Acharei Mot: Divine Law and Human Discretion
After two weeks of a Pesach-themed break, we return to the march of the Torah onward through Vayikra. In this week’s parsha, God commands Moshe about the priestly duties for the day that will come to be known as Yom Kippur.
Following a lengthy description of those rituals, God makes a statement about the special procedures of the day, and then a statement about the day’s importance.
שַׁבַּ֨ת שַׁבָּת֥וֹן הִיא֙ לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם חֻקַּ֖ת עוֹלָֽם׃
It is a sabbath of sabbaths for you,1 and you shall afflict yourselves, an everlasting statute. (Vayikra 16:31)
There are two important things to notice about this verse. The first, which the Meshech Chochma will open with, is that the feminine singular construct, היא (hee), is used in reference to the required rest of the day. This isn’t in and of itself odd, but the Meshech Chochma will complicate it.
Secondly, while our verse mentions the obligation to afflict ourselves on this day, it does not specify what that affliction (innui) should look like. Most of us are familiar with the interpretation that this affliction relates at the very least to fasting, but that isn’t necessarily the plain meaning of the affliction meant by the verse.
The rabbis of the Mishnah dealt with this by ascribing a few practices that would come to define this affliction.
יוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים אָסוּר בַּאֲכִילָה וּבִשְׁתִיָּה וּבִרְחִיצָה וּבְסִיכָה וּבִנְעִילַת הַסַּנְדָּל וּבְתַשְׁמִישׁ הַמִּטָּה.
On Yom HaKippurim, it is prohibited to eat, drink, bathe, anoint, wear sandals, and have sexual relations. (Mishnah Yoma 8:1)
With this background, the Meshech Chochma begins to interpret our verse.
שבת שבתון היא לכם. בכל מקום אצל יום הכפורים כתיב לשון זכר היום הזה, שבת שבתון הוא, וכן בכל מקום, לבד כאן שכתוב בלשון נקיבה. ומה יאות הדבר לפי מה דדרשו ריש פרק יוהכ"פ מנין ליום הכפורים שאסור ברחיצה וסיכה, ותה"מ, ונעילת הסנדל ת"ל שבתון שבות. ועיין רבינו ניסים שפירש בשם הרמב"ם דהוי דבר תורה, רק שמסר זה הכתוב לחכמים, כפי מה שיראו ג"כ להוסיף מה שהוא ענוי, יעו"ש, ולכן אמר שבתון היא לכם, פירוש, השביתות בפרט לפרשן תלוי בכם ומסור לכם כפי מה שיתראה לכם עפ"י דרכי התורה ושקול הדעת הישר, ולשון היא קאי על השביתה בעצמה, שהיא מסורה לכם, ולא מדבר על היום, שלהלן מדבר על היום ואמר שבתון הוא לכם, היינו היום ודו"ק.
It is (hee, feminine singular) a sabbath of sabbaths for you. In every place where Yom Kippur is mentioned, it is in the masculine, “It is (hoo, masculine singular) a sabbath of sabbaths” (Vayikra 23:32),2 and it’s so in every other place, except for here where it is in the feminine. And how nice is this by way of the interpretation in BT Yoma 74a: “From where do we know that it is forbidden on Yom Kippur to bathe, anoint, have sexual relations, and wear sandals? The Torah says, ‘[Sabbath of] Sabbaths,’ [meaning to] rest.” And see what Rabbenu Nissim says in the name of the Rambam--that this is Biblical law, and that the verse passed down authority to the Sages, who added what they also saw to be innui. Therefore, it says “a Sabbath of Sabbaths for you,” meaning that the specifics of interpreting the “rest” depends upon you and was passed to you according to what seems correct to you in accordance with the ways of the Torah and the weighing of opinions/honest discretion. The feminine language of hee refers to the rest itself, the discretion about which was passed to you, but does not speak out the day. Later on, it mentions the day by saying “It (hoo, masculine) is a Sabbath for you,” and that is the day (which is passed down to you).
There are two different pieces of this interpretation. The first is the use of the word היא (hee), the feminine singular construct used to modify the phrase “sabbath of sabbaths.” Since the Torah uses hee here, and it usually uses hoo, this must be coming to tell us something.
The second piece is מסר זה הכתוב חכמים (the verse passed down authority to the Sages).3 This concept, which applies in only a select few cases,4 was expounded upon by the Ran, a 14th-century Spanish commentator on the Talmud and halacha. The Ran, in commenting on the piece of gemara quoted by the Meshech Chochma (BT Yoma 74a), writes that the specific prohibitions outlined by the rabbis for Yom Kippur were not prescribed by the Torah itself in our verse. Rather, the Torah only mentioned the idea of affliction and left it up to the rabbis to decide exactly how that affliction should be done, according to how the rabbis saw fit. Still, following the Rambam, the Ran stresses that the prohibitions of Yom Kippur still have Biblical-level significance.
