Kavanot: פרשת אחרי מות־קדושים תשפ״א

This shiur is largely based on הרב אלחנן סמט's על פרשנותם המטפורית של חז״ל לאיסור

Are you allowed to place a stumbling block before the blind? That sounds like a stupid question:

But there are no stupid questions. Rashi (from the Sifra) doesn’t take the pasuk literally:

The Maharal justifies this based on the context:

In fact, the gemara extends this further to forbid helping someone sin (even if they are fully aware of the sin, and are not “blind”):

But what about the literal stumbling block thing? Artscroll adds that in brackets:

However, that’s problematic. Taking psukim literally, without the interpretation of the תורה שבעל פה, is the hallmark of heterodox Jewish sects:

And it’s not until the אחרונים that anyone suggests that we read the pasuk literally (this is the תורה תמימה; the מנחת חינוך and משך חכמה are similar).

However, we never find the literal meaning in חז״ל or the ראשונים. The Rambam is very interesting:

But to answer our question: No, you cannot place a stumbling block before the blind. But it’s not based on our pasuk.

So the Rambam reads the Sifra (“don’t give bad advice”) as פשט, and the gemara (“don’t help someone else sin”) as the דרש. There’s no halachic place for the literal meaning; you can’t place a stumbling block before the blind, but that is a specific case of the general rule of לא תשים דמים בביתך.

Rav Samet makes the point that this teaches us something about פשט. It doesn’t mean “the literal meaning of the text”; that is called משמעות.‎ פשט is the “unadorned” meaning of the text, how we interpret it without our knowledge of תורה שבעל פה. But we do use poetics, looking for metaphors and symbolism and all the tools of literary analysis. This is clear from the pasuk later in the perek:

No one would read לא תעמד על דם רעך as anything but metaphoric; if you are cut, I can go help you without worrying if my feet are standing on your blood!

Another example is the mitzvah of tefillin:

לאות על ידך: לפי עומק פשוטו: יהיה לך לזכרון תמיד, כאלו כתוב על ידך. כעין (שיר השירים ח:ו), שִׂימֵנִי כַחוֹתָם עַל־לִבֶּךָ [כַּחוֹתָם עַל זְרוֹעֶךָ]. רשב״ם, שם

Here, the פשט is metaphoric, while the דרש is literal.

Rav Samet says there are four levels of increasing abstraction in reading our pasuk and specifically the word עִוֵּר. The first is literal; עִוֵּר means someone who is blind, as the Torah Temimah attributes to the tsedukim: משים צור מכשול לעור עינים על דרכו.

The second reads עִוֵּר figuratively (though not quite a metaphor), as someone who doesn’t see the obstacle at that moment. Onkelos translates our pasuk as:

using the term לָא חָזֵי even though when the Torah is talking about physical disabilities (as in (ויקרא כא:יח)‎ כִּי כָל־אִישׁ אֲשֶׁר־בּוֹ מוּם לֹא יִקְרָב אִישׁ עִוֵּר אוֹ פִסֵּחַ) he uses the Aramaic word עַוִּיר.

It’s like those metal bumpy warning strips they put at intersections. They are not just for the blind; they are for all of us walking while playing on our cell phones. Without the warning, we would be דְּלָא חָזֵי and would walk right into the street.

The third level of abstraction is that of the Sifra. עִוֵּר means someone who does not understand, who does not realize that you are giving bad advice. Rambam says this is the פשט of the pasuk.

The fourth level of abstraction is that of the gemara. עִוֵּר means someone who is about to sin, even if they are fully aware that what they are doing is wrong. You still can’t abet their sin. Rambam says this is the דרש; there is a לא תעשה of יעזור על עבירה and חז״ל tied it to our pasuk.

Why the emphasis on the metaphoric interpretation, especially since the literal meaning is still true?

I think the emphasis on the ערבות אוניברסלית לכל אדם is because the message of קדושים תהיו is a dialectic. There are two opposing truths here:

פְּרוּשִׁים means separate. But we can’t achieve our קדשים תהיו by cutting ourselves off from others.

We talk about Torah being שירה, poetry. The nature of poetry is to communicate emotion, things that are incapable of being expressed in words, but need to be communicated nonetheless. The dry details of halachic law are in the תורה שבעל פה. The תורה שבכתב tells us the spiritual meaning of the halachot, the טעמי המצווה. The metaphor of לפני עור לא תתן מכשל, like that of לא תעמד על דם רעך, helps us feel that we are all connected, that anything else is שפלה וילדותית.

The Torah lets us understand the halacha not only with our minds, but with our hearts as well.