Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily, our 40-week tour throughout the entire Talmud.
And this week, I am so excited, we are discussing Tractate Yoma. Yoma literally means the day, like yom, Yoma is the day. It’s spelled in Aramaic, so there’s an aleph afterward. And also, you could think of it conceptually in a way, because what is this tractate about? It is all about Yom Kippur.
And in a way, Yom Kippur is the yom. It’s the day of aleph, of unity, of getting back to that origin, where the entire world is going to be unified. Like many people have pointed out the word atonement, which is what our focus is on Yom Kippur, can also be read “at-one-ment.” And Yoma, which is literally just the day, is literally yom aleph. It is like the day of oneness, the day of unity.
Now, when most people think about Yom Kippur, they think about one thing and one thing only, because it’s on their mind the entire day, and that is fasting. That is not the central focus of this tractate. One of the things that you’ll notice as you study and get more familiar with the Talmud is very similar to what we experienced in Tractate Pesachim, where most of the tractate is really about Korban Pesach, what the experience of Passover was kind of in the time of the Temple, and then at the very end there’s a discussion about contemporary Passover experience.
Yoma follows a very similar structure. There are eight chapters in Tractate Yoma. Seven of those chapters are focused not on fasting, not on the actual day of Yom Kippur as we experience it, but the day of Yom Kippur as experienced by the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest. What was the service of the Kohen Gadol, what we call the avodah. Avodah literally means service or worship. So when we talk about Tractate Yoma, the first seven chapters are all about the avodah of the Kohen Gadol, which is the service of the High Priest.
The final chapter, the eighth chapter, the transcendent chapter, is the one that we really focus on for our contemporary Yom Kippur, and that talks about the five ways that we discipline ourselves on Yom Kippur, that we kind of simplify—we don’t get into luxuries, what are known as the chamesh inuyim. Chamesh is five, and an inui are ways that you kind of…I don’t like the word afflict yourself. You’re not… We’re not punching ourselves. But the five ways that we kind of simplify and get back to basics. What are those five inuyim?
One is fasting, that’s the most popular one. One is called rechitzah, which is not washing your hands. A third is tashmish hamitah, which is intimacy, sexual intimacy. A fourth is known as sichah. That’s like putting on ointments and oils and all that sort of stuff. I don’t really do that on regular days, so it’s pretty easy for me on Yom Kippur at least. And then finally, ne’ilas hasandal, which is not wearing certain types of shoes, what we contemporary… We don’t wear leather shoes. You do see some people wearing socks on Yom Kippur, but you can wear, you know, your classic Crocs. Or we used to, growing up, we would wear Keds, canvas Keds. That was the official shoe of Yom Kippur.
So there are five ways in our contemporary Yom Kippur that we kind of focus up and we get away from these day-to-day pleasures. But let’s really focus on the first seven chapters of Yom Kippur, which is the service of the Kohen Gadol.
Now, before we get into this, I really think it’s important to understand where Yom Kippur emerges from. And it’s really from two places, and we’re going to see there’s a dichotomy that rolls its way throughout Yom Kippur, because its origin really comes from two different places. And let’s give a little bit of a timeline.
So, let’s talk about the first Yom Kippur. The first Yom Kippur, which occurs on the 10th of Tishrei:. How did we get there? It really begins with the Jewish people leaving Egypt, which is what we commemorate on Passover, on Pesach, that takes place on the 15th of Nissan. And then the next major holiday, as we receive the Torah on the 6th of Sivan, that is the holiday of Shavuos. We receive the first set of luchos, of tablets, and 40 days after they receive the Torah, what comes next? That is the 17th of Tammuz.
What happens on the 17th of Tammuz? This is a traditional fast day that the Jewish people fast. A lot of things happened, but in this original story on the 17th of Tammuz, Moshe is going up, studying the Torah with God, so to speak, looks down and sees the Jewish people are worshiping a golden calf. They get worried, “Where’s Moshe? We can’t find him,” and they go and they start worshiping the golden calf.
