This week's double parashah, Behar and Bechuotai, bring to a close the book of Vayikra, a book the all-consuming focus of which is, undoubtably, KEDUSHAH, holiness. The last chapter is concerned largely with the kind of vows people make in dedicating something to the service of Hashem in the Mikdash. There are many laws regulating this seemingly noble motivation and its accompanying action, but my attention was taken this time around by the following law: "If (the devoted thing) is an animal of the kind from which an offering is brought to Hashem, any one which is given to Hashem shall be kodesh. One shall not exchange it (lo yachalifenu) nor shall one substitute for it (yamir oto), good for bad or bad for good; now if one DOES substitute for it, it will be that it and its substitue will be kodesh." Vayikra 27:10-11 This halachah turns out to be very curious, because one is lashed for its intentional violation, although the rule is that one is not lashed for violating a prohibition the violation of which entails no action. Now the only way to interchange a holy animal with a profane one is through a declaration, not through physically moving them, yet we have a principle that speech is not considered the equivalent of action. So, this law, knows as Temurah is an exception. Why? Another curiosity. There would seem to be two separate prohibitions: exchange (hachlafah) and substitution (hamarah), for the Torah tells us to do neither this nor that. Nevertheless, they are accounted as only one prohibition. What IS the difference between hachlafah and temurah. Rav Shimshon Rafael Hirsch has an extended discussion of this, and he explains that hachlafah derives from the root meaning "to change places", and he shows how it is used to refer to "trading up", switching bad for good. Hamarah means exactly the opposite - switching something good for something bad, as in the verse, "Has any nation substituted for its god, even though those are no gods; yet My people has substituted worthless for their glorious [G-d]." (Yirmiyahu 2:11). The Rambam explains the prohibition as a penalty placed by the Torah upon one whose yetzer hara is creeping back onto the scene after dedicating an animal for his atonement, and he wants to save on the expense of his teshuva process, so he wants to swap a poorer quality animal for a fine one. The Torah penalizes him by making both animals kodesh, and it prohibits even swapping a poorer quality (yet acceptable) animal for a better one so as not to open the door for the opposite, since it is all based upon a somewhat subjective assessment of the animals value. Rav Hirsch then notes: the term hamarah meaning swapping bad for good, is used subsequently generically for either kind of swapping, to indicate that once we are speaking of something denoted as kodesh, ANY change of designation indicates a complete misconception of the nature of the holy, and is by definition bad. Rav Shmuel Skaist, in his album, "Rav Shmuel", has the following line in one of his songs: "Everybody wants to be somebody else (sing like a mocking bird); act in the theatre Everybody want to be somebody else". Hashem has declared each one of us as His holy offering, we live life and are ultimately consumed by it as a holy offering on the altar of existence. Each one of us has an absolutely indelible holiness. We imagine how much better it would be if we could swap our essence with the beckoning example of what stands outside our beings. WE don't just want what's in the greener pastures on the other side of our consciousness, we want to BE the other, believing there we find redemption. But if we go there, we don't transfer the holiness of our essence to a new and better circumstance, but having violated the trust Hashem has placed in us by granting us our holy souls, we now take on a double burden, responsible for the self we sought to jettison (which remains ours, and holy) AND the new project which we have not brought into our own realm. As another, different folk music tradition counsels: "Hold what you got". Attempting to trade up or down with our own essences is not an act of teshuvah or self-improvement, it's an uncalled for act of desperation on the part of someone who has forgotten how precious he/she is to Hashem, has forgotten that his/her birth is a declaration and imparting of holiness on Hashem's part, His gift to the world of an essence that he has called upon you to deliver. May this Shabbat be your FedEx to the universe!
The tefillin worn on the head (henceforth, “ shel rosh ”) differ in a number of respects from the tefillin worn on the arm (henceforth, “ shel yad ”). One of the differences is this: Though both must contain the four passages in the Torah which make mention of the mitzvah of tefillin, the shel yad has all four passages written on a single parchment, in the order they appear in the Torah, rolled up and placed in the single compartment of the shel yad . The shel rosh , however, is constructed such that it has four small compartments side by side. Though these compartments appear to be tightly bound to one another, in fact, they are almost actually completely separate from one another. They only join at a common base, like the fingers of one’s hand. Into each compartment is placed one of the four passages, written on four separate parchments. Here is a list of the passages, in the order they appear in the Torah: 1. Kadesh Li – Shemot 13:1-10 ...
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