to curse David, what would he do? He would say to David, it would be good if you built the house. You should know what David’s answer was. Psalms 122, was glad when they said to me, let’s go to the house of Hashem. He doesn’t want to build the house. So you clearly have this thread, this strong pathway within both Rabbinic and prophetic Judaism that what we have constructed in Judaism as we know it today is equal to, is parallel to, is an offset, and in the last midrash, even more powerful and better than what we had in the past.

20:04 – GS:

Very powerful tradition.

20:06 – AM

That’s very powerful.

20:07 – AM:

You see, that’s actually a great kind of evolution of this idea. And that is, one is, it’s as if we gave the sacrifices. But since we can’t give sacrifices anymore, we need to say to ourselves that what we’re doing is as good as and then better than actually giving the sacrifices. That’s a way to justify the fact that we can’t actually do it anymore.

20:35 – GS:

There are many different levels to it, but it is not, as we talked about last week, it’s not a minority opinion. There’s a strong, strong tradition for this that starts, as I said from the beginning, with children studying Torah at gan. There’s a piece of Talmud I won’t even quote where Rabbi Yehuda Hanasi, the traditional originator of the Mishnah (the source of Rabbinic Torah) , his favorite area of study was the Torah Kohanim [because it was theoretical ?]. But now let’s move fast-forward to modernity. And we are going to start in 1921 when a certain magazine noticed that Rabbi Kook had opened up a new yeshiva.

21:23 – GS:

And the yeshiva was called Yeshivat Torah Kohanim. And the first magazine to pick it up was called The Christian. It was not a Jewish magazine, and it was saying how the significance of this was so important that he had created this yeshiva and seminary to be established in the Holy Land for instructing priestly and Levite-descending Jews in temple rites. And it seems that all of the secular Zionists got hot under the collar and they huffed and puffed, and Rav Kook actually responded.

22:05 – GS:

And this we have in a text. I couldn’t find it in Hebrew, but it comes from Adapted from Zichron Re’iyah, pp. 201-203; Igrot HaRe’iyah vol. IV, 1127, and I have it in English translated in the source. And Rav Kook says the following, that it is true that Yeshiva Torat Kohanim was established in the Old City with the unique goal that scholars who are Kohanim will study the Talmudic order of Kedoshim, which is the authoritative source. He says, however, the reason we need to do that is we must affirm at all times our eternal aspiration that the temple be rebuilt speedily in our days.

22:52 – GS:

So he is not straying from tradition in saying what Jews aspire to, what they hope to. He goes on to say, even though this yeshiva is entirely and purely an institution for theoretical Torah study, I think I mentioned that before, that’s what we’re talking about, the yeshiva’s establishment nonetheless contains a subtle message to the world. The nations should not think that we have an even a fleeting moment of despair, God forbid, conceded to relinquish our rights to the site of the Temple, the cornerstone of all holy places.

23:29 – GS:

So, again, I think we would be dishonest if we say that Jews throughout the ages, not only including Rav Kook, but especially Rav Kook, prayed and wanted for the temple to be established. He says, nonetheless, divine providence brought about the means so that which was improbable became probable. We are certain that this process will continue. So I wish I had the Hebrew, but from my “diuk” (technical reading of the text and word choice) , from my analysis of the English, what he was saying was that he lived in a time where God had brought us to the state of Israel, something that we had never imagined possible.

24:10 – GS:

And he was preparing in terms of study for when God will bring us the next stage in life and do whatever God wants with these laws, these traditions, and these customs. Again, he is very careful about not saying that we need to go ahead and (actively) build the temple or anything that he was doing was proactive in that way. I think he’s picking his words very carefully. Would you agree?

24:41 – AM

I would agree very, very carefully.

24:43 – GS:

So I talked about the mikdashnikim, the people who are really focused day in and day and night on the Mikdash, and there have been a number of studies about them. And I’m going to quote from two. One was written in 2007 by Moti Inbari, and he talks about there are four schools of thought with regarding to the rebuilding of the temple. And even being on temple grounds, the first rejects such a possibility, which is left to messianic position as shared by the majority of the plenum of the chief rabbinate.

