Q&A: A Priest Becoming Impure for His Wife
A Priest Becoming Impure for His Wife
Question
Good evening, honorable Rabbi. This past Sabbath we had a discussion in the yeshiva, and I’d be glad if the Rabbi would share his opinion. In the Torah portion, the Torah mentions those for whom a priest is permitted to become impure, and it writes that he may become impure for his close relative: his father, his mother, his son, his daughter, his brother, and his sister. The Torah does not mention that a priest may become impure for his wife. But the Jewish law is that a priest does become impure for his wife, as the Talmud says in Yevamot. We had an argument over whether the rabbinic exposition that “his close relative” means his wife is the plain meaning of the Torah’s words, or not the plain meaning. If it is not the plain meaning, then how could the Sages have added his wife against the Torah’s explicit words?
This morning one of the guys sent us in the group a Torah thought that Rabbi Sagi Mazuz wrote on WhatsApp relating to our discussion. An older kollel fellow who learns with us told us this is heresy. I’m attaching the WhatsApp message for the Rabbi, and I’d be glad if the Rabbi would say whether these seem like correct ideas to him.
“Interpretive revolutions (?) of the Sages in the Torah – a priest’s impurity for his wife / on the Torah portion Emor
Halbertal has a wonderful book called Interpretive Revolutions in the Making. In that book he brings a series of examples in which, in his opinion, the Sages used expositions in order to adapt the Torah’s words to values that were renewed and changed from the time the Torah was given to their own time. Halbertal is uncertain whether the Sages knew that the Torah’s intent was different, and nevertheless interpreted against the Torah’s intent, or whether they were convinced that it was impossible that the Torah said something that stands in opposition to the values they believed in, and therefore the plain meaning had to be pressed in order to fit reason. In my opinion, to accuse the Sages of interpreting against the Torah’s intent is casting aspersions without sufficient proof, and the matter should be dropped, and I won’t elaborate here.
The best-known example is the stubborn and rebellious son, where according to the plain meaning of the Torah one must execute a child who is a glutton and a drunkard and does not listen to his parents. The Sages, because of their values, could not imagine that the Torah would command executing a child, and therefore they offered various expositions until they completely uprooted this law and established: ‘There never was and never will be [a stubborn and rebellious son]; why then was it written? Study it and receive reward.’
In our Torah portion there is a very strong example of such an interpretive revolution (which Halbertal does not mention). Our portion opens with the prohibition on priests becoming impure through the dead:
And the Lord said to Moses: Speak to the priests, the sons of Aaron, and say to them: None shall become impure for the dead among his people. Except for his close relative that is near to him: for his mother, and for his father, and for his son, and for his daughter, and for his brother; and for his virgin sister, who is near to him, who has not been to a man, for her he may become impure. He shall not become impure as a husband among his people, to profane himself.
The Torah stresses: a priest may become impure only for his blood relatives: his father and mother, his brother and sister (the virgin), his son and daughter. What about his wife? The Torah emphasizes: ‘He shall not become impure as a husband among his people, to profane himself,’ and as Rashbam explains: ‘No husband among the priestly people may become impure for his wife.’ But even if we explain verse 4 differently (see, for example, Hizkuni), from the fact that the Torah listed all the people for whom a priest may become impure and did not mention that he may become impure for his wife, it is clear that a priest may not become impure for his wife.
(As my friend Rabbi Avi Klementinovsky noted), in Ezekiel as well (chapter 44, verse 25) there is a listing of the people for whom a priest may mourn, and there too all the relatives are mentioned: father, mother, brother, sister, son, daughter—but it is not mentioned that he may become impure for his wife.
One can suppose that the Torah (in its plain sense) did not permit a priest to become impure for his wife because in biblical times the bond between husband and wife was often ‘technical’; it was common for a man to marry several wives, and marriage was almost a technical arrangement in which the husband supported the wife and the wife in return took care of things in the home, including raising the children. For such a relationship, we would not permit a priest to become impure.
In the time of the Sages, the bond between husband and wife became more personal, conjugal, and familial, and therefore the Sages could not imagine that the Torah would not permit a priest to become impure for his wife. So they expounded (Yevamot 90b) that when the Torah says that a priest becomes impure for ‘his close relative that is near to him,’ it means that he becomes impure for his wife. In other words, instead of reading the verse as saying that a priest becomes impure ‘for his close relative that is near to him,’ and then a colon, followed by a listing of what that close relative is—his mother, father, son, daughter, etc.—the Sages understood that the phrase ‘his close relative that is near to him’ means his wife. This explanation is strained, since in Ezekiel the phrase ‘his close relative that is near’ is not mentioned, and also because in the plain sense ‘his close relative that is near to him’ is a heading for the list that follows (his father, mother, etc.). It is also somewhat difficult that in verse 4 the Torah emphasizes: ‘He shall not become impure as a husband among his people’! However, this verse can be explained differently, as the Sages expounded: ‘There is a husband who does become impure and there is a husband who does not become impure. How so? He becomes impure for his fit wife, and he does not become impure for his disqualified wife.’
