Protecting the Innocent – Acharei Mot - Kedoshim
The Mishna in Chagiga (2,1) says that one doesn’t דורש בעריות unless the audience is 3 people or less.
By nature I am a non-confrontational person and try my best not to get involved with controversial issues. Sometimes however you find yourself in a situation where it is patently obvious that there is a great injustice being perpetuated and you have it in your power to speak up and perhaps influence people to remedy it. In these cases, in the words of Hillel HaZaken (Pirkei Avot 2,5) ובמקום שאין אנשים השתדל להיות איש. I am fully aware that not everyone will agree with me, and that is OK.
Now that I have hooked you with that provocative introduction - legufo shel inyan.
Obviously I am not about to defy the directive in the Mishna above and to understand what the Mishna is referring to we need to examine the Rambam’s qualification on that Mishna – שאסור לדרוש בסתרי עריות. So this shiur is not about the ins and outs of עריות, but rather the general concept and it is primarily targeted for a specific audience – parents of young children and educators.
At the end of parshat Acharei Mot we read -
כד) אל תטמאו בכל אלה כי בכל אלה נטמאו הגוים אשר אני משלח מפניכם. כה) ותטמא הארץ ואפקד עונה עליה ותקא הארץ את ישביה. כו) ושמרתם אתם את חקתי ואת משפטי ולא תעשו מכל התועבת האלה האזרח והגר הגר בתוככם. כז) כי את כל התועבת האל עשו אנשי הארץ אשר לפניכם ותטמא הארץ. כח) ולא תקיא הארץ אתכם בטמאכם אתה כאשר קאה את הגוי אשר לפניכם. כט) כי כל אשר יעשה מכל התועבות האלה ונכרתו הנפשות העשת מקרב עמם. ל) ושמרתם את משמרתי לבלתי עשות מחקות התועבת אשר נעשו לפניכם ולא תטמאו בהם אני ה' א-לקיכם. (ויקרא יח, כד-ל)
In my shiur on parshat Vayikra I touched briefly on the concept of teaching Sefer Vayikra to תינוקות של בית רבן, before Sefer Breishit for example, on the premise יבואו טהורים ויתעסקו בטהרות.
As we get deeper into Sefer Vayikra however, the concept becomes more and more incredulous. Sins, korbanot, body parts, blood, leprosy, stains on clothes, blemishes on walls and in this week’s parsha, the subject of the עריות (which we read also in Mincha of Yom Kippur). Anyone with “common sense” would take one look at this and keep it as far away from kids as possible. Much better to start them on the “nice” stories in Breishit, the Creation, Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov, Yosef and the technicolor dreamcoat, etc.
This always baffled me, why our sages davka suggested we plug Vayikra at the earliest possible age. As one delves deeper into the subject however, you began to understand why the “conventional wisdom” is flawed and that the reasoning of our Chachamim is actually profoundly apt. You also unfortunately discover that the wise foresight of the Chachamim is not being applied practically today, to our great detriment.
Upon closer analysis, we find that Sefer Bresihit and Sefer Vayikra are actually more similar than we think - they both deal with the subjects of good and evil. In Breishit the evil is (mostly) from without and the villains are extraneous to us, the nachash, Nimrod, Sdom, Lavan, Yishmael, Eisav, Eshet Potifar, Pharaoh, etc. A notable exception here is the selling of Yosef, but in the vast majority of Breishit the threat is an outside threat. In Vayikra however the evil enemy is much closer to home, the יצר הרע - within us.
By telling us to begin teaching the Torah to our youth starting from Vayikra, our sages are indicating that the inner threat is far more dangerous than the outer threat and that we should protect ourselves from it already at the youngest possible age. As any expert educator will tell you, the age of תינוקות של בית רבן is the most impressionable age, and what we learn at this stage of life is indelibly imprinted on our neshama.
To illustrate, a personal experience/confession of my own. When I was about 7 or 8-years-old, in a Yeshiva school back in Johannesburg, we kids considered it “cool” to be naughty and rebellious (I think things have not changed much since). Of course I also wanted to be “cool”, so when one of the “cool” boys in my class asked me to come over to his house to play one afternoon after school, with the promise that he “would teach me to smoke”, I jumped at the opportunity.
That afternoon we crept round the back of his house, out of sight behind a wall and he pulled out a plastic cigarette filter that he had obviously purloined from one of his parents. He put this filter to his lips and took a long whiff and urged me to do the same. I took this spittle filled, orange piece of plastic, placed it between my lips, as he had done, and inhaled. There were no cigarettes in sight, just this plastic filter which reeked of cigarette smoke. The combination of the spittle and the awful smell were absolutely disgusting. Despite the fact that I acted “cool”, telling my companion how “cool” it was to smoke, I was actually trying my best not to throw up. This experience cured me of smoking for life and every time I was exposed to the numerous “actual smoking” opportunities throughout my school career, I ran a mile. Even today when I am in close proximity to someone smoking, it conjures up this image in my head and ironically, I am eternally grateful to this “friend” for unintentionally steering me on the path of righteousness (at least as far as smoking goes).
