Parashat Naso
"Take
a census of the Gershonites also, by their ancestral house and by their clans.
Record them from the age of thirty years up to the age of fifty" (Numbers
4:22-23).
The
tribe of Levi received special treatment, and therefore was counted separately
from the rest of the Israelites, as written in Numbers 1:49,
"The Levites, however, were not recorded…with the Israelites." Once
they were counted from the age of one month up and the author of the Torah
dedicated the whole of chapter three to this counting. Now, in chapter 26:57,
the tribe of Levi is counted once again, this time before the entrance to the
Land of Israel. See an amazing thing--38 years have passed, and the number of
Levites has hardly changed. They've only grown by 700 men, even though the
tribe of Levi was not included in the punishment of dying in the desert, as
brought in Tractate Baba Batra 121b: "R' Hamnuna said, 'this decree
["in this very wilderness they shall die to the last man" Numbers
15:35] did not fall upon the tribe of Levi'." The other tribes, who were
destined to die in the desert (the Scripture says in Numbers 26:64, "And
in these [those counted at the end of their sojourn] there was no man of those
counted by Moses and Aaron the priest, who counted the people of Israel in the
wilderness of Sinai."), did not see their numbers reduced. In many
instances, they increased quite a bit in number, as did the tribe of Menasseh:
"The tribe of Menasseh was 32,200" (Numbers 1:35). After all the
people had died, the Scriptures tell us: "These are the families of
Menasseh and their count, 52,700" (Numbers 26:34).
The tribe of Menasseh grew by more than 20,000. Ibn Ezra was puzzled by this in
his commentary on Numbers 26:62: "The count of the Levites this time
yields an increase of 700. It is puzzling why they increased by only 700, while
the Israelites were sentenced to die from age 20 and up, yet their final number
was higher than their earlier number, for the Levites were not included in the
counting of Israel, and Elazar the priest is a witness." Ibn Ezra kept the
answer to himself; it is logical to assume that it falls under the rubric of
"the wise one will be silent."
From
what age were the Levites suitable for service in the Sanctuary? In chapter
four they counted the Levites suited for work as being from age thirty to
fifty, "from the age of thirty years up to the age of fifty, all who are
subject to service, to perform tasks for the Tent of Meeting," but in 8:24
it is said, "This is the rule for the Levites. From twenty-five years of
age up they shall participate in the work force in the service of the Tent of
Meeting." Again, we will not bring the Biblical commentators to settle the
conflicting verses; we leave this to anyone who is interested and seeks truth. Let
him check and find for himself the meaning of the contradiction. We have
already hinted at the method of solving it many times.
But we
will note that in the book of Ezra 3:8 it is written, "appointed Levites
from the age of twenty and upward to supervise the work of the House of the
Lord." We find that in the Second Temple period they did not follow what
was written in the Torah, neither about the age of thirty nor about the age of
twenty five. What do Chazal say about this? In Hulin 24a: "Could it have
been even in Shilo and the permanent Temple [that Levites below the age of
thirty were invalid]? It says, 'To do the work of service and the work of
carrying.' This applies only when there is work of carrying [that is, when the
Tabernacle must be carried from place to place]." This is very puzzling,
for it is specifically for the work of carrying that young strong men would be
needed, yet this work, the carrying of the Tabernacle, the Torah delegates to
the older men, and in the permanent structure where there is no carrying, they
use the young men? This is what we say: The Torah expands and repeats the count
of the Levites and details the sacrifices of the tribal leaders for full
chapters, but the exact age of the Levite suitable for Temple service is left
for the sages to determine through the 13 methods in which the Torah is
elucidated. Understand this well, for we do not live from the Torah but from
the words of the sages, for in the Torah it is written thirty or twenty-five
(of twenty nothing is written in the Torah), and in the Temple we permit
service form the age of twenty.
And
between the chapters recounting the census of the Israelites and the dedication
of the Tabernacle the Scripture commands us about the adulterous woman and the
Nazarite. We will focus in on the adulterous woman and see what we have already
written about in the portion of Tetzave, that halacha changes with the
times; generations come and go and the
determination of the sages differs in each generation, based upon the public's
will and the spirit of the time and place. We will also say that even though
the law of giving the adulterous woman to drink the bitter water is no longer
practiced, the laws of an adulterous woman are still applicable, as is written
in the Shulchan Aruch, Even HaEzer, section 178, paragraph 7, "A man
should not say to his wife, even in private, 'do not be alone with so-and-so.'
Now that we do not have the waters of the adulterous woman, if she is alone
with a man after she is wed she is forever forbidden to her husband." (In
paragraph two it is explained that a husband may forbid his wife to be alone
with even her father or brother.)
