Sin as a Cover, Spontaneous Blessing, and More
by R. Gidon Rothstein
The Fat That Covers
The Torah and halachah refer to two kinds of fat in an animal, cheilev and shuman. Cheilev fats are offered on the altar as part of animal sacrifices, and therefore prohibited to Jews to eat (at a karet level, the person would be cut off from the Jewish people should s/he eat such fats with knowledge and malice aforethought). Shuman is completely permissible, like all kosher meat that comes off an animal.
Ramban to 9;19 gives a distinction between the two that’s a bit more defined than “the ones that go onto the altar” and “all the rest.” The verse refers to some cheilev as ha-mechaseh, that which covers; Rashi explains which fat that means, but Ramban sees it as generally true of cheilev— some cheildv covers the intestines, some the kidneys, some the loins, but it all covers.
That’s as far as he goes, but to me it suggests a distinction between fat that is part of the animal, interwoven into its body, and fat on the animal, a separate material that covers the “real” animal. Almost as if sin covers our real, pure selves, so Hashem had us burn that on the altar, a symbol of our hope to get back to our best selves. [To be clear: Ramban says none of that, only defines cheilev as covering parts of the animal. I think that implies what I wrote, but that’s my claim, not necessarily his].
Aharon Blesses the People
Verse 22 tells us that Aharaon lifted his hands towards the people and blessed them. Rashi assumes this was birchat kohanim, the three-part blessing laid out in Bamidbar 6;22-6. That would mean that section of the Torah came before this one which, as we saw last time, Ramban sometimes resists. Here, he’s more accepting, because the next chapter in Bamidbar (the words after birchat kohanim, in fact), tell us of the gifts of the heads of the tribes, an event that came with the completion of the Mishkan. Ramban is willing to accept that some whole sections of the Torah go out of order (for reasons we would have to discuss when we think about the story of those gifts).
He offers another answer. I Melachim 8 tells us Shlomo’s prayer upon the completion of the Beit HaMikdash. In verse 55, he turns and blesses the people in a loud voice, for several more verses. Just as Shlomo came up with a blessing of his own, Aharon might have done so here.
Ramban then tells us that Torat Kohanim Shemini 30 seems to support Rashi’s reading, since it says Aharon’s berachah was setumah, we would not know what he said, but for the fact that later in the Torah it tells us the priests’ three-part berachah. Ramban thinks he could claim that Torat Kohanim meant that this berachah Aharon said is not disclosed by the text, but the general brachot that kohanim said is made clear.
For all his independent-mindedness, Ramban preferred his interpretations to fit with those found in Midrash.
Gd’s Decrees, Forewarned and Not
Many people likely remember the deaths of Nadav and Avihu more than any other items in Parshat Shemini (although the laws of kashrut compete closely). In one part of that story, Moshe tells Aharon this event “is that which Hashem said,” that Hashem sanctifies His Name through those closest to Him, in a way that creates greater honor for Hashem. Vayikra Rabbah pointed to a verse that it thought had Hashem say that, and Rashi reported that.
Ramban thinks that was unnecessary, because a plain reading of the phrase “that which Hashem said” can be “which Hashem thought.” Moshe was telling Aharon this was what Hashem said to Himself, as it were, at the moment of Nadav and Avihu’s sin, that a reaction was needed, lest they ruin the sanctity of the moment and of the Mishkan, and that by doing so, Hashem knew the people would learn a lesson about Hashem’s honor.
Hashem’s actions and decrees do not need advance warning, Ramban wants us to understand, which does not mean they are not still Hashem’s actions and decrees.
The Halachic Impact of Logical Inferences
At the beginning of chapter eleven, the Torah gives the signs of kosher animals, that they have fully split hooves and chew their cud. Four animals have only one such sign (the camel, hyrax, and hare chew their cud but do not have split hooves, and the pig has split hooves but does not chew its cud), and are therefore not kosher. Sifra 3;2 derives all the animals that have no signs of kashrut from those four; if their one sign of being does not suffice, zero signs certainly cannot.
Ramban cannot accept that as the whole story, because the Gemara is certain that ein onshin min ha-din, violations of prohibitions we derive from a logical argument (such as this one, a kal va-chomer, if x that is closer to possible is not true, certainly y, which is farther from possible, is not) cannot receive the punishment prescribed by Torah law.
Yevamot 22b inferred that from the Torah’s telling us (Vayikra 18;11) that a full sister, one with whom a man shares both parents, counts as a sister for incest purposes. We could have known that based on a kal va-chomer from verse nine, which prohibited both maternal and paternal half-sisters as arayot relationships.
The Gemara thinks that verse eleven stresses that a full sister is also a sister so that we can know that, in general, courts may not punish based on those kinds of logical inferences. That opens a door on the role of human logic and inference in Jewish law, since it seems to say that we do not take those inferences seriously enough to punish people.
It’s a door through which Ramban does not walk, so neither will we. To explain how we know that eating those other non-kosher animals is also punishable, he first points out that this Sifra must be either mistaken or follow the view that such inferences do authorize courts to punish, a view we do not accept in our halachic system. For our view, he offers the following inference: the verse that rules out a shafan (a hyrax) tells us a lack of a split hoof makes it unacceptable, and the verse regarding a chazir, a pig, tells us that not chewing one’s cud makes an animal unacceptable.
The animal with both those signs thus qualifies as either—rather than an argument a fortiori, that these other animals are worse than the ones mentioned in the Torah, Ramban says these animals have each of the disqualifying factors. The pig shows that lack of cud-chewing itself rules out an animal, and the hyrax shows that lack of split hooves does it (as do the camel and hare).
Both is more, but here it’s that it’s either, so these animals have whatever disqualifies.
Some of ideas of Shemini, the fat that covers, the blessing Aharon thought of on his own, whether Hashem always tells us decrees ahead of time, and what makes an animal nonkosher.