EUPHEMISMS
The Jewish people were governed by four sources of authority: The monarchy, judiciary (the Sanhedrin), priesthood and prophecy, all of which are discussed in this week’s parsha. Each of these institutions had specific requirements to qualify as a member. Two institutions, the Sanhedrin and the priesthood, had as a peculiar requirement that their physical bodies should not be blemished or defective.
This requirement flies against every notion modern people have of not discriminating against the physically impaired. Our society has, correctly, shied away from using insensitive terms to describe a person who lacks certain physical attributes. We use terms such as “physically challenged” instead of the crass epithet, “cripple.”
Indeed, the Talmud was the first to recognize the need to employ a euphemism to describe a blind person. The term is sagi nahor. Literally, it means “great-light.” Indeed, in rabbinic, as well as in modern Hebrew, the term used for “euphemism” is sagi nahor. Chassidic thought explains that the term is accurate because blindness is actually the result of a person having too much energy for his physical body to contain. Thus, a person who lacks sight might have more powerful insight. A person who cannot see physically often exhibits greater perception than those who can see.
In addition, Jewish law is strict with regard to the way we speak and think about others. The Talmud discusses how the Torah goes out of its way to avoid writing something disparaging about a non-kosher animal; yet, the same Torah excludes physically challenged people from both serving in the Temple and serving on the Sanhedrin!
THE BAIS HAMIKDASH: A MODEL OF PERFECT ALIGNMENT
The explanation regarding the Priesthood and their service in the Holy Temple is that it relates to the uniqueness of the Bais HaMikdash as a place where the physical and spiritual worlds worked in tandem and in perfect alignment. The former was a reflection of the latter. While the rest of the world suffers from a misalignment of the physical and the spiritual, the Holy Temple manifested a world in which the two are mirror images of each other.
By having only Priests who did not possess physical defects serve in the Bais HaMikdash, the Torah is demonstrating what an ideal world is supposed to look like. We are so accustomed to seeing mismatched realities, where the good suffer and the wicked prosper, that we’ve accepted that as normal and call that condition “reality.” Anything different is suspect. For example, if a righteous person is rich and prosperous, some people become suspicious. Where did he get the money from? He must have done something illegal or unethical to attain such affluence. We almost revel in the poverty of our sages and wince at great rabbis enjoying the benefits of this world.
In the true reality things match. While reality is distorted in exile, we must recognize that the distortion is an exile phenomenon and we must never confuse it with the ideal.
Especially now, when we are on the threshold of the Messianic Age, which will begin with the building of an even more glorious Bais HaMikdash than the first two, we must condition ourselves to the reality that true normalcy is the state of the world in the days of Moshiach, particularly, the way things were in the Bais HaMikdash. Normalcy is defined as when the physical and the spiritual are identical twins.
SANHEDRIN IN THE TEMPLE
While this may adequately explain the requirement of the priests’ unblemished state for eligibility to work in the Bais HaMikdash—a place of perfection—how do we explain a similar requirement for the members of the Sanhedrin?
The simple answer is that the Sanhedrin too resided in the Bais HaMikdash, in the section called the “Lishkas Hagazis-Hewn Chamber.” Moreover, when the Sanhedrin left the Hewn Chamber near the end of the Second Temple era, they lost some of their judicial powers, in particular, the ability to impose capital punishment. It was their connection to the Temple that was their source of empowerment. Since they had an association with the Temple, with its concomitant expression of perfection and harmony, they too needed physical characteristics paralleling and reflecting their spiritual attributes.
However, one can still question the very premise of this answer. Why did the Sanhedrin have to function within the precincts of the Temple? What connection is there between rendering justice and the Holy Temple where one served G-d through the various offerings?
THE DIVINE IMPRIMATUR
To answer this question and to better grasp the emphasis on physical perfection for members of the Sanhedrin, it is important that we understand the role of the Sanhedrin and what distinguished it from other lower courts which were not situated in the Temple.
The Sanhedrin served a dual function:
First, it was the ultimate authority on matters of Jewish law. The laws of Judaism were transmitted primarily through the Sanhedrin; when they ruled on a matter of law their decision was final.