Apparently we will never be able to decide whether the Torah’s intent was as the simple reading implies or as the Sages expounded it. In any case, this phenomenon is fascinating in my eyes and shows the tremendous power of the Sages in shaping the Torah.
For those who want to go further: Maimonides writes in chapter 2 that the fact that a husband becomes impure for his wife is from rabbinic law. That implies that he understood, like us, that this is a change made by the Sages. Apparently he understood the passage in Yevamot as merely an asmachta. The reason they enacted this may be because they enacted that a husband inherits his wife, and if the husband inherits his wife then he is obligated to bury her. His words are even more far-reaching than ours, because according to him the Sages uprooted through positive action the prohibition that forbids a priest to become impure for his wife. And he would also have to explain that the passage in Yevamot is only a mere asmachta. According to our approach, the Sages thought this was the correct interpretation in the Torah, and there is no need to say that they uprooted anything through positive action, nor to say that the passage is only an asmachta.”
Many thanks to the Rabbi, and sorry for taking up the Rabbi’s time
Answer
I don’t understand how this exposition is different from any other exposition. Except that here the result is anchored in a word in the Torah itself, “his close relative,” and therefore there is room to say that here the exposition reveals the plain meaning. Rabbi Shimshon of Kinon wrote that there are hermeneutical rules that are considered as though they are explicitly written in the Torah, and they are not regarded as interpretive rules proper (which is why they were not brought by Rabbi Ishmael, even though they appear among the 32 rules of Rabbi Eliezer son of Rabbi Yose the Galilean).
I don’t see what heresy they found here. Halbertal’s second possibility is not reasonable (that they went against the Torah’s intent). The simple understanding is the first possibility: they did so because it is not reasonable that the Torah said to do something against their values. But in our case, neither of those possibilities is reasonable. The Sages included his wife because that seemed to them to be the meaning of the word “his close relative,” not because of newly emerging values or anything of that sort.
Discussion on Answer
The comparison to the Hebrew Bible is not necessarily correct. There are quite a few contradictions between the Torah and the rest of the Hebrew Bible (for example, “Fathers shall not be put to death because of sons” — whether regarding the sins of sons or the testimony of sons). The whole addition “except for his close relative” is seemingly superfluous. Headings are usually expounded precisely because they are superfluous. So the question whether this is plain meaning or exposition can be viewed in several ways, as I wrote. Even in the language of the Mishnah, where they are certainly not expounding but interpreting, headings are interpreted (“four primary categories” — why do I need the count? “the common denominator” — what does it come to include?).
That is what the Torah came to say when it said, “He shall not become impure as a husband among his people, to profane himself” — that a husband may not become impure for his wife, and if he does he profanes his priesthood.
So it’s not only that his wife doesn’t appear; the Torah also explicitly rules it out.
That is also very clear according to Maimonides, that a husband does not inherit his wife by Torah law.
By the way, regarding a husband’s inheritance, the exposition there is clearly not the plain meaning. It expounds “and you shall give his inheritance to his close relative” as if it said “and you shall give the inheritance of his close relative to him.”
And from both of them you see that “his close relative” means his wife — this is a full-fledged exposition, not the intent of the verses in their plain meaning.
That the Sages uprooted not one or two commandments but most of the Torah is obvious and well known.
The reason for this is unknown.
It may be that this was done in order to prevent natural heretics with supra-divine morality from switching to other religions or founding new ones.
Avi, look at all the midrashim and commentators there, and you’ll see that this is not the plain meaning of the verse. As for Maimonides, in his view anything derived from exposition is rabbinic law.
This exposition is different from other expositions because here there is no inclusion derived from a word or something similar, but rather a very improbable literal interpretation. There are two reasons it is very improbable: a. The Torah would not have gone out of its way to write “his close relative that is near to him” instead of writing “his wife.” b. In the haftarah (Ezekiel chapter 44 verse 25) there appears the list of the priest’s relatives for whom he is permitted to become impure, and it does not mention there that he is permitted to become impure for his wife, and there too it does not say “his close relative that is near to him.” So even if there were some basis to say that “his close relative that is near to him” means his wife, in Ezekiel we see that a priest has no permission to become impure for his wife. So unless we say there is a contradiction between the Torah and the prophet, we should explain it according to the simple meaning, that “his close relative” is a heading for the list that is stated immediately afterward.