{"id":68904,"date":"2020-01-22T14:04:51","date_gmt":"2020-01-22T12:04:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=68904"},"modified":"2023-08-16T10:32:31","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T07:32:31","slug":"a-legal-look-at-a-theological-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/a-legal-look-at-a-theological-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"A Legal Look At A Theological Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[662,363,742,778],"acf":{"old_id":"68904","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":36147,"related_cahpter":"400","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"When is a sword like a corpse?\r\n\r\n","content":"

The ultimate chapter of Isaiah begins with a soaring pronouncement: \u201cThus said the Lord: The heaven is My throne and the earth is My footstool: Where could you build a house for Me? What place could serve as My abode?\u201d Among modern readers, this is seen as participating in a debate about the necessity, or even the legitimacy, of a Temple for God.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a brilliant re-use of this verse I want to unpack today. In Jewish law, the most severe form of ritual impurity is corpse impurity, called \u201cthe granddaddy (<\/span>avi avot<\/span><\/i>) of all impurities.\u201d The Talmud mentions a rule a few times that \u201ca sword is like a corpse\u201d (e.g., Bavli Pesa\u1e25im 14b). The image is graphic, and the law is strict: a sword that is pulled from a corpse, after being plunged into the living body, is just as impure as the corpse itself. But the metaphor is just a metaphor, and the law applies to all metal vessels that come in contact with the corpse: they, too, are as impure as a corpse.<\/span><\/p>\n

Medieval authorities debated the parameters of this law. Would someone who entered a building with an impure metal vessel need to have recourse to the ashes of a red heifer? The Tosafist Rabbenu (Yaakov ben Meir) Tam (France, 1100-1171) had a stringent view on all this, and ruled that a vessel is like a corpse for all laws. But as recorded in Tosafot on Nazir 54b, this elicited a response from his student, the distinguished Parisian rabbi, Hayyim ben Hananel ha-Kohen (the priest), who sent him Isaiah 66:1: \u201cWhat house would you then build me?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

It is certain that in every house, Rabbi Hayyim said, there must be something metal that once was under the same roof as a corpse \u2013 in which case priests, like Rabbi Hayyim himself, would be prohibited from entering.<\/span><\/p>\n

This repackaging of the verse shows how effortlessly the Bible flowed from the lips of some of our sages. And it shows that the creative, even subversive reapplication of biblical texts is not a modern phenomenon.<\/span><\/p>\n

Image: John Steven\u2019s Cabbot, Captain William Kidd, 1874 \/ wikimedia<\/span><\/p>\n","image":{"ID":68905,"id":68905,"title":"is66-sword","filename":"is66-sword.jpg","filesize":0,"url":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/is66-sword.jpg","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/a-legal-look-at-a-theological-vision\/is66-sword\/","alt":"","author":"7","description":"","caption":"","name":"is66-sword","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":68904,"date":"2020-01-22 12:04:36","modified":"2020-01-22 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