It Isn't Just Us II---$homer Negiah?

Well, it turns out there's a market for tznius, in a sense.

Maybe this'll solve the shidduch crisis, what between "bad dates" and religious authorities claiming that "once you touch each other you'll never marry each other" [real quote].

This is an excerpt from an article from the May 26 Village Voice.


See Dick Pay Jane: Chaste Dating for Cash
Recession desperation produces a quaint throwback
By Emily Brady
Tuesday, May 26th 2009

We've never met before. All I know about Carlos is that he's five-foot-six, Asian, likes baseball, and is looking for a "cute, smart, and fun chick to enjoy the game with."

That chick is supposed to be me.

My "date" with Carlos has been arranged by the Austen's Janes Agency. Three unemployed women in their mid-twenties set up this business—with its awkward name—earlier this year to provide men with an unusual service: platonic female company for a price.

For $60 an hour, the agency arranges for a smart young woman to accompany you, laugh at your jokes, and make you feel interesting and special. It may sound like just another escort service—with additional sex services available by negotiation—but it's not.

The young women who set up the agency are adamant about this, and they spell it out on their website: "If there are any attempts at sexual activity, the girl has the right to end the date immediately."

In other words: No touching. Not even a little kiss. But despite that firm ban on fooling around, the women are getting business, as quaint as their service seems. Which made me wonder: What sort of men, in this financial climate, were willing to spend hard cash for brief companionship and absolutely no chance of physical intimacy?

The idea started out as a joke: Cara, April, and Julie, three 26-year-old friends—who, for privacy and safety reasons, prefer to use their agency-related pseudonyms and not their real names in this story—all found themselves unemployed victims of the bad economy at the end of last year. One of the women—no one remembers which of the three—pointed out how brilliant it would be if they could get men to pay to go out with them. Both Cara and April had recently been denied food stamps, and they joked about how being paid to be taken out to dinner every night would be a great way to cut down on food costs. Behind the laughter, there was a thread of seriousness: What if? As April pointed out, "I've been on so many bad dates, it was kind of a joke because it felt like work sometimes. You might as well get paid for it."

Since then, Cara, April, and Julie have gone on about 35 dates all told, weeding out the sincere inquiries from the hundreds of e-mails they say they receive from men expressing interest in their services. While the women aren't raking in the big bucks, the money they have earned has gone toward rent, groceries, and MetroCards, and—for a few desperate weeks—was Cara's sole source of income.

The men ranged in age from mid-twenties to mid-fifties. About half were white American-born males; the rest came from countries such as India, Turkey, and Nigeria. For a while, Cara had a regular client whom she would meet for vegetarian food on Friday nights, but most men aren't repeat customers.

The first thing nearly every guy requests when he first contacts the Austen's Janes Agency is, "Pictures, please." Though the girls still post on Craigslist, they now have a website, designed and built by April, with partial photographs of the trio and their carefully crafted bios. Even for a platonic service, the physical is clearly important. The three white women field requests for Jewish, African-American, and Asian women. And once, a guy requested someone who looked like Uma Thurman, which Cara still laughs about: "Uma Thurman for $60. Seriously?"

Some men change their minds after seeing photographs. One turned down all of us, saying that he was used to dating "really pretty girls." As Cara says, you have to have a thick skin.

According to agency rules, the girls only meet in a public place and won't ride in a car. Most date requests are along the lines of dinner and a movie, but the ones that stand out range from the poignant to the kinky. Early on, Cara learned about the fantasy angle. When a guy didn't like her photograph and said he preferred long hair, she put on a long black wig and took another photo. He agreed to a date. "Some men just want you to be a certain way," she says.

When I asked Elizabeth Bernstein—a women's studies and sociology professor at Barnard, and the author of Temporarily Yours: Intimacy, Authenticity, and the Commerce of Sex—what she thought about Austen's Janes, she pointed out that the bad economy that had motivated the women to start the business may also be motivating the men to patronize it.

Poking around the agency's website, Bernstein found the style—flowery purple writing on a black background—very "neo-Victorian and demure." She then burst out laughing when she read about Julie's professed advocacy for victims of sex trafficking, which can be found in the bio section of the site.

"Part of what they're selling is the sexual fantasy that goes along with the chaste woman," she says. "It's part of the 'no-touch' fantasy, like strip clubs and peep shows."

Julie herself uses the same analogy when she explains the service. "Women are often objectified in regular life—now we are finally getting paid for it without contracting any life-threatening diseases!"

