Personal and Communal Purity

And the Lord spoke to Moses, after the death of the two sons of Aaron, when they drew near before the Lord, and died.                          Leviticus 16:1

Metzora, the previous parasha, ends with the instruction: “Thus shall you separate the Children of Israel from their impurity, that they not die in their impurity, when they defile My Tabernacle that is in the midst of them.”

My father commented that the way of Torah is for one to be pure and avoid personal (ritual) impurity and conveying impurity to others.

Yet, equally, Torah teaches that every individual has responsibility for his fellow men and therefore, drawing near before the Lord, to the extent of abandoning fellow men and complete withdrawal from society, can lead to ones death.

Similarly, in verse 2, Moses is told to convey to Aaron “that he not come at all times into the holy place…” Torah’s approach does not confine sanctity to the holy precincts, quite the contrary, the ideal is to sanctity one’s daily life in all its aspects, and it is that sanctity which will allow one to enter the holy place.