Weekly Torah portion: Emor
Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: These are My fixed times, the fixed times of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as sacred occasions. On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, a sacred occasion. You shall do no work; it shall be a sabbath of the Lord throughout your settlements. These are the set times of the Lord, the sacred occasions, which you shall celebrate each at its appointed time…Those are the set times of the Lord that you shall celebrate as sacred occasions, bringing offerings by fire to the Lord — burnt offerings, meal offerings, sacrifices, and libations, on each day what is proper to it (Leviticus 23:2-37).
It would appear from these verses that fixing “the times of the Lord” is entrusted to humans rather than to God. In this vein, the Talmud recounts:
Our Rabbis taught: Once the heavens were covered with clouds and the likeness of the moon was seen on the twenty-ninth of the month. The public were minded to declare New Moon, and the Beth Din wanted to sanctify it, but Rabban Gamaliel said to them: I have it on the authority of the house of my father's father that the renewal of the moon takes place after not less than twenty-nine days and a half and two-thirds of an hour and seventy-three parts. On that day the mother of Ben Zaza died, and Rabban Gamaliel made a great funeral oration over her, not because she had merited it, but so that the public should know that the Beth Din had not sanctified the month (Rosh HaShana 25a).
The story emphasizes that the fixing of dates and times is a human function, yet it may also give the impression that it is based upon some objective, scientific criteria. But on the same page, we also read:
R. Akiba went and found R. Joshua while he was in great distress. He said to him, Master, why are you in distress? He replied: Akiba, it were better for a man to be on a sick-bed for twelve months than that such an injunction should be laid on him (Rabban Gamaliel had decreed that R. Joshua appear before him with his staff and purse on the day that R. Joshua reckoned to be Yom Kippur). He said to him, will you allow me to tell you something which you yourself have taught me? He said to him, Speak. He then said to him: The text says, ‘you’, ‘you’, ‘you’, three times, to indicate that ‘you’ (may fix the festivals) even if you err inadvertently, ‘you’, even if you err deliberately, ‘you’, even if you are misled. He replied to him in these words: Akiba, you have comforted me, you have comforted me.
In justifying Rabban Gamaliel, R. Akiba emphasizes that, according to parashat Emor, the fixing of “the times of the Lord” is entirely given to human discretion.
1. In his commentary to the parasha, Nahmanides writes: “Speak to the Israelite people – the Priests play no greater part in regard to fixing the times than the Israelites, which is why Aaron and his sons are not mentioned in this section, but only the Israelite people, which comprises them all as one.” Why is it important that the times for the Priestly service and for the Temple sacrifices are determined by the Israelite people?
2. The Talmud tractate Shabbat (69b) considers the question of “a person travelling in the wilderness and who does not know when it is the Sabbath.” Must such a person observe the Sabbath? Can he? The replies debated in the Talmud are: “he must count six days and observe one,” and “he must observe one and count six”. Are we to understand that even the fixing of the Sabbath is not necessarily objectively true? Is the sanctity of the Sabbath controlled by humans?
3. Is it important that the date of the Sabbath and of the holidays be established according to objective criteria? Is the sanctity of the Sabbath or of a holiday dependant upon the date of observance, or does establishing the date constitute part of the observance and the sanctity?
Iyunei Shabbat is published weekly by the Schechter Rabbinical Seminary, The Masorti Movement and The Rabbinical Assembly of Israel in conjunction with the Masorti Movement in Israel and Masorti Olami-World Council of Conservative Synagogues.
Chief Editor: Rabbi Avinoam Sharon
