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TORAH PORTION: SHMINI

Parashat Shmini—Parshat HaChodesh

April 6, 2024 | 27 Adar II 5784

Torah: Leviticus 9:1–11:47 Triennial: Leviticus 10:12–32

Maftir: Exodus 12:1–20 Haftarah: Ezekiel 45:16–46:18

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In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Torah portion by Bex Stern-Rosenblatt called "Punishment in Search of a Crime", Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein asks shares insights from Hassidut in a video titled "Falling to Rise, Breaking to Repair", and Rabbi Joshua Kulp continues his series of essays on the Halakhot of Pesah in a piece called "Guard Those Matzot with Your Life: What is Shmurah Matzah?".

D'VAR TORAH

Punishment in Search of a Crime

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt

Parashah

Nadav and Avihu died before God. And Moses quoted God to his brother, the bereaved father, saying: “Through those close to Me shall I be hallowed and in all the people’s presence shall I be honored.” And Aaron was silent. 

But we are not. From the moment we are informed of their deaths until this very day, we, “the whole community of Israel, weep over this burning which God has burnt up.” Where Aaron and his remaining sons cannot mourn, we break the air with our cries. We cry for these sons of Aaron as if they were our brothers, our sons, stepping into the roles which the immediate family cannot fill. 

But they are not in fact our sons, our brothers. We did not know them in the ways that Aaron, Elisheva, Eliezar, and Itamar did. We did not know them even in the way that Moses did. We cannot mourn them, eulogize them, make their memories into blessings, in the way that those who knew them could. Rather, we “weep over this burning which God has burnt up.” We lament death. We cry out to, for, and against God. We hold God responsible for this death, for all deaths. We pour out our tears to God, we try to quench the flame of God’s anger. But we do not cry for Nadav and Avihu. They are reduced to the manner of their dying. They become the burning, the korban which God takes from us, the unwilling givers. God is hallowed through them, through their burning, and honored by us, through our tears.  

Ever since Moses climbed up Mount Sinai, the Torah had been exposing the order of the world to us. We have been told, in excruciating detail, how to behave. We know what to wear, what to build, what to eat, and how to cook it. The raw, terrifying power of God, the creator and the destroyer, had seemed to be tamed. Just so long as we dotted our i’s, crossed our t’s, and refrained from making golden calves, it seemed we should be able to live happily ever after with God in our midst. 

The story of Nadav and Avihu destroys that notion. The Torah had not been exposing the order of the world, but rather imposing order onto the world and onto God. But God cannot be fully contained or fully understood. The world will not make sense if we just do everything right. Sometimes, really horrible things happen. 

When they do, we do not remain silent. We demand answers, explanations, order. We want the world to make sense and so we make sense of it. As Ed Greenstein writes, “most readers view the death of Nadav and Avihu as an effect and look for a cause.” Surely, Nadav and Avihu must have done something wrong. After all, the fire was strange or foreign fire. Or perhaps this is a delayed punishment for Aaron’s formation of the Golden Calf. Or perhaps we are supposed to learn not to get drunk. 

Once we have finished crying out to God for the burning, we cry out to ourselves. We change that which we can change. We blame those who must listen to us casting blame on them. We see error in our own ways because, at least, our own ways are our own. We have control over them and can modify them. We want to believe we can prevent such a burning from happening again.

HASSIDUT

Falling to Rise, Breaking to Repair

Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein

Insights from Hassidut

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Rabbi Daniel Silverstein teaches Hassidut at the CY and directs Applied Jewish Spirituality (www.appliedjewishspirituality.org). In these weekly videos, he shares Hassidic insights on the parashah or calendar.

HALAKHIC ESSAYS ON PESAH

Guard Those Matzot with Your Life: What is Shmurah Matzah?

Rabbi Joshua Kulp

For most people the words “shmurah matzah” conjure up the notion of “super-kosher matzah” or “hand-made matzah” or perhaps super-dry and difficult to digest matzah. This might all be correct. If you buy something labeled “shmurah matzah” it probably is all of those things–it's certainly kosher, it almost certainly was hand-made and unfortunately, many of us find it dry and difficult to digest. But this is not what “shmurah matzah” is. 

