Eleven Exemptions and a Firstborn Already Holy

The Hook

Count the people the Rambam excuses. A deaf man, and a man deaf in only one ear. A mute, even one whose hearing is perfect. A blind man, and a man blind in only one eye. A man who limps in a single leg. A minor, one who cannot govern his own mind, a servant, a woman, the ritually impure, the uncircumcised, the old, the sick, and the man too delicate to climb on foot. Eleven categories, each pulled out of a phrase in the verse. They come to appear and to see, so a man who cannot see is not summoned. They come so that they will hear, so a man whose hearing is imperfect is not summoned. They come so that they will learn, and whoever must learn must also teach, so a man who cannot speak is not summoned. By the end of the first halachah the courtyard has been emptied.

Then the next chapter arrives at Hakhel and almost all of it comes undone. Once in seven years the whole nation gathers to hear the king read, and those exempt from appearing are exempt here as well, except women, minors, and the uncircumcised. The one exemption that holds is impurity, and it holds for a purely technical reason. So the man the previous chapter placed alongside the impure now stands in the Women's Courtyard under obligation, the child who could not climb the mountain is carried in, and the convert who cannot follow a syllable of Hebrew is told to listen with trembling as though the mountain were still smoking. And then, having gathered everyone, the Rambam opens the laws of the firstborn with a creature that became holy before anybody had an opinion about it.

Chagigah 2: Eleven Who Do Not Come, and a Door That Cannot Be Shut

The chapter begins with subtraction and it is thorough. A tumtum and an androgynus are exempt because there is a doubt that they may be women; a man half servant and half free is exempt on account of the servant in him. And then the Rambam adds somebody back. The scraper who collects the excrement of dogs for the tanners, the man who quarries copper underground, the leatherworker: men whose trades make them offensive to stand near, and the ruling is that they purify body and clothing and go up to Jerusalem with all Israel. Being unpleasant is not a disqualification. Being unable to see, hear, speak, or walk is. The line is not drawn around dignity but around capacity, around whether a person can do the thing the pilgrimage is for.

Around that spine the chapter builds its economics. Whoever is obligated to appear is obligated in the festival offering, and whoever is exempt from one is exempt from the other. And the money is watched closely. The burnt offering of appearance may come only from ordinary funds. The festive peace offerings may be bought with second tithe money mixed into ordinary money, and only if the minimum measure a person must eat could have been purchased with the ordinary coins alone. A priest may satisfy his celebration with the portions that come to him from other offerings, but never with a bird sin offering or a meal offering, because those are not meat, and meat is what makes a person glad.

Then the chapter ends, and the register changes completely. When a man brings his offerings he should not sit and eat them secluded with his wife and children and imagine he has performed a whole mitzvah. He is obligated to gladden the poor and the bitter of soul, and the verse names them: the Levite, the stranger, the orphan, the widow. If he ate his own sacrifices and did not gladden these people at his table, the Rambam applies to him a line from Hoshea about sacrifices like the bread of mourners, which defile everyone who eats them. The Levite comes first, because he has no portion and no inheritance and no share of the sacrificial meat. The chapter that opened by ruling eleven kinds of people out ends by ruling that a table with only your own family at it is not a mitzvah at all.

Chagigah 3: The Scroll Through Five Hands

Once in seven years, on the first day of chol hamoed of Sukkot in the eighth year, the whole nation assembles: men, women, children, and the stranger in your gates. Here the Rambam performs the reversal. All who are exempt from appearing are exempt from Hakhel, except women, minors, and the uncircumcised, who are obligated. The ritually impure person alone stays exempt, because the verse speaks of all Israel coming and he is not fit to come to the Temple. A tumtum and an androgynus are obligated here without any doubt, because women are. The architecture of the previous chapter, built to keep the pilgrimage to those who can see and hear and learn, is set aside for one day in seven years, and set aside precisely in favor of the people who cannot.

The staging is extraordinary. Trumpets sound across Jerusalem. A large wooden platform is set up in the middle of the Women's Courtyard. The Torah scroll travels from the attendant of the synagogue to the head of the synagogue, from him to the segen, from the segen to the High Priest, and from the High Priest to the king, and the Rambam tells us why the chain is that long: the transfer passes through many hands as an expression of respect. The king takes it standing and may sit to read. He reads from the opening of Devarim through the blessings and the curses, then adds seven blessings of his own, the last a supplication in his own words as best he can. All of it is in the Holy Tongue, even though foreigners are standing there.

Then comes the halachah that makes the chapter unforgettable. Converts who do not understand are obligated to fix their attention and direct their hearing, listening with awe and reverence, rejoicing while trembling, as on the day the Torah was given at Sinai. Even great sages who know the entire Torah must listen with the most extreme concentration. Then the Rambam says what the ceremony is for: Scripture established it solely to strengthen the true faith, and a person must see himself as though he were being commanded at this moment and hearing it from the Almighty, for the king is only an agent to make the word of God known. The man who understands every word and the man who understands none get the identical instruction. Neither is there to acquire information.

