Vayikra Chapter 27 – Transcript

Vayikra Chapter 27: Laws of Dedications

Introduction and Context

We’re up to the final chapter in Sefer Vayikra, chapter 27. It’s a short book relatively, the shortest of all the five books. This final chapter comes after the end, which as we discussed is a kind of structure that is common in Sefer Vayikra. There’s an end, as we saw. And now there’s one more parasha. It’s one parasha with many parts, but one parasha of laws.

These are laws of people who dedicate some kind of gift. There’s different kinds of gifts, but some kind of gift l’Hashem, which means functionally to the Mikdash or to the Kohanim.

It’s curious that this should be, number one, appearing after the end, so to speak, and number two, that this should be the final thing. We might see it as somehow a continuation of the discussion of the laws of land, of who things belong to, that we had right before the Im Bechukotai. We had this discussion of how land returns in Shmita and Yovel and all of that. And now we have the more voluntary side of that, what the dachot of Yovel are about—how all land in some sense belongs to Hashem and we can only use it for a certain amount of time and therefore also belongs to each person, his yerusha, his inheritance belongs to him. It goes back in Yovel, all of those laws.

Now we have really a discussion of the Kohanim. We recall that Kohanim don’t have their own land. In other words, the kedusha, the hekdesh, doesn’t own any permanent land except for the place where the Beit HaMikdash was built and so on and the cities of the Levim. Those things are not mentioned right here or not mentioned explicitly at all in this book.

So what we have is really like the voluntary donations of people giving their land to the Mikdash or donations. Maybe that’s the way in which it completes the discussion of land before. We’ll see there’s explicitly discussion of Yovel, how it interacts with these laws and so on. And it seems like that’s an important part, the regulation not only of people buying and selling land between themselves but also the regulation of how donations to the Kohanim or to the Mikdash work.

So that’s the context but it still needs some kind of explanation of why this should be the last chapter and why this should come after the Im Bechukotai. I don’t have a good explanation for that right now.

Three Categories of Donations

Now what we have is like this. We have various ways in which a person can do a donation, can dedicate something to God, to the Mikdash and the Kohanim. And as we’ll see, it seems like most of these donations, their goal isn’t to donate the thing itself.

In other words, we’ll talk about three major categories and within them different categories of donations:

1. Donating people – donate yourself or someone else, things like that

2. Donating land

3. Donating animals

Those are the three main categories of possessions. Humans, in the sense of slaves, can be possessions but also in some sense a person belongs to himself, his family. You can donate that. And then there’s land and animals, known in general in halacha as karka or nichsei d’lo nayedi (not land, unmovable possessions), and metaltelin, which are mostly animals that move.

The Principle of Monetary Conversion

Now, as we can see, in all of these three categories, the goal usually here is not that the kodesh, not the Kohen or the Mikdash, should have these possessions. Usually, it almost always gets transferred into money, unless we literally bring a korban, of course, then the kodesh gets literally the animal. But this parasha is mostly not talking about that. It’s mentioned in some ways, slightly, and there’s maybe a discussion what it means. But in general, this is all about the kind where you donate something, but we understand that what the kodesh gets out of it is the value of it, the monetary value of it. And there’s different ways of converting the thing that you want to dedicate with money.

Now, of course, you can ask, if the point is to give money, why don’t we just give money directly? Well, firstly, money is not the main category of possessions in the Torah. When we get to Sefer Devarim, we get a little more about money being a category. But specifically, for sure, in the first four books, mostly we talk about possessions themselves. Money is just a representation of that.

And secondly, it seems like there’s a point that someone wants to be makdish himself, or his son, or something to the Mikdash, he doesn’t want to give money. We give money in some kind of way in exchange for that, but the value, the meaning of the money is still that it’s in exchange for that. So that’s the basic idea of all of these, for the most part.

Two Methods of Valuation

Now, another important basic distinction that we have in this chapter is between things in which you donate the value of the thing itself. In other words, now what will happen, as the pasuk says each time, is that the Kohen will evaluate it, he’s going to be the appraiser. There are halachot that discuss in more detail how this appraisal will work, but basically, the Kohen has the right, or the kehuna, the Kohanim in general, have the right to do the appraisal, and therefore they will get the amount of money that they appraise it for.

