BS"D
YESHIVAT HARA'AYON HAYEHUDI
Jerusalem, Israel
HaRav Yehuda Kreuser SHLIT"A, Rosh Yeshiva
PARSHAT ACHAREI MOT/EREV PESACH
14 Nisan 5768/18-19 April 2008
AS EASY AS APPLE PIE
As the days dwindle down to Passover, and we frantically turn our houses
upside down searching for any crum or speck of dust that we can get our
hands on, running near and far to purchase the newest fad of Kosher for
Passover toilet paper, somehow we seem to be missing the main point of the
holiday - the Passover sacrifice.
Sadly, today we can only fulfill two of the four biblical commandments
that the Torah has given us on this holiday: 1) Relating the story of
Passover; 2) the eating of the Mazta. Missing are: 3) the Passover
sacrifice; and 4) the eating of the bitter herbs, which today is only a
rabbinical commandment.
So many people will respond and say: Well, what can we do, there is no
Temple today to bring the sacrifice and at any rate, we are all tameh -
spiritually unclean. In truth, many of us just couldn’t care less anyway
about some old sacrifice, and would just rather get out on the golf course
down in southern Florida.
Truth be told, the Passover sacrifice could be brought today without any
real problems, if we only had the will.
1) First of all, one can bring a sacrifice even when the “House” is not
standing; meaning that, even though today there is no Temple standing, one
does not need the building to bring sacrifices, one only needs the Altar,
and of course, the sheep. For as the Rambam writes: We sacrifice even though
there is no building.
2) But you say we are all tameh - spiritually unclean, and so cannot do
the holy work in the Temple. True, but the Talmud teaches us that when the
majority of the Jewish people are tameh, one can then bring communal
sacrifices, even in the state of tuma. Today, being that we are all
spiritually unclean, we would be allowed to bring the Passover sacrifice,
which is a communal sacrifice, in this state of tuma.
3) So now that we have the sheep and can sacrifice on the Mount, even
though there is no building, and we can bring the sacrifice even in our
state of tumah, we still need Kohanim - Priests - to do the work. The
“Chatam Sofer” already answered this problem some 100 years ago, when the
question of renewing the sacrifices came up - he writes that a Kohen has a
“chazaka” that he is a Kohen, and if there is no question about his
priesthood, then he can do the sacrificial work in the Temple service.
4) Another obstacle that comes up is where the place of the Altar is.
This must be an exact location and cannot just be anywhere (unlike some
people in Monsey who would like to think that it could be there). But this,
too, has a solution based on halacha. The Altar in the time of the Second
Temple was quite large - 16 by 16 meters - but in reality, under Torah law,
we only need to build a Altar that is half a meter by half a meter. And
being that we know today approximately where the Altar stood, our small
Altar of half a meter just has to be placed anywhere in the area of the
16-meter Altar. This, then, is quite easy to do.
5) Re another problem - uncut stones for our Altar. These are easy
enough to find in the Holy Land, and they can be placed in plastic
containers until transferred to the Temple Mount. Priestly garments have
already been prepared, and so have the Temple vessels which receive the
blood of the sacrifice.
In short, no stone has been left unturned, and all “halachic problems”
have a solution. For Hashem would not give us a commandment if we could not
carry it out. It is in our hands, If we have the will, it would be as easy
as apple pie, but in the meantime we will continue to run after kosher
toilet paper...
With love of Israel,
Levi Chazen
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Topic: PARSHAT ACHAREI MOT/EREV PESACH - AS EASY AS APPLE PIE (Read 1833 times)