Moral Priorities Gone Awry — BT Yoma 23a — #116

Our Rabbis taught: It once happened that two priests were neck-and-neck as they ran to mount the ramp and when one of them came within four cubits of the altar ahead of his colleague, the other took a knife and thrust it into his heart. R. Tzaddok stood on the steps of the Hall and said, “Our brothers, House of Israel, listen! Behold it says, If a corpse should be found on the land... your elders and judges shall go out (Deuteronomy 21:1-2). Who is responsible for bringing the eglah arufah, the city or [the priests of] the Temple Courts?” All the people burst out weeping. The father of the young man came and found him still writhing. He said, “Behold he is your atonement. But my son is still writhing and [therefore] the knife has not become ritually impure.” [The father’s words] teaches you that the ritual purity of the vessels was of greater concern to them even than the shedding of blood. Thus is it also said, Manasseh also shed much innocent blood, until he filled Jerusalem from one end to the other (1 Kings 21:16).

INTRODUCTION

Mishnah Yoma, chapter 2, discusses how the daily tasks around the Temple were attended to. The first chore of the day was terumat ha-deshen, cleaning the ashes off the altar. Mishnah explains that originally, anyone who wished to collect the ashes would do so. If there were more volunteers than needed, a race up the ramp to the altar was held and the one who came within four cubits of the altar first was declared the winner. If two priests tied, there was a procedure for  settling the matter. However, the mishnah recounts, one time two priests tied and one pushed the other off the ramp (which was approximately 15 feet high) causing him to break his leg. After that, the races were suspended and a priest was chosen each day by lottery. The story is shocking: how could priests charged with the sacred work of the sanctuary behave in this manner? Yet the Gemara records either another far more tragic version of the incident, in which the young priests are not the only “bad performers.” The story is an allegorical and scathing criticism of the priesthood in the second century C.E.—a community more obsessed with ritual purity than human life.

COMMENTARY

In the Gemara’s version of the story, the two priests running up the ramp ahead of the pack tie, when one pulls out a knife and thrusts it into the chest of the other—with clear intent to kill. In re-imagining the pushing story as one of slaying with a knife at the altar, the echo of sacrificial slaughter is unmistakable. As much as it seems things could not get worse, R. Tzaddok (a priest living toward the end of the Second Temple period), rather than attending to the wounded man lying on the ground with a knife in his heart, stands and declares: We must follow the Torah’s law concerning the eglah arufah (the heifer whose neck is broken), which tells us that if a corpse is found in an open field and it cannot be determined who the murderer is, the elders and judges of the closest settlement must perform an atonement ritual. They bring a heifer, break its neck, and make a declaration denying responsibility for the murder.  Not quoted, but well understood by those telling the story, is that Torah concludes the account of the eglah arufah with these words: “Thus you will remove from your midst guilt for the blood of the innocent, for you will be doing what is right in the sight of Adonai” (Deuteronomy 21:1-9) thus absolving themselves of the bloodguilt. R. Tzaddok wonders whether the people of Jerusalem or only the priests in the Temple are responsible for fulfilling the ritual of absolution. And then it gets even worse.

At this moment, the father of the dying priest arrives. What he says is beyond astonishing. Rather than attempting to help his son, he makes two declarations. First, he offers up his son’s life as atonement for his own murder! Only then does the father realize that his son is still alive. He is physically writhing on the ground, yet only now does he seem to notice this. His second declaration is to point out that if the knife used to stab his son is removed before the young man succumbs, the knife will not become ritually impure. If, however, the young man dies with the knife still in his body, the knife’s physical contact with a corpse will render it ritual impure. The father is more concerned with the ritual purity of the knife than with the life and death of his son! The Talmud comments: we learn from this that people’s priorities were deeply and perversely skewed. They were more concerned with the ritual purity of a mere Temple vessel (the knife) than with the life—and murder at the very altar of the Temple—of a human being. Clearly the Talmud finds the religious priorities and consequent immoral behavior of everyone present—even the father—appalling and reprehensible. The story may be read as a polemical attack on the priestly class and institution of the Temple, or perhaps a cautionary tale directed at the entire society that sacrifices its own people and perverts Torah by its priorities.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER AND DISCUSS

1. We presume that fulfilling Torah—and especially the sacred rituals it commands—is good for individuals and society. Yet here, selfishness, competition, and greed result in the “misuse” of Torah, transforming something good into something evil. Can you think of examples when a society’s priorities have transformed good ideals into evil behavior?
2. R. Tzaddok blames not the priest who committed the murder but rather evokes the law of the eglah arufah, which does not apply. Hence his words are best understood as a rebuke, either of the priesthood or the nation as a whole. What do you believe he is saying? Should society be blamed when the instruments of government and religion are used for evil rather than good? What responsibility does society bare for the guilt of individuals who commit crimes ostensibly believing they are contributing to society?
3. The image of a knife slaughtering a human being near the altar is searing—it evokes the idea of sacrificing people. The priests, passionate about religious laws and rituals, have prioritized them above what is far more important: human life. Are there religious ideas, or rituals, or political beliefs that you believe some in society today have elevated above human life?