Halachot Shonot

by R. Gidon Rothstein

This Year’s Glimpse of Halachot Shonot of Aruch HaShulchan He-Atid

For a while now, I make a practice of looking for overarching messages in selections of text. It’s what animated my book The Judaism of the Poskim, the idea that if I took a large and random collection of responsa, illuminating commonalities would emerge. Critics of the book claimed my selection wasn’t random enough.

I disagreed there, but the point is important as we look back at this year’s discussions of the Halachot Shonot of AHH (Aruch HaShulchan He-Atid, his codification of laws relevant when we again have a fully restored Jewish law). We looked at this section of AHH eight times this year, three related to nazir (when a Jew decides to vow to take on this status, obligating him/her to refrain from haircuts, tumah-producing contact with the deceased, and all grape products), two about arachin (a special version of donating money to the Beit HaMikdash), and two regarding the Sanhedrin.

I did see some running themes, but I want to be careful at the outset to remind us we are working with insufficient material to draw any broad conclusions.

The Power of Human Speech

The power the Torah gives our speech has long fascinated me, and impacted the halachot in our selections, too. The whole idea of nedarim, including nazir, gives human beings a power we would have thought impossible. Remember, the Torah specifically disallows adding to the Torah, yet fully permits vows, which can add a great deal to Jewish law, can reshape our experience of halachah. (If someone takes fifteen vows to do various activities, and another fifteen to refrain from what is permitted, that Jew has just expanded Torah law by thirty obligations!).

With nazir, even more so than regular nedarim, we saw resistance and hesitance. AHH discouraged using nazir to express happiness or sadness over some turn of events (usually shown by committing to the nezirut al tenai, on condition). Using it as a means to an end is risky, could lead to the person regretting and even violating it. The only positive motive for becoming a nazir is the expectation it will enhance the person’s connection to God’s laws and values. Such nezirim reap the praise of the tradition.

Arachin is perhaps a kind of vow, as well, a verbal commitment to donate certain money for the upkeep of the Temple, phrased as the value of some person or item [for reasons never specified; I think it would be such as if a person/relative/friend was ill and saved, or achieved a positive milestone, and this was a way to celebrate]. Here again, saying the words creates mitzvah obligations, to give on time and not delay.

[Within this issue, AHH noted that the erech of people is set by age and gender, the erech of sedei achuzah, inheritance land in Israel, is fixed, fifty shekel for a beit kur. For animals or houses, a kohen determines the ordinary financial value. The value of people and land, in other words, operates on a different scale. It reminds me of the beginning of the Torah, where Adam is taken from the adamah, where the sin of eating the Etz Ha-Da’at leads to the adamah’s punishment as well, and the verse we read a few weeks ago, where the Torah likens people to trees of the field. The “market” value of people or of fields isn’t what the Torah cares about when it comes to arachin.]

Finally, the section on death penalties showed us words that could doom a person. Most prominently (in our selection, because we had a siman about it) the rebellious elder, who might be put to death for insisting on ruling at odds with the Sanhedrin, but also for the blasphemer, one of the only two sins for which the corpse is hanged (briefly) after death.

Not to mention avodah zarah, a worship of other powers which can be transgressed purely verbally (saying a certain power controls one’s life, even if not to the exclusion of God).

Perhaps banal because it is so well known, the extent of the impact the Torah gives our words continues to stimulate my interest.

The Complications of Uncertainty

Another theme that arose in each section, the value of being clear, and the difficulties of lack of clarity, led us down many difficult paths. With nazir, we spent what felt to me like a lot of time on how to reconcile commitments to nezirut that seemed to interfere with each other, how to do both or all. Beyond that, there was the question of how to reconstruct a nazir’s intent when s/he spoke without full transparency.

With arachin, we weren’t always sure what constituted ownership, since one can only dedicate items to the Beit HaMikdash if both the legal owner and in legal possession. There was also the issue of the tumtum or androginos, whose blurred gender meant such people could vow others’ erech, not their own.

The tortured path of the zaken mamrei, the rebellious elder, starts with a dispute about the law. The job of the Sanhedrin was to provide clarity and final rulings about the law, and the zaken mamrei interferes with that, by insisting on ruling as he thinks correct.

We also confronted a lack of clarity about Halachah le-Moshe mi-Sinai, some examples of which we saw in nazir discussions. Rambam claimed there never was disagreement about such laws, except he left us unclear on what he meant, since later writers pointed out seemingly obvious counterexamples.

Ensuing discussion and suggested resolutions aside, it reinforces the value of clarity.

The Search for Service

I hope I’m not reaching, but nazir and arachin both show Jews reaching for more than the Torah’s prescriptions in their search for closeness with God. The nazir feels the need to cut off parts of the human experience (personal grooming, end of life issues, and wine, what was and is, for many, a central avenue of enjoying life); the ma’arich seeks a way to add meaning to his/her donations to the Temple. Such people weren’t satisfied giving a hundred shekel, it had to be in recognition of… something (a life, a house, a field).

The Sanhedrin seems the antithesis, the source of certainty and specificity, except the examples we saw suggest another way to see it. Remember that a zaken mamrei only commits a capital crime if he rules against what the Sanhderin did; if he only says he thought and thinks the halachah should be otherwise, but agrees all have to now submit to the Sanhedrin, he’s not a zaken mamrei.

Similarly, while Rambam talks about there being no machloket when the Sanhedrin was around, it’s not clear they would rule on everything, to impose such unity of perspective. There seems room to recognize the Sanhedrin would leave some areas unresolved, accepting a range of practices. With the death penalty, for all the extensive list of what could incur it, we also know how easy it was to avoid it (such as by not committing the sin immediately after witnesses’ warning.)

There is, I suggest, a background hum of reminder that service of God wasn’t restricted to specific and exact laws and directions. With those that are specific (hear shofar, shake a lulav on Sukkot, for some upcoming examples), AHH showed us less defined elements of a life lived in service of our Creator.

We have much power, even with our words, to bring us closer to God even than what we would were we to limit ourselves to what is laid out specifically, a power AHH in Halachot Shonot shows us reason to know we must wield carefully and cautiously.