29 Dec Learning is Doing

I. Special Power of Learning Torah

We have not offered the Temple sacrifices in nearly 2,000 years but we continue fulfilling those mitzvos through our ongoing study of their laws. Does this special power of Torah study apply to other mitzvos as well or just sacrifices? The answer has implications for us today, during the (hopefully quickly ending) era of Coronavirus.

The source of the special power of learning Torah is the Gemara (Megillah 31b) that describes God’s promise to Avraham that even when Jews cannot bring sacrifices, when we learn the related Torah passages our sins are forgiven as if we brought the sacrifices. Similarly, the Gemara (Menachos 110a) explains the use of the term “the Torah” of the burnt-offering, meal-offering, sin-offering, etc. (Lev. 7:37). When you learn the laws (Torah) of these sacrifices, it is as if you brought the sacrifices themselves.

However, Rav Tzvi Pesach Frank (20th cen., Israel; Responsa Har Tzvi, Orach Chaim, no. 1) points out that learning Torah is not literal fulfillment of the mitzvah. The Gemara (Shabbos 12b) tells how R. Yishmael Ben Elisha once accidentally moved an oil lamp on Shabbos and wrote in his notebook that he must bring a sin-offering when the Temple is rebuilt. Why didn’t he just learn the Torah passage of the sin-offering? Clearly, learning the Torah of the sacrifice does not fulfill the requirement to bring the actual sacrifice to the Temple altar. Rather, Rav Frank says, learning the Torah of the sacrifice serves as a temporary reprieve until the sacrifice can be brought. Slightly differently, Rav Yisrael Meir Kagan (“The Chafetz Chaim,” 20th cen., Poland), in his Torah Or introduction to Asifas Zekeinim (ch. 1, footnote), says that the spiritual repair of the sacrifice is put into effect even better by learning the Torah but the act of bringing the sacrifice must still be done when it becomes possible.

II. Korbanos Are Different

Rabba Bar Avuha once found Eliyahu in a cemetery (Bava Metzi’a 114b). He asked Eliyahu how he, a kohen, could enter a cemetery. Eliyahu answered surprisedly that isn’t Rabba Bar Avuha familiar with the teaching in Taharos that permits a kohen entry in that particular circumstance? Rabba Bar Avuha replied that he has not yet mastered four Mishnaic orders, and certainly not all six orders. Which four did he attempt to master and which two did he not?

Rashi (ad loc., s.v. be-arba’ah) explains that Rabba Bar Avuha focused on the four orders that held practical implications for him: Mo’ed (about holidays), Nashim (about marriages, divorces, etc.), Nezikin (about financial matters) and Kodshim (about sacrifices). He also studied but was far from mastering Zera’im (about the agricultural laws that do not apply in the Diaspora) and Taharos (about the laws of purity). How is Kodshim relevant? Because, Rashi explains, someone who learns the laws of the sacrifices is as if he offers them in the Temple. Rashi implies that this special quality of Torah study applies only to the laws of sacrifices and not to other mitzvos.

The Chafetz Chaim (ibid., ch. 2) explains that this is why there is a Babylonian Talmud on Kodshim but not on Zera’im and Taharos. Kodshim is still relevant to practice, because by learning about it we are considered as if we put the laws of sacrifices into practice.

III. All Torah Is Practical

Others believe that when you learn any subject of Torah, it is as if you fulfilled that mitzvah. Rav Yitzchak of Corbeil (13th cen., France; Semak, introduction) says that with any mitzvah, if you learn about it and decide in your heart to fulfill it when you can, it is as if you have done the mitzvah. On the first day of Nissan, God commanded the Jews regarding the Pesach sacrifice. The Torah says that after Moshe finished explaining the requirement, “So the children of Israel went and did; as the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did” (Ex. 12:28). And yet, Semak points out, it was still two weeks before the Pesach should be brought. However, once they learned the laws and decided to fulfill the mitzvah, the Torah considers it as if they did it. Similarly, Rabbeinu Bachya Ben Asher (14th cen., Spain; end of Vayachel, Ex. 38:9) says that learning the details of the Mishkan achieves a similar effect to learning the laws of the sacrifices, about which we are told that learning those laws is like bringing a sacrifice.

The practical difference between these two views arises when someone is unable to fulfill a mitzvah. For example, does someone forced into isolation due to Coronavirus, incapacitated by illness, who could not buy an esrog, have any remedy to his situation? Someone should have taken care of this for him but if that did not happen and he lacks access to an esrog on Sukkos, should he learn the laws of esrog in order to at least fulfill the mitzvah in that sense? According to Rashi, it would seem unnecessary. Of course, there is nothing wrong with learning that area of Torah and it might fulfill the idea of learning the laws of a holiday on that holiday, but it does not fulfill the mitzvah of esrog. According to Semak, it would seem that a person in such an unfortunate situation would be obligated (if sufficiently healthy) to learn the laws of esrog in order to fulfill the mitzvah. Interestingly, the standard commentaries to Shulchan Aruch (649:6) do not mention this suggestion when discussing someone who does not have access to a kosher esrog.