Netvort Emor 5775
Judging Greatness
By Rabbi Joshua (humanely known as The Hoffer) Hoffman
The second half of parshas Emor
consists largely of the laws of the festivals. In the middle of those laws,
however, there is one verse that seems to be incongruous. After recording the
laws of Shavuos, and before the laws of Rosh HaShanah, the Torah tells us,
“When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not remove completely the
corner of your field as you reap, and you shall not gather the gleanings of
your harvest; for the poor and the proselyte you shall leave them; I am the
Lord, your God” (Vayikra 23:22). Why is this verse placed here? Rashi cites a
midrash, which says that this placement of laws regarding the poor in the
middle of the laws of the festivals, which include the bringing of the
appropriate sacrifices, teaches us that whoever fulfills these laws is
considered as if he built the Beis HaMikdash and brought the offering inside
it.
Rav Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, in his Meshech
Chochmah, offers another explanation. He says that the placement of the laws of
the poor after the laws of Shavuos teaches us that the Torah, which was given
on Shavuos, contains not only chukim, laws which we would not have thought of
on our own without a divine mandate, but also mishpatim, logical and ethical
laws that we may have thought of without a belief in God, and a command from
Him. despite all its capabilities, the human intellect can go awry, and man can
at times act a wild beast without ethics. Rav Dovid Feinstein made a similar
observation in saying that this is the reason for reading the book of Rus,
which deals with the kind way in which Boaz treated the poverty-stricken women,
Rus and Noami, on Shavuos, when we celebrate the giving of the Torah, to
demonstrate that proper treatment of the poor is included in the Torah. Rav
Aharon Dovid Goldberg, in his Shiras Dovid, adds that the explanations of Rashi
and Rav Meir Simcha are really complementary. When one fulfills a mitzvah
between man and his fellow man, Rashi is telling us, he, in effect, is also
fulfilling a mitzvah between man and God, because, as Rav Meir Simcha
emphasizes, both are commanded by God and integrally connected to each other.
Rabbi Goldberg notes that this idea is also articulated by Rav Ovadia
MiBartenurah in his commentary to Pirkei Avos, in which he says that the
tractate begins with the statement, “Moshe received the Torah at Sinai,” to
teach us that the system of ethics recorded in Avos was given to Moshe at Mt. Sinai,
together with the rest of the Torah. Perhaps, we may, add, this is why we read
these chapters in the weeks leading up to Shavuos, as a preparation for
celebrating the receiving of the Torah, reminding us that the Torah includes
ethical laws as well as statutes.
These thoughts of Rabbi Goldberg came
to mind recently when I saw a quotation from Mahatama Gandhi, who said, “The
greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its
animals are treated.” While the Torah does forbid cruelty to animals, the fact
remains that we are allowed to slaughter them, in order to eat and thereby
preserve human life, and mandated to bring them as sacrifices to God. A society
can be judged, rather, by its treatment of even the lowest level of society, as
Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch teaches, and this is why the civil laws in
Mishpatim, as a follow up to the Decalogue, begin with the laws governing
slaves. Perhaps, too, this is why the next portion of the Torah, after Emor,
also deals with our treatment of slaves. The divine mandate, given at Sinai
incorporates ethics, as well, as taught by the mention of the laws of the poor
after the laws of Shavuos. An ethical system based on human intellect alone can
lead to a society in which animals are treated better than humans.