Moshe Rabbeinu is beside himself. God is ready to destroy the Jewish people, build a new nation with Moshe. Moshe beseeches God and says, “I’m going to go back up to the mountain for 40 days to beg for forgiveness.” That begins in the month of Elul, and 40 days later, Moshe finally is granted forgiveness on behalf of the Jewish people. That is the 10th of Tishrei. That is the first Yom Kippur, where Moshe gets the second set of luchos. This is a set of luchos, tablets, that unlike the first, Moshe has to carve himself, create himself. And Moshe comes down from the mountain with that second set of luchos and forgiveness on that first Yom Kippur.
So why do we have Yom Kippur on the 10th of Tishrei? A lot of the imagery is coming back from that confrontation between Moshe and God on Mount Sinai, beseeching God to forgive the Jewish people for the sin of the golden calf. But the story does not stop there.
It is right afterwards, and I’m following the basic traditional chronology of the Torah, though you’ll find commentaries here and there who tinker a little bit with this chronology. It’s right after Moshe comes down from the mountain after Yom Kippur where God then commands and asks that the Jewish people create and build the Mishkan, the Tabernacle. This is kind of the transitory home that is going to continue the Sinai experience. That even after we leave Mount Sinai, even after we continue, we’re going to have a central place where God’s presence is felt on behalf of the Jewish people.
The Mishkan takes a long time to build, and it’s finally at the very end of the month of Adar, which is really like the last month in the calendar—that’s when we have Purim usually—when they have seven days where they inaugurate the Mishkan.
And it is on the first of Nissan, in that kind of like second year, that now the Jewish people are inaugurating and entering the Mishkan for the first time. And it’s at this point where the High Priest, the Kohen Gadol, the brother of Moshe, Aharon HaKohen, who was the first high priest that we had in Jewish history. He had two children, Nadav and Avihu. And his children, out of this excitement and closeness, God’s presence is now resting on the Mishkan, on this Tabernacle, where they go in, and there are many commentators that discuss what exactly their sin was, but let’s just give over the plain meaning. They go and offer a fire, a sacrifice, a something that was not commanded, and they are both killed inside of the temple, inside of this Mishkan.
Aharon is bereft. Aharon is like, “How do I recover from this?” And it’s in response to the death of his two children right after this inauguration that God, in the 16th chapter, what we call Parshas Acharei Mos, this is the 16th chapter of Leviticus—you can look it up—it is in a parsha that we read on Shabbos that we call Acharei Mos, after their death, referring to the death of his two sons, Nadav and Avihu, that Aharon is commanded by God and given the prototype of the service of entering into the Mishkan, and actually allows him to enter into the Holy of Holies, the innermost sanctum of the Mishkan, to have that union, that intimacy, that private moment where it’s just Aharon and God, where he can now beseech on behalf of the Jewish people.
It is over here that for the first time, we are given a detailed account of what the avodah of the Kohen Gadol is on Yom Kippur. What is the service of the high priest on Yom Kippur? And it’s through a specific ritual of sacrifices, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s only after this that the Torah then says, this is a ritual that can be done each and every year, not just by Aharon, but by future high priests, that allow them to enter into the Holy of Holies, and in the future, after Aharon, this can only be performed on Yom Kippur itself.
And I think it’s worth mentioning, according to many, and most famously the Vilna Gaon. The Vilna Gaon understands that Aharon himself, in that initial commandment that he got in the beginning of Parshas Acharei Mos, he was able to enter the Holy of Holies through this ritual on any day that he wanted. It was only future generations that limited that entry into the Holy of Holies specifically to the day of Yom Kippur, where Yom Kippur kind of becomes this triumvirate of unity. Where kind of the ultimate realization of holiness in an individual, in a time, and in a place, when they all converge, that is the only time that we are in the Holy of Holies. So it’s the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur is then able to enter the holiest place in the world, namely the Kodesh Hakodashim. So it’s time, place, and individual all kind of converge on Yom Kippur.
