Parshat Achrei Mot Rabbi Chaim Brovender

Let us learn a posuk with Rashi.

"Hashem speaks to Moshe: 'Speak to the people and say to them, 'I am Hashem your G-d...'" (18: 1-2). With this introduction Hashem insists on his special standing as "our G-d" raising as it does his privileged authority to demand special behavior from his nation.

The third verse continues these prefatory remarks: "The conduct of Egypt where you lived you should not follow; and the behavior of Canaan, the land to which I bring you, do not imitate and their laws do not follow..." (18: 3).

This precedes a long list of forbidden sexual behavior explicitly banning certain partnerships (18: 6). The Torah's comments about Egypt and Canaan might introduce these laws as the standing examples of the kinds of societies whose intimate behaviors we should not adopt; alternatively, Egypt and Canaan might receive independent mention here with a significance that remains unspecified.

Rashi seems to take the reference as applying broadly and generally: "It says that the behaviors of Egyptians and Canaanites are the most degenerate of all other nations." The sexual behaviors of those nations were then not the focus of this condemnation. Rashi thought the condemnation applied broadly to the cultures of those two lands and that specific behaviors were difficult to specify.

The end of the verse "do not follow their laws" Rashi interprets in the same manner in which he explained its beginning: "matters that are part of them as if they were laws, for example, theaters and stadiums. R. Meir says: these are the ways of the Amorites". Again it is culture that is censured with R. Meir comparing theater attendance and stadium going to idolatrous practices.

The Torah demands from us the sensitivity to avoid the pitfalls that result from accepting common standards of behavior and the attitudes of popular culture. The theater and the stadium may in themselves be harmless, or seem to be so, yet in ancient practice they connected to idolatry.

The acts of severe transgression found in the rest of the chapter are not at issue, but a more subtle problem connected to the general cultural practices of the day remains. The Exodus from Egypt was not simply a release from slavery. In Egypt the Jews had succumbed to the temptations of a certain lifestyle and came to reject the more serious attitudes of the Avot, their forefathers.

The Exodus fortified the people and allowed them to reject what had to be rejected. This made entry into Canaan possible but the warning about undesirable influence would, the Torah insists, still apply. Not only liberation but also conquest had to include rejection of bad culture. Only a people free in that way could strike roots in their new country and inherit it. This qualified approach to freedom helps explain why the Exodus became our timeless model for entering the land and possessing it.

Gut shabbos,
Chaim Brovender

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