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Parshat Acharei Mot
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron

בס"ד

לשכנו תדרשו

Cleaving to the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

"ורחץ את בשרו במים ואחרי כן יבא אל המחנה"

"A pure heart may You create for me O God, and an upright spirit may You re-instill within me" (Tehilim 51).

These words, said by David in Tehilim in the famous chapter of repentance enlighten us to understand the connection between purity and spiritual cleanliness through repentance. Indeed the special day of Repentance, the Day of Atonement, is also the day that deals extensively with purification, as it says, "for on this day you will be atoned for to purify you from all your sins, before HaShem you shall be purified." Moreover, the high priest's service on this day involves firstly atoning for impurity within the Temple, for which purpose he enters the Holy of Holies numbers of times.

It is interesting to note that the atonement for this impurity within the Temple precedes the more general atonement for all the sins of Israel by the casting off of the Goat of Azazel in the Wilderness later (Halachically too the order here is mandatory). We may explain this by saying that the source of all this atonement through sacrifices stems from our connection to God through the Temple. When the channels to this "source of atonement" are "blocked" by impurity, as impurity means "blockage of channels" (see our issue p. Vayeshev 5773 on this at length), so the high priest must first atone for and purify these "channels" in order for general atonement to be achieved.

Today, in absence of the Temple, there continues to be atonement by the essence of this holy day, but only on condition of repentance by the effort of the individual who has sinned.  The combination of these two elements in purification, both human effort to be purified and the element of time in purification is a common theme throughout the laws of purity. In many cases an individual that needs purification must wait a period of time, in some cases 7 days, and with that also make human effort, such as dunking in a mikveh, giving an offering, etc., in order to be purified. Even in cases when the individual does not have to wait 7 days etc., dunking in the mikveh is in many cases still not sufficient. This individual too must at least wait till sunset, for till then he is rendered a "tvul yom", literally meaning,  "one who has dunked in the mikveh that day (yom) and is awaiting sunset" for full purification. Halachically, a "tvul yom" has a status of a semi-pure person, allowing him to conduct in certain matters just as a pure person, while in other matters he is rendered impure.

One of the cut-off lines for the "tvul yom" is the sixth holiest section of the Temple (as in continuation of our on-going study of sections of the Temple in our issues this year on the book of Vayikra), called the "Ezrat Nashim"/ "Women's Section", considered off-limits even to such a "tvul yom".  This section is the outer-most section of the Temple complex itself, before the more external sections of the Temple Mount and Sanctified Jerusalem, and therefore we may gain more understanding into why a more "complete/whole" level of purity is needed here.

This "complete/whole" level of purity needed for the more "house-like" complex of the Temple itself also seems to hint to the "arteries/veins of Hebron" operating in the "brain of Jerusalem", as we depicted in the past that Hebron can be compared to a heart while Jerusalem acts as the brain of the Holy Land in this analogy. Yakov our "Complete Father" whose offspring were completely chosen for the Jewish People is buried in Hebron which itself means unity/completeness. Furthermore, it is Yakov who called the Temple Mount "house" as if envisioning the "house-like" structure of the Temple meant for the "completely pure".

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Real Stories from the Holy Land #168

"One day, for about a half an hour I was particularly involved with a learning project called "Tzurba Merabanan" through study and writing notes on my learning. Just then, I suddenly received a text-message asking me a question about this very learning project "Tzurba Merabanan" (I spend usually about 10 minutes a day on this project).  (I.G)

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