Parshat Bo

There is a famous statement in masechet Sanhedrin (44a), af al pi she’chata Yisrael hu- even though a Jew may sin, he remains a Jew. This statement forms the core of our identity as a nation. The Torah does not accept religious lapses, but it does not exclude lapsed Jews from the community.

In this week’s parsha we learn about an exception to this ideal of Jewish community. Among the laws of the korban Pesach there is a rule (actually the very first rule in the parsha which begins in perek 12, pasuk 43), “…kol ben neichar lo yochal bo.” Onkelos translates the term “ben neichar” as “kol bar Yisrael d’ishtamad.” In simple English what Onkelos says is that a Jew who has left the faith may not partake of the korban Pesach.

To someone not familiar with Halacha this may not seem very striking. What Onkelos says is that if, for example, a Jew decides to embrace Christianity then he may not eat the korban Pesach. A person could very well respond, “So what?” After all, the convert certainly isn’t interested in Pesach and this will be just one more sin. But Onkelos is really telling us a great chiddush. The apostate may not join the rest of the Jewish people in performing a mitzva. There is nothing like this in the realm of Halacha (with one possible exception, which I will address later). Should the apostate wish to put on tefillin, no one will stop him. On the contrary, it may be that we should encourage him to do so. The Rambam writes in Iggeret Hashmad that apostates are expected to fulfill the mitzvot, and that even the most willful renegade will be held accountable not only for his idolatry but also for violating rabbinical ordinances.

So why is the meshumad excluded from the mitzva of Pessach? The Sefer Hachinuch explains this. He writes (in mitzva number 13) that the Pesach commemorates not only our deliverance but also our becoming the people of the Torah. A person who abandons the Torah really can have nothing to do with the Pesach. The Chinuch says that this idea is so obvious that it can be placed with those mitzvot, which are simple common sense.

As I mentioned there may be another mitzva forbidden to a meshumad. In the event that a man dies without children his wife needs to either marry his brother (in a marriage ceremony called yibbum) or to divorce him (in a ceremony called chalitza). There is an opinion of the Geonim and Maharam of Rottenberg that a meshummad is excluded from this relationship with his sister-in-law. He performs neither yibbum nor chalitza. The actual Halacha may not be according to this view. For the discussion see the Tur Even Ha’ezer, siman 157.

There is a very interesting discussion of this question in the Responsa of the Sridei Esh (volume 3 of the Mosad HaRav Kook edition, siman 44). The Sridei Esh was presented with the following question. A man died without children. His young widow was then left with the need to perform chalitza with her brother-in-law (since in our time we do not, as a rule, perform yibbum). She had a choice of two brothers-in-law. One brother -in-law was a convert to Christianity and the other was an atheist. In this case the apostate was willing to perform the chalitza ceremony while the atheist would not.

The question brought to the Sridei Esh was two-fold. The first question was whether we should follow the ruling of the Geonim. The second was, does the Halacha differentiate between apostasy and atheism.

The question is obviously not easy to answer. The author of the Sridei Esh, Rav Weinberg zt”l consulted with many outstanding poskim to arrive at a conclusion. Their responses are recorded in the teshuva and anyone who is interested can find them. For the purposes of this dvar Torah I will cite the idea of Rav Yosef Chayim Sonnenfeld zt”l. Rav Sonnenfeld zt”l applies “common sense” to the chalitza issue in the same fashion as the Sefer Hachinuch did by the korban Pesach.

The Torah says that the purpose of yibbum/chalitza is to ensure that the deceased brother will not be forgotten. And if he did not have children, then at least he will be remembered by the new family created by his widow and brother. This would be fine if the brother was a practicing Jew. But what sort of family would be created by an apostate? Obviously the Torah does not see the apostate as being one who would perpetuate a Jewish family. Again, “common sense” that tells us that an apostate is excluded from the performance of a mitzva.