Many Laws That are Difficult Today

There are many commands in this group that find application today more metaphorically than literally. Most of it has to do with the cultic practices surrounding the temple. There is no temple where the priests could offer the sacrifices in the manner that is prescribed here. During the Babylonian captivity the Jews first learned to be Jews without a temple, there prayers took the place of sacrifices as they do today.

Kohanim (Priests) and Levites. The law establishes an hereditary priesthood within the tribe of Levi these are the Kohanim (Priests) the rest of the tribe are called the Levites. The Levites have duties and responsibilities around the tabernacle and subsequently the temple. The Kohanim (the plural of kohen) are descendants from Aaron. Aaron, Moses' brother, was designated as the Kohen Gadol, the high priest; male descendants of Aaron are Kohanim. Many people with the surname Cohen, Kahn, Katz (and their various spellings) are kohanim, and many with the surname Levi or Levy are Levites. As the priests and the Levites appeared before the Lord as their vocation they are subject to certain restrictions to maintain ritual purity as can be seen in the details below. Today kohanim are given special honor and responsibilities in the synagogue.

T'rumah (Offerings), Tithes and Taxes are the methods of funding the temple and the government. T'rumah means gift but it also means "lifting up" and can refer to a heave offering. The offering is lifted upward to give it to God and then received back from Him. Another usage has to do with the free-will offerings especially in the story of the offerings that were used to build the tabernacle. Tithe simply means tenth part and is calculated as one tenth of something. The first tenth belongs to God in recognition that all is from God. There are actually several tithes that are prescribed by the law. Tithes generally fund the temple and those who work there. Taxes are as they are today used to fund the government. It may be that t'rumah are free-will, the tithes are mandatory and are in some sense taxes. In the days of the monarchy other taxes were required by the king. These are not detailed here. Generally in moral philosophy it is said that "obligation requires free will." That is the reason that it is often hard to separate the three; Offerings, Tithes and Taxes. There is no word about an authority that could audit a person's compliance with the tithe.

The Temple, the Sanctuary and Sacred Objects. These commands are applied largely to the synagogue and copies of scriptures today. As an example, in the synagogue you are asked not to place books containing the Torah on the floor. The commandments surrounding the alter provide a challenge for the archeologist as a heap of earth could be an alter for the Patriarchs while the pagans made grand temple with great alters of finished stone. Quite the opposite even wen the Jewish temples were constructed. Since the time of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem and the second temple (70 AD) there is no longer a place to offer sacrifices. While many of the objects from the first temple that had been taken to Babylon were returned with Ezra and Nehemiah for use in the second temple. Things were lost, the second temple did not contain the Ark, which tradition says was buried by Jeremiah. When the Romans destroyed the temple in AD70 they stripped all of the gold and carried it away.

Because there is no temple, Sacrifices and Offerings of the sort prescribed in the law cannot be offered. On their own, these laws are confusing without what would have to be the tradition that surround them. Tracey Rich, to whom I owe the list of commands underlying this page, has a page on sacrifices on which he says "For a long time I was reluctant to write a page on the subject of qorbanot (sacrifices), because it is a subject with little practical application today. However, I felt I had to address these issues, because it is one of the two subjects I receive the most questions about. Interestingly, the questions I receive on this subject are invariably from non-Jews (jewfaq.org)." The word qorban means "something which draws close." The purpose of the sacrifices was to bring people closer to God. The Rabbis teach that there are other ways to draw near to God and they include prayer and good deeds. There are two reasons that Christians are interested in these sacrifices. One stems from reading the laws and trying to figure how the sacrifices work exactly. That is my problem in the section on sacrifices below. Working through these commands in this form has not really helped. The reason Christians are curious about sacrifices stems, in part, from the verse in Hebrews (9.44): "In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness." Many Bibles reinforce the point with a cross reference to Leviticus 17.11: "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life." In both instances it can seem that the blood sacrifices are necessary for atonement. Christians see Jesus as the final sacrifice: "He himself bore our sins" in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; "by his wounds you have been healed (1 Peter 2:24)." This leaves the Christian puzzled about why the Jews are not longing for blood sacrifices. (Although I understand that some orthodox actually are preparing for the re-institution of them.) The prophets reinforce the notion that it is not the sacrifices performed in the proper order see, for example, Isaiah 1:11–15. Even in Deuteronomy 30.6 it says "The LORD your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of your descendants, so that you may love him with all your heart and with all your soul, and live."

Ritual Purity and Impurity apply mainly to the temple ceremonies. A person could not enter the temple in an impure state. Illness and some aspects of daily live can make a person ritually impure. There are instructions in each case for purification. Much of this is impossible today without the temple. Having said this Chabad.org says that this is "[o]ne of the most widely misunderstood concepts in the Torah. They point to two words: tum'ah and taharah. These are often translated as "unclean" and "clean," or "pure" and "impure." They say that such translation misses the mark. Tum'ah and taharah are, above all, spiritual and not physical concepts. Meeting God requires some preparation, Moses is asked to remove his shoes at the burning bush and the people are told to wash their clothes before the receive the revelation at Sinai. There is bathing to clean the outside and there is the Mikvah for spiritual cleansing.

Lepers and Leprosy: Leprosy, known today as Hansen's disease, is a bacterial infection that has been curable since the mid 20^th century. Hansen's disease is not all that contagious (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/14593226/ 9/6/24). Without antibiotics, however, the best strategy was isolation. In the Bible many other forms of skin disease were called leprosy, the Biblical definition and the modern one overlap to some extent but the Biblical definition is more broad. Some translations use "wasting skin disease,' mold and/or mildew depending on context. (Some translations refer to a house with leprosy in some places.) Leviticus 13.1-14.32 contains the laws about leprosy, much has to do with diagnosis. Chapter 14 contains the conditions were a leprous person could rejoin the community. Only 4 laws from this section make the Rambam's list.

The appointment of a King was positioned as God's concession to the people in I Samuel 8. This is after the giving of the Torah but the Torah did anticipate a king. The Israelite kings were under the law just as the people were. More typically in the nations around Israel, the king was the maker of the law. We see the contrast in thinking in the story of Neboth's Vineyard in I Kings 21. Jezabel is a pagan princess married to Ahab the king of Israel, and does not understand that concept. At that point even the wicked Ahab realizes that he is not the source of the law but is constrained by it.

Nazarites: Some years ago I attended a synagogue service where Parshah Naso (which contains Numbers 6 where the Nazarite is described) was the order of the day. The Rabbi said that the Nazerite vow is not something that is practiced today and it bordered on sinful. His reasoning was that the sacrifices prescribed to end the vow period was a sin offering. A sin offering is made to atone for inadvertent or unknown sin, the primary point being that it is hard for a human not to sin even for the short period of a vow.

Wars are a feature of the Biblical narrative. In Jewish thought these fall into two categories: Obligatory War and Permissive War. Obligatory War are those that are directly commanded by G-d. These would be the wars to do with possessing of the promised land. These wars have a divine purpose; that of judgement on the population being displaced. Many of the commands to do with these seem stark or even cruel. But they are divinely commanded and at that stage Israel is the instrument of G-d's judgement. Just as the nations around Israel are later used as tools of divine judgement against Israel. Permissive wars are largely defensive wars. The contrast is that Israel is instructed to sue for peace prior to laying siege to a city.

 

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Handelman, Susan. On the Essence of Ritual Impurity. https://www.chabad.org/theJewishWoman/article_cdo/aid/1542/jewish/On-the-Essence-of-Ritual-Impurity.htm 9/19/24

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