Komentarz do Powtórzonego Prawa 14:1

לא תתגדדו YE SHALL NOT CUT YOURSELVES — i.e. you shall not make cuttings and incisions in your flesh for the dead in the way the Amorites do (Sifrei Devarim 96:11), because you are children of the Lord and it is therefore becoming for you to be comely and not cut about and with hair torn out.

YE ARE THE CHILDREN OF THE ETERNAL YOUR G-D: YE SHALL NOT CUT YOURSELVES, NOR MAKE ANY BALDNESS BETWEEN YOUR EYES FOR THE DEAD. This also is an explanatory commandment of what He said in the Torah with reference to the priests, They shall not make baldness upon their head etc., nor make any cuttings in their flesh,¹⁹²Leviticus 21:5. and now he [Moses] will explain that it is not merely because of the distinction of the priests which He mentioned there, They shall be holy unto their G-d,¹⁹³Ibid., Verse 6. that they were thus commanded. Rather, all the congregation are holy, every one of them,¹⁹⁴Numbers 16:3. and all of you are the children of the Eternal your G-d like the priests; if so, you too, take heed to yourselves regarding this commandment like them. This explanation is in accordance with the opinion of our Rabbis¹⁹⁵Yebamoth 13b. that both verses [the one here and the one in Leviticus] relate only to the practice [of cutting and making baldness as signs of mourning] for the dead, [although “the dead” is not mentioned in the priestly injunction in Leviticus]. But it is possible that the first commandment [in Leviticus was stated] in relation to priests to state that if the priest had his hair torn out and his flesh cut, he was not fit for the Divine Service, just as He said, and they shall not profane the Name of their G-d,¹⁹³Ibid., Verse 6. and their Service is thus profaned [i.e., invalidated]. Here he explained that the commandment applies also to the Israelites, both prohibitions being necessary.¹⁹⁶By combining both statements we deduce that the prohibition against making baldness relates to the whole head and not only between the eyes, that it relates to the practice in connection with mourning for the dead, and finally that a separate penalty is incurred for each incision into the flesh (Makkoth 20 a-b).
And Rashi wrote: “Because you are the children of the Eternal it is becoming for you to be comely and not be cut about and bald [due to the tearing out of hair].” But it is not correct, for if so this commandment should be binding even [if the deeds were done] not for the dead! And Rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra commented: “Once you realize that you are the children of the Eternal and that He loves you more than a father loves his child, you should not cut yourselves [in bereavement] for anything that He does, because whatever He has done is for your good although you may not understand it, just as little children do not understand their father, yet rely on him. For thou art a holy people,¹⁹⁷Verse 2. and you are not like all the other nations; therefore you shall not do as they do.”
In my opinion the purport of the expression for thou art a holy people¹⁹⁷Verse 2. [is to state] an assurance of the eternal existence of the souls before Him, blessed be He. The verse declares: “Since you are a holy people and the treasure of G-d — neither doth G-d respect any person, but He deviseth means that he that is banished be not an outcast from Him¹⁹⁸II Samuel 14:14. — therefore it is improper for you to make incisions in your flesh and tear your hair for the dead even if he perisheth in youth.¹⁹⁹Job 36:14. Scripture, however, did not prohibit weeping for the dead since it is natural to cry when parting from beloved ones, and when they go on a journey even in life. From this verse, there is support for our Rabbis in prohibiting excessive mourning for the dead.²⁰⁰Moed Katan 27b.

בנים אתם לה' אלוקיכם, לא תתגודדו, it is bad manners to display excessive grief over the loss of a relative as long as a more relevant relative (G’d) is still alive. This is why G’d reminds us in this context that we are His children, i.e. that whatever relative we may mourn we have a father who is alive and well so that we are not really orphaned.

בנים אתם לה׳ אלוקיכם, "You are children to the Lord your G'd, etc." Why did the Torah write this statement next to the prohibition to make incisions on one's body? It appears that the reason is to teach us that if one loses a family member to death one should not look upon the deceased as having become lost. The true state of affairs can be understood by a parable. A father sent a son to a distant city to buy some merchandise. Seeing the son did not return, the father sends out someone after a while to try and locate him. The son's absence was felt only in his home town; this does not mean that he no longer exists. Moreover, the chances are that the reason he did not return is that he is better off in his new home as he is closer to the original father, i.e. G'd, who was the primary source of his having lived on earth in the first place. This is the reason we must not make incisions on our bodies, or to make bald spots on top of our heads in mourning for the deceased. This law would not apply to the Gentile nations as they are not in the category of being "children of G'd." The reason the Torah stresses the word אתם, "you," is to explain the difference between the death of a Gentile who does indeed cease to live in any world upon his physical death and the Jew who moves on to a higher world.

