The king’s executioner (I don’t think tabach here means
butcher) had to constantly pass back in forth before the king. After seeing this not-too-welcome sight too
often, the king made a decree that the tabach should no longer come in contact
with the dead and contaminate the palace.
So too, G-d decreed that the kohanim who enter the Beis haMikdash, his
palace, should never come in contact with the dead.
The mashal of the Tanchuma does not seem to fit the
facts. The prohibition of a Kohen coming
in contact with the dead applies even today, when we have no Beis haMikdash,
even when the palace of the King is gone.
The Midrash Rabbah even comments that this mitzvah was given to Aharon
for eternity as a special reward:
How then are we to understand the mashal of the Tanchuma?
R’ Tzadok haKohen explains that the Midrash is teaching us
that what was given to Aharon and his children as an eternal reward was not simply
the prohibition of becoming tamei; what was given to Aharon and his children
was the ability to always be in the palace of the King, no matter where or when
one lives. A palace of a human king may
be a physical place with a moat and turrets, but G-d’s palace is a place of
spiritual refuge that a person builds within himself. Even when there is no longer a Beis haMidash,
that palace continues to exist.
This also explains the double-use of the word “emor”
in the opening of our parsha, “Emor el hakohanim… v’amarta aleihem.” The root a-m-r is soft speech, a whisper. “Tizal ka’tal imrasi” – G-d’s speech a-m-r
is compared to dew. When dew falls you
don’t see darkening clouds or drops falling from the sky, but when you wake up
early in the morning the grass and tress are covered with moisture. There may no longer be visible walls of a
Mikdash, but the relationship between G-d and the kohanim remains everpresent.
I always wondered about the issur to be metamei chulin in eretz yisrael and why the prushim were so makpid on tuma and the obligation to be metaheir yourself on a regel even bizmn hazeh. Makes sense.
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