Our Mishna discusses a dispute between the Sages and Rabbi Yehuda. Since the Cohen must be ritually pure in order to perform the Yom Kippur service, they would appoint a backup Cohen, lest he become ritually impure.. However, Rabbi Yehuda also required them to appoint a backup wife, presumably for each Cohen, because the Cohen who performed the service needed to be married. To this concern, the Rabbis retorted, “If so there is no end to what we should be concerned about.” Death is an infrequent event, and not one to obsess over.

Leaving alone the extensive lomdus around this dispute, I would like to focus on the simple reading of the Mishna, and the simple meaning of the rabbinic retort to Rabbi Yehuda. “If so”, they said, “there'll be no end to what you worry about.” That is, if you will be concerned about sudden death of the cohen’s wife, there are so many other contingencies that you also must be worried about and there is not enough planning or backup that you could employ that would satisfy all of them.  

This reminds me of the conundrum of the person suffering from Obsessive Compulsive disorder (OCD). OCD results from an inability to tolerate the possibility of a feared catastrophe. The person with OCD engages repeatedly in various actions to temporarily ward off the fear of the unwanted event. Classically, he or she will wash hands every time he or she thinks there was exposure to germs. The compulsive action happens in order to ward off the fear of the possibility of becoming contaminated or contaminating others. Another classic form of OCD involves repeating prayers for fear that perhaps a word wasn’t uttered correctly or with incorrect intention.

The person suffering from OCD must learn through behavioral and psychological exercises not so much as to convince him or herself that the feared event will not happen, because that is an impossible thing to be sure of. Rather, the exercise is a mental and behavioral learning how to tolerate the risk and the possibility of the feared event taking place. The person must learn to tolerate the possibility of becoming contaminated or the possibility of having failed to fulfill the ritual requirement properly.  Because, as the Rabbis said, “If so, there is no end to what you’ll be afraid of.“

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

Do you like what you see? Please subscribe and also forward any articles you enjoy to your friends, (enemies too, why not?)