Jeremy Rosen
Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Leviticus 9:22

Rabbi Jeremy Rosen - Making Sense of the Bible: Can its Ancient Text be Relevant Today? Leviticus 9:22

- Good morning, everybody. I was playing Barbara Streisand, actually, singing an aria from Handel, a very famous one, “Lascia mio pianga,” something like that. I can’t remember exactly the whole accurate terms, but she’s very talented and it’s beautiful music. So, we now turn to continue our journey through Leviticus, Vayikra, the very, very difficult book of the five books of Moses. And I would like you to turn to chapter nine and there we have verse 22. Now, where have we come up to now? We’ve been talking about primarily the public rituals of the tabernacle and the temple, which was a form of national identity, keeping everybody together and turning up at this great ceremonial performance that went on every day. Then, we’ve dealt with the sacrifices that took place in the temple, and they were divided by and large into three categories, the olah, the burnt offering dedicated to God, and then there were the so-called shelamim, the peace offerings that were offered as voluntary donations and opportunity for everybody to have a big feast and eat together. And finally the hatat, the sin offerings for anything anybody or the community did, and that included everybody from top to bottom. We now have a little interlude with describing the final dedication of the tabernacle. And then we’re going to move on from those categories of laws that were communal to laws that are more private and personal. It’s often said in academic circles that in the early biblical period, there was no folk religion. It was all ceremonial. But the truth is that when you look at the Book of Leviticus, you see very clearly that both are involved in the book.

In other words, the Book of Leviticus, the book that is called Torat Kohanim, the laws of the priests, also involves everybody in the community because in a humane sense or in a humanitarian sense, everybody was a priest. So that there is, other than what goes on in the temple, everything that priests had to do, the ordinary person had to do. Now, whether they actually did it or not, I suspect not. I suspect it was no different in those days to the way it is now when the majority of Jews do not practise Judaism, certainly not fully. That doesn’t mean to say they’re not involved on some level with the community. So, that’s the background to an incident that, if you like, is a transition from the public, the priestly to the private. And if you look at 9:22, you will see that after the complete ceremony of dedication, Aaron lifts up his hands. He raises his hands towards the people and he blesses them. And this is the origin of the priestly blessings that we still retain today as a memory of what happened then. And then, having done this in front of everybody, he then steps down from having done these three types of sacrifices. He puts the hatat first, the sin offering first. I’ve got to atone for any mistakes I’ve made before I can do anything else. Then the olah, the burnt offering to God, and then the shelamim where we all sit round and have a great feast together. And in verse 23. Then Aaron and Moses go inside the general temple, the general tent of gathering, which is, as I’ve mentioned before, ambiguous. Is that the courts, the general area, as opposed to the inside part of the mishkan, which is the tabernacle?

And once again, together, they blessed everybody. And the glory of God then comes down and rests on the tabernacle. So, you have what it seems to me to be two stages here. You have the initial stage of Aaron giving the priestly blessing. And it may well be it was just to the priests. Then together, Moses comes in, and together they bless everybody together as a whole. And in verse 24, a miracle. And fire comes out from God. And eats around the altar. The burnt offering. The fats that are on the altar. And people saw this happening. And they cried out. They made a noise. They were frightened. They fell flat on their faces. This was a miracle that happened in front of everybody, an amazing phenomenon. Now, that’s the introduction to what now happens. Chapter 10. And the two sons of Aaron, having seen this going on, Nadab and Abihu, these two guys, Nadab and Abihu. Each one of them took their , their censer, the pan in which they put coals, on which they put nice, sweet smelling scents and incense that creates this atmosphere of nice smells that covers anything from the sacrifices of killing animals. Priests had these censers, although we’re also going to see later on that other people did, too. But at this stage, it’s just the priest having these pans that they carried with them as part of the overall ceremony to keep the atmosphere, but they weren’t actually doing the sacrifices. So each man, Nadab and Abihu, are now two people who are independently taking their private censer pans, putting fire in them. On the coals, they then put the incense, and they offer it before God.

