Friday, April 11, 2008
17a: Making Up For Lost Time
The notion of tashlumin, which is prominent on this page, is an interesting one. Micah has already made the implicit connection between tashlumin and tschuva in an earlier post, and I just want to highlight that idea here. We make mistakes, but even missing the assigned day for sacrifice is not irreversible. We may argue (and we do) about when such missed sacrifices can be made good, but we allow people to, in essence, make up for lost time. As Micah pointed out, this notion is odds with the "crooked can't be made straight" stuff we saw earlier, but given all the discussion about tashlumin, you gotta think the rabbis are putting their fingers on the scale in that philosophical dispute.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
But I wonder how or whether this tashulumin can apply today? The argument is over whether a sacrifice can be redone. If our prayers are in place of sacrifices, could someone who missed a Shavuot service on Shavuot say those prayers on another day within 7 days to make it up? Or what about Pesach -- do we really allow people who can't do Pesach this year for one reason or another to observe Pesach on Pesach Sheni? I'll give a real example. There was a women in our shul who got seriously ill on Erev Pesach before the Seder. She was in the hospital for all of Pesach and not allowed to eat - she has an IV. She felt terrible that she couldn't get matza this Pesach. In this case, could I say to her -- No worries -- there is always Pesach Sheni and you'll fulling make up for missing Pesach this year? Why not?
Post a Comment