Parasha: Vayikra · Aliyah: Seventh (Malchut)

נפש כי תחטא, ומעלה מעל בשם, If someone sin and commit a trespass against the Lord, etc. Why did the Torah have to write the words כי תחטא here? It cannot mean that the sin referred to is a denial of the sin by the sinner seeing that the Torah already wrote וכחש בעמיתו, that the sinner denied having committed the trespass, i.e. having exploited his labourer by failing to pay him. Besides, why does the Torah in this instance describe the sinner as מעל בשם, "having committed a trespass against the Lord," words which have not appeared in any of the previous examples of sins committed? Why did the Torah have to add the word בעמיתו when writing וכחש בעמיתו? The meaning of the word is not clear.

Perhaps the Torah wanted to inform us of three distinct wrongs committed by the sinner in question. 1) He appropriated to himself something which did not belong to him, i.e. an aspect of the sin of robbery. 2) ומעלה מעל בשם, the meaning of the words "against G'd" may imply that by trying to re-arrange the allocation of wealth to people other than those decreed by G'd, the sinner interfered with G'd's scheme of things. Hence the Torah describes him as having committed a trespass against G'd. By doing so, the sinner creates the impression that he denied G'd's justice and fairness in allocating wealth to different people at different times. It is even possible that the reason that the Torah repeats the expression, i.e. ומעלה מעל instead of merely saying ומעל includes the victim's impression of G'd's sense of justice and fairness. By the sinner having done what he did, he produces a feeling in the heart of the victim that G'd has allowed him to be victimised. This is an additional sin committed by the person described as guilty of "trespass." 3) The meaning of the words וכחש בעמיתו is that the sinner, i.e. the recipient of a loan who now denies to the lender that he had received it, accuses the righteous of being wicked when he makes it appear as if the lender was the liar. The exact meaning of the word בעמיתו is, that he puts his opposite number in the position of appearing to have stolen from the dishonest accuser. He has the nerve to challenge the person who extended a loan to him, and, instead of being grateful to him he makes him appear as a criminal. All of these three sins occur either when 1) someone has either received some deposit on trust, פקדון, or בתשומת יד, when he had a loan extended to him, the depositor not wanting a third party to know about it; or 2) when there is outright robbery, גזל;, or 3) עשק בעמיתו, when the sinner is guilty of withholding wages from his labourer and the like. When someone has found some object lost by a third party and denies it, the definition כחש בעמיתו does not apply, seeing he does not know who has lost it. This is the reason that the Torah wrote a separate verse to describe this example of wrongdoing.

On the moral-ethical level, our paragraph also describes three negative effects on the soul of the sinner described here. 1) By accusing someone wrongly, the soul of the accuser loses some of its spiritual light; the expression נפש כי תחטא reflects this loss sustained by the soul itself. 2) the words ומעלה מעל בשם may be understood in kabbalistic terms. Every Jewish soul depends on continuous input from celestial forces called שפע נשמתו in order to sustain itself spiritually inside a body. The only soul which does not enjoy this continuous spiritual input is one whose נפש, the person it resides in, has become guilty of criminal sins which will result in its being deprived of the celestial spiritual input. This is what the Torah meant when it described the נפש being "cut off" in Genesis 17,14 as the consequence of a Jew ignoring the commandment to circumcise himself or be circumcised. The celestial spiritual input into our souls which we have described enters by means of two thin "threads" through a person's two nostrils as this is the area where the נפש is joined מקום דבקות, to its owner i.e. to G'd. This is what Moses meant when he said in Deut. 4,4: "all of you who have cleaved unto the Lord your G'd are alive as of this day."

If man commits the sins described in this paragraph his soul comes under the domination of the forces of evil. If the spiritual input from celestial sources were to continue, it would actually strengthen the forces of evil which have taken over in that person. When the Torah speaks of ומעלה מעל בשם, this describes such a process of strengthening him who trespassed against G'd. This is the mystical dimension of Proverbs 28,24: "Whoever robs his father and mother and says: 'it is no sin,' is a companion of a destroyer." Solomon means that inasmuch as this person makes common cause with evil, otherwise known as איש משחית, a destroyer, he has himself become a destroyer.

3) The denial of the truth by the individual in our paragraph impacts also on the community of Israel seeing that all of Israel are branches of one soul. If any branch of that soul becomes involved in evil this has repercussions on the entire people. This is the deeper meaning of the words וכחש בעמיתו, his denial extends to the members of his עם, his people. His people become כחש, "weak," through his sinful behaviour. This is exactly what Solomon referred to in the verse from Proverbs we have just quoted. Berachot 35 describes the word אמו in that verse as referring to the כנסת ישראל, the spiritual concept of the Jewish people, "mother Israel." The Jewish nation increases in spiritual power by means of its men of valour who contribute to it peace and harmony and who thereby assure it of life itself.