Shabbat Shemini Atzeret - 5784

Shabbat Shemini Atzeret - 5784

Rabbi Hal Miller The one who said of his father and mother, "I have not seen him", his brothers he did not recognize and his children he did not know, for they kept Your statement and Your covenant they would preserve. [Devarim 33:9] Our verse is referring to the slaying by the tribe of Levi of some three thousand of the Jewish people in response to the golden calf episode involving Aharon. But exactly who did they kill? Rashi begins by noting that at the time, Moshe called for "Whoever is for God, to me" and that "all of the Levites gathered to me". Without asking our question directly, Rashi answers it. If all of the Levites stepped up to Moshe, they would have no Levites to kill, and our verse about parents and siblings makes no sense. Based on Sifri, Rashi explains that maternal relatives might not have been of the tribe of Levi, and had they been among the sinners, each Levi might have to kill such a relative. This would include maternal half-siblings, even the mother as well. He then says it is impossible to explain "his father" literally. Rashi does not note it but we know that a grandfather is often called 'father', so the verse could be applied to a maternal grandfather. Ramban comments that up to here, the Torah usually uses "Levites" to refer to the sons of Aharon, which would mean that all the Kohanim stepped up to Moshe, but not the rest of the tribe. Ramban says that this verse is where the Torah begins to use "Levites" to mean the whole tribe. These explanations answer the question, but they do not explain how the Levites were any more able to ignore their maternal familial relationships than they were their paternal ones and to go about killing relatives, let alone non-relatives of the other tribes. On this, Rav Hirsch tells us, "in their zeal to stand up for God they forgot all human ties and carried out His command to execute justice and save the nation." Nechama Leibowitz asks about this zeal, since Yaakov had condemned Levi (and Shimon) for this very thing in Shechem. She explains that the very zeal that Yaakov condemned "was now extolled by Moshe. This extreme quality can be used for either destructive or constructive purposes."