A thought on Parshas Pinchas

"...tmimim yi'yhu lachem..." "...unblemished shall they be for you..." (28:19) The Torah often writes that the sacrificial offerings must be temimim - pure and unblemished - as befits any gift or offering which one might bring in serving the Divine. It is easy for us to understand, at a human level, why a sacrifice would be deemed unfit were it to have physical imperfections. The question on the above verse, though, is the word lachem which means "for you." Generally, the Torah writes that these offerings must be temimim without then adding that they must be pure and unblemished "for us." The Bechor Shor offers a midrash-halachic approach this week. That is, he interprets the verse in a manner which draws a halachic meaning from the words. What are we talking about here? This verse refers explicitly to offerings which were brought on yom tov, on Pesach to be exact. All offerings anytime needed to be unblemished, yet the Torah writes here with regard to bringing yom tov sacrifices that they (too) must be unblemished, and must be unblemished "for us." What makes Pesach any different than all other occasions? The Bechor Shor observes that what makes a yom tov, or Shabbos, different than all of the other week days when offerings might be brought is that on our holy days we are forbidden to engage in actions which are considered non-essential work. In the event that an animal was not carefully checked and was slaughtered in order to make it a Temple sacrifice, and a blemish was then discovered, the work performed in preparing that animal would have been in vain and thus non-essential. The persons who had engaged in that work would be, by negligent accident, desecrating the holy day. Thus, the mandate of having the offerings on those days "temimim" is not only an objective requirement; it is a subjective requirement binding each person involved in the Temple process. For our own spiritual sake, we need to make sure the animals are temimim. What our verse intends, then, is that we understand that the offerings must be pure, not only because all Temple offerings must be unblemished, but on holy days, we ourselves need to ascertain that no needless work is done, which would happen in the event that an unfit animal were slaughtered, rendering the process meaningless, and bringing avoidable iniquity "to us." At a deeper level, a lesson to derive from this interpretation is that HaShem's rules, even when seeming clear and objective, take on a subjective and personal importance to each of us. We have much to gain within ourselves from focused and objectified observance. Good Shabbos. D Fox