Cara, meanwhile, has found a full-time job at a nonprofit, and April is on unemployment again after a short-term government job. Both continue to "date" on weekends. Julie plans to work for the agency again upon her return to the States this summer. Though they've noticed a recent dip in business, which they attribute to the Craigslist Killer case, like the savvy entrepreneurs they are, the girls dream of expanding, hiring others, and taking the agency to other states.

It Isn't Just Us

http://buzz.yahoo.com/buzzlog/92559/?fp=1
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5008285n

Suspended for Dancing
by Mike Krumboltz

Tyler Frost, the high school senior who was suspended for attending his girlfriend's prom, has become a sensation in Search. And yet, despite all the news surrounding his fight for the right to get jiggy with it, folks had yet to hear from Frost himself. That wait is over. This morning, the teen went on "The Early Show" to tell his side of the story.

During an interview with Harry Smith, Frost explained that his private Christian school does have a contract stipulating "no dancing." However, he didn't believe it should include dancing outside of school. So, despite a stiff warning from his principal, he went to his girlfriend's prom at another school. He has since been suspended and won't be allowed to take his final exams on time or graduate with the rest of his class.

Despite this, Frost has no regrets, saying that attending his special lady's prom was both "worth the risk" and "the right decision." Frost's stepfather was also there for the interview. He didn't say much before leaving in the middle of the discussion, but he did mention that a lawsuit against the school is in the works.

Behar-Bechukosai: Oys Kapital

One of my goals in stating this blog was to find the areas of Torah that highlighted the fact that the conventional wisdom that Torah is necessarily socio-politically conservative may be more conventional than it is wise. [Thought one would have to be modeh that it is highly unlikely that one could find mekoros that would provide direct support for the progressive agenda.]

In a recent article in the New Republic, renowned social scientist Alan Wolfe felt compelled to draw a clear distinction between the system of thought one would call liberalism and the system one would call socialism. In contrast, the political journal Dissent defines its weltanschauung as “democratic socialism”. We can see that, in a manner analogous to machlokos about Jewish denominationism, that in this too, ein ladavar sof.

Nevertheless, well-meaning [well, mostly well-meaning] attempts continue to be made to find support for the ideas that Torah leans toward Capitalism or Socialism. This argument started long before the current economic matzav came upon us, before a mandate seemed to arise fro punishing rich people just for being rich. The parsha[s] possibly provide the most extensive economic blueprint one will find in the Chumash, and I will use it to loosely lay out where I think the Torah may be in a socio-economic sense.

A starting point: The Torah is anti-socialist, in the sense that, for the most part, private property is not only sanctioned, it borders on sacrosanct. This, in complete contradistinction to the [“chareidi”?] socialist canard attributed to Joseph Proudhon that “All property is theft”, which today’s progressive socialist might ascribe to in the more friendly manifesto of John Lennon, “Imagine no possessions”. Even if one would maintain that “behind every great fortune lies a great crime”, the halachos of chazaka—and the fact that kinyanim are chal in the case of genevah and gezeilah—indicate that at some point even misappropriation is salient, even if wrong.

[Two halachos may even further illustrate how protective of ownership Torah is: a) the issur of stealing from a ganav, even if it’s one’s own stolen property one is trying to recover, and b) the fact that so much was made of “chamas”, the notion of stealing less than a shava pruta and that it sealed the fate of the dor hamabul.]

However, once we’ve established support for private property and, by extension, private enterprise [can’t have one without the other], a close look at this parsha [and related halachic literature] indicates that the Torah takes a rather equally dim view of ceratin conservative canards regarding government as a problem and the “invisible hand” of the market.

Specifically, not only is the economic system as described in the parsha[s] is highly taxed and regulated, but there is something unique about the command not to “sell the land in perpetuity, because the land is Mine”: the command that all land reverts to its original tribal ownership.

Here we have a directive against two trends specific to what might be termed unfetterd capitalism: 1) that unimpeded acquisition and hoarding is a good thing; 2) that the unfettered pursuit of same is always synonymous with—and should dictate—a polity’s interest.

Granted, one can’t always generalize; certain halachic proscriptions regarding economics—particularly the issur on loaning at interest—are certainly not meant to be universal (the best explanation I’ve seen was that the issur was “familial”; would you make your grandmother pay interest? (Would you make your grandmother pay you back?))

However, should anyone tell you that Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman are analogous to Da’as Torah…look out. Whatever they take from you won’t be tax deductible.

Emor: Due Process?

