Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch on the parsha: Do you care?
Animosity is often better than indifference.
Nothing is more frustrating or hurtful than the cold shoulder of indifference. A heated, angry response at least indicates care. The person takes you or your words seriously and feels compelled to reply. If he remains flippantly silent, that means your words (or you) mean nothing to him.
In Parshas Vayikra, we read about a person who “behaves unfaithfully [i.e., commits me’ilah] and sins through carelessness against any of Hashem’s holy things” (Leviticus 5:15). Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch notes that the Torah punishes this person more harshly than his counterpart who purposely desecrates “Hashem’s holy things.”
Furthermore, the Gemara teaches that hekdeshb’shogeg mis’challel, b’meizid eino mis’challel (Kiddushin 55a). In Rav Hirsch’s words: “A conscious, intentional desecration of a holy object does not rob it of its nature of holiness. Only an inadvertent profane use of it does so!”
These laws seem counterintuitive. Why should accidental misuse of holy items cause more damage – and be punished more harshly – than intentional misuse of them?
Rav Hirsch answers by noting that “accidental” (shogeg) in Jewish law doesn’t mean “faultless.” (That’s ones.) Shogeg actually implies a certain measure of careless indifference. And indifference is dangerous. “It is not direct opposition, not intentional sin, but indifference that the Jewish sanctuary has to fear from its sons” (emphasis in the original).
Rav Hirsch continues: “Towards direct opposition, the Mikdash stands high and untouchable in holiness; the very fact that it is being consciously opposed, fought against, is itself a warrant of its holiness. But shegagah, indifference, careless forgetting the holiness of the Sanctuary and its justification to direct our actions – therein lies the grave of the holiness of the Sanctuary.”
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) – head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years – was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.
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