Before moving to look more closely at this concept, let’s see how the Meshech Chochma uses it to expound on our verse and its grammatical subtlety. He says that the use of the feminine hee is a reference to the experience of rest, of the “sabbath of sabbaths” itself that we are supposed to undertake. Hee doesn’t, however, teach us anything about the day on which this takes place. For that, Vayikra 23:32 comes along:
שַׁבַּ֨ת שַׁבָּת֥וֹן הוּא֙ לָכֶ֔ם וְעִנִּיתֶ֖ם אֶת־נַפְשֹׁתֵיכֶ֑ם בְּתִשְׁעָ֤ה לַחֹ֙דֶשׁ֙ בָּעֶ֔רֶב מֵעֶ֣רֶב עַד־עֶ֔רֶב תִּשְׁבְּת֖וּ שַׁבַּתְּכֶֽם׃
An absolute sabbath it is for you (hoo, masculine singular), and you shall afflict yourselves on the ninth of the month in the evening, from evening to evening you shall keep your sabbath.
Here, the “sabbath of sabbaths/absolute sabbath” is in the masculine. In this mention of sabbath, the Torah tells us the specific date and time at which this ritual is supposed to take place. It is outlined specifically, without any doubt or room for human discretion (leaving aside, for the moment, the question of when “evening” begins).
According to the Meshech Chochma, this subtle grammatical shift emphasizes for us the difference between these two parts of how Yom Kippur is constructed. There are observances about which there was human (rabbinic) discretion, and observances legislated directly by the Torah itself. The use of the feminine or masculine construct signals to us this distinction.
Let’s return now to מסר זה הכתוב חכמים, the verse passed down authority to the Sages. This is a remarkable conception of human involvement and discernment in the adjudication of Jewish law (a topic I also touched on in parshat Tazria).
Yom Kippur is one of the most important days in the Jewish calendar. The rituals we perform on that day are weighted so heavily that the Torah itself says that anyone who does not sufficiently perform affliction will be “cut off from their kin” and will “perish from the midst of his people” (Vayikra 23:29-30). And yet, even so, the ultimate discretion for what that performance looks like is granted by the Torah to a group of mortals and is still granted Torah-level authority. This is an enormous amount of trust placed in the hands of the rabbis. Had they fumbled it, they would have been putting the entire Jewish people in divine danger.
It is of course also important that this concept is employed only sparingly. In the vast majority of cases, the Torah is assumed to be adjudicating law directly, not through a human intermediary. This passing of authority is rare, but still belies a deep trust that the law was being passed down to caring hands.
This raises an interesting question about verses in the Torah that are seemingly vague or general, especially when that verse seems to be commanding us to perform, or not perform, specific actions. How should we approach these verses that ask something of us when that thing is not clear?
Take, for example, the prohibitions of Shabbat. In Shemot, we are told:
וְי֨וֹם֙ הַשְּׁבִיעִ֔֜י שַׁבָּ֖֣ת ׀ לַיהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑֗יךָ לֹֽ֣א־תַעֲשֶׂ֣֨ה כׇל־מְלָאכָ֜֡ה
But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. You shall do no melacha. (Shemot 20:10)
That last word, melacha, is often translated as work, labor, task, or creative activity. However one decides to translate it, the specific melachot that are prohibited here are not entirely clear.5 One potential explanation, as we find in BT Shabbat 49b, is that the specific melachot are derived from the labors of the mishkan.
In any event, our concept of מסר זה הכתוב חכמים is not explicitly employed here in a case where it very well could have been, and even though some of its underlying principles might still be at play in the rabbinic understanding of melacha.
One could read this and say that Shabbat is more important than Yom Kippur, and for that reason, human discretion was not explicitly granted in the same way. The main problem with this reading, of course, is that our very verse in Vayikra calls Yom Kippur שבת שבתון, a sabbath of sabbaths! That can’t be the solution.
At the end of the day, I’m not quite sure exactly how these three particular cases (cf. footnote 4) qualified to be given the status of מסר זה הכתוב חכמים, but I still think that contrasting the case of melacha can help us understand the relative weight of how our concept is used for Yom Kippur.
I hope that in seeing this comment of the Meshech Chochma, and perhaps in being introduced to מסר זה הכתוב חכמים for the first time (as I was just a few days ago!), we can reflect upon the explicitly human role that has played so prominently in the development of core rituals. Fasting on Yom Kippur--probably one of the most well-known Jewish practices and one that is observed widely across the Jewish world (when medically appropriate)--was granted to us through joint divine-human authority and mediation.
But along with that trust comes a deep responsibility to care for those traditions to which our ancestors were given discretion. Just as the Torah granted trust to the rabbis, those rabbis have passed down to us a tradition that also requires care, commitment, and sensitivity. We may not have been granted the same type of authority as those rabbis, but these texts lay now in our hands.
What a grand responsibility for our lives, our practice, and our deep connection to sacred texts. Shabbat shalom.
This is a difficult phrase to translate. Here, I’ve used Robert Alter’s translation. JPS translates it as “a sabbath of complete rest.”
Vayikra 23:28 as well, but with a reference to the term Yom HaKippurim, as opposed to “sabbath of sabbaths.
Thank you to R’ Aryeh Klapper, who both taught me the specific functional meaning of this phrase, and for helping with translation as always. R’ Klapper also has a source sheet on this concept, which you can find here.
In addition to our case, the concept is employed with regard to the prohibitions of Chol HaMoed (BT Chagigah 18a) and the laws of one’s firstborn animal (Bechorot 26b).
Cf. Mishnah Shabbat 7:2 for the list of 39 melachot as articulated by our Sages.