Originally, I thought that with all the current brouhaha surrounding the release of the “torture memos” and the attendant spectre of possible prosecution of the major Bush Administration players for Constitutional violations, the incident of the mecharef/megadef at the end of this weeks’ parsha couldn’t be more timely, as I had always looked at that story as sort of a lesson in some form of halachic jurisprudential due process. Then I read the news about the case surrounding Stefan Colmer and how right-wing communal elements still remain undecided as to if, or when, to report sex offenders to the secular authorities.

http://www.thejewishweek.com/viewArticle/c36_a15703/News/New_York.html

This case highlights all sorts of issues, not least the ones I highlighted in my Ki Savo 2008 post. What I didn’t deal with straightaway is the notion pervasive in more isolationist communities that any reporting to secular authorities constitutes “mesirah”; however, you won’t hear that term bandied about all that much nowadays, as the embarrassment gets too great with each revelation for that claim to be publicly be made with a straight face, even by the most ardent isolationist apologists. Instead, other, sometimes even more infuriating, “defenses” have been offered, ranging from the chiddush that “if theres no penetration, theres no violation” to the fear that extending a window of reporting would bankrupt yeshivot.

I will attempt to be dan lekaf zechus, as it were, in a very limited sense (especially since I will immediately proceed to knock down said “zechus”). I will attempt to theorize that that, like the crisis surrounding aguna, there is an uncertainty vis-à-vis a clear-cut due process, halchic and extra-halachic, as to how to deal with the situation, as it is (relatively) novel, and the result has been initially paralysis (techilah beshogeg—maybe;) followed by the laundry list of apologetics (where it becomes sofo be’mezid). I will attempt to show how this possible “excuse” is immediately erased when one uses the sippur mecharef umegadef as a template for due process application when the owrs of offenses are committed.

The question arises as to why, after detailing the incident that led to the individual committing blasphemy (including a “sidebar” about his lineage) and the judicial process that followed, the Divine response regarding his punishment included an exhortation to execute murderers. What prompted a more detailed discussion of offenses warranting the death penalty beyond what had just occurred?

I think we have to take a look at all three factors: first, the process of judgment that ensues when blasphemy is committed; two, the linage of the offender and the possibility that the Torah considers is as a possible circumstance leading to the offense; and three, the mentioning of capital murder as a lesson regarding due process involved in all halachic capital cases. I will then attempt to do two things: aside from pointing out each of these respective elements’ unique contribution to the concepts halachic due process, I will also attempt to make some hekeshim to instances like the Colmer case. I should reiterate one hekesh, of sorts, that I made in Ki Savo: that the commission of pedophilic sex offenses by practitioners of isolationist Orthodoxy, especially when they occur in settings that are supposed to be associated with its most respected practices, constitutes one of the, if not them gravest chillul Hashem possible. That enough makes a rather salient analog to chiruf and giduf.

The first element is the process unique to the mecharef umegadef. The Gemara in Moed Katan (26b) details how the witnesses to the blasphemic utterance testify to said utterance by repeating it verbatim (which compels those present to tear kri’ah). We see two things from here: one, the extent to which the Judaic judicial system goes to eliminate “reasonable doubt”, even to force a “replay” of the “crime”; G-d, as it were, is willing forego his Honor to ensure that the conviction is correct. Some might say that this indicates that the standard of proof should be at least as high in our cases. I would say that we see that G-d’s willingness to forgo his Honor to establish the truth should actually indicate for a different attitude here: namely, that we be willing to go to any length to ensure that the offender is kept from ever having the opportunity from repeating the offense.

I would even take an instruction from this event regarding the “tznius” excuses. In one case, an offender said he couldn’t assist in his own defense because he would be forced to look at salacious pictures; in another, as noted in the article, “those molesters who were reported were apparently unwilling to participate in existing sex offender programs because, among other obstacles, men and women were treated together, a violation of communal norms. ‘There is not going to be an appropriate mix,’ explained Hynes at the time, ‘if you put them in with a group that is not chasidic, that is not Orthodox.”’ I would proffer that this becomes less of a halachic and more of a “cultural degradation” issue, and that the threat of cultural abandonment might serve as an appropriate punishment, if not deterrent, that if an individual associated with an isolationist sect commits a sex crime said individual SHOULD lose the ability to use “communal norms” as a shield even if it threates the rest of one’s religious life, as the requisite conduct itself has indicated that the forfeiture was already of the offender’s own volition. The fact again that G-d, as it were, would forgo His Honor for the sake of the truth indicates that perceived “communal norms” make a poor excuse for hiding the truth and protecting children.