Second, they represented the totality of the Jewish nation. The collective erudition and authority of the 71 Sages that constituted the Sanhedrin represented and channeled the entire Jewish people.
With respect to the second function we can understand why the Sanhedrin had to reside in the Bais HaMikdash: The power to channel all of Israel derived from the Bais HaMikdash itself. The Divine presence that rested there had the unifying power to incorporate all of the people under one roof.
However, even with regard to its first function, as the transmitters of Torah knowledge and supreme arbiters of Jewish law they needed to be located in the Temple. It was the Temple that gave the Divine imprimatur to their rulings.
HUMAN LOGIC AND DIVINE DIRECTION
To be sure, when they ruled on a matter of Jewish law they had to use all of their intellectual acumen. Every decision on their part had to be rooted in Torah precedent, and the analytic tools they applied to interpreting the Torah and applying it to new situations were handed down from G-d at Mount Sinai and transmitted from generation to generation. They could not, however, rely on prophecy or any extra-logical method at reaching a decision.
When a member of the Sanhedrin, or for that matter a rabbinic authority today, reaches a decision in matters of Jewish law, he is functioning as an integral part of G-d’s Torah. The omniscient G-d knew that when He gave the Torah to the Jewish people they would interpret and apply it with the finite powers of the human intellect. Indeed, that was G-d’s intention and He knew what the outcome would be. The result was already part of, and implicit in, G-d’s original communication at Sinai.
However, even the best of human minds could err. As brilliant as the members of the Sanhedrin were, they were fallible and capable of making mistakes that would not channel G-d’s true intention. Indeed, there is a section of the Torah (at the end of Parshas VaYikra) and an entire tractate of the Talmud (Tractate Horiyos) that are devoted precisely to the possibility that the Sanhedrin might err and cause the nation to transgress in reliance on their flawed decision. This tractate discusses how they would need to go about rectifying and atoning for their mistake.
Notwithstanding the possibility of error on their part, the Sanhedrin was usually able to channel G-d’s intent in their legal rulings, even to the extent of meting out the death penalty. The license to take a life, an irreversible act, came from their unique ability to have their minds in sync with G-d’s “mind.” In other words, their greatest intellectual abilities would not suffice; they needed to be tuned in to a spiritual frequency which connected them to the source of the Torah’s knowledge. They could plug in to that frequency only in the place that G-d chose for the two worlds, the heavenly and the earthly, to meet; the Bais HaMikdash.
So, the Torah was given to humans and, as the Talmud states, “Torah is not in Heaven.” While the judges had to use their minds and not rely on prophecy, their ability to choose the right direction required close proximity to the Divine. This they acquired by virtue of their presence in the Bais HaMikdash.
The members of the Sanhedrin personified the ideal of the meeting of the two worlds. There was a perfect symmetry between Divine intellect and their corporeal minds. This symbiotic relationship was manifested by the perfection of their physical properties as a mirror reflection of their spiritual properties.
SNIFFING JUSTICE!
One of the features of the Final Redemption will be the reconstitution of the Sanhedrin along with the rebuilding of the Bais HaMikdash. It follows that in these last days of exile we ought to prepare ourselves for the Sanhedrin phenomenon. This demands that we devote ourselves to Torah study in a manner that connects the two worlds.
Frequently, when we study Torah we can be swept up with the brilliance of the ideas and delight in the intellectual feasts it provides. Torah study is exciting and the greatest delight. King David devoted the longest Psalm (Psalm 119) to extol the beauty of Torah and his passion for its knowledge. However, King David also possessed another quality. When King Saul was told about David’s virtues he was unimpressed until he was told “and G-d is with him.” King Saul understood that to mean that David was not only a towering scholar, but that his views always prevailed. This meant that not only did he possess the requisite intellectual conditions for Torah study, but, in addition, there was a perfect symmetry between his knowledge and the Divine level of knowledge. He was like the Sanhedrin which resided in the Bais HaMikdash.
One of the qualifications of Moshiach is that his power of judgment is his ability to “sniff” righteousness. Moshiach embodies the same fusion of the Higher and lower dimensions of Torah, reminiscent of the Sanhedrin.
Our role in preparing for the Redemption is similar. We must make ourselves receptive to the Divinity of Torah so that our minds work in tandem with G-d’s mind.