Parashat Emor
Sanctifiers of Time
The commandment to
proclaim the festivals includes concepts of communal responsibility and
imitating God.
By Rabbi Avraham Fischer
The following article
is reprinted with permission from the Orthodox
Union.
In the midst of a book devoted to kedusha (sanctity), the apex of the Torah's value system, we
revisit the subject of the festivals:
And Hashem spoke to Moshe, saying: Speak to the Children of
Israel and say to them: The festivals of Hashem which you will proclaim (tikr’u otam) as holy convocations, these
are My festivals.
For six days shall work be done, and on the seventh day is
the Shabbat of complete rest, a holy convocation, all work shall you not do, it
is Shabbat to Hashem in all your dwellings.
These are the festivals of Hashem, the holy convocations
which you will proclaim (tirkr’u otam) at their occasion. (Vayikra 23:1-4)
The festivals were discussed earlier (Shemot 23:14-17; 34:17-23), where it was
established that Pesach must be during aviv
(spring in Israel), and consequently the other pilgrimage festivals would
coincide with their proper seasons: Shavuot with the first offering of the
wheat-harvest and Sukkot with the in-gathering of the harvest. Based on the
inspection of the grain, the flowering of fruit trees and the vernal equinox,
the Sanhedrin (high court) would
decide whether to intercalate the year by adding a month before the month of Nisan.
Furthermore, the rabbis teach (Tractate Sanhedrin
11a; Rambam, Laws of Sanctifying the Moon, 4:5) that the Sanhedrin can
intercalate for other reasons, which can only be described as communal needs:
when late winter rains cause the obstruction of roads, the destruction of
bridges or the ruining of earthenware ovens for roasting the Pesach sacrifices;
or, if Jews in the Diaspora have begun their pilgrimage to Jerusalem but will
not arrive in time.
Rashi, based on Torat Kohanim (also
called Sifra, the Jewish legal
midrash on Vayikra) Emor 9:1, refers to this last consideration:
"Speak to the Children of Israel…The festivals of Hashem:" Make the
festivals so that Israel will be accustomed to them, when intercalating the
year for the Diaspora Jews who have left their places to make the pilgrimage
and they have not yet reached Jerusalem.
More than just permitting the Sanhedrin to take this into account, the Torah is
insisting that the Sages look ahead, for if the exiles are frustrated one year,
they may not make the effort the next year. Consequently, Pesach is postponed
by a month.
Malbim (Rabbi Meir Leibush, 19th century commentator) notes that the
responsibility to proclaim the festivals does not fall on all of Israel, but
only on the Sanhedrin. The fact that this section is introduced by "Speak
to the Children of Israel" suggests that it addresses an aspect of the
festivals that involves the entire people, namely, to consider their needs when
fixing the calendar, as Rashi says. As such, the Sanhedrin acts as the
representative of the entire people.
In addition, Malbim argues that k-r-a,
in the sense of "naming," has different connotations depending on the
preposition that follows it:
kara l’ means to
assign an additional name: "And God called the light Day" (Bereishit
1:5);
kara et connotes
to proclaim, to establish a name: "And He called the name of that place Kivrot-Hata'avah (graves of lust),
because there they buried the people who lusted" (Bamidbar 11:34).
Thus, when the Sanhedrin establish the beginning of Nisan,
and accordingly the festivals of the entire year, they are determining reality.
Moreover, Hashem authorizes their determination:
"Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them: The festivals of Hashem
which you"--that is, the Sanhedrin acting on your behalf--"will
proclaim as holy convocations, these"--and only these--"are My
festivals."
Hashem ordains the dates of the festivals, but the Jewish people ordains when
those dates will be.
Shabbat, initiated at Creation, is mentioned in this context to demonstrate
that the festivals, once proclaimed, are elevated to an equally G-d-given
status, as Rashi says:
"For six days": What is the bearing of Shabbat upon the festivals? To
teach you that anyone who desecrates the festivals is considered as if he
desecrated the Sabbaths, and anyone who fulfills the festivals is considered as
if he fulfilled the Sabbaths.
Hashem invites the Jewish people to be equal partners with Him in
sanctification, extending the moral imperative of imitating Hashem that is the
central theme of Vayikra: You shall be holy, for I Hashem am Holy (Vayikra
19:2).
The Jerusalem Talmud (Tractate Rosh Hashana 1:3) explores the ramifications of
this partnership:
If the court says, "Today is Rosh Hashana," the Holy One, blessed be
He, says to the ministering angels "Set up the platform, set up the
defense attorneys, set up the prosecutors, because My children have said that
today is Rosh Hashana."
But, if the court decides to postpone it until the next day
[because they have not accepted the testimony for the new moon], the Holy One,
blessed be He, says to the ministering angels, "Remove the platform, remove
the defense attorneys, remove the prosecutors, because My children have decided
to postpone it to tomorrow."
We determine the circumstances of our own judgment. This might explain why our
passage, unlike previous discussions of the festivals, is the first time that
Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are included.
The Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Talmud)
then suggests a number of analogies to explain how Hashem entrusted the fixing
of the festivals to the people of Israel. Hashem is compared to a king or to a
specialist who passed on a treasured and useful item to his son (a precise
clock, a watchtower, a signet-ring, a treasury; a carpenter's tools, a
physician's bag) when the son came of age.
The implementation of the commandments of the Torah, too, is a coming of age
for the Jewish people. Through the festivals, they are empowered to determine
the nature of time, emulating Hashem as sanctifiers, as creators.