The second element in the story regards the way the Torah details the lineage of the megadef, going so far as to detail his lineage and unfortunate exclusion from the geographic inheritance which apparently prompted the blasphemous outburst. This may be loosely analogous to what is termed the “abuse excuse”, and how the Torah shoots it down. In theory, we see something similar later on Ki Tezte in the discussion surrounding the ben sorer u’moreh, and how the obstacles set up by halacha to the actual execution (the parents voices have to be “similar, neither one of them can be disabled, etc.) might indicate that an “excuse of influence” does exist. I would say that the ben sorer umoreh actually upholds the notion that we are delineating here: that, influences do play a sometimes mitigating role, but the ultimate “moral responsibility” of the offender is not necessarily the concern of dinei adam, particularly when someone might get hurt. The fact that the Torah raised up the megadef’s “abuse excuse” defense for him and still insisted upon his execution indicates for this.

(I would add that the two cases— chiruf/giduf and ben sorer umoreh—are also indicators for the need to monitor societal influences and their concomitant effects, but the better arguments regarding communal responsibility for said influences is much stronger in the inyan of horeg beshogeg, ir miklat, and the spectre of the Kohen Gadol’s death serving as the indicator of said communal failure. Also witness how the Gemara in Makkos disparages a Sanhedrin that has to carry out the death penalty. Vis-à-vis ir miklat, I think that provides a good analogy regarding civil confinement. But I’ll discuss that at another time.)

Finally, the third element is the unexpected appearance of the laws of capital murder, followed by the laws of assault, immediately followed by the exhortation that “mishpat echad yih’yeh lachem”: “you all have one law”. I could repeat the obvious, trite, but necessary analog of molestation as “soul murder”; I could also detail how the listing of these cases after the the mecharef, followed by the “one law” exhortation, is a further indication of how the process delineated in the case of chiruf/giduf—even if, at first glance, it seems to be rigged for conviction—is as salient a “due process” as one applied in cases of torts and homicide.

I would employ this third element to serve as a further attitude check as to what this whole crisis is about. It’s “One Law”. You molest a child, you pay. Everything else is a cover up at best, facilitation at worst. And that may be the worse crime.

Acharei Mos/Kedoshim: So Who’s Being Picky?

This week’s parshas present the comprehensive list of forbidden liaisons/relationships (Acharei, Chap. 18 and Kedoshim, Chap 20 with their various attendant spiritual penalties).

When you get down to it, there is quite the salient sexual subtext and its connection to family to the Bible. The message, however, is not what you would expect: in a reversal of Freud (“sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar”), sometimes—or even most of the time—sex is not just about sex.

In the interests of brevity, I would put it this way: sefer Bereishis details a myriad of inappropriate relationship between everybody and the struggle (or complete lack theoreof) to find appropriate ones (which Avraham’s progeny were better at, though certainly not perfectly). Sefer Shemos continues the theme, albeit in a amore limited way: witness the detail dedicated to Moshe and Aharon’s family lineage in Va’era.

In Vayikra, however, we don’t get to dealing with sex until now—mostly because most of the halachos have been essentially all dealing with ben adam la-Makom. I don’t thnk that that’s a complele accident; the Torah presents a series of atonement-eliciting services—from everyday korbanos to Yom Kippur—creating, as it were, the refuah before the makah.

There are a number of other subtexts I can briefly touch upon in this vein: the notion that sex isn’t always about sex but (at least, certainly in the time of Matan Torah) is tied up with family, politics, and culture—hence “maaseh eretz Mitzrayim” and “maaseh eretz Cana’an”. The Egyptian political dynasties were specifically doctrinally incestuous (talk about keeping it in the family. One might even detect a more modern propensity among the pre-World War I monarchies to marry each other’s cousins, and the preponderance of hemophilia that resulted).

I however, will focus on one aspect of the story: why the “master list” of Chapter 18 ended up in Acharei Mos. Did it have anything to do with the deaths of Nadav and Avihu?

One of the reason given for Nadav and Avihu incurring Divine displeasure was their reluctance to marry: no one was good enough for them. Now, this is one among many reason given for their demise, so it would be a bit of a stretch to say that it was the proximate cuase; however, if one examines the other reasons given—particularly, their thoughts that “when are these old men going to die so we can get our rightful positions as leaders”—indicate a degree of spiritual arrogance to which their reluctance to marry is not unrelated.