לא תתגודדו, as described in Kings I 18,28 ויתגודדו כמשפטם בחרבות וברמחים, “they gashed themselves with swords and daggers.” The word is also used for cutting down trees (Sanhedrin 110)

You are children: It is clear that this is an introduction and that the reason for the prohibition is after it. But it is difficult - if it is the reason, why did the Torah write another reason, "since you are a holy nation"... In the warning against lacerating yourselves there are two distinct meanings, as explained in Yevamot (13b): Do not lacerate your flesh in mourning for the deceased, and do not make separate groups. This is not an allusion, but the meaning of the text … including within this warning is that you should not have two Beit Din courts in a single city. For this reason the verse first gave the explanation that you are sons of Hashem, and since you are sons of Hashem it is not appropriate that you appear as different groups in the customs of your Torah, because the nature of children is to follow the same path.

בנים אתם לה' אלוקיכם, “You are children to Hashem your G’d;” Seeing that in Leviticus 21,5 the Torah had forbidden the priests to make bald spots on their heads and their flesh as signs of mourning because even in mourning they are not truly orphans, being holy unto G’d, Moses wants to assure the people at large that they are no less beloved by Hashem than are the priests. All the Israelites are holy, and all are Hashem’s children. As proof of this, they are to observe the same restriction spelled out for the priests already in Leviticus. According to the tradition cited by our sages (Sifri 89), the prohibition mentioned here applies only to such incisions when they are made as signs of mourning for a dead relative, both in the case of ordinary Israelites and in the case of the priests. (Although the prohibition in Leviticus did not mention the word למת.) Ibn Ezra writes that seeing that you have been told that Hashem considers you as His children and He loves you more than a mortal father loves his children, you must not register your dismay at what you perceive as something that Hashem has done to you by disfiguring the body He has lovingly given to you. Just as you know that a mortal father’s actions are always motivated by his love for his son, so G’d’s actions are even more definitely motivated by what He knows as being good for His children, even if at the time we, His children, are unable to understand this. We must always subscribe to the cliché of “Father knows best.” It is possible that the reason that this prohibition first appeared as if it applied only to the priests was that when a priest engages in such disfiguration he thereby disqualifies himself from performing his duties in the Temple until such a blemish has healed. Now the time had come to extend this prohibition also to the ordinary Israelites. Rashi explains that seeing that you are Hashem’s children it is incumbent upon you not to disfigure “His” property. Ultimately, your body belongs to Him. Nachmanides disagrees with Rashi, saying that if he were correct this prohibition would apply also if it did not involve mourning for a dead person.

בנים אתם לה' אלוקיך”You are children to the Lord your G’d.” The reason this paragraph follows immediately after the paragraph dealing with the עיר הנדחת is that it is forbidden to observe rites of mourning on behalf of any of the people of that city that have been executed, just as it is forbidden to observe mourning for anyone executed judicially by the court. The Torah continues to describe mourning rites which are forbidden to observe even for people for whom it is incumbent upon us to observe mourning under normal circumstances.
The Torah forbids incisions in one’s flesh, לא תתגודדו, as a pagan rite of mourning practiced by the Emorites. They did this because they considered life on earth as the principal life of a person; therefore, they had no reason to consider his departure from earth as a promotion to a higher form of life in the celestial regions. Emorites were therefore correct to mourn their family members as losses never to be restored.
The Torah tells us here that our whole outlook on life is so radically different that we have nothing in common with them seeing that “you are children of the Lord your G’d.” It is customary for a father to leave his son as a bequest something which was very dear to him. Seeing that we are G’d’s children and He is our father, He leaves us the bequest of the world to come as His portion for us. Seeing Jews who die have such a bright future to look forward to in the hereafter it would be most inappropriate to overreact to our loss and ignore their promotion by making painful incisions on our flesh. Pulling out one’s hair and other such symbols of our grief are equally out of the question. The Torah adds: “for you are a holy nation;” the meaning of קדוש is “separate, apart,” i.e. of all the nations of the world you have been set apart in that we receive the reward for good deeds performed in this life in another life, a life which commences with the death of our bodies.

Do not inflict lacerations and gashes on your flesh, etc. I.e., a prohibition only applies to a person carrying out an action, and not on the one to whom the action is carried out. Since the [hitpa’el verb form of] the term לא תתגודדו (do not lacerate yourself) usually emphasizes on whom the action is carried out, therefore Rashi explains, “Do not inflict lacerations on your flesh.” And Rashi says גדידה ושרט (lacerations and gashes) to let us know that גדידה is a type of gash — the two words are synonymous. See Parshas Emor (Vayikra 21:5), where this verse has been fully explained.