Bechorot 1: Holy the Moment It Emerges

The laws of the firstborn open with a commandment to set aside every male first issue of the womb, among people, among kosher animals, among donkeys, healthy or fatally flawed, all of it going to the priests. Firstborn sons and firstborn donkeys are redeemed and the money goes to the priest. A firstborn kosher animal is slaughtered in the Temple as an offering of lesser sanctity, the rest of its meat eaten by priests. If it is blemished, whether born that way or blemished later, it is handed to a priest as his outright property, and he may eat it anywhere, sell it, or feed it to anyone at all. And then the fourth halachah, the strangest sentence in the chapter. It is a mitzvah to consecrate the animal and say, behold, this is holy. And even if the owner did not consecrate it, it is holy anyway. It became holy the moment it came out of the womb.

Hold both halves of that. The declaration is a commandment, so a man who says nothing has failed to do something. And the declaration accomplishes nothing, because the sanctity did not wait for him. It binds priests and Levites and Israelites alike, so that even a priest with a firstborn born in his own herd must treat it under the laws of a firstborn rather than as his dinner. Then the clocks begin. The animal is eaten within its first year, counted from the eighth day if unblemished, since that is when it becomes fit for the altar, and from the day of birth if it was born blemished, since it could have been eaten that day. And in our own era, with no Temple, it is simply kept until a blemish comes, and then eaten.

The last movement of the chapter is about handing it over, and it is unexpectedly delicate. A firstborn animal is not given to the priest right after birth, because that is not respectful to him. The owner raises it first, thirty days for a small animal, fifty for a large one. And if the priest, impatient, says give it to me now and I will look after it myself, the owner may not comply, because that would make the priest a man who assists in order to collect what is owed him. There is one opening. If the animal is blemished and the priest asks for it in that interval so he may eat it now, or if it is unblemished and he asks so he may offer it now, the owner may hand it over, because the priest is asking for the thing itself rather than for a job. And the Rambam adds a quiet note in his own voice: it appears to me that a person may give the firstborn to whichever priest he wishes.

The Unifying Principle

Three chapters, one question. What is the relationship between the status a thing already has and the act by which a person acknowledges it? The firstborn animal is the purest case. Its holiness is fixed at the moment of emergence, indifferent to whether the owner noticed, and still the owner is commanded to open his mouth and name it. The Alter Rebbe built the second chapter of Tanya on exactly this structure when he wrote that the soul of every Jew is a part of God above, literally, which is not a reward for anything and cannot be forfeited by anything. Nobody consecrates it. It emerged that way. And the rest of the book is the daily labor of saying so, because a holiness you never articulate governs nothing about how you live.

Hakhel is that same law written across a nation. The point of the gathering is not instruction, since the greatest sages stand there under the same obligation as the convert who cannot follow the language. It exists to strengthen faith, and it does that by making every person see himself as though he were commanded at this moment. The Lubavitcher Rebbe pressed this mitzvah into the present with unusual force, insisting that the smallest child carried into the courtyard belongs to the mitzvah rather than decorating it. The Baal Shem Tov taught that a person is wherever his will is, and that is the whole instruction given to the convert who understands nothing: not comprehension, but presence and desire. And the Sfat Emet taught that the first of a thing is not the opening installment of what you own but the point at which it has not yet become yours. The firstborn is holy before its owner acts because the first of anything was never his.

Which is why the last halachah of Chagigah 2 is not moralizing tacked onto a technical chapter. A man who eats his offering with only his household around him has performed a different act.

Modern Application

Start with the eleven, because they are the uncomfortable part. There is a serious reading of Chagigah 2 in which a community organizes itself around capacity: who can attend, who can follow, who can climb the stairs. That reading is legitimate. The Rambam ruled it. And then he ruled Hakhel, the exemptions folded, and the room filled with women and infants and the man everyone had a category for. A community which only ever gathers on the terms of capacity has never once held its Hakhel. Somewhere there has to be an occasion whose design assumes that most of the people present will not follow it, and which is not a concession to them but the point.

Then the firstborn, which is more personal. Something in your life is already holy and you did not make it so. The child, the marriage, the work you were handed, the first hour of the morning. The Rambam says two things about it that sit uneasily together and are both true: it is holy whether or not you ever say so, and you are commanded to say so. Then he adds the thirty days and the fifty days, which is the part nobody expects. You do not get to discharge the obligation the instant it appears. You raise the thing first, and if the one receiving it offers to take the burden off you early, you may not accept, because then the gift becomes a wage. What is owed is not delivered at the earliest moment that clears your conscience. It is delivered after you have carried it.

The Closing

The seam between these two treatises looks administrative. But the Rambam has set a gathering and a birth beside each other, and both are events in which something is true before anybody consents to it. The nation was already the nation before the trumpets sounded. The animal was already holy before the owner opened his mouth. What the trumpets and the words accomplish is not the fact. It is the person catching up to the fact.

Eleven kinds of people are told they need not come, and then once in seven years the trumpets sound and almost all of them are told to come anyway, and the man who cannot understand a word is instructed to tremble as though Sinai were happening in front of him. And the calf born this morning is already holy, and its owner is still commanded to say so, and he must feed it for fifty days before he may give it away. Nothing in these chapters waits for you to feel ready. Everything in them waits for you to say it out loud, and then to carry it a while before you hand it on.