(Should one say they had the “Kohen excuse”—that it made it harder for them to get married because of the extra restrictions—one can easily counter that they were probably the most desirable single men on the shidduch market at the time.)
However, I would take it a step further: I think Nadav and Avihu, to a degree, became risk-averse; they were becoming protective of their rightfully gained spiritual standing (this, as opposed to say, Korach, who was trying to arrogate to himself something that wasn’t his). They therefore didn’t want to do anything that might jeopardize that standing (even if it meant not getting married, because they might end up with someone not necessarily commensurate with said lofty position). This might explain why they mused about the eventual deaths of Moshe and Aharon: they were already treating their position as a familial property (which it was, but only to a point). The mida k’neged mida was that they ended up actually taking a risk where it proved to be absolutely fatal.

One of the hardest things in life to do is distinguish between necessary and unnecessary risk. However, the aforementioned all but proves that absolute risk avoidance is all but impossible, and not even spiritually desirable. In parshas Tzav we saw that even the most sublime of services—the Olah—has inevitable detritus needing cleanup, the deshen; not necessarily a good deed not going unpunished, but having inevitable side effects. Here in Acharei we see that that risk isn’t a “side effect”: its part and parcel of spirituality.

Tazria-Metzora: The Hardest Thing

Tazria-Metzora happens to be my father’s bar-mitzva parsha.

He spent a good chunk of his formative years as a [very good] ba’al korei, ; having been through kol haTorah kula numerous times, he still marvels at how it remains the most challenging parsha to lain.

I have never tried to lain the parsha, bun in the few cycles of shanim mikra-echad targum I’ve completed, I’ve always found these two parshas the most difficult to understand (with Truma and Tetzaveh a close tie for second).

I think its no accident that the inyanim of tzaraas are the most difficult in Chumash, analogous to the difficulty of avoiding the avera it purports to correct, lashon hara. (I have a quite learned distant cousin who best illustrates this: “There are shivim leshonos. I chose lashon hara.”)

Lets start with the more “conventional” vorts:
First, from R' Isaac Sher z"l (Slobodka rosh yeshiva), as recounted by R Shlomo Katz in the 5760 Tazria-Metzora Hamaayan:

[W]hen a person speaks lashon hara and is stricken with tzara'at, this demonstrates…Hashem's closeness to that person himself. Today, no one gets tzara'at because we no longer are close enough to Hashem that we can expect such a clear sign of His displeasure with us.
[http://www.torah.org/learning/hamaayan/5760/tazria.html]

Second—and I can’t remember the exact source, but it was from Chabad-sponsored Parsha sheet—was that tzaraas affliction were generally Divinely “reserved” for those at high madregas; in other words, if someone was a habitual speaker of lashon hara, that person generally never got tzaraas.

In this vein comes the third source, R’ Jacob Solomon:

By being completely covered in tzaraat symptoms he would be be ritually pure. But by being pure he would not have the privilege of being secluded by the Kohen. Instead his tzaraat would be on view to the public - they would know that the Almighty singled him out as a gossip or slanderer. He would therefore have been publicly shamed by the Almighty as a means of correcting his misdeeds. [http://www.shemayisrael.co.il/parsha/solomon/archives/tazria63.htm]

Taking all three of these together and applying them to what might be termed the contemporary scene, we can draw a completely different type of conclusion. One might simply use the Gemara in Baba Basra that states that everybody, every day, commits some form of infraction concerning avak lashon hara, as a starting point. The Gemara is not playing sown the issur; but it recognizes that everyone is guilty of it in one form or another.

I would go so far as to say that, when you look at how both tzaraas is deemed to be a sign of Divine love (R’ Sher), and simultaneously a vehicle for Divinely ordained public embarrassment into compliance (R’ Solomon), one can also understand how in both cases the Divine intent could be subverted, as it were. I can think of two ways: one, how one being afflicted by tzaraas (and suffering in silence, pace R’ Sher), instead of becoming a cautionary tale, can become a lightning rod for further slander (“…did you hear what happened to…?); and, two, in the case of the one completely covered in the “pure” tzaraas using said state as a badge of honor.

More specifically, I would not necessarily bemoan that, per R’ Sher, “ we no longer are close enough to Hashem that we can expect such a clear sign of His displeasure with us.” It seems as if G-d decided that, as “kulan be’avak lashon hara”, it k’vayachol didn’t really pay to directly intervene every time someone spoke lashon hara. The “hester panim” involved in this case seems to be more due to the allowance of unimpeded social functioning.