25:23 – GS:

So the chief rabbinate, who Rabbi Kook was a part of, are very strong. We can’t do anything to bring about the rebuilding of the temple, and we certainly cannot enter the temple mount. The second seeks to prepare actively for redemption, but within legitimate religious frameworks, through theoretic studies of the laws relating to the sacrifice. This does not include actual entry into the Temple Mount site and remains, again, within the accepted framework of Torah study. The approach of Avram Yitzchak haCohen-Kook reflects this approach.

25:59 – GS:

The third school argues that the construction of the temple is indeed a public commandment, but before this takes place, spiritual elevation is needed. So, if you look at certain laws, the mitzvot, some are tluyot be’aretz, some require we be in the land, and some actually provide that the Jewish people enter a certain level of religiosity. So that you can work to bring the level of religiosity up, that you can do, but you can’t actually go and make the Temple itself. This approach is the most common among Merkaza Rav Yeshiva school.

26:38 – GS:

The fourth and most activist school permits Jews to enter the temple mount with certain restrictions. To this end, much effort is devoted to studying the borders of the temple, an area to avoid actually walking on a place that you’re not allowed to. This fourth school is becoming more dominant among religious Zionist leadership, both political and rabbinic. That was written in 2007. There is an amazing book that if you are interested in this subject and also interested in where the Dati Leumi, the national religious community is, it’s called Frayed, and it’s by Yair Edinger.

27:23 – GS:

It was originally written only in Hebrew. It came out last year, and it is in English, and he talks about issues that are dividing the national religious community, and some of them have to do with women, some of them have to do with the gay rights LBGTQ community. There’s a whole chapter on the Temple Mount. It’s fascinating, it’s all in the notes, but what is really fascinating to me is how statistically the numbers are growing. This is no longer a fringe movement. This is something that is growing, and it’s becoming very… it’s almost nationalistic in terms of those who aren’t on the bandwagon are almost seen as though they are a defeatist.

28:22 – GS:

And all the statistics are there, but what’s fascinating is some of the people who are criticizing it. I’m going to quote one Dr. Tomer Persico, he’s from the Hartman Institute in Jersalem, and he says that the Jewish Temple Mount movements not only made a radical departure from Rabbi Kook’s vision of redemption as a piecemeal process, they are also demanding the effective secularization of a holy place. The increasing visits by religious Zionists to the temple mounts, he writes, amount to an active revolt against Rabbinic tradition.

29:05 – GS:

Ettinger says we are watching under our very eyes. We’re so used to watching whether it’s Reform or Conservative, others change the law in front of our eyes. Here we have in possibly 10 or 15 years, some people trace it to the Oslo Accords, Others trace it to leaving Gush Katif in Gaza, but somehow there was a displacement and a focus is we are not giving up anymore. We are taking back the Temple. It is a fascinating movement that is happening as we speak. In the notes, I have a screenshot from an interview sent to me by my secular brother-in-law of Moshe Feiglin, who is one of the leaders of this movement.

30:01 – GS:

And above his head in the picture, you can see a picture of the rebuilt Temple. He is actually copying every Palestinian leader that you’ve ever seen who has a picture of the Dome of the Rock behind them. We are going face-to-face, head-to-head with this. What makes it even more confusing is that Feiglin, if you look at his Wikipedia listing, he is for open marriage in Israel. He is for women’s rights. You can’t make a clean argument here. The argument that’s in Frayed is that what combines all of this stuff is (a rejection of) traditional rabbinic leadership.

30:48 – GS:

A rabbi is no longer being respected. And that these movements are just taking the halacha into their own hands. We are in a, it’s a balagan, and it’s a serious one. I’d love to know your thoughts on what’s going on.

31:08 – AM:

I mean Balagan in the sense that there’s no real leadership. That’s the point that you’re making, right? There’s no real leadership. We need leadership. The question is, how do you define what good leadership would be?