And then there’s another category, which is set prices. So certain things, as we’ll see, specifically humans, and specifically certain fields, have set prices, so these are like formalities, formalizations of how much this person is worth, how much this thing is worth, and that’s the amount of money that you will have to give. It’s not a market worth, it’s a kind of—just like we have, for example, the donation of machatzit hashekel, which is a set amount, there’s an ideal of having, just like Sefer Vayikra likes having everything in set amounts, a lot of clarity, so these are set amounts. Of course, they have some relation to the market value, they’re not entirely disconnected, they’re not floating in the air, these valuations, but the point of them is that they’re set, it’s like the set price.

Laws of Human Dedications (Erchin)

So that’s the first parasha. The first parasha is what we usually call erchin, but really I think the language erchin here refers to almost all of them. But in any case, the first parasha is, if someone makes a neder, ki yafli neder—yafli is just the language for the verb of making a neder, the verb of making a neder in the Torah is called hafla, which means something like setting apart or declaring something to be separate. And you want to give nefashot, nefashot literally meaning souls, living things, living people specifically here.

Then what we get here is categories based on age and based on gender. So the way I’ve organized it is, you can see that the pasuk is working first with age, it gives each age, and then within the age, for the genders within that age, how much money the erech is, although it’s not presented explicitly that way in the pasuk, that’s how it’s organized, you can see the parasha is organized that way.

The Age Categories

So we see number one, and the first age, and the way the ages go also is not in this order of age, it doesn’t work from zero to 100, it works from the primary ages and then the ages around them.

Ages 20-60 (The Primary Age)

So the primary age, in other words, the ideal human being, the ideal age of a person is between 20 and 60, those are the ages in which he’s complete, he’s not too young and not too old, not the—what’s called the—sometimes the yemei amida, the standing ages, you’re not growing and you’re not declining. And then:

– Male: 50 shekel

– Female: 30 shekel

That’s the erech for that age.

Ages 5-20

Now, we have the age before that, and now the age before that gets divided into two levels. There’s an age from 5 to 20, so he’s like a child, until you’re 20 you’re a child in this formulation. It’s very interesting, there’s different ways of describing who is—which age you’re a child, which age you become a man, which age you become too old, and so on. So for this purposes a child is from 5 to 20, so up to 5 is really small, but from 5 is already, you know, there’s someone, something to talk to, and until 20 then we have:

– Male: 20 shekel

– Female: 10 shekel

Ages 1 Month to 5 Years

Then from 1 month until 5 years, that’s the smallest level, so less than a month doesn’t count at all, as if it wasn’t born yet, but from 1 month to 5 years:

– Male: 5 shekel

– Female: 3 shekel

Age 60 and On

So those are the three ages, first the main age from 20 to 60, and two levels before that, two pre-adult levels, and then there’s a post-adult level from 60 and on:

– Male: 15 shekel

– Female: 10 shekel

So those are the four categories of ages, and with their set prices for how much you have to pay.

Provision for the Poor

And now we have one more thing, although in their set prices here, just like we had earlier, all the way in the beginning, different things, in which if you’re too poor, if you cannot afford it, then the Kohen will evaluate how much you can afford and that’s how much you will have to give. So that’s the law of a human.

Laws of Animal Dedications

Now what of an animal? So the way it works with an animal is, and there’s different readings of this, I’m not sure it entirely conforms with the simple reading, but I’ll say what it says and then you can find out what the halacha says about this in a different place.

We’re working from living things, so after humans there’s animals. And animals, there’s really two ways of dedicating it. One is you give an animal for a korban, it can be sacrificed. The important thing that this passage adds is, since we’re speaking of someone who gives the animal, the point of his giving is that the value of the animal should be for the Kohen or for the Mikdash or something like that.

The Law of No Exchange

So the important law added here is that you cannot exchange it. As we’ll see later, some things can be exchanged, but here you cannot exchange it. So don’t exchange one and say, well I have a better one or a worse one, you do not exchange it. If you do exchange it, the punishment or the result of that will be that both become kodesh, you don’t gain the one that you exchange, you have to give both. And obviously although it says, you can’t exchange even a bad one for a good one, probably the reason for this law is that we don’t trust it—

Behema Tehora and Behema Temeiah

Now that is an animal that you can bring a korban, so it’s called behema tehora. Now the opposite is behema temeiah. Of course it’s interesting—by the way, the place where this kind of duality exists first is in Parshas Noach, right? There’s an animal that can be a korban, a behema tehora, and then there’s a temeiah animal that you can’t bring a korban from. Now it’s not clear—there might be animals that are not temeiah but we don’t bring korbanot from. Okay, anyways.