But it is important to understand that Yom Kippur really has two different roots. Root number one is this is the anniversary of the day where Moshe got the second set of luchos, of tablets. The Jewish people were then forgiven on behalf of the Jewish people, and therefore God gave forgiveness for the entirety of the Jewish nation. That took place on the 10th of Tishrei. But aside from that, the actual ritual of the Kohen Gadol was not given to Aharon on Yom Kippur. It was given to him after the death of his two sons, after this tragedy, and now he is able to enter into the Holy of Holies, and future generations are told that you also are going to be able to enter into the Holy of Holies and have this moment alone with God where you can then get forgiveness on behalf of the entirety of the Jewish people.
To me, going into the Holy of Holies is really a reenactment of what Moshe and God were doing on Sinai when he was pleading on Yom Kippur for the forgiveness. That intimate moment, Sinai, is then continued in the Mishkan, and the Mishkan itself has a moment for holiness every year on Yom Kippur, where the High Priest on the holiest day of the year is able to go into the holiest place in the world through this very specific ritual known as the avodah of the Kohen Gadol on Yom HaKippurim.
Now one final word to say about this dichotomy is we see the dichotomy about Yom Kippur in the very verse that talks about what Yom Kippur actually provides. And I’ll read it for you over here. There’s a verse in Acharei Mos. This is after Aharon is told how he is able to enter into the Holy of Holies, and then it says future generations are able going to be do this too. And the words of the Torah are, ki vayom hazeh, on this day, referring to Yom Kippur because this story didn’t take place on Yom Kippur. So it’s on this day, on future days. When are you going to have this ritual of going into the Holy of Holies? Only hayom hazeh, on this day Yom Kippur, yechaper aleichem, you will be forgiveness, letaher eschem, to purify all of you, mikol chatoseichem, from all of your sins, lifnei Hashem tit’haru, before God, you will become pure.
And if you listen closely to this verse, you will hear two different Hebrew words that both are proxies for forgiveness, but are different types of forgiveness.
The first word we hear is ki vayom hazeh yechaper. On this day, you will get this yechaper, from the word like kapparah, which means a form of forgiveness. But it doesn’t stop there. Then afterwards it uses a different term, and that is the term of taharah, of purity. And we will see throughout the day of Yom Kippur there are really these two types of things that we are doing.
One type, and this is like a lower type of teshuva, a lower type of return and forgiveness and reconciliation, that is called kapparah. Kapparah is really more transactional. It’s like you bang into somebody’s car so you got to pay them for the cost of that car. That is kapparah. That is the transactional of making somebody else whole for the damage you have done. That can be another person, that can be yourself, that can be God, but if you cause damage, you need to fix it. That’s a lower level of kapparah.
Taharah, which is really at the center in the heart of Yom Kippur itself, is a much higher level. After, God forbid, somebody gets into a car accident or bangs up somebody else or steals money or whatever mistakes that we may be atoning for, aside from actually giving back the money, aside from actually making that person whole, aside from actually fixing whatever you damaged, there’s the relationship itself. You bump into the person the next time after you get into a fender bender, so even if you pay the person back, the relationship still might be a little weak. It still might need to be addressed. There still needs to be healing to be done.
What actually heals the relationship. Not just healing it to get it back to that original state before the damage, but it actually strengthens the relationship. We’re even closer, we’re even stronger now. That is known as taharah of purity, where on Yom Kippur we are not just paying back our mistakes, but we are after something even more lofty. We want to strengthen the relationship. We want to ensure that the foundation of our relationship with God, with community, with the Jewish people, and of course ourselves, is not just going back and remaining stagnant, but each year when we go through this process, the relationship itself gets stronger.
And that is why I am so excited for this tour of Tractate Yoma, the tractate that talks about and is focused on Yom Kippur. I’m so excited for this, and let’s together keep making Torah sweet.