The Other Side of the Coin

By Rabbi Joshua (flippantly known as the Hoffer) Hoffman

In this week's parsha, we read of the inaugural service in the mishkan. After Moshe served as the kohein gadol for seven days, on the eighth day Aharon begins his service in that capacity. As a part of his inaugural service, he is told to bring a calf as a sacrifice on his own behalf, as a sin offering. The rabbis tell us that this calf was to atone for the sin of the golden calf, which was fashioned by Aharon in response to the demand of part of the nation. The Keli Yakar points out that Aharon sinned, during that episode, only in his actions, but not in his thoughts. Therefore he brought the calf as a sin offering. He brought another calf to atone for the nation's worship of the golden calf. However, it served as an olah, a burnt offering, because the people sinned in their thoughts, worshipping idolatry, and the olah atones for sinful thoughts, among other things.

The Maharal of Prague, in his super-commentary to Rashi, Gur Aryeh, asks how a calf could be used as an atonement for the sins of making and worshipping the golden calf. After all, there is a principle, often invoked in rabbinic literature, of 'ein kateigor na'aseh saneigor' - a prosecuting attorney cannot become a defending attorney. He answers that this principle only applies when the object that was used for one sin is then used to atone for a different sin. However, if it is used to atone for the same sin that it served as an object for in the past, there is nothing wrong with it. I believe that there is a very important principle behind this distinction, that can be gleaned from the comments of Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch on our parsha.

Although Rabbiner Hirsch does not raise the question of 'ein kateigor na'aseh saneigor,' he does note the significance of the fact that the very same kind of animal that was used to sin is now being used to achieve atonement. The message behind this, he writes, is that no matter what drives toward sin that a person has within him, they can all be transformed and used in the service of God. The drive to worship the calf was very strong among the people within whose society the Jewish nation had developed. However, they had the capacity to take that drive and channel it toward God.

Rabbi Avraham Yitzchok HaKohein Kook, in a way somewhat reminiscent of Rabbi Hirsch's remarks, explains Avraham's trial of the akeidah as a means of utilizing the kind of emotional enthusiasm found among idolators in the service of God. God did not, ultimately, want Avraham to sacrifice his son. Rather, He wanted him to demonstrate that the enthusiasm which idolators had in their perverted services could in fact be used to worship the true God. Thus Avraham used the enthusiasm he built up in going to the site of the akeidah to bring the ram as an offering. In a similar way, then, Aharon was told to use a calf to serve as an atonement for the worship of the golden calf to demonstrate that the enthusiasm with which those who worshipped the calf invested in their idolatrous activity could be refined and channeled in a positive way.The wider message to us is that we have within us the ability to channel whatever drives we have, and to utilize any situation that confronts us, in the service of God. Perhaps it was precisely to teach us this mesage that these sacrifices were brought as part of the inaugural service of the mishkan, where the highest level of serving God can be reached.