The truth is that at age 7, I had no clue about nicotine, cancer of the lungs, asthma or any of the “adult” stuff surrounding smoking – I didn’t need to know. All I needed was to a. identify it and b. experience disgust for it - on my own age level, not on an “adult” level.
This is the indelible kind of impression that it is possible to make during these formative years and the Chachamim knew that, which is why they wanted us to start davka with the Vayikra “method”.
Every generation has its own נסיונות and undoubtedly the current generation’s נסיון is the internet.
I personally believe the internet to simply be a reflection of the world. It reflects the best and the worst and everything in between. The “supposed” problem is that it is easily and instantaneously accessible to anyone. However when you break it down to basic essentials, I don’t really see how that is so different to the real world – in the real world there is the good and the evil – it depends on where you look and what you are looking for.
For example, in the nearby town of Kfar Sava, in order to get to my branch of the bank, you have to walk past a series of shops, one of which is a “sex shop”. So in order to circumvent this, I have a number of choices. I can switch to a different branch, I can walk on the opposite side of the road, I can avert my gaze as I walk by (which I do). The determining factor in how this shop affects me is the way I regard it, not its actual presence!
In the world, more so in the galut but undoubtedly also in Israel, there are many things that we regard as an unacceptable part of the modern culture of liberalism/materialism and they are practically inescapable. You can try to eliminate exposure to them. For example many charedi sectors totally ban the use of the internet. You can try filter out the unacceptable things, like in the national religious sector, using internet filters, which are successful to a point but certainly not hermetic. Another choice is to not limit the internet all, which the secular Jewish world does. Or - you can educate your children how to deal with it in the right way, which I regard as the best option, as it correlates with the Vayikra method above and involves installing “filters”, not on your PC or phone, but in yourself.
The question to ask yourself is not “Are my kids going to be exposed to this?” but rather “Who would I prefer exposes my kids to this?”
As we see above, the Vayikra approach is not to build walls around yourself - solid walls, or walls with windows (filters), but rather to teach our children from the youngest age possible, when they are MOST impressionable and give them the protective TOOLS to be able to handle it throughout their lives.
Sin, leprosy, עריות etc. is definitely the “seedier” side of real life and Sefer Vayikra goes into vivid, graphic detail describing it and prescribing it to our youngest children. In Talmudei Torah around the world 5-8 year olds are being taught –
"ובכל בהמה לא תתן שכבתך לטמאה בה ואשה לא תעמד לפני בהמה לרבעה תבל הוא" (ויקרא יח, כג).
I have never had the privilege to been in a class and observe the method a melamed uses to teach that to a six year old, but I do know the required outcome. The required outcome is that the child comes out of that class totally aware that the concept exists, but at the same time totally disgusted with it, as disgusted as I was when I left my friend’s house that day. That disgust will remain with them for the rest of their lives and will protect them from it. This very young age is a rare opportunity as it lasts for a very short time before a person’s יצר and hormones begin to take over. At six-years-old the concept of kissing a girl is still “ick!”, how much more so the עריות.
It is a certainty in modern society that the children will eventually be exposed to the תועבה. The question is how they are first exposed to it. Will they be exposed to it by the melamed/מחנך/teacher in the appropriate way, or will they first be exposed to it by accident in the most tempting way, the way it is portrayed on the internet, by the suppliers of the תועבה, trying to ensnare with vivid, inticing hooks? Someone who has been conditioned to it early on, knows it exists and wants nothing to do with it - will be minimally affected by it. They will be disgusted by it, the kind of disgust we feel when someone suggests we eat pork.
This is what the Vayikra method is. It is not afraid to expose us to the seedy realities of life, even from the earliest age, actually preferably from the earliest age, “exposing” it for the fraud and filth it is.
It seems so intuitive, so simple and obvious, but unfortunately that is not how we are educating our children today.
In charedi circles they are teaching Vayikra to תינוקות של בית רבן, but no mention is made of the internet or the current תועבה - that actually poses an imminent threat. They should be combining the parsha of the עריות in Acharei Mot with contemporary examples from modern society, so the children can identify them when they eventually encounter them - and they are not. So when some crisis occurs, like COVID-19 and the charedi youth are suddenly exposed to it for the first time, they cannot protect themselves, because they haven’t been conditioned against it from an early age.
