S.A.L.T. - Sunday

          Parashat Metzora opens with the description of the procedure by which a metzora undergoes purification from his state of ritual impurity – tum’a – resulting from his illness.  This ritual involved, among other things, two birds, one which is slaughtered and the other ultimately sent away.  The Torah requires the metzora to bring two birds described as “chayot” and “tehorot” – literally, “alive” and “pure” (14:4).  Rashi, citing from Chazal, explains more specifically what these two criteria entail.  “Alive” excludes “tereifot,” mortally ill birds.  “Pure,” Rashi comments, excludes “oaf tamei” – non-kosher birds.  The metzora must therefore bring two healthy, kosher birds.

         Later commentaries have detected a subtle anomaly in Rashi’s commentary to this verse. Commenting on the first term – “chayot,” Rashi speaks in plural form – “to the exclusion of ‘tereifot’ [sick animals].”  In his remarks about “tehorot,” he suddenly shifts to the singular form - “to the exclusion of a non-kosher bird.”  What makes this inconsistency particularly troubling is the fact that in Torat Kohanim, the source of Rashi’s comments, the consistency is, in fact, maintained: it employs the plural form in both.  Why did Rashi deviate from the text of the Torat Kohanim?

         The Maharal of Prague, in his “Gur Aryeh,” suggests that Rashi shifted to singular form so as to avoid a possible misunderstanding.  If he would have written “oafot temei’im,” this might have implied that by “temei’im” he refers not to “non-kosher” birds, but rather to “ritually impure” birds, meaning, birds that had contracted tum’a.  In order to ensure that the reader will understand that he refers to non-kosher birds, Rashi shifted to the singular form, and wrote, “oaf tamei.”

         The Levush Ha-ora, another work on Rashi’s commentary to the Chumash, raises the two obvious difficulties against the Maharal’s explanation.  First and foremost, how does Rashi preclude this misunderstanding by shifting to the singular form?  Why would the plural form lend itself to the interpretation of “temei’im” as “ritually impure” more so than the singular form?  Moreover, the Levush adds, there is, technically, no such thing as a ritually impure bird.  Only human beings can contract tum’a during their lifetime; animals and birds can become tamei only after their death.  Why, then, would anyone possibly misinterpret Rashi as referring to “ritually impure” birds, if the Torah explicitly required that the metzora bring a live bird?!

         A much different, particularly sharp explanation of Rashi is suggested by Rav Shelomo Ha-kohen of Vilna (in his “Kuntrus Chiddushei Torah” published in his “Binyan Tziyon”).  Rashi here seeks to resolve an apparent problem in the verse.  At first glance, we have no need for the Torah to specify “tehorot” – that the metzora must use kosher birds.  Later in its description of the ritual, the Torah tells that the kohen slaughters (“ve-shachat”) one of the two birds.  Now the term “shechita,” which denotes rendering a live animal halakhically permissible for consumption, can, by definition, be applied only to kosher animals and birds.  Since a non-kosher animal does not become permissible, its slaughtering cannot be described with the term “shechita.”  Necessarily, then, the bird used for this ritual is a kosher bird, and the Torah therefore had no need to explicitly require “tehorot.” 

         The answer, Rav Shelomo writes, is obvious.  Recall that this ritual involves two birds, only one of which is slaughtered.  Thus, though we have no need to be told that the slaughtered bird must be kosher, the Torah must, indeed, specify that a kosher bird is needed for the second bird. To this, perhaps, Rashi refers when he writes, “to the exclusion of a non-kosher bird.”  Since Rashi sees the word “tehorot” as referring specifically to the second bird, he employs the singular form.

         What about the Torat Kohanim?  Why does it write “to the exclusion of non-kosher birds,” in the plural form?

         Once again, Rav Shlomo of Vilna responds with a brilliantly sharp solution. Unless we find explicit indication otherwise, we generally attribute the comments in Torat Kohanim to the famous tanna, Rabbi Yehuda.  Now we know from the Talmud that Rabbi Yehuda held that according to Torah law, birds do not require shechita.  Therefore, according to Rabbi Yehuda, we cannot derive anything from the use of the term “ve-shachat” in reference to the birds used during the metzora’s purification.  Since “shechita” does not (according to Torah law) have any effect on birds, the use of the term here is unique and singular.  We would not, then, derive from the word “ve-shachat” that the slaughtered bird must be kosher, and hence the word “tehorot” is required for both birds, not merely the one that remains alive.  For good reason, then, the Torat Kohanim, as opposed to Rashi, employed the plural form, “to the exclusion of non-kosher birds.”

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