Sefer Vayikra is about sacrifices, and though these laws have been inoperative for almost 2,000 years since the destruction of the Temple, the moral principles they embody are still challenging.
One set of sacrifices set out in detail in this week’s sedrah warrants particular attention: chattat (sin offering). Four different cases are considered: the high priest, the Sanhedrin (Supreme Court), the King, and an ordinary individual. Because their roles in the community were different, so too was the form of their atonement.
The sin offering was to be brought only for major sins, those that carried the penalty of koret (being cut off) – and only if they were committed unintentionally (b’shogeg). This could happen in one of two ways: a) because the person concerned did not know the law (e.g., that cooking is forbidden on the Sabbath); or b) he or she did not know the facts (e.g., that today is the Sabbath).
Unintentional sins stand midway between intentional sins (where you knew what you were doing was wrong) and involuntary action (ones where you were not acting freely at all; e.g., it was a reflex action, or someone was pointing a gun at your head). Intentional sins cannot be atoned for by sacrifice. Involuntary actions do not need atonement. Thus the sin offering is confined to a middle range of cases, where you did wrong, but you didn’t know you were doing wrong.
The questions are obvious: Why should unintentional sins require atonement at all? What guilt is involved? The sinner did not mean to sin. The requisite intent (mens rea) was lacking. Had the offender known the facts and the law at the time, he would not have done what he did. Why then does he have to undergo a process of atonement? To this, the commentators gave a variety of answers.
Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch and Rabbi David Zvi Hoffman give the most straightforward explanation. Ignorance – whether of the facts or the law – is a form of negligence. We should know the law, especially in the most serious cases. We should also exercise vigilance, and know what we are doing. That is a fundamental obligation, especially in relation to the most serious areas of conduct.
Abrabanel argues that the sin offering was less a punishment for what had been done than a solemn warning against sin in the future. The bringing of a sacrifice, involving considerable effort and expense, was a vivid reminder to the individual to be more careful in the future.
Nahmanides suggests that the sin offering was brought not because of what led to the act, but rather because of what followed from it. Sin, even without intention, defiles. “The reason for the offerings for the erring soul is that all sins [even if committed unwittingly] produce a ‘stain’ on the soul and constitute a blemish in it, and the soul is only worthy to be received by its Creator when it is pure of all sin.”
The late Lubavitcher Rebbe, following midrashic tradition, offered a fourth interpretation. Even inadvertent sins testify to something wrong on the part of the person concerned. Bad things do not come about through good people. The sages said that G-d does not allow even the animals of the righteous to do wrong; how much more so does He protect the righteous themselves from error and mishap (see Yevamot 99b; Ketubot 28b). There must therefore have been something wrong with the individual for the mishap to have occurred.
This view – characteristic of the Chabad approach, with its emphasis on the psychology of religious life – shares more than a passing similarity with Sigmund Freud’s analysis of the unconscious, which gave rise to the phrase, “a Freudian slip.” Remarks or acts that seem unintentional often betray unconscious desires or motives. Indeed, we can often glimpse the unconscious more readily at such moments than when the person is acting in full knowledge and deliberation. Inadvertent sins suggest something amiss in the soul of the sinner. It is this fault, which may lie beneath the threshold of consciousness, which is atoned for by the chattat.