Comentario citado sobre Génesis 38:7

כל המצוה, “All the instruction, etc.” our author understands the word כל in our verse not so much as “all,” i.e. each and every, but as “the whole commandment.” Once you have begun to fulfill a commandment you must complete what you have undertaken. This rule has been spelled out specifically in the Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Rosh Hashanah, chapter 1, halachah 8. The text is: when someone has commenced to perform a commandment he is told to complete it. If someone has commenced to perform a commandment and it is completed by someone else, the last person gets the credit for having performed it. The source of this ruling is traced to Moses who had commenced the commandment of transferring Joseph’s remains to the land of Israel, (Exodus 13,19) but who could not complete it as he never crossed the Jordan. The credit for burying his remains in the land of Israel is therefore given to the Jewish people, as we know from Joshua 24,32: “and the Children of Israel buried Joseph’s remains which they had brought with them from Egypt, and they were interred in the city of Sh’chem on a plot of land which his father Yaakov had acquired for the price of 1000 kessito as spelled out in Genesis 37,27. This plot became an ancestral heritage to the tribe of Joseph.” (Compare Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sotah) folio 13. Rabbi Sh’muel bar Nachmani is quoted in the Talmud, tractate Sotah folio 13, as saying that if someone commences to fulfill a commandment but fails to complete it (not by circumstances beyond his control), he will wind up burying his wife and his children. He adds that we know this from Yehudah (Yaakov’s son) compare Genesis 37,26, who said: “what profit is there in killing our brother Joseph.” Yehudah, of course buried both his wife and two of his sons, as we read in Genesis 38, 7-12. Some scholars add that this was why the brothers demoted him as we know from the beginning of that chapter. Instead of saving Joseph, the brothers sat down to eat their meal, and in the interval Joseph was taken out of the pit by Ishmaelites and sold as a slave. Yehudah said that they could not pronounce benedictions of G–d while planning to commit murder of their brother. They therefore interrupted, and sold Joseph, before they sat down again to eat. Yehudah is perceived as having begun to save Joseph from death but not having brought him back safely to his father. The Torah had testified that the brothers listened to him, so that it could be assumed that they would also have agreed to bring him back to his father. At any rate, this is the meaning of Moses referring to כל מצוה, “the whole commandment.”

The Torah goes on to say that Er and Onan died, a reference to the destruction of both Temples. Departure of the שכינה, G'd's Presence, from the Temple, is described as death. Just as death of a body is the departure of the soul, so the departure of the Holy Presence of G'd is the death of the Temple. The cause, of course, were the sins committed by the Jewish people. Instead of being filled with G'd's Presence, the respective Temples became filled with the negative spiritual forces created through the sins committed. There is also an opinion according to which the specific sins which the original Er and Onan had been guilty of became the cause of the destruction of both Temples (compare Shabbat 62). The Talmud there states that the Jews were causing their bedsteads to become evil-smelling with semen (which was not theirs), committing the same sin as Er who is reported as being "evil" i.e. wasting his semen, in the eyes of G'd (Genesis 38,7). Onan's sin which is held responsible for the destruction of the second Temple, i.e. "senseless hatred" as described in Yuma 9, was that he hated his deceased brother and did not want that his name should be perpetuated through his impregnating his brother's widow (compare Genesis 38,9). The word Onan is derived from the Hebrew אונאה which also describes mutual harassment, i.e. causeless hatred.