The Sensitivity We Need

Parshat Emor

by Rabbi Avi Billet

The holiday Torah reading from Parshat Emor is familiar to us, and is often referred to by the opening phrase as the “Torah reading of שור או כשב.” That complete verse translates to “When a bull, sheep or goat is born, it must remain with its mother for seven days. Then, after the eighth day, it shall be acceptable as sacrifice for a fire offering to God.” The verse which follows is וְשׁ֖וֹר אוֹ־שֶׂ֑ה אֹת֣וֹ וְאֶת־בְּנ֔וֹ לֹ֥א תִשְׁחֲט֖וּ בְּי֥וֹם אֶחָֽד, which translates to mean “Whether it is a bull, a sheep or a goat, do not slaughter [a female animal] and its child on the same day.” The translation brought here is from Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan’s “Living Torah,” and his insertion of the bracketed phrase “a female animal” reflects the input of many commentators, including Rashi, following the Talmud, which note that we definitely know who the animal’s mother is, and the prohibition does not apply to a father-animal and its child, who may be slaughtered on the same day. 

B’chor Shor, as one example, suggests this mitzvah is meant to ingrain in us a sensitivity to avoid cruelty, as he compares it to the mitzvah of sending away the mother bird of Devarim 22:6. Targum Yonatan adds a proclamation to the beginning of his “translation” of the verse, which sounds like this: “My nation, the children of Israel! Just as our Father in Heaven is, so should you be merciful in the land – a heifer and its offspring should not be slaughtered on the same day.” 

The tragic example of how a misunderstanding can lead to cruelty is the tale of Do’eg Ha’Adomi who advised King Shaul not to finish the job of wiping out Amalek and to spare King Agag, on account of the exhortation in the verse “אותו ואת בנו,” which he applied to Agag’s case to avoid cruelty through killing the king after you had just wiped out his nation. (Midrash Shochar Tov) 

Of course, King Shaul had not wiped out Amalek to be cruel – he was following a Divine commandment as certified through the most noted prophet of his era! In fact, an argument can be made that showing mercy to Agag turned the entire commandment – which should have been an emotionless endeavor of just fulfilling God’s will – into an act of cruelty. If you spare one, the implication is that those not spared were killed in an act of hatred. 

The problem with Do’eg’s calculation is that it was perverse and irrelevant to that situation. The Torah’s commandment regarding animals has no bearing on the Torah’s commandment regarding Amalek. In fact, however we want to make the calculation, Do’eg himself emerged from this tale quite capable of killing parents and children on the same day as he demonstrated through his single handed executions of many of the Kohanim of the city of Nov! (Shmuel I 22:18-19) What happened to the command not to kill parent and child on the same day, Do’eg? Now you have to right all the “wrongs” committed in the battle with Amalek through killing every living creature – human and animal – in “Nov, the city of Kohanim?” 

Amalek, pardon the pun, is a different animal. In many ways we are grateful that the nation Amalek doesn’t exist – that the mitzvah was either achieved, or Sancheriv caused them to disappear – so we have no responsibility to seek out and destroy. 

Even if the mitzvah with the animal is specific to the mother and its child, Ramban suggests an added sensitivity is in order – even as he acknowledges that the halakha does not follow this view – to not kill the father-animal on the same day as its child (and vice-versa). 

We are painfully reminded of the futility of life as the events of Thursday night in Meron are laid before us in our newsfeeds. With at least 45 dead, at least a handful of them under 16, we do not yet know whether any of these people are from the same family. 

My friend and colleague Rabbi Yehuda Oppenheimer shared a message he received shortly after the Meron tragedy, signed by a woman named BatSheva Sadan. Here is an excerpt of it. 

A moment after I breathed a sigh of relief when I found out that all my children were fine – I started crying.

• I cried for my brief feeling of happiness and relief that this was the disaster of others; not my disaster. 
• I cried for the sigh of relief that I was not one of the terrified mothers desperate to know the fate of their loved ones.
• I cried realizing how I had differentiated myself from dozens of families whose lives have changed, who will now carry a never-ending pain.
• I cried as I realized how far I was from actualizing the mitzvah “Love your fellow as yourself”. I still see the world as separate and divided (i.e. us and them), that I cannot emotionally or physically feel within me the pain of someone else, pain that is not my pain. 

On this special day – when we supposedly have completed internalizing the message of the plague decimating the disciples of Rabbi Akiva for not practicing this teaching of their great Rebbi – I realized that we still do not understand anything. 

Through the pain of her words we are reminded that to truly be Ohavei Yisrael, those who love our fellow Jews unconditionally, we must be able to feel the other’s pain. And we also must remember that when it comes to our fellow Jews, there are no “others.” 

I readily admit it is hard to feel the pain of people we do not know. But many of us do cry when we hear of a terrorist attack in Israel or elsewhere in the world. Many of us do cry over the loss of life and the loss of potential, especially when young peoples’ lives are cut so very short. I recall being inconsolable during the invasion that followed the kidnapping of the 3 boys in the summer of 2014, when 13 IDF soldiers were ambushed and killed in a single mission. Sometimes the pain is combined with pride and triumph, such as what followed the Six Day War and Yom Kippur War, when the losses of so many soldiers was countered by the scope of the victory and the salvation. 

Informationally, the world is very small and connected. We are exposed to so much, so our sensitivities are often jaded, as we are overwhelmed by too many stories and tragedies. 

Perhaps the message of אותו ואת בנו is to be able to see the tragedy in even the fate of animals, animals who may be slated to die on different days! But the loss of both parent and child on the same day is a different level of magnitude. 

The Mishnah in the last chapter of Brachos (9:3) gives an example of a wasted, senseless prayer: “If someone is coming home from a journey and he hears a cry in the city, and says ‘May it be Your Will that they [those screaming] not be from my house,’ this is a worthless prayer.” After all, whatever caused the scream has already taken place, those crying out are who they are – no prayer will change that. In his Melechet Shlomo, Rabbi Shlomo Adani suggested an alternative prayer. “If that comes from my home, save the members of my household so they not fall victim to the fire (or whatever the current danger is).” Or the person should at the very least put trust in the Almighty that it isn’t in his home. 

And even so, there are no guarantees in life. We can’t undo what has been done, nor what has happened. What we can do is pray for ourselves, our loved ones, and for our fellow Jewish brothers and sisters, even when we don’t know them. In the best case scenario, we feel their pain, even when their pain doesn’t seem to impact us directly. Their pain is our pain, no matter how far apart we are or seem to be. 

What the verse in our parsha is teaching us is sensitivity, and it is sensitivity that helps us elevate our souls to be more kind and thoughtful people, neighbors, friends, family members. 

May our enhanced sensitivity, as trained upon us through this mitzvah, help increase our empathy, and our ability to identify with the concept of עמכם אנכי בצרה – of being with others in their moments of crisis. When we recall that God first appeared to Moshe in a burning bush, we see that the idea of being sensitive to someone else’s pain is indeed a divine quality, and it should certainly serve as a reminder that being empathetic and sensitive are ways in which we imitate God Himself.