Kap. 14. V. 1. Das vorige Kapitel hatte den mißbräuchlichen Einfluss zum Gegenstande, den durch Geist oder soziale Stellung hervorragende Persönlichkeiten, נביא שקר ומדיחי עיר נדחת, oder durch Verwandtschaft und Freundschaft uns teure Personen auf unsere Gottestreue üben könnten. Geist, soziale Stellung, Verwandtschaft und Freundschaft — das ist die Summe dieses Kapitels — sollen für uns nicht vorhanden sein, sobald sie sich zu Werkzeugen des Abfalls von Gott uns gegenüber gestalten. Daran knüpfen sich in innigstem Zusammenhange die hier am Eingange des neuen Kapitels stehenden Gesetze, die wesentlich im 3. Buche (Kap. 19, 27. 28 u. 21, 5) gegeben sind, hier aber wegen ihrer erhöhten Bedeutung für die bevorstehende Vereinzelung des Volkes zur Wiederholung kommen. Wir haben schon im 3. Buche a. a. O. bemerkt, wie das שריטה וקרחה למת-Verbot die aus der unmittelbaren Gotteshörigkeit eines jeden einzelnen fließende Selbstschätzung einer jeden, auch der teuersten und zu verehrendsten Persönlichkeit eines andern gegenüber aufrecht halten soll. Keine Persönlichkeit darf uns so fesseln, so ganz in sich aufgehen lassen, dass bei deren Wegfall wir gleichsam ihr unsere Persönlichkeit als nunmehr wertlos nachwerfen dürften, wie dies das bleibende Schnitt- oder Glatzmal an unserem Körper zum Ausdruck bringen sollte. Im Vorhergehenden war nun die Gefahr gezeichnet, welcher eine maßlose Hingebung an uns Liebe und Achtung einflößende Persönlichkeiten selbst unser höchstes Verhältnis zu Gott aussetzen könnte, eine Gefahr, die um so leichter eintreten könnte, je mehr in der bevorstehenden Vereinzelung des Volkes kleine und kleinste, vom Zentraleinfluss entfernte Kreise durch Geist und Stellung imponierenden Menschen einen um so mächtigeren Einfluss gestatten könnten. Mit tiefer Bedeutsamkeit wiederholt daher das Gesetz שריטה- und קרחה-Verbote, die selbst den teuersten Wesen gegenüber die eigene Wertschätzung aufrechthalten wollen und durch alle Schichten des Volkes das große Wort hindurch dringen lassen: בנים אתם לד׳ אלקיכם, in allererster Linie seid ihr Gott verwandt, und das Band, das euch mit eurem Gotte verknüpft, geht allen anderen Banden, die Herz und Geister mit Geistern verknüpfen, voran (siehe zu Wajikra 19, 28).

בנים אתם לה' אלוקיכם, “You are (as) children for the Lord your G–d.” [This is an introduction to what follows. Ed.] If we are perceived as children of G–d when any Jew dies, the surviving children are not really orphans as G–d never dies, and therefore mourning rites have to take that into consideration. This is why certain mourning rites spelled out in this paragraph as being practiced by the gentiles are not appropriate for Jews. The prophet Jeremiah 2,27, refers to the gentiles as people who because they worship idols made of wood are in fact mourning the loss of their father, and are calling it as such, just as they treat a carved stone idol as if it had given birth to them.

בנים אתם, “you are the children, etc.;” this paragraph has been inserted here in order to warn you not to observe pagan methods of expressing mourning after the death of close relatives. Possibly, one of the inhabitants of the idolatrous city discussed in the previous paragraph was a close relative, and you might have had to observe mourning rites as he or she had been put to death as a result of that city’s destruction.

בין עיניכם [NOR MAKE ANY BALDNESS] BETWEEN YOUR EYES — i.e. adjoining the forehead. In another passage (Leviticus 21:5), however, it states, “They shall not make their head bald”! It, however, intends to make the entire head like between the eyes (בֵּין עֵינַיִם) [i.e., one must not make bald spots on any part of the head]. (Sifrei Devarim 96:13; cf. Rashi on Leviticus 21:5 and Note thereon).

ולא תשימו קרחה בין עיניכם על מת כי עם קדוש אתה, there is no reason to mourn excessively for the person who has passed as he, at least, has not experienced any loss, on the contrary, he has been promoted to the region of eternal life, something of which our sages in Avot 4,6-7 have said that a single hour of the serenity experienced in that life is worth all the combined delights ever experienced during one’s transient life on earth.

Makkot 21 a (und so auch Jebamot 13 b) wird zwar das למת unseres Textes auch auf לא תתגודדו bezogen, es wird dort jedoch, mit Hinblick auf Kön. 1, 8 ויתגודדו כמשפטם, auch eine גדידה לע׳׳ז, als eine allgemeine heidnischen Gottheiten zugewandte Kulthandlung besprochen, deren Bedeutung wir bereits zu Wajikra 19, 28 im Zusammenhange mit גדידה למת behandelt.

בנים אתם לה' אלוקיכם, “you are children of the Lord your G-d;” it is just because you are children of Mine that you must understand that the death of a family member whenever and wherever, is not an unmitigated disaster, though it appears to affect you as such, but that I, in My greater wisdom, have decided that the deceased’s place in the universe was no longer on earth, for his own greater benefit. Just as small children sometimes, or even often, do not appreciate that what their father does, even if it hurts them, is for their benefit, the same is true in your relationship to Me.

ולא תשימו קרחה בין עיניכם למת, “neither are you to make bald spots between your eyes for the dead.” Even if your father died, you are not as bereaved as would be one of the gentiles who lost his father, as you have a Father in heaven who will never die. The pagan who looks upon his idol as his father image, what does he have, a piece of wood or metal? When he loses his biological father, he suffers a great loss compared to you whose father in Heaven will continue to provide for him. Compare Jeremiah 2,27, who describes how ludicrous it is for the pagans to address their manmade idols as “my father!” Furthermore, you are a holy nation, and as such are not at liberty to desecrate your bodies.