Haftorah Parashat Emor
Yehezkel 44;15-31
Yehezkel, the Future Beit haMikdash and How It Explains Modern Orthodoxy
This week’s haftarah focuses on how the Kohanim of the future will conduct themselves, paralleling the parsha’s discussion of the rules for priests. The challenge of these chapters of Yehezkel is that they portray a Beit haMikdash and priestly society that differs in important ways from what we see portrayed in the Torah and Sefer Melachim, where Shlomo haMelech’s Beit haMikdash is described.
Commentators approach this divergence in two main ways. Rashi, echoing the Gemara, tries to reconcile Yehezkel’s words with halacha, as recorded in the Midreshei Halachah, Mishnah, and Gemara. This is most obviously necessary for those pesukim where Yehezkel seems to prophesy that the 3rd Beit haMikdash will violate well-accepted halachot. Since we hold as a fundamental belief that the Torah given to Moshe on Har Sinai will not change, we cannot imagine Yehezkel predicting an abrogation of those laws.
Even there, I would note, we can also imagine instances where we would not have to adopt Rashi’s view (which sometimes involve forced readings of the text). There are occasions when later events reveal to us that an apparently unequivocal halachah had room for adaptation. One famous example is Ramban’s view of our calendar, where we use the names of the months that the Babylonians had used, despite there being a Torah requirement to base our calendar on making the month of the Exodus the first of the year. In his view, events showed that the Torah actually meant that we should have the calendar reflect our various redemptions, not just the first one from Egypt.
It might be possible, then, that when the 3rd Temple is built, the Sanhedrin will discover that Yehezkel’s words don’t actually contradict the earlier halachah as much as show a new range of permissibility that was always latent in that halachah. Within the Rashi/Gemara view, then, we might see Yehezkel as fully within the old halachah, or as demonstrating new room for what the Torah meant.
Radak: The Rules of the Game Will Change
I find Radak’s approach more textually compelling while also more theologically challenging. Radak assumes Yehezkel is regularly noting deep differences of practice between the 3rd Temple and the first two. Some of those are fairly banal, such as that the dimensions of the Third will be larger than the others.
This is not so much of a problem since Shlomo haMelech’s Mikdash was much larger than the Mishkan in the desert, already showing that the dimensions were not fixed numbers, but proportions. I have long wondered whether even Yehezkel’s dimensions would have to be expanded in a future Beit haMikdash, just because the world population (even the Jewish population, despite our many troubles over the years) has expanded so much.
Numerous sources suggest that the Beit haMikdash simply didn’t service all that many people on any particular day. The Mishnah in Pesahim speaks of offering the Pesah sacrifice in three groups of at least thirty animals in a group, and the Gemara speaks of years when they could not get that many. Granting that as many as fifty people might have shared one lamb, that number represents only 4500 people. Assuming in a good year you had three groups of 100 animals, that’s only 15,000 people. While I would never want to underestimate the possible apathy of world Jewry, I still gotta imagine that a future Beit haMikdash would have more than 15,000 people coming to Yerushalayim for Korban Pesah. So, it seems to me, it’d have to be a lot bigger than it was.
Another area where there could be change, and that applies to most of the examples in this week’s haftarah, is if the people of the time would voluntarily accept such change upon themselves. If, as Radak reads it, the Kohanim of the future would voluntarily decide to only marry either women who have never been married before, or the widows of other Kohanim, there would be no problem with that (as long as they didn’t confuse it with Torah law, a bal tosif problem), other than wondering why they would want to, why they would see value in this.
Roles Can Change Over Time, Within Traditional Models
Since I find Radak so much closer to what the text seems to mean, if I can find a theologically sound reading of the text within his framework I would prefer it. Here, Yehezkel refers to the Kohanim both as Leviyim and as Benei Zadok, the first of the Kohanim to actually serve in a Mikdash.
The names support other aspects of the haftarah that suggest that in the future the Mikdash, for all its importance, would be largely separate from the ordinary life of most people. If so, while priests will still perform the service, they might see other aspects of their job as more central to their identity, such as their teaching the nation (a Levitical duty as well). Zadok, who started life only as the teacher kind of Kohen, but then became part of a Mikdash, serves as a model of bridging the two worlds.
The Separateness of the Kohanim
While this would place the priests more frequently among the people, their strong connection to the Mikdash—both professionally and as an identity issue—might instill in the Kohanim the need to maintain a distance from the regular populace, such as by marrying only women who have never been married, or who are firmly within and accustomed to the Kohen lifestyle. Yehezkel’s stress on Kohanim having no share in Israel of their own, their reliance on God’s gifts for their sustenance points in the same direction.
Rashi explains the closing verse, which says that Kohanim cannot eat unslaughtered animals or birds (a puzzle, since neither can the rest of us), as necessary because when the Kohanim are in the Mikdash, some sacrifices are in fact killed in a way not ordinarily permitted. This comment, too, stresses the challenge the future Kohanim will face, of knowing when they are separate from other Jews and when they are the same. A challenge we can all hope to struggle with, and to help them reach conclusions on, soon, speedily, in our days. Shabbat Shalom.
YEHEZKEL 44
[15] But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me, and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord GOD:
[16] They shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come near to my table, to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge.
[17] And it shall come to pass, that when they enter in at the gates of the inner court, they shall be clothed with linen garments; and no wool shall come upon them, whiles they minister in the gates of the inner court, and within.
[18] They shall have linen bonnets upon their heads, and shall have linen breeches upon their loins; they shall not gird themselves with any thing that causeth sweat.
[19] And when they go forth into the utter court, even into the utter court to the people, they shall put off their garments wherein they ministered, and lay them in the holy chambers, and they shall put on other garments; and they shall not sanctify the people with their garments.
[20] Neither shall they shave their heads, nor suffer their locks to grow long; they shall only poll their heads.
[21] Neither shall any priest drink wine, when they enter into the inner court.
[22] Neither shall they take for their wives a widow, nor her that is put away: but they shall take maidens of the seed of the house of Israel, or a widow that had a priest before.
[23] And they shall teach my people the difference between the holy and profane, and cause them to discern between the unclean and the clean.
[24] And in controversy they shall stand in judgment; and they shall judge it according to my judgments: and they shall keep my laws and my statutes in all mine assemblies; and they shall hallow my sabbaths.
[25] And they shall come at no dead person to defile themselves: but for father, or for mother, or for son, or for daughter, for brother, or for sister that hath had no husband, they may defile themselves.
[26] And after he is cleansed, they shall reckon unto him seven days.
[27] And in the day that he goeth into the sanctuary, unto the inner court, to minister in the sanctuary, he shall offer his sin offering, saith the Lord GOD.
[28] And it shall be unto them for an inheritance: I am their inheritance: and ye shall give them no possession in Israel: I am their possession.
[29] They shall eat the meat offering, and the sin offering, and the trespass offering; and every dedicated thing in Israel shall be theirs.
[30] And the first of all the firstfruits of all things, and every oblation of all, of every sort of your oblations, shall be the priest’s: ye shall also give unto the priest the first of your dough, that he may cause the blessing to rest in thine house.
[31] The priests shall not eat of any thing that is dead of itself, or torn, whether it be fowl or beast