They brought it before God. Kind of alien fire, fire that was not required. This was an independent act. They were not commanded to do this. And the result is fire then comes out from God, consumes them and they die before God. Very, very strange, peculiar incident. And the rabbis argue on so many different levels as to what actually happened here. Why did they take an initiative in the presence of Moses and Aaron? What were they thinking? What was their motive? We’re going to see afterwards a reference to priests getting drunk. And it’s very common that when passages are aligned to each other in the Bible, they’re meant to teach, both sides are teaching us something. And so, what the second reference to priests being drunk implies that Nadab and Abihu were themselves drunk. There’s another version of the rabbinic authority in which this is a political rebellion. Nadab and Abihu, who are walking and seeing Moses and Aaron doing everything and they’re saying, “Oh, these two old men, they’re getting doddery and old. It’s about time we take over.” And therefore, it was a kind of a coup d'etat. There’s a third possibility, and in one sense, I like this possibility most of all. They were not rebels, not drunk. They were nice, pious, good boys who wanted to go further than the ceremony that Moses and Aaron were responsible for. And in a sense, they wanted to innovate. They were mystics driven by this passion, this passion to take religion as far as you can go. It’s a natural tendency, the monastic tendency, the tendency of hermits, the tendency of people who lock themselves away in the study hall and don’t want to care about anything that’s going on outside. And the Torah’s message essentially is, first of all, it’s enough with what you’re officially commanded to do. Don’t try and be too pious.

Don’t try and show how much better you are, how much more religious you are. This is not what, so to speak, God wants of you. And this is what they made the mistake in thinking, that the more pious I am, the better I am. And if you remember, we had a reference to this when we were studying the Book of Genesis when we talked about this son, Enoch, who walked before God and God took him away. And the question was why did God take him away? What did that mean? And one explanation is God took him away before he could get up to any monkey business. And another explanation was no, his idea of how to worship God in this early stage of Genesis when we’re experimenting with the evolution of religion from sacrificial system to prayer to other forms of engagement, he thought that the way to deal with this was by going into a monastery by shall we say, isolating himself with God, not caring about other people, only caring about religious ceremony or his relationship with God. And the Torah is saying, no, that’s not what God wants. If you are not prepared to get involved with human beings, I’m taking you up to heaven. Which is again, why Noah, who did also walk with God, was, if you like, the person who rescued the world because he was concerned with the rest of what’s going on, not just with himself. So, that is what happened to these two people. And then verse three, Moses and Aaron. Moses says, rather, to Aaron “Moses said to Aaron,” “This is what God meant when He said.” We don’t know when He said it. We don’t know if He did say it or whether he’s imagining that God said it. “I sanctify myself through people I am closest to.” In other words, I care most about the people I’m closest to and therefore, if they do something wrong, it matters more to me. But I want to bring this statement up to date, to the situation that we’re all in now, the situation of the war, of the loss of life, of the constant anxiety and pain, and why are these wonderful young men and women being killed? The term means those people who are closer to me, I sanctify myself through them. They become my agents.

They become my angels, so to speak. They are doing my work. I care about them. And so, that, I think, is a very important message for the situation that we’re in today. So, then carrying on from that particular point in verse four, Moses then calls Mishael and Elzaphan. These are cousins, benet Uziel, the sons of Uziel, who is the uncle of Aaron. And he commands them, because they obviously were not in the front rank of priests performing, because remember, priests were not supposed to come into contact with the dead. That was part of what made them, shall we say, a special group. There were limitations on them. And one of the limitations was don’t have anything to do with dead people. And that is why in cemeteries today there’s a space for priests which is separate from the space for anybody else so that although the laws don’t actually apply anymore, of purity, they are preserved as a cultural, historical relic, if you like. Anyway, these two come along and he says, Moses says to him, “Come close.” “Lift up and remove these two bodies from the holy place where they are at the moment and take them out of the camp.” And in five, “They came forward.” They lifted it up with their clothes. They used the clothes to carry them out rather than a stretcher. Out of the camp. As God spoke to Moses. And then, Moses turns, in verse six, to Aaron and to Eleazar and to Ithamar, who are the two sons who are taking over from them as opposed to Nadab and Abihu, and he says this. “Do not uncover your heads.” “Don’t cut your garments” “so that you do not die. You might die, too and I want to prevent this.” “And then the whole community is going to suffer.”

