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.