Then what happens is that the Kohen will tell you we have to give the value. So you don’t give—we can’t get a korban—but he will evaluate it and you’ll give the value of the Kohen. And here also it says “bein tov u’vein ra,” that it sort of corresponds to the “tov u’ra” of that, although it’s not clear. The point is, again, that’s why I’m saying that the reason for temura being also “bein tov u’vein ra” is because if we don’t trust the person, same here. What he’s saying is you accept the Kohen’s evaluation whether you think it’s good or bad.

And then the—I’m going to go down—and now if the person, now what happens, what the way this works is that the Kohen takes the animal and he sells it, which will be called geula. So someone else sort of pays him for it, and you will have to pay how much the Kohen demands. So it seems like when you get it from the Kohen, it’s not like the Kohen puts it on the market—it’s that he sets a price and then someone pays that price, and that’s how you do your donation.

If the person himself wants to take it—so in other words, he’s gonna say, “I’m giving this to you and I’m going to give you money”—then he has to add a fifth. And that’s, I think, also part of this sort of not trusting the person. Like if you’re gonna do it yourself, you might handle—you might make some kind of deal with the Kohen to make a smaller evaluation—so you have to add 20% if you do it yourself.

Okay, so that’s the law of what’s called anything being—when you’re giving a living thing.

Houses and Fields

Now we’re moving to houses and fields. This corresponds to the laws of houses and fields that we learned in the beginning of Behar, which is how the real estate market is supposed to work.

So now we have these three categories—we’ll see there’s three categories. There’s houses—over there we had more categories, there’s different kinds of houses—here there’s three.

Houses

First, houses. If you’re makdish your house, you say you will give your house, right? Which means the value of the house, because it’s going to be sold, or you will redeem it. So again, the Kohen gets the right to evaluate it. If you redeem it yourself, you have to add a fifth, the 20%.

Fields – Two Types

If you’ll give a field, now fields, there’s two kinds of fields.

S’dei Achuzah

There’s a field that is also your inherited field, that belongs to you, to your family. Then this field, besides for a person who has this—erech has a certain amount that you have to pay for it—a field also has a set amount, not market value. Each time s’dei achuzah, again, has a set amount, which is “zera chomer se’orim bachamishim shekel kesef.” In other words, every field that can do a chomer’s worth of barley is worth 50 shekel. That’s how it works.

Now you remember that fields have this law of Yovel. So whenever someone had dedicates a field to Hekdesh, even Hekdesh, so to speak, in the first law over here, also only gets it until Yovel. So the amount that they give is not—there’s a famous—it’s not from one year, it’s as many years as I left until Yovel. It’s not forever and not one year, but as many years as left until Yovel. If it’s after—if it’s from Yovel, then it’s the entire amount, from 50 years. If it’s less, less years left until Yovel, then that’s the amount that you have to give them.

The same thing—if you redeem it yourself, you have to add a 20%.

Now, if not, or if it’s sold to someone else, right? Now the Hekdesh—remember, either sells it or you tell someone else, or he sells it back to the owner, which is called the owner sells it again—then you can’t redeem it. It will go back—it will not go back to the original owner, will go back to the current—if he sells it to someone else, that’s the law. So this is one way in which the Kohanim can gain property, since—or the Kohen, wherever that is.

Now that’s the law of a s’dei achuzah, a field that belongs to your family. So in other words, by Yovel it would go either back to you, and therefore we only pay you for that amount, or if it’s sold to someone else, will go to that person, and then it will return—revert to the Kohen from Yovel.

S’dei Miknah

If you bought—s’dei miknah, a field that you’ve bought, not what you bought of someone else, it will go back to them for Yovel, right? So then again, you will—he will count, you will give them the value of this—would be the value that is the value for you until Yovel. But when it’s—when Yovel, it won’t return to the Kohen as the person who gives his own field, because then he’s dedicating past the Yovel. But will go back to whoever you bought it from, because the fact that you—doesn’t preclude the law of the Yovel, that everything goes back to the original s’dei achuzah.

