Parashat Emor/Nachum J Stone

This week’s parsha has multiple references to the concept of חילול השם, the profanation of God’s name. The parsha does not explain what it means to profane God’s name. However, the previous parsha, K’doshim gives us insight into what it might mean.

We generally assume that Yom Kippur is מכפר, atones, for all our sins. The Gemara yoma 86a states, “For the sin of chilul hashem, teshuva doesn’t suspend ones punishment and yom kippur doesn’t atone. בחילול השם אין כח בתשובה לתלות ויום הכיפור לכפר  .  The Meshech chochma on Vayikra 19:12 concludes that chilul hashem must be a sin of bein adam lchaveiro– an interpersonal sin. Otherwise, hashem could forgive for chilul hashem on Yom Kippur. Why is it interpersonal? Because the chilul hashem distances others from hashem. Depriving others of their faith is unrestorable. Thus, it is unforgivable.

The Netziv  vayikra 19:2 explains ” כל עדת בני ישראל ” to mean all the members of b’nai Israel on their own level. We are all equal when it comes to the performance of mitzvot. We eat the same matzah, carry the same lulav, hang mezuzot, and wear tekhelet (of course). However, when it comes to holiness we have divergent paths. The willingness to work hard to learn to control our thoughts and actions is certainly unequal. It is within the grasp all of us to push ourselves to become a person worth emulating. To be a true Kiddush hashem– to honor to God.

Today, the greatest Torah scholar of our generation passed away. None of us can dream to approach the mastery of the Rambam’s Torah that Rav Rabinowitz achieved. Yet all of us can emulate many of his traits. The modesty, the warmth, the empathy that made him beloved to his thousands of students. The only fear that they felt was of not thinking clearly enough. He led by example, and truly treated his students as equals; seeking out their opinions, and expressing his own only to clarify.

As a scholar, he was working for the ages, and he knew it.
As a teacher, he was working for you, and you felt it.