I've Got to Be Me

By Rabbi Joshua (uniquely known as The Hoffer) Hoffman

In the beginning of parshas Vayikra, God commands Moshe, " Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, When a person (adam) from among you will bring an offering to God, from the animals, from the cattle and the sheep you shall bring your offering" (Vayikra 1 : 2). The Midrash Tanchuma points out that the word 'adam' is used, rather than 'ish,' which also means man, in order to serve as an allusion to Adam HaRishon, the first man in the world. The Torah is saying that when a person like Adam HaRishon, who was the first to sin, does sin, then he should bring a sacrifice as Adam did. One may ask why the Torah chose to make this allusion to the sin of Adam in our section, which refers to the 'korban olah,' which is a sacrifice that is completely burned on the altar, with the exception of its hide, which is given to the kohein. The rabbis tell us that an olah is brought for a sin of omission, meaning, the failure to perform a positive mitzvah, or the transgression of a prohibition that can be corrected by performing a positive mitzvah. Adam himself sinned by transgressing a negative mitzvah, the prohibition of eating form the tree of knowledge. Why, then, did the Torah allude to his sin in reference to the korban olah, rather than in regard to a korban which is brought for transgressing a prohibition? I believe that an understanding for the need to allude to Adam altogether can help answer this question, as well.

Rabbi Yosef Salant, in his commentary Be'er Yosef, explains that the purpose of alluding to Adam is to impress upon a person the magnitude of his own sin. When Adam sinned, he caused a change in the destiny of man. God told him that on the day he would eat from the tree, he would die. Actually he did not die on that day. The commentators, for example, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra, explain that God was saying that when Adam sinned, he would be subject to death. As the rabbis say, when Adam ate from the tree, he subjected all of his descendents to death, thus changing the very nature of mankind. Rabbi Salant further cites Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin in his work Nefesh HaChaim, where he states that a person's actions have repercussions on the universe in a mystical way that we are not aware of. The Midrash Tanchumah, then, is telling us that the Torah wants us to keep the memory of Adam alive, in order to realize the universal implications of our actions, and appreciate how serious a thing it is to sin.

Although Rabbi Salant does not say this, I believe that the allusion to Adam's sin and its universal implications is especially meaningful within the context of the mishkan. A number of commentators explain the mishkan as being symbolic of the universe as a whole. When the Midrash tells us that within the process of bringing a korban in the mishkan we are to remind ourselves of Adam, I believe that it is telling a person to view the world as being created for him alone. This idea is articulated in the mishnah in Sanhedrin, which says that the reason for man being created as Adam, a single individual, is to point out the uniqueness of each person. Therefore, the mishnah concludes, a person is obligated to say that the world was created for him. As we have explained in the past, the idea behind this is that each person is unique, and is created at a certain time in history to carry out a mission that only he can do. In this sense the world really was created for him, in the sense of his unique task in life.

The Rambam, in his commentary to Avos, writes that if a person performs one mitzvoh in a complete way, he merits a portion in the world to come. This does not mean that the person does not perform any other mitzvoh. Rather, it means that he puts a special effort into performing a specific mitzvoh, which he identifies with. The idea here is that the person has a unique draw to that particular mitzvoh, and sees within it an expression of what his task in life is. By putting in an extra effort to perform this mitzvoh in a complete way, he is expressing his unique self. Perhaps for this reason the midrash alludes to Adam specifically in regard to the korban olah. As we have explained, based on Rabbi Salant's comment, the allusion to Adam is a means of reminding each person of the universal repercussions of our action, of the idea that the world was created for him, that he has a unique task to fulfill in this world. Although Adam's sin consisted in the transgression of a prohibition, the message is brought out more starkly in connection with the omission of a positive act, as an allusion to the unique task which each person was created to fulfill. When a person brings a korban olah to rectify this omission, he needs to remind himself of Adam, and thereby of the unique task he was created to perform in the world, which is symbolized by the mishkan, within which he brings that korban.