Exodus 12:17 states, “And you shall observe (ushmartem) the Matzot for on this very day I brought your ranks out of the land of Egypt; you shall observe this day throughout the ages as an institution for all time.” The verse clearly is instructing the observance of the festival of Matzot, what we call Pesah. But read hyper-literally, as rabbis tend to do, the verse could be read as “And you shall guard the matzot.” The tannaim, the rabbis of the second century C.E. who composed the mishnah and several midrashic collections on the Torah all read this as mandating proper care such that bread does not become hametz. After all, hametz is one of the few prohibited foods that starts off permitted and can become prohibited without any intervention. If one kneads flour and water the bread will start to become leavened without any intervention. Therefore, special care is needed to make sure that this does not happen. For instance, Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael states, “‘And you shall guard the matzot:’ Guard them so that you do not bring them to be disqualified. From here they said: If it [the dough] becomes swollen, she should slap it with cold water.” The woman kneading the dough (the Talmud always assumes that women do this work) instructs her what to do if her dough begins to rise before she can put it into the oven–she should slap it with cold water. 

Thus the original idea of “guarding the matzot” was simply to ensure that the matzot did not become hametz. These matzot are ordinary matzot. The Torah, read through rabbinic eyes, is simply instructing people preparing matzot to watch out that the leavening process does not start. This understanding of the verse continues to be prevalent in the Talmud (see for instance Menahot 53a). There is also a vigorous debate on Pesahim 40a concerning at what point the grain must begin to be guarded–from the time of when the grain was harvested, from the time it was ground into flour, or from the time it was kneaded into dough. The issue in this passage is how concerned we are that grain that becomes wet even before it is kneaded will begin to ferment. 

However, the verse is used in another way in the Talmud. On Pesahim 38a-b, Rabbah, a fourth century Babylonian amora explains that matzot meant to be used as sacrifices cannot be used as the mandatory matzah because of the following verse: “And you shall guard the matzot”—matzah which is guarded in order to be used as matzah—this excludes these (matzot designated for sacrificial purposes), which were not guarded for the sake of matzah but for the sake of a sacrifice.” Rabbah is not referring to the physical kashrut of the matzot–did they begin to become leavened? The matzot made to be sacrifices were assumedly prepared with the proper caution. The problem with these matzot is that when making them, the baker did not intend to use them for Pesah but for another purpose. 

However, in a difficult Talmudic passage on Pesahim 40a the editors of the Talmud add one more step to the development of the interpretation of the verse “and you shall guard the matzot.” Rav Huna in that passage says that one can eat on Pesah dough made by Gentiles but he cannot use it as the mandatory matzah on Pesah. Clearly this dough is not leaven, for otherwise Rav Huna would not allow it at all. So why can it not be used at the seder? The answer, according to the editors, is that it was not guarded for the sake of Pesah. The Gentiles who made this dough either did not, or by law cannot, have the intention to make matzah for Jews to eat on Pesah. 

The Talmud leaves us with two definitions of guarding the matzah–making sure it is not hametz and preparing it with the intent to use it for Pesah. But emerging from the Talmud, the second understanding dominates the halakhah, creates a stringency, but also severely limits the application. While originally it was understood that all matzah must be guarded (to make sure it's not hametz), only matzah that is used at the seder, the “matzat mitzvah” must be made with the intent to use it on Pesah. The debate about when guarding must begin is now understood not as an issue of at what point we must be concerned about the leavening process, but simply at what point the intent of the one preparing the flour, dough and loaves, need have the proper intent to use the matzah at the seder. The Shulkhan Arukh, OH 453:4 codifies all three existent views, ranking them in terms of their level–the best matzah is that which is guarded from the time the grain is harvested. If this is not possible, then the grain should be guarded from the time when the flour is ground, and if there is no other option, one may buy flour from the market and use it for Pesah (this is not done today).

Today, the Shmurah Matzah one buys to use at the seder is made from grain that has been guarded from the time it was harvested with the intent that it be used for the matzat mitzvah at the seder. It is not “more kosher” than regular matzah, and according to some rabbis, it can be made by machine–under the assumption that the person turning off and on the machine has the proper intention in mind. The only reason it tastes different from regular matzah is that it is hand-made. One should strive to use such matzah at the beginning of the seder, both for matzah and for the “Hillel sandwich” as well as the afikoman at the end of the seder. But for the rest of Pesah, any kosher matzah will do.

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