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Kashrus & Silence?

Written by d fine

Rashi 11:2 tells us that the reward for Aharon’s silence (and that of others) at the deaths of his two sons was that the portion of the Torah regarding kashrus was told via him also. All of HaShem’s rewards are middah ke’neged middah – the reward matches the deed perfectly. So what has eating Kosher got to do with silence? One idea is that their silence (as Rashi says) showed their understanding that whatever HaShem does it is for the best – they accepted HaShem’s decree with love. This show of great understanding is connected to the mitzvah we have to understand and differentiate between kosher and non-kosher animals (Vayikra 10:10). Moreover, the fact that silence is connected to the laws of Kashrus shows us that there is a certain connection between what comes out of our mouths and what we put into our mouths. Lastly, one underlying principle of kashrus of animals is that non-kosher animals tend to be cruel in their behaviour. Thus, we do not want to ingest them for if we do so we will absorb a certain degree of cruelty and callousness into our characters. This means that the underlying idea of kashrus is keeping one’s character clean in terms of having good middos (traits). The connection to Aharon’s silence here is that such a silence demonstrated a great wealth of good middos in putting HaShem’s agenda over any pain Aharon might have experienced.

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