Each week we discuss one familiar halakhic practice and try to show its beauty and meaning. The columns are based on the commentary "Meaning in Mitzvot" on the Kitzur Shulchan Arukh, which is serialized on Yeshivat Har Etzion's "Virtual Beit Midrash", www.vbm-torah.org. Subscribers are currently learning about Shabbat.

Many commandments in our parsha exemplify that even in times of war, we must act like human beings, and not degrade ourselves to the level of animals. One of these is the commandment to be scrupulous about body wastes, פFor HaShem your G-d goes about in the midst of your camp, to save you and to give your enemy before you; let your camp be holy, and let Him see no unseemly thing among you, and turn away from youצ. (Devarim 23:15.) Of course we can understand why we need to keep a military camp from becoming one gigantic latrine, but why is this identified in the Torah with having a holy camp, which HaShem traverses?

We find in many places that bodily wastes have a negative spiritual symbolism. One of the rules learned from the verse cited above is that we may not say HaShemֶs name or other holy utterances in the presence of filth (SA OC 79:1), or even in a place which is used as a bathroom. (SA OC 83.) It may even be that such a berakha is invalid (OC 185:5). Tefillin may not be worn in a bathroom or while eliminating. (OC 43.)

One way of understanding this symbolism can be inferred from the halakha that we are required to wash our hands after visiting the bathroom. (SA OC 4:18.) The reason for this is because there is a פruach raֶahצ, an פevil spiritצ, in such a place (Mishna Berura s.k. 40). We have explained many times that tuma or a ruach raֶah can be explained as a frustrated potential for holiness, and this explanation is clearly applicable here. The food we eat becomes sanctified thereby: it not only sustains the activity of our bodies, which is ideally holy, but it also sustains life itself and much of it is actually incorporated into our bodies. Yet some parts of the food are excreted. These waste products failed to ally themselves with holiness in any of these ways. (See Nefesh HaChaim II:7.)

Conversely, the manna which sustained us in the desert was a holy food which came directly from HaShem; the gemara tells us that this food was פabsorbed into the limbsצ and left no waste products at all. (Yoma 75b.)

We live in a world which contains holiness, as well as profane with a potential for holiness; alas, it also contains wickedness, aspects which resist and oppose holiness. We are reminded of this by our bodily wastes, components of our diet which had every opportunity to serve holiness by nourishing us yet were eliminated by the body.

MEֶEIN OLAM HABA

The gemara tells us that three things in this world are like the World to Come. The first, fittingly, is the unique spiritual elevation of Shabbat. The second is sunshine, which as it warms and illuminates reminds us of HaShemֶs own lambence. The third, more surprisingly, is elimination! (Berakhot 57b.) Rav Kookֶs commentary points out that overcoming our shortcomings is an impossible task in this world. This is because the perfection of the spirit must await the purification which precedes our entry into Paradise. Yet in the process of elimination the body manages to cleanse itself of all its wastes, all non-productive content. This is an analog of the spiritual purification which we will experience as we approach the next world. (Ein Ayah.)

Rabbi Asher Meir is in the process of writing a monumental companion to Kitzur Shulchan Aruch which beautifully presents the meanings in our mitzvot and halacha. Rabbi Meir - who had given a series on Business Halacha at the Center, and has taught a series on the Meaning in Mitzvot. We hope to have him back at the Center some time in the future.

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