Parashat Vayikra (5761)

With God's help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath of Parashat Vayikra, 5761

Sin and Atonement: Is Jewish Law Mechanistic?

In our portion the book of sacrifices begins, namely the Book of Leviticus. In Jewish law there are several types of sacrifices, among them

sacrifices brought as a freewill offering, obligatory sacrifices of the community and of the individual, and sacrifices that are brought

for atonement. In the Torah there are two intermediate categories of transgression: inadvertence and compulsion. An inadvertent transgression

is a transgression committed in ignorance, for example: a person who traps an animal on the Sabbath and does not know that today is the Sabbath

or who does not know that trapping is forbidden on the Sabbath. A transgression under compulsion is a transgression committed out of lack of

choice, for example under threat to one's life (a threat from a person with a gun, or the ‘threat’ of a

dangerous illness). Sacrifices of atonement, such as a sin offering, are brought only for inadvertent transgressions, as is stated

in our portion: “If a person sins unintentionally in any of the things that the Lord has commanded not to be done…” (Leviticus 4:2).

The Sages discuss why an inadvertent transgression requires a sacrifice, and more generally why we must seek atonement after committing

inadvertent transgressions. A transgression under compulsion, for example, does not require a sacrifice for atonement, since it is not regarded

as a transgression at all. An inadvertent transgression, by contrast, is regarded as a transgression, and we must bring a sacrifice in order

to gain atonement for it. There are various explanations for this, such as the view that a person who commits an inadvertent transgression is culpable

because he ought to have acted with greater attentiveness. All these explanations attempt to clarify that an inadvertent offender

is culpable for the transgression he committed, unlike an offender acting under compulsion.

Beyond all these explanations, there is an additional assumption here to which we should pay attention. In

‘moral’ offenses (such as theft, harming another, and the like), it is clear that even if a person committed the offense inadvertently

the harm to the other person has been done, and therefore there is clearly something here that must be repaired. By contrast, one might have said

that with respect to offenses between a person and God this would not be the case, since ostensibly no one is harmed by them.

Offenses of this kind, such as eating pork, do not harm any person, and one who commits them

inadvertently has also not rebelled against any divine command, since he did not even know that such a command

existed. The claim that an inadvertent transgression too counts as a transgression requiring atonement assumes that even an act

of offense between a person and God committed inadvertently has caused damage that requires repair. The nature of this damage

may be interpreted in accordance with one’s conception of the essence of the commandments in general.

The prevalent approach regarding the essence of the commandments assumes that they have a dual dimension. The assumption is

that the commandments are not arbitrary, and that every commandment rests on some underlying reason. According to this conception,

eating pork, for example, impairs the spiritual strata of reality, and for this reason the Torah forbids

it. This approach maintains that one who fulfills a commandment has both repaired something in the world and fulfilled the will of

God, whereas one who commits a transgression has both damaged something in the world and violated the will of God.

According to this understanding, one may say that in an inadvertent transgression there is indeed no dimension of disobedience, since

the offender was entirely unaware of the existence of a command, yet the blemish in the world still exists. One who ate pork

without knowing that it was pork did not violate the will of God, for he had no idea that God wanted him not to

eat that meat, yet the very act of eating impairs some spiritual layer of the world. According to

this conception, the sacrifice brought for inadvertent transgressions is intended to ‘erase’ from the world the blemish that was created

in it as a result of the transgression that was committed.

This conception raises a considerable difficulty. A transgression under compulsion, as noted, does not require a sacrifice for atonement.

According to the explanation above, it is not clear why the offender acting under compulsion is not obligated in atonement, for after all there has been

here a transgression that damaged the world, even though there was no element of rebellion (disobedience). Similar to what

we saw regarding an inadvertent transgression, a transgression under compulsion too should have required some form of atonement.

A possible explanation is that compulsion is not an act of transgression at all. A person who commits an act because of a threat to

his life has not committed a transgression at all, and therefore no blemish in the world has been caused. If the threat to his life

comes from another person, then it may be that the one issuing the threat is the one considered to have damaged the world, since he is regarded

as the one who performed the transgression. If the threat to life is the result of an illness, for example, then no

transgression has been committed here, and therefore no atonement is required.

If so, the picture sketched above is not so simple. Until now we assumed that the degree of culpability in a transgression

has implications only on the plane of command and not on the plane of damage to the world. The assumption was that eating

pork without awareness of the prohibition does not constitute rebellion against God, but the act of eating in itself

damages the world. Lack of culpability does not affect the damage in the world, but only the degree of rebellion

contained in this act. In light of what we have said here, we see that culpability affects the damage in the world as well.

In the case of a transgression under compulsion, where there is no culpability at all, not only is there no rebellion against God but

no blemish in the world is created either.

Our conclusion is that it is not the eating of pork that damages the world, but the transgression involved in eating pork. To be sure,

it is true that eating pork is not merely rebellion against God's command, but also creates

a blemish in the world. However, our conclusion is that it is not the eating of pork in and of itself that damages the world in an

automatic way. The transgression involved in eating pork is what damages it. Even according to the dual-dimension approach

described above, Jewish law is not entirely mechanistic.

It is clear that atonement for transgressions operates in a parallel manner as well. The damage caused by transgressions in the world is not

mechanistic, and likewise the erasure of the blemish through bringing a sacrifice is not an automatic atonement,

a mechanistic one. The dimensions of the commandment involved in bringing the sacrifice—that is, the intention and repentance that accompany it—

are what enable the sacrifice to effect atonement.

Have a peaceful Sabbath

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