As more than half our congregation is vaccinated, and with vaccines available to all adults, in-person Shul life is within reach! We've been able to launch a beautiful Friday night service with the influx of conregants who have returned after being away for more than a year. We look forward to davening amidst our full congregation soon. With that in mind, if you could fill in asurvey about in-person Shavuot planning, it would help us plan for our next big step out of this long year+ of COVID.
Drashah:
After weeks of animal sacrifice, blood, and bodily emissions, we have arrived at the less visceral parts of Sefer VaYikra. Our double Parshah, Achrei Mot-Kedoshim, serves as the transitionary point in the book of Leviticus, as we pivot from talk of temple sacrifice and ritual impurity to the abstract idea of societal “purity,” as God tells us we need to maintain an upstanding interpersonal ethic if we want to keep the land of Israel, and the Jewish society established within it, “pure” and worthy. This transition from literal metaphysical impurity to figurative metaphorical impurity is best expressed in God’s warning in our Parshah, that we shall not “Mitamei,” impurify the land of Israel, lest it spit us out. To that end, God gives us a list of mundane ethical imperatives, governing honesty in our business dealings and interpersonal relationships.
I’d like to look at one of these seemingly mundane business laws as a case study of the significance of these commandments to the larger goal of maintaining a “pure” land and society. God commands the Jewish people (VaYikra 19:13):
לֹא־תַֽעֲשֹׁ֥ק אֶת־רֵֽעֲךָ֖ וְלֹ֣א תִגְזֹ֑ל לֹֽא־תָלִ֞ין פְּעֻלַּ֥ת שָׂכִ֛יר אִתְּךָ֖ עַד־בֹּֽקֶר
Do not oppress your fellow, do not steal, do not withhold a worker’s wages until the morning. Following the umbrella prohibition against stealing, the Torah gives us seemingly a specific expression of it. Do not withhold wages from your workers. While the ethical violation here is intuitive, as surely withholding owed payment seems tantamount to stealing, the need to single out this specific form of thievery seems confusing. God literally just told us, for the umpteenth time no less, that it is prohibited to steal. Why is it necessary to go on and single out a specific case of stealing– a boss who steals wages from his worker? Isn’t that included in the blanket prohibition of Lo Tigzol? Indeed, the Gemara in Bava Metzia tells us that one who withholds wages violates Lo Tigzol, and this new prohibition of Lo Talin, withholding wages. But if that’s the case, why is there a need for the redundancy? ...continued
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