David Seidemann: Appropriate aggressiveness

From the other side of the bench

By David Seidemann

Issue of April 3, 2009 / 9 Nissan 5769

If each book of the five books of Moses was a movie in and of itself, and if Hollywood movie reviewers would review them, the acclaimed critics would most likely offer the following reviews.

Genesis (creation, floods, Abraham, twelve tribes etc.), five Stars. Exodus (10 commandments, 10 plagues, red sea, golden calf etc.), five stars. Numbers and Deuteronomy, the travails throughout the desert, approximately three and half stars, and the book of Vayikra, Leviticus, no stars. After all, how exciting are the laws of sacrifices compared to brothers selling a brother or rivers turning to blood?

But were Hollywood to opine in such a manner, as with most of what they do, they would be wrong. It takes more work to adapt the lessons of the sacrifices to contemporary mankind, but the work is necessary, rewarding and obligatory, like many of the sacrifices themselves.

Animal or bird; male or female species; obligatory or voluntary; who can eat, when can they eat, where can the remnants be eaten, the permutations are numerous and beyond the scope of this article. I did however find one aspect fascinating. One of the categories of sacrifices is that of the “Olah.” It is an offering of a male animal or a male or female bird which is entirely consumed on the altar. No one may eat from it. It is brought by someone who feels remorse for failing to observe a positive commandment like not hearing the Shofar on Rosh Hashana or not eating matzo on the first night of Passover.

Another category of sacrifices is the “Chatas” or sin offering. It is mandatory and is brought by a person who unintentionally committed a sin like violating the Sabbath. Once the person realizes his transgression of a negative commandment (do not light a fire on Shabbos) he regrets his actions, resolves not to violate that negative precept again and brings the sin offering. Unlike the Olah which was brought after failing to do a positive commandment, the Chatas is brought for transgressing a negative commandment.

What seems strange is that the Chatas brought for transgressing a negative commandment may be eaten by the Priest while the Olah, brought for (simply) failing to observe a positive commandment cannot be consumed by any human. It must vanish into air. Didn’t we always assume that violating a “no-no” is more severe than simply failing to do something positive? If so, why is the Olah totally consumed while the sin offering is available for human consumption?

That reasoning, my friends, would be another Hollywood type mistake. It’s not a question of more severe transgression or less severe. That is not what determines its “eatability.”

Whether the sacrifice is eaten (Chatas) or totally consumed, (Olah) depends, I believe, on the following analysis.

When a person violates a negative commandment, the effect of that violation lingers. If one person actively violates a negative commandment, the effect lingers over all of us. Since it lingers, its meat lingers to be eaten by the Kohen, the Priest who should have instructed the sinner to refrain from such violations. The Kohen partakes of that lingering sin, the lingering meat. The Priests eating is a message to the next generation of leaders to be more vigilant in their instruction of the masses.

The Olah, or totally consumed sacrifice, is brought under different circumstances. It is brought when one missed the opportunity to do a mitzvah. Nothing lingers. The moment is gone. There is no meat to be eaten. That is the lesson for the next wave of people, that a missed opportunity is gone forever.

The lesson of the sin offering is that the sin lingers so the Kohen eats that which lingers. The lesson of the Olah is that the opportunity is lost forever, it has vanished, it is gone, and so all of the meat is lost forever.

The failure to capitalize, to seize the moment, to act with alacrity can mean the difference between fulfilling one’s dreams or having one’s dreams vanish into thin air like the entirety of the Olah sacrifice.

Last week a professional football player was detained by a police officer in a hospital parking lot. This was despite the desperate pleas of the football player to be “freed” to run into the hospital to say good-bye to his mother-in-law who was dying. By the time the officer let him go, it was too late. The son-in-law arrived in his mother-in-law’s room not more than 30 seconds after she died. The football player was crestfallen. The officer was appropriately suspended.

While maybe not as dramatic, each of us have moments, probably daily, where success or failure, dream or despair, demand on our exercising “appropriate aggressiveness.” Whether these dreams linger or vanish is more a product of our effort than we probably imagine.

David Seidemann is a partner with the law firm of Seidemann & Mermelstein. He can be reached at (718) 692-1013 and at ds [@] lawofficesm.com.