ת"ש ניסן שבו יצאו ישראל ממצרים בארבעה עשר שחטו פסחיהם ובחמשה עשר יצאו ולערב לקו בכורות לערב ס"ד אלא מבערב לקו בכורות ואותו היום חמישי בשבת היה מדחמיסר בניסן חמשה בשבת ריש