The
text explicitly states that it is enough should a man be jealous of his wife
"and the spirit of jealousy passed over him" in order to shame her in
public in the Holy Temple, to see if the husband's jealousy has any actual
foundation. As Ibn Ezra wrote on Numbers 5:13, "Though there is not even a
single witness to make her suspect." But the sages understood that in this
sort of situation many women would be unreasonably shamed due to the suspicions
of their jealous husbands, so they determined in tractate Sotah 2 that
witnesses had to see her go off alone with her suspected partner in adultery,
as Rashi writes on Numbers 5:13, "There are no witnesses to her impurity,
but there are witnesses to her going off alone." Not only did the sages
innovate this, they also said that if the husband or wife were blind or lame
the woman should not drink the bitter waters, as they said in Sotah 27,
"Just as if the husband were blind he would not give the bitter waters to
be drunk, for it is written, 'and it disappears from the woman's eyes,' so,
too, if she is blind she does not drink. R' Ashi says that if she is lame or an
amputee she does not drink, as is written, 'And the priest will stand the woman
before the Lord and place on her hand,' so, too, if he were lame or an amputee
he would not give to drink." See how strange are the teachings of the
sages. Did the Scriptures mean, in saying "and it disappears from the
woman's eyes" that if he is blind he does not give her to drink? When it
says, "and place it upon her hand" that if the woman is an amputee
she should not drink the bitter waters? To illustrate how the sages determine
and decide matters which are explicit in the Scriptures, see the decree of
Rabban Jochanan ben Zakkai, who lived at the end of the second Temple period,
in tractate Sotah, chapter nine, mishnah nine: "As the adulterers have
multiplied, the administration of the bitter waters has ceased, and it was
Rabban Jochanan ben Zakkai who ceased it, as written, 'I will not punish your
daughters when they commit whoredom, nor your brides when they commit
adultery'." Is the fact that adultery is widespread a reason to cease
administering the bitter waters as commanded by the Torah? The Gemara in Sotah
47b explains that the bitter waters only check the woman if the husband is
clean of the sin of adultery. Now that the husbands, too, are adulterers, there
is no reason to give her to drink, as the bitter waters will not test her.
Maimonides, in Laws of an Adulterous Woman chapter three, halacha 17,
explained: "If the man is guilty of that which is prohibited, the waters
do not check his wife…and he merely ridicules the waters of the adulteress, for
his wife tells other women who have prostituted themselves that the waters did
not test her, and she will not know that it was her husband's actions which
rendered the waters ineffective." See how quickly the miraculous powers of
giving the waters of the adulterous woman fall away. Those who believe in the
miracle can always claim that nothing happened to the adulterous woman because
of some hidden sin of her husband's. This is a ready excuse for the water's
lack of effectiveness.
Come
see how the reality of public behavior changes the law of the Torah itself.
There is no better example than an incident which took place in 13th
century France, mentioned in the Responsa of the Provence sages, part one,
section 49: A cohen was jealous of his wife and told her not to be alone
or speak to a specific man. When he returned from abroad witnesses and one
woman told him that they saw his wife kissing and hugging that man. When he
asked his wife, she admitted that she had slept around. He went to the
religious court in his city, and the judges went to the woman and heard her say
that she had slept with someone other than her husband. One of the
investigation judges told her: "Stupid, why didn't you just hide the
matter from your husband?" She told him, "I couldn't, because one
woman saw me coming out from behind the curtain with the man." When she
tried to get away from the sages who were investigating her, they warned her
not to dare admit anything to any person or religious court on earth. After a
time her father and loved ones came and she retracted everything, saying that
she had not said what she had said, and that the only reason she admitted to
anything was for fear of her husband, and it seemed certain that she learned
her claims from the judges.
From
this incident you can see that the Torah is set aside; the religious arbiters
knew very well that the woman was committing adultery, and that she should be
forbidden to her husband, but what did they do? The judges reprimand her and
tell her not to admit the truth so that she might be permitted to her husband.
All opposite the Torah's commands.
Not
only in matters of adultery do the sages intentionally ignore the facts. On
many rules they do so when they think the times do not fit the rules of the
Torah. In the portion of Tetzave we brought the change which
befell the issue of monetary loans, with the Torah commanding they be forgiven,
but when Hillel saw that if the Torah's law was kept the public would not loan
money, he changed the law and established the prozbol. Later they
establish that even if the prozbol were not written the judges teach the
claimant to say he had one, though everyone knows he did not! Similarly, the
selling of chametz on Passover; any reasonable person knows that the
grocery store owner does not sell his chametz to a gentile, but what do
the sages care for facts? It's enough that he mumbles some formula and presses
the "sell" button and it's sold. This is also the rule on the
prohibition against usury; today any G-d fearing Jew who's greatly overdrawn at
the bank pays usurious rates without hesitation. Our rabbis know that the
religious public is prepared to pay interest in their dealings with the banks
and could not follow the laws of interest from the Torah, so they created
permission for businesses, as though we were partner with the bank and
therefore are "saved" from the prohibition against interest. Every
child knows that we are not actually partners in the banks in any way, but what
difference does reality make? Write a writ of permission for a business and the
whole Torah prohibition against interest becomes like the dust beneath our
feet.
These
are only a few examples of the acts of the sages, who permit themselves to
uproot the words of the Torah when they understand that the public will not
follow the prohibition from the Torah. This is how it has been for generations.
And in our days there are those who wish to decree a total and absolute freeze
on halacha, for fear of the wisdom and enlightenment which have spread
throughout the world. As more and more facts have been revealed which raise
difficult questions about the validity of various halachot, the rabbis began to
fear that they would be forced to deal with these difficult questions. They
decided that any halachic innovation would be forbidden, under the heading of
"new [things] are forbidden by the Torah." They did not rest until
they calcified the whole halachic process, and for fear of one step forward
resolved to only walk backwards from now on. Their rulings became stringencies
on top of stringencies and added fear to every suspicion, turning every doubt
into a certainty and every far-fetched custom into a strict prohibition. But
soon they will all see that life and reality have power greater than any
decree, and that which the public cannot live with will surely fall. What will
it aid the generations' rabbis to forbid computers and the internet? There is
not a house where there is no net…
Words
of True Knowledge