In national religious circles the תינוקות של בית רבן are not being taught Vayikra, they are instead being taught Breishit – a “Walt Disney” version of Breishit, with heroes and villains and happy endings. It is actually more “dangerous” to start teaching our children Breishit because Breishit has many “grey areas”, whereas Vayikra is black and white - this is evil, this is good. Breishit is much more complicated, with the intricate familial relationships between the Avot, their spouses, their offspring, sibling rivalry etc. So instead of bogging our six-year-olds down with this “complicated adult” stuff, we water it down with a “rosy”, Walt Disney version of it – that confuses them and does not equip them to deal with real life. We want to protect them for as long as possible - it is a parental instinct, but sometimes in overprotecting them from the realities, we inadvertantly handicap our children for the rest of their lives. We find no difficulty in teaching our children to be cautious of strangers while at the same time not fostering a fear of people. Why then can we not do the same with the other dangerous realities of life, like the internet?
In other, less religious circles, there is no Vayikra and no Breishit, there is only – assimilation.
I do not have a masters degree in education, but you don’t need one to understand that we are currently LOSING this battle and along with it countless neshamot, because we are not simply following the guidelines of our wise sages - out of well-intentioned motives perhaps, but misguided nonetheless.
Now hang on a second! You say that building a wall around it is not the right way? What about the first Rashi in parshat Kedoshim. –
קדושים תהיו" - הוו פרושים מן העריות ומן העבירה, שכל מקום שאתה מוצא גדר ערוה אתה מוצא קדושה".
Rashi seems to indicate the opposite, that building a wall around it IS the right way, like the charedim are doing?
To understand this we need to examine a profound principle brought down by the sefer Emet LeYa’akov.
Parshat Acharei Mot is read on Yom Kippur morning as the first part of the parsha deals with the Avodah of the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur. Why however do we read פרשת העריות in Mincha on Yom Kippur? What is the connection?
In the time of the Beit Hamikdash there were no tefilot in the shuls on Yom Kippur (bad news for all you chazzanim out there, when the 3rd Mikdah will be rebuilt בבי"א) - no Shacharit, Musaf, Mincha, Ne’ilah or Arvit. This was all covered by the Avodah of the Kohen Gadol in the Beit Hamikdash. So what did everyone else do on Yom Kippur? They all came to shul and had a kind of a בר בי רב, saying Tehilim and learning and reflecting on stuff that was Teshuva related (like Mesilat Yesharim) and Avodah related like Masechet Yoma. After shkia, the motzei Yom Kippur news on the TV reported how the חוט השני turned white and that the Kohen Gadol emerged safely from the קדש הקדשים and that Yom Kippur had successfully atoned for the sins of Am Yisrael.
That is what all the married adults were doing. What were the unmarried בחורים and בחורות doing? The Emet LeYa’aKov brings a Mishna in Ta’anit (4,8) which relates that on Yom Kippur in the time of the Mikdash, all the unmarried girls would go out to dance in the vineyards. What about the guys? They also went to the vineyards – looking for shidduchim! Dancing in the vineyards? Shidduchim? On Yom Kippur davka? You can’t find a better time for that?
So the Emet Le’Ya’akov says – DAVKA on Yom Kippur, when everyone is on the level of the angels and totally immersed in טהרה - that is the best time to go looking for a shidduch, so that you can be totally focused on the ikar and not on only exterior appearances.
These young people had been taught with the Vayikra method from a very early age, they had been conditioned to what was right and wrong, so instead of degenerating into a Roman orgy, it resulted in a beautiful thing of קדושה.
Even so, they still needed a gentle reminder, which is why they read the פרשת העריות in Mincha. Also for the married adults in shul, to be extra cautious - as many married women came to shul מקושטות and there was a potential פרצה. עד כאן the Emet LeYa’akov.
All they needed was a gentle reminder and that was sufficient, because they had been conditioned from an early age to identify and steer clear of the עריות.
But what about those who were not privileged to this early education and reached adulthood without this “protective shield”, it was too late to apply at such an advanced age. Once someone reaches adulthood without the protection of the Vayikra method, the only recourse is פרישה, like Rashi says – to build a wall around it. But that was not the ideal choice. The ideal choice was to be conditioned against it from an early age.
So what am I advocating? Am I advocating that we expose our youngest children to internet pornography and other kinds of תועבה?
The answer is yes, but in the right way. In the same way a melamed can teach a six-year-old about the עריות in Acharei Mot –
"ובכל בהמה לא תתן שכבתך לטמאה בה"
in an appropriate way that makes him aware of the existence of such a concept and at the same time arouses a sense of disgust so that he will steer clear of it the rest of his life! The child does not need to understand the concept on the same level we adults do, all he needs is what I needed regarding smoking – identification and disgust. There are a lot of creative educators out there who can come up with such a formula – without damaging the child with all the “adult” ramifications of the תועבה and chas vechalila not traumatize them against the concept of פרו ורבו completely.
That is the way to protect the innocent. Give them the authentic tools to deal with the real world – the ability to identify and steer clear of the evils and a לב טוב to recognize and pursue all the light and the good.
