Parshas Vayikra: Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse

One of the trickiest things about travel is that every new place has its own laws.  Often, laws in different countries vary wildly.  In Australia, not only must you keep your child in a car seat until the age of seven, but the car seat must be “properly installed” – meaning, they want you to hire a professional to put it in your car!  But in other countries, like Thailand or India, car seats are virtually unheard of.  Not only do you not need a car seat for your child, but you can take your child – of any age, even new-born – on a motorcycle with you… without a helmet!

Of course, it’s up to the traveller to apprise themselves of the laws of the new place they’ll be visiting.  Are you allowed to make a right turn on a red light in the state you’re driving through when you’re on your American road trip? Are you allowed to use a radar detector? What about talking on your mobile phone – are you even allowed to touch it?  And those are just basic laws pertaining to cars.  Yet, the law touches every aspect of our lives and we are obligated to know about it and follow it, even if we are just visitors.

The same is true in Judaism.  Ignorance of the law is no excuse.  We are held accountable for our sins even if we commit them purely because we did not know it was a sin.  Perhaps we never heard that we are not allowed to cook on the Sabbath, or we did not know that what we were doing qualified as cooking. Or we simply did not know that it was the Sabbath in the first place.  Of course, had we known, we would not have done the sin.  But in not knowing, we are held responsible – it was up to us to learn the laws of keeping the Sabbath, and it was up to us to keep track of the days of the week.

In this week’s parsha there is a whole series of offerings described for unintentional sins.  Intentional sins are those we mean to do and involuntary sins are those we are forced to do.  Unintentional sins fall right in the middle, the gap between the two extremes.  For intentional sins sacrifice as atonement is generally not an option and for involuntary sins it is unnecessary, but for unintentional sins an offering will bring atonement.

You see, even unintentional sins cause a blemish upon the soul.  According to Nachmanides (Ramban), just as unintentionally brushing past a spot of grease leaves a stain on a shirt, so too does our inadvertent brush with sin stain us spiritually.  The sacrifice atones for the spiritual stain.

Not only that, but a sacrifice, which generally caused hardship to offer, reminds the person not to sin again in the future, cautions Abarbanel.  We must learn to be more careful, to look before we leap.  Furthermore, making a sacrifice gives one pause for introspection.  According the Ba’al Shem Tov, anything we see is meant to teach us a lesson.  How much more so are we to learn a lesson from our mistake, especially if the punishment for it is so severe!

Finally, notes Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, G-d would not even have allowed us to commit such a sin accidentally if it did not reflect a bigger failing on our part spiritually.  G-d does not allow even the animals of the righteous to sin, and protects the righteous man himself from sinning, even accidentally.  If we do not merit this protection, it means we need to improve and work on ourselves.

This year, when you learn about the animal sacrifices, look beyond the apparent brutality of it, or the sense that such activities have become obsolete.  Look deeper into the meaning and you will see that even today we still have much to learn from them.

Shabbat shalom.

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