Currency Standard

Now there’s one law—all these—anything are the shekel hakodesh. Apparently there’s different, you know, different ways of counting a shekel. We already had this in Ki Tisa. A shekel hakodesh is 20 gera, which is the amount of silver. Apparently that’s what a shekel is.

Okay, so that’s all the laws, all the kinds of Hekdesh.

Non-Voluntary Dedications

Now we have a few more kinds.

Bechor

One is a bechor, and these are similar things, although some of them are not voluntary. Bechor, it says, “lo yakdish ish oto”—that means a bechor is already kodesh. So you have to be—either it or not, or give it or give it to the Kohen, whichever one, but you cannot not be. It’s not a question of if you’re makdish—that’s anyways kodesh. So though it’s—we learn in another place that we have to makdish it, to say that it’s kodesh, so before it becomes kodesh, all right?

If it doesn’t have a mum, goes to the Kohen. If it’s a man with a mum, again, you can be podeh it, but you have to add a chomesh, 20%, if—same way, if the same person. Otherwise it’s sold to someone else and the other person doesn’t have to add 20%, right?

Cherem

Now cherem, there’s different—different law. Cherem is apparently when you do give the field itself to the Kohen, to the Hekdesh. I think that’s the difference. Cherem, as opposed to Hekdesh, is the point is the value. Cherem, when you give the field itself, that’s why it’s cherem, and it’s like you entirely putting it away from yourself and give it to them.

Both—and from these three categories, right? Adam, behema, s’dei achuzah—all of them. So they’re not—that’s all that goes kodesh. There’s a debate—it’s the same means for the Kohen, if we’ve had the Beis HaMikdash. But there’s a—in any case, it’s entirely to the Hekdesh, to the Kohen. It’s not something that’s not another market thing. This is not the value—this is that’s—there’s cherem.

And Hekdesh or erech that we discussed before, and now there’s cherem.

Difficult Pasuk on Human Cherem

There’s a difficult pasuk that says, “Kol cherem asher yacharam min ha’adam lo yipadeh, mot yumat.” So again, we understand that the way it seems to be to say is that in general, that if you are—do you call it—you’re not in a s’dei achuzah, then Hekdesh gets it, it can’t be bought back. Same thing if you give—but the person, that means that he will have to die. But what—well, the person have to die?

So this is not a clear halacha. Of course we know that language of cherem is also, for example, by the shiva amim—it’s called the cherem shiva amim. But then maybe there’s really saying that people that deserve cherem also, you cannot buy themselves out for money. There’s different interpretations about—different interpretation. I’m just trying to show you the flow of the pasuk, which what it seems to mean in this context.

Ma’aser

Now another thing that is also—we don’t have to makdish—is ma’aser. Just to be clear, ma’aser—these are the two things that are automatically kodesh. So just like we said in the beginning, these two categories, right? There are things that are like defined, that are obligatory, and then there’s voluntary things. But bechor and ma’aser are the obligatory things that sort of correspond to erech and Hekdesh, which are the voluntary ones, right?

So ma’aser—this kind of ma’aser, the ma’aser from the field, from the things that grow there—again, if you redeem it, you have to add a chomesh. The person redeems himself also can’t be redeemed, but have to—you have to give it.

Same thing, ma’aser from an animal. Then it has the same laws, just like your ma’aser, an animal.

Practice of Ma’aser Behema

Firstly, we have an interesting description of the practice of how to do ma’aser: “Kol asher ya’avor tachas hashevet”—it’s sort of that account, one, two, three—the tenth is kodesh lashem. And here also you can’t exchange it, so similar to when you makdish a behema and you can’t exchange it. After here, it’s not your decision at all—you count one to ten, and then—doesn’t exchange. And if you do exchange, then both are kodesh, again for the same reason as we discussed.

Conclusion of Sefer Vayikra

And that’s the last law. And now we have another ending for the whole book: “Eileh hamitzvos asher tzivah Hashem et Moshe el Bnei Yisrael b’Har Sinai.” That these are the mitzvos, and this was the last mitzvah, and this is the end of the book of Vayikra.