31:26 – GS:

It’s funny. It also mirrors the early secular Zionists rejected the rabbis. The rabbis said, wait for the Messiah, pray and study, and they rejected it. And in an ironic way, these new religious Zionists are doing the same thing. They’re again rejecting the rabbis, and they are saying that not only are we not going to listen to them about reclaiming the land, as the early Zionists did, we’re not going to listen to them either when it comes to laws that go against what we want. And it is, and it’s tearing, I believe it’s tearing the religious Zionist movement apart.

32:10 – GS:

We assume they’re one cohesive group. Read this book, Frayed, they are actually not. Maybe that’s good news, but these are definitely interesting times that we’re living in, and certainly there is a rupture with the tradition that we started tracing from the Cheder. I want to end with a little snippet of audio from a podcast, (The Promised Podcast) which is from an interview that was conducted today. It’s from a guy named Bradley Burston. He used to be a writer for the Haaretz. He’s clearly a very secular Jew.

32:49 – GS:

He’s just come out with a book called The End of Israel: Dispatches from a Path to Catastrophe . So, he’s not that optimistic, but what he is going to be talking about when I push the button is that he is seeing this happen, and he’s taking a glimmer of motivation from it that really resonated with me. So I’m going to play it, and then we’re going to end by discussing where this is forcing him to be almost a bigger Zionist and lover of Judaism than we were before.

33:23 – AM

So let’s give a listen. Okay.

33:27 – Bradley Burston

The obsession with bringing back the temple, the obsession with the Temple Mount itself, you know, somebody snaps their fingers and says, oh, well, it’s true that a little while ago, the rabbis determined that we shouldn’t be on the Temple Mount because we would mistakenly step on the Kedosh HaKadoshim, the Holy of Holies, because we don’t know where it is really. Somebody snaps their fingers and says, no, no, now we can all go up in Temple Mount, and we should, and we should make pictures of how we’re gonna build a third Temple, and we should study this sacrificial rituals.

33:54 – Speaker 2

And I’m thinking, well, I guess I don’t understand idolatry very well, because I’m worried that that’s what’s happening here, that there’s all kinds of new idols that are being celebrated. We saw it during the war. The war hadn’t been going on very long. And there’s a convention in Jerusalem that was the Dancing on the Blood Convention, where they decided that we have to resettle Gaza permanently. We have to go back, because that’s what’s important now. So, I don’t want to leave this place to those people.

34:21 – Speaker 2

I don’t want to feel like I’ve done everything I could to keep some kind of sane and humanistic element to Judaism. Because it’s all there in the teaching, you just decide which things you decide to follow.

34:32 – AM

Wow.

34:33 – GS:

And I couldn’t have said it better, and I think that’s the source of Madlik. I don’t want to leave Judaism to others to decide what it is. I want to have a voice.

34:43 – AM

That’s amazing.

34:44 – AM:

That’s remarkable, that little snippet. Thank you.

34:48 – GS:

So I really do think that this means that it’s just that much more important. For those of us who have his opinion, I love the way he ends where he says, he’s not saying they don’t have a leg to stand on, but what he’s saying is we all have to fight for our Torah. And in this particular case, I’ll be damned, I’m going to fight for my Torat Cohanim.

AM: I’m fighting too.

GS:  I’m going to fight for my Israel and I’m going to fight for my Judaism.

35:15 – GS

So here’s to the fight.

35:16 – AM:

Thank you so much. Here’s to the fight. Happy Purim, everybody. This is amazing. See everybody next Thursday. Can’t wait.

35:23 – Multiple Speakers

Have a great Purim, everybody.

35:25 – GS:

I know it’s hard to say happy Purim in these days. But because I’m involved with so much charity work in Israel, all day I’ve been seeing pictures of children who are displaced from the South and the North having full bloated Purim parties, because for them they have to remember, they have to forget, they have to enjoy. I’ve seen Purim parties for soldiers. So, it might be hard for us to celebrate Purim, but trust me, there are people out there who are being encouraged to forget, to take a little vacation in their mind and remember the beauty of life, the happiness of life, the joy of life, (the silliness of life), the simcha of life.

36:13 – GS:

And I’m going to have pictures of those people celebrating Purim in my mind, this Purim, when I try to celebrate. So Purim Sameach to you all.