“And your brothers, the house of Israel” “they may mourn the burn up of these two kids. They may mourn, but you mustn’t.” So, these were clearly ceremonies at the time that reflected mourning, to sit on the ground, to uncover your hair, to tear your clothes. These are all things that, not all of them, because we don’t sit bareheaded nowadays at the shiva house, but essentially, he’s saying, “You two may not mourn because if you mourn, basically you’re saying mourning for those two boys prioritises everything else, and we’ve got to carry on. You’ve got to carry on because the priesthood has to function all the time. And if you’re now going into mourning, in a sense you are saying that’s more important than me, and it’s not.” Mourning has its place, but there are things more important than mourning. There is the community. And so, this is a command to Aaron and his sons not to mourn, but everybody else can. And so, in verse seven it says, “I don’t want you to sort of go back home to your families to mourn, so don’t leave where you are, functioning in the tabernacle today.” “The oil of anointment has been poured over, you’ve been anointed.” There’s this word , which is anointing with oil, which is the same word as . And they are anointed and they have to do what God says. So, this is a rather sad and a moving event. We learn lessons from it of different kinds. And now, we go on to a new law out of the blue. And this is the one I mentioned before which hints that alcohol might have been the problem. And as far as the priests are concerned, do not drink wine or alcohol.

You and your children with you when you come into this religious holy area so that you also won’t suffer some penalty. This is a general rule for generations for you that when you come into a holy place, you should not be drunk. Now, this is reflected technically in Jewish law that somebody who’s drunk can’t lead the services. But if you know anything about most Hasidic communities, you know this is something that they ignore, particularly Purim, but any other time, too. But nevertheless, this purpose of this is in verse 10. Between what is holy and what is mundane. Between pure and impure. Now, people often think that purity in Judaism has something to do with physical cleanliness, and that is not the case. There are separate laws about being physically clean and taking care of your body. Tame and tahor, purity and impurity, are merely abstract spiritual terms between a person who is spiritually clued in and a person who is spiritually clued out. Like in the same way, the term kadosh, holy, can mean something which is set apart to be something positive or set apart to be something negative. It’s part of our human condition. We have choices. We have phases we can go through. We have states we can go through, and it’s up to us to make the right decisions and the right states. So, this term , to differentiate, recurs all the time. It started with Shabbat, and it comes with the seasons and everything like this. This notice that there is a good and a bad side, a negative and a positive, a yin and a yang, a male and a female, and we are all combinations of these different elements and we all do bad things and we all do good things and we have to try our best to focus on the good. And the tabernacle, if you like, was a symbol of the presence of God, the symbol of goodness, the symbol of morality. And therefore, this is important.

And that’s why in verse 11, I want you to teach all these laws which God has spoken through Moses as a way of learning how to live a moral and a good life. And then, we go on to spend a little time talking about the actual meal and the food and what they were eating. And finally, Moses hears and gives the information to everybody. He explains to Aaron why he should not be in a state of mourning. And that’s where this episode and this stage of the Book of Leviticus ends. And we now come in chapter 11 to the origin of the laws of kosher. Now, people try to find all kinds of reasons as to why these laws of what we can and what we can’t eat are there for. And the Torah does not give any reason for them. It doesn’t give any specific reason. There’s only one example of where the Torah gives a reason for a law. And that is in regard to the king in Deuteronomy, saying the king must abide by the law. He mustn’t amass too much money. He must amass too many wives. He mustn’t increase his army too much, all reasons that the king has to be under control. And this was disobeyed by King Solomon, who ignored all these limitations, and that, say the rabbis, is why the Torah avoids giving reasons, and that applies here to the laws of kashrut. And people try to say “No, this is all to do with health.” This is what they, you know pigs had certain diseases, yes, but sheep had certain diseases, too.

All animals have certain diseases, and it is clear that there were laws of what you can and can’t eat long, long before the Torah, going back thousands of years before if you accept a modern evolutionary system. And this obviously divided into certain kinds of categories. Some people say it was a difference between domesticated animals and other animals, but that doesn’t fit there. There is a complete, shall we say, absence of a single reason why these laws are given. When it comes to fish, it’s fins and scales so people say it’s because they’re all bottom feeders and unhealthy. And when it comes to burdens, no reason is given. In the case of animals, as we are going to see, we talk about hooves and chewing the cud. When it comes about fish, we are going to see that it talks about fins and scales and when it comes to birds, we’re not given any formula. We are just given a list of birds which are and aren’t, and as you will see, most of them are carrion eaters and carnivores, so to speak, or birds of prey. So, I believe that the function of all the laws of the Torah is to get us to be mindful, to think before we eat, how grateful we are to have food. Where did this food come from? How do we prepare the food? Is there a way of, if you like, food being something which is spiritual, maybe by adding a blessing before, adding a blessing after, something, which, in the course of a working day, in the course of a normal routine, gives us a break and raises our mindfulness and consciousness a little more. So, I believe that if there is a reason, or can’t give a reason, but if that is a function of the laws of kashrut, that is what is intended.

