A guest post by Y. Bloch
One of the great features of Jewish leap-years is that the advent of
Passover allows us to ignore those two perplexing portions of the Torah,
Tazria and
Metzora, which deal mostly with
tzaraat,
leprosy. Of course, there are a few other topics we could discuss in
those sections, like the defilement of childbirth, or menstruation, or
gonorrhea-- Wait, where are you going? Let's talk about Hillel!
Hillel
is the man who rescues Passover in the last decades before the Common
Era. When the elders don't know how to prepare for a Saturday night
Seder, it is Hillel who teaches them what to do (Tosefta,
Pesahim
4:13). When others cannot figure out what to do with lamb meat, flat
bread and salad, he invents the shawarma (Babylonian Talmud,
Pesahim 115a).
- Leaning
on the right side, Thor? This is why we can't have pagan gods at our
Seder. Just follow the redhead. I hear she's Jewish.
In fact, according to the Jerusalem Talmud
(Pesahim 6:1), Hillel makes aliyah in order to explain Passover to all the sabras:
Hillel
went up from Babylonia because of three matters. The verse says, "He is
pure" (Lev. 13:37). Does this mean that if the symptoms disappear, he
does not need the priest? No, for the verse continues, "The priest shall
declare him pure." But what if a priest said "pure" to one who was
really impure, does he thereby become pure? No, for the verse says, "He
is pure; the priest shall declare him pure." For this Hillel went up
from Babylonia.
One verse says (Deut. 16:2), "You shall slaughter
the passover for the Lord, flock or herd," but another says (Ex. 12:5),
"From the sheep or the goats you shall take them." How is this? The
festival offering can come from either, but the passover can only come
from the flock.
One verse says (Deut. 16:8), "You shall eat matzot
for six days," and another says (Ex. 12:15), "Seven days shall you eat
matzot." How is this? Six days of the new crop, seven days of the old
crop.
Hillel expounded, and his conclusions were confirmed. He went up to Israel and it was accepted as law.
Hillel
not only provides practical Passover direction for his contemporaries,
he also resolves their textual difficulties: the passover lamb or goat
is for dessert (i.e.
afikoman), but the main course can be
beef; matzot can be made throughout the week from the old flour, but the
new flour cannot be used until day two, when the
Omer is offered.
But one of these things is not like the others. The first matter Hillel comes to teach is about the purification... of
tzaraat. This plague is catching like... like... Anyway, here we go again with the Hansen's disease.
- Now you will never get this song out of your head.
Wait, what was so pressing about this verse concerning
tzaraat? There
is no contradiction per se, just a redundancy. Was this a widespread
problem in Second Temple times? Moreover, if the exegetes were so
exercised about the use of "He is pure" and "The priest shall declare
him pure," what about the verse which appears earlier (11), "The priest
shall declare him impure... he is impure." Isn't that just as
superfluous?
It doesn't seem that Hillel's first exegesis is really about
tzaraat; far
more significantly, it demonstrates his halakhic approach. When
approaching the inverse verse, "The priest shall declare him impure...
he is impure," one might be tempted to say that impurity can be assigned
on one of two bases: objective reality (he
is impure) or subjective considerations (he has been
declared
impure). After all, forbidding a given act or item on halakhic grounds
is temptingly easy for any decisor. Even if something is technically
permissible, there are always a handful of ancillary reasons to
prohibit.
However, Hillel's first lesson is the verse which
disproves this approach: "He is pure; the priest shall declare him
pure." When he is pure, the priest must declare him so; this is a sacred
duty. Ultimately, Hillel and his followers gain a reputation of being
generally lenient (unlike the generally stringent approach of his
colleague Shammai), but the Mishna devotes an entire chapter
(Eduyot
5) to listing the exceptions to this rule. Hillel is not lenient for
the sake of being lenient; he is lenient because that is what the
objective facts require. The solutions he finds for the observance of
Passover reflect the fact that his first and foremost dictum is "He is
pure; the priest shall declare him pure."
As we approach Passover, it's worth remembering what the Talmud says
(Eruvin 6b):
The
halakha is always in agreement with Beit Hillel, but he who wishes to
act in agreement with the ruling of Beit Shammai may do so, and he who
wishes to act according to the view of Beit Hillel may do so; he,
however, who adopts the more lenient rulings of Beit Shammai and the
more lenient rulings of Beit Hillel is a wicked man, while of the man
who adopts the restrictions of Beit Shammai and the restrictions of Beit
Hillel, Scripture says (Eccl. 2:14): "But the fool walks in darkness."
Search for more information about Hillel at4torah.com