(This, possibly, contrasts with the eventual inefficacy of the “mei sotah”, which stopped working when the accusing husbands apparently became as incontinent as their allegedly wayward wives; this was a case of avoiding implementation of a moral double standard.)

Lest anyone accuse me of trying to down play the severity of lashon hara (I wish I could, and I'm sure I wouldn’t be alone in that), I think we can actually learn a few constructive—and not necessarily contra-halachic—lessons.

That is: I gossip, and at the risk of being choshed be’kesherim, so do you. (I hope you don’t, for your sake, but can any of you plausibly claim you don’t?) People find reasons to say anything, about anyone, on the flimsiest of pretext; again, not to say that words are meaningless—but they can be mitigated if you’re willing to not take everything personally.

Irrespective of the loss of “Divine Love” involved in the disappearance of tzaraas as a corrective measure, G-d seems to be willing to “let go”—if we are.

Vayikra-Tzav: Cleanup

Whether I've mentioned this inyan before or not, I think it bears repeating, especially with regards the current world economic matzav—and its backstory.

There are those who may wonder why the first pesukim taught in “cheder” [or the modern-day equivalent] are the first five pesukim in Vayikra, and the question has been answered in many ways.

I will posit that is has something to do with the inyan discussed in Rashi: “Adam ki-yakriv mikem”: just like Adam owned everything at the commencement of maasei Bereshis [as he was the only person around], and therefore could not have been nechshad in gezel, so too your spiritual endeavors and striving should be equally free of the taint of misappropriation.

Or, in plainer English, don’t take what doesn’t belong to you.

Not to say that the “Torah al regel achas” that Hillel taught [Shabbos 31a]--"that which you hate, don't do to others--a paraphrase of the command to love your neighbor—is any less an “entire Torah”; but teaching not to take what’s not yours is likely the clearest illustration of said principle, which makes it so basic, and such a perfect teachable moment to those starting out on “mikra”/”Vayikra”.

The parallels to the economic mess don’t need to be borne out [i.e., I don’t have to name names]. I think we could say that the brouhahas over bonuses seem to indicate that there just might be this idea that people are taking what doesn’t belong to them, so there is still hope for us.

Now that was last week. But it connects to this week. As R’ Shlomo Ressler pointed out this week:

“Our Parsha, Tzav, informs us that the priests’ first task of the day was to remove the ashes from the offering sacrificed the previous day (Leviticus 6:3). Is there any significance to this being the priests’ first order of business with which to start the day?

Rabbi Avi Weiss explains that the priest begins the day by removing the ashes to illustrate the importance of his remaining involved with the mundane. Too often, those who rise to important positions separate themselves from the people and abandon the everyday menial tasks. By starting the day with ash-cleaning, the Torah insists it shouldn’t be this way.”

I’m going to try to take that idea a step further. You’ll notice that, in describing the inyan of “Adam ki Yakriv Mi-kem”, I mentioned that one’s spiritual endeavors should be free of any taint of gezel. Why did I mention—or, for that matter, why even use spiritual endeavors—to illustrate the idea of why stealing is wrong?

I think that Rabbi Weiss’ idea of trumas hadeshen illustrates another basic, if ignored truism: that, while it may or may not be true that “no good deed goes unpunished”, what IS true that the “spiritual business” [I just made that up…I think] is, of necessity, a dirty business. Even the most sublime of offerings—the Olah, which is all for On High—leaves ashes that need to be cleaned up, AND those ashes most be lceaned up on a daily basis—FIRST.

I think we can link “Adam ki-yakriv mikem” and trumas hadeshen in two ways.

One: don’t be afraid [or, as Rabbi Weiss is trying to say, don’t act “too important”] to clean up a “mess”. It just night be the task of someone of your stature. I’ve discussed before how Yoram Hazony, in his seminal treatment of Megillas Esther, “The Dawn”, makes a demarcation between “morality” and “purity”, and how the former influenced Mordechai’s actions in the Purim story. Specifically, Mordechai was willing to get “dirty” when necessary [e.g., the sha’ar hamelech was not exactly a beis medrash. But read Hazony for further explanation.]

Two: one can take the “yakriv mi-kem” admonition against gezel specifically to a more genral principle: don’t ever expect that ends almost never justify the means. The principles of “aseh docheh lo ta’aseh” and “es la’asos lashem heferu torasecha”, among others, are important exceptions, but ones that prove the rule generally. And realize that even if you are truly makriv mi-kem, there will always be deshen to clean up, and you should be prepared to—and, more importantly, not be ashamed or too proud—to clean up.