So now, let’s look at the text. And now God is speaking to Moses and to Aaron. So, this now looks like new laws, not necessarily coming from Mount Sinai, but may be coming down the mountain afterwards because on Sinai, it was just Moses. Now, this is Moses and Aaron. Verse two, “Speak to the children of Israel.” “These are the animals” “that you may eat” “from amongst” “from the animals on earth.” And it’s interesting, you’ve got two words here. is any animal, and , obviously, is what we would call domesticated or domesticatable animals. And the category goes like this. Any animal that has a hoof that divides, a hoof, a split hoof which is split into two chews the cud, literally brings the food back up and regurgitates it you may eat. So here’s your formula, split hooves and chewing the cud. But there are some exceptions here. Some animals do have split hoofs. Some animals do chew the cud. So, for example, , the camel, it chews the cud. But it has no split hooves. Difficult to understand that because it does appear when you look at a camel that it does, but not quite in the same way as others. So then, is technically impure, but it doesn’t mean to say they’re impure or they’re dirty in any way. It’s just not of the spiritual category we’re talking about, not of the approved category. So we’ve got camels who have one feature and not another. Then you’ve got the .

Now, , very difficult to know what we know as the is. It’s chews the cud, but it doesn’t have split hooves. It has claws. So, this could be coming something like either a badger or a rabbit or a hare or some other animal, but then we’ve got the down here in number six. The is the hare or the bunny rabbit. It also chews the cud and and its hooves are not split. This is therefore tame. So, here’s an example of animals that chew the cud or that regurgitate, but they don’t have the right foot. And then we come to the , to the pig. It has split hooves, it certainly does. But it doesn’t chew the cud. And therefore, . It’s very interesting. Why is the pig considered to be such a treyf animal, so to speak? And shall we say bunny rabbits or camels not quite as bad, although people do eat rabbits, of course. The rabbis like to say something’s unique about the pig. What’s unique about the pig is you come up to the pig and the pig is in the pen and he puts his hooves or his feet forward and say, “Look, I’m kosher, I’m kosher.” But if you look below his figs, down, his feet, down to the the belly, you see that he’s not, and this is an analogy for religious hypocrites. Religious hypocrites very often like to say, “Look, look at my feet, look how religious I am.” But meanwhile, beneath the surface where people can’t see, they’re getting up to monkey business. Nice idea. But anyway, in verse eight, you can’t eat their flesh. The carcasses are, you should avoid touching .

They count as tame. They count as non-approved. I prefer non-approved to impure or pure. So, there we have the definition of what animals you can and can’t have, what quadrupeds, at any rate. And then we come to the water. This is what you should eat. From everything that’s in the water, you can have whatever has in this water fins and scales. You know, I always thought sounded like a snapper, snapper fish, but it’s fins and scales. in the water, in the seas, in the rivers. This is what you may eat. And anything that doesn’t have fins and scales in the water or in the rivers or any creepy crawly thing in the water, maybe like an eel or something, from everything in the water, you have to keep away from. Again, the term says abomination in the English translation and sheqets can be something abominable, but it isn’t necessarily. It can mean something that you simply should keep apart from. Don’t eat their flesh. You should avoid their carcasses. And here you’ve had another example of this constant repetition. Sheqets, sheqets, sheqets. And now, we’re applying the same term to the birds. But just one interesting thing about this. I’m sure you know that there is a debate, historical debate about sturgeon, which leads to caviar. And there were different rabbinic opinions as to whether the sturgeon had scales or not. And because the scales are so small on sturgeon, many people decided it wasn’t kosher and therefore, you could not have black caviar, which comes from sturgeon. There were other rabbinic opinions who said no, there are scales, very, very small and you can, but as often happens, the stricter ones one won out in the debate, and traditionally most orthodox people will not have black caviar, but they’re happy to have the red caviar, which comes from salmon ‘cause salmon, we all agree is a kosher animal, and that’s a continuing halachic debate to this day. And now, we come to the birds, the little tweety pies.

And these are the ones that you’ve got to keep away from amongst the birds, verse 13. They’re also sheqet, something you should avoid. We know that’s the eagle. We know that’s the vulture. is another bird of prey. And then you’ve got these other names coming up. Some of them we recognise. So for example, in verse 15, we know the which was the raven 'cause that was in Noah’s Ark. But above it we have in verse 14, , which is translated here as a kite, , falcons of different kinds, small birds of prey rather than the big ones. But again, there’s plenty of argument about what actual birds they mean. But we know these are all birds of prey. And what is the ? Some people say this is the ostrich, but we’re not certain. is supposed to be like a kind of an owl, although there’s another word that’s used for owl that we’re going to come to shortly called the , and the , which is another kind of a bird of prey. Is it a seagull? And this is another kind of a hawk. The is a hawk, still used. Then you’ve got and so, here the English says is a little owl. is a cormorant, but again, is also an owl. These are not, if you like, birds that go by the sea and the coast. And so, there seems to be a problem. Are we talking about birds of prey on land as opposed to birds of prey on sea? Is there a difference? It’s not at all clear. Then you’ve got in verse 18, another owl, , which is, translate as the pelican, and the , which is a bustard. These are these big land, not as big as an ostrich, mainly land foul, big size. Then you’ve got the , which is the stork, the , which is the heron of different kinds, which is translated as hoopoe, common more in African societies. And the bat. Where does the bat fit in here? But that’s, is the modern term for bat because are often any other kind of swarming things, going on four legs is something you should avoid.

Well, four legs? We’re talking about grasshoppers. We are talking about plagues of locusts. Anyway, in verse 21, these are the things that you can eat, any of the flying things that have four legs and whose back feet are higher than the front ones. So, that’s used to leaping on the ground, that . And amongst these, you can eat. So, you can eat , locusts and , whatever are, another kind of locust, crickets and even the grasshopper. So, there are perfectly good biblical justifications for eating locusts and grasshoppers and things like that. And there are many people who say, you know, if you roast them, they taste very, very nice. I haven’t tried myself, but you can. But there is still some argument about the leg formulation. Are we talking about hind legs? Because they mentioned jumping and springing. Are we talking about front legs? But basically, it’s when you see a picture of them and you see these two legs sticking up above the back of the animal, that’s the test. So otherwise, anything with four legs, creeping on the ground, beetles and other stuff like that, you don’t want to deal with and don’t touch them. And if you do, you have to wait until the evening. Now, this is an interesting issue. It crops up time and time again that if you come into something that you are not supposed to touch, whether it’s a dead body or whether it’s the wrong kind of animal or something of that kind, you are in this ritual state of impurity, which is sometimes translated as impurity, but can also be translated as you have limitations on you as opposed to freedoms on you.

So, if this happens, you have to wait till the evening. And then, we are going to learn later on that when you get to the evening, you have to go to the mikvah. But this primarily applies to priests before they could perform any ritual ceremony. In other words, it didn’t mean that you were in some way a deficient person. It just meant that if you’ve done something wrong, take a little break and put it right and you put it right by using a combination of time and the water, so to speak, like Noah’s flood covering over the earth and starting again. And that’s a feature of many rituals in Jewish life, using water as a way of starting again. So, these are the animals we’re talking about. Verse 25, we talk about waiting to the evening, and then in verse 26, we have a qualification. But hold on. This is repetition, isn’t it? Verse 26. That everything that splits its hoof and doesn’t chew the cud, the, sorry, isn’t split his hoof and does not chew the cud. They are tame. . If you touch one of them, you are in a state of being tame. But now, he adds something else. He has . Any animal that walks on its paws. So, we’re referring here, I guess, to monkeys. Why didn’t that come in earlier when we were talking about it? It looks as though this is an afterthought. This is maybe as a result of some question coming forward, not knowing the answer and putting it in. But now we have another question.

If you carry their body, you’ll have to wash your clothes and you are tame to the evening because they are tame. And now, we go on again to give more clarification of what we’re talking about. We’re talking about moles and mice and lizards and things that go under the ground and crocodiles and lizards and geckos and chameleons. They’re all in the same category. And you thought we might have spoken that together, but now, we have a category of their own. And not only that, but if any of these animals, when they’re dead, fall on a vessel that we use for cooking or for food or for anything like that, then the article needs to be purified, too, by passing it through water. And that is the origin of dipping new vessels into water before we bring them into the kosher kitchen. And similarly, this should apply to anything that can be purified except for, in verse 33, anything made out of pottery because pottery is very absorbent. It’s not glazed. It doesn’t have this cover of glass over it. It absorbs, and therefore, anything will be absorbed into the surface. And pottery is not kosherable, so to speak. And similarly, again, any liquid that comes into contact, you can’t drink and anything that comes from the carcass. But if you are able to use water collected, and here you have in verse 36 the origin of the mikvah, of the mikvah or a well, or a , a fountain, or certainly the sea, these all function as ways of purification. And this is the issue that crops up in our day and age. And the question is, did it then apply to everybody or did it only apply to the priests? It was only the priests who had to be in this state of going into the temple and being in a ritually pure situation. But otherwise, the ordinary person would just carry on with his work day by day.

And in a state of impurity, you still had to carry out all the laws. It didn’t stop you from praying, didn’t stop you from keeping Shabbat or the festivals or anything like that. It was merely a limitation on going into the temple area, mainly for priests and for those who wanted to go into the temple area, had to purify themselves beforehand. And so, we carry on with all these other exceptions. And of course, the question is often asks, if this book was made up, as some people think it was made up, of different texts being put together and then from different times from different authors and then being brought together in one document by some sort of editing, why were the editors so incompetent as to not see that there were inconsistencies and do something about it? You can only explain this in terms of the power of transmission of the oral law, that these were ideas and laws and rules that were transmitted to the masses orally. It might have been written down in some form for, in the temple tabernacle and things of this kind, or Moses coming off the mountain. But in general, the people were not aware of this in a constitutional or written form. They heard it. And these were messages then that the people, the elders, the experts, the prophets, were telling the masses, recounting them round the campfire just as they spoke about the events and the history around the campfire.

And so, in the same way, they brought all these things together as they were heard from the different sources. And remember, even the Torah itself says that Moses was speaking this and writing it over the whole period and changing it all the time. So, this is the process of compilation, and that sometimes has what you might think are inconsistencies. So, we end today by saying in verse 44, “I’m the Lord your God.” “I have made you holy,” in the sense, “you should be holy because I am holy because I represent holiness. I represent this ability to be a better person, and therefore, I want you to be a better person by not just doing what everybody else is doing. And so, this is intended to raise your awareness, to raise your spirituality, and that is why I took you out of Egypt to adhere to higher standards than those that everybody else is adhering to, and these are the laws of the animals,” in verse 46, who creep on the ground, and to differentiate between those as aspects that are prepared or spiritually okay, those that are not, between what can be eaten and what can’t be eaten. And here we end our session for today. So now, let’s go to questions and answers.

Q&A and Comments:

And what is it Ronald’s asking me? And I don’t know what it is, so please explain. Zoom. “Laschia piu pianga.” Let me weep, Frideric Handel. Yes, thank you.

Q: What exactly is incense?

A: Well incense is, yeah, if you ever go into a Catholic church and you’ll find that incense plays a very important part in the ceremonial. They have these censer things that swing and give the incense coming in and out all the time, that it’s referred to negatively as by the Protestants. Look at the Christians and say it’s all about bells and smells. So incense is nice smells, and included in incense is cannabis. Cannabis is considered to be an incense.

Q: Shelly says, “How can people take on strictnesses after the third interpretation of Nadab and Abihu?”

A: Well, Shelly, frankly, you ask this question about everything. The Torah says in black and white don’t add to these laws. Don’t reduce from these laws. And it always depends on interpretation. The official position is you can’t add a brand new law, but there were brand new laws added. Purim was a brand new law. Hanukkah was a brand new law. So, there is an inconsistency here.

Q: Shelly, “Was drinking alcohol or being intoxicated by drugs a feature of rituals of pagan priests?”

A: Almost definitely, because, you know, if I can give an unfair example, look at Chabad, how they regard vodka as being an aid to spirituality because you relax, because you let yourself open to new experiences. And so, yes, alcohol has often and always been used as an aid to spirituality. I just think, in my opinion, much as I have a lot of sympathy with a lot of Hasidism, if you need something artificial to help you get to God, it’s delusion. It’s not the real thing. That’s my particular take.

Susan McGill, “Leviticus 10:11 translates in Sefaria as teach.” Yes, indeed. That’s right. I don’t know what you’re trying to say from that. Romain, those who did, they were punished. Well, you know, sort of the punishment, again, as I mentioned, that normally, punishment is merely an indication of how serious this thing is taken, a kind of a metaphor. But they do use it to scare people, to make people realise this is so serious, don’t even try it. And I think that’s how I would understand in regard to the two sons of Aaron.

Q: Shelly says, “If you can’t touch an un-kosher animal, as well as eat it, does it mean you can’t wear rabbit fur or fur or pig skin?”

A: No. The straight answer is no. And these were regarded as simply part of the temple purity as opposed to what everybody normally was doing.

“The hoopoe,” says Nori, “is the national bird of Israel.” Is it really? I had no idea. Thanks for telling me. Thank you for telling me.

Q: Mark Tanenbaum, “If the carcass of a kosher animal is impure, how can it be eaten and remain pure? What makes the carcass of a kosher animal sufficiently pure to consume?”

A: And my assumption is that if you are dealing with a carcass, you are already dealing with meat that’s gone off, and therefore, meat that’s gone off is a problem. If, on the other hand, you take the skin and the skin can be purified and cleaned and removed of any meat, that’s a different matter altogether.

Q: Marcia asks, “Since bees swarm, why is honey okay?”

A: Excellent question. Bees are treyf. You cannot eat bees. And this goes back to the question that we’ve had earlier about, you know, what are the limits of Jewish law? Because when the rabbis of, when when we talk about honey in the Torah, we assumed it always meant honey of date palm. But there was other honey at the time. People thought honey came in later. That’s not true. Honey was there long before. The rabbis of the Talmud, when dealing with this say, ah, because the bee doesn’t consume the nectar, it goes and goes through its system and come out at the other end. There’s a special sack it has, which is apart from the body of the bee and that’s where the honey comes from. Now, that’s simply not the case. It was a misunderstanding. And there’s no question that the honey comes from the innards of the bee. And so, why did they allow it? And here’s an example of total inconsistency. They did decide it was allowed. It’s almost like saying what I say is kosher is kosher, and what I say is not kosher is not kosher, but that was the rabbinic opinion and that’s how Jewish law has interpreted it for the last 2000 years. So, you might say it’s become part of our tradition.

Thank you, Clara. And you, Carla, thank you. Nice to hear from you, and Rita, and I wish Linda a long life. Thank you, Richard.

“Your thoughts on Aaron was silent.” Well, Aaron had lost his sons. Of course, he was in mourning. How could he hold himself back? It’s amazing that he was able to put something, to illustrate how I’ve got to put God first, so to speak. I’ve got to obey. I’m subservient. I’m not a dictator. I’m not a free agent.

Q: Why is salmon kosher?

A: Well, because salmon does have fins and scales. You can see it. You know, you look at the carcass of a, you watch those nature programmes of bears eating salmon out of the river and you can actually see on them their fins and scales.

Q: Is the swordfish kosher or not?

A: In general, diseases of violence cannot be transmitted to man except the pig, which has tape worm, which could be transmitted to man. Philip, I’m not an expert on these things, but I’m told that there are other animals that transmit things to man. I believe that it is argued possibly that COVID did. It’s offered that, in Africa, that there are animal diseases transmitted by monkeys. So, I think there are different opinions on this one.

Q: Israel asks, hi, Israel, “We tend to assume we know what it means when we say that God is holy. What does it mean that we will be holy people? What’s the concept of holiness as regards to human beings?”

A: Well, holy, to me, means different. Try to be better. Try to be more mindful of the spiritual, as well as the physical. And when we talk about God, we talk about in the image of God. We said this in Genesis. Knowing the difference between good and bad. That’s what Adam was going to do with the tree, would be to know the difference between good and bad, which was what he did and why he got himself into trouble by ignoring God. So, when we talk about applying anything to God, you know we can’t use human language. It doesn’t make sense. So, when we talk about any quality of God, we’re really talking about a quality that we humans should aspire to and we should aspire to being better.

Q: Janice, “Do you think Aaron’s sons were thinking of doing idolatrous practise, sacrificing humans?”

A: It’s possible. I don’t think sacrificing humans because there was no indication that any human was going to be, but they were maybe doing something idolatrous. It’s possible.

Shelly says, “Remember mad cow?” Yeah, that’s another good example, mad cow disease. Wine is made from yeast. We don’t know. We didn’t know. We wouldn’t drink wine over Passover, theoretically, but yes, it’s true, but there’s a difference between wine fermentation and the position of bread, which was picked up specifically because remember, they’re talking about matzoh on Pesach, on the bread not rising, not talking about the wine not rising. But it’s a good point. So, thank you everybody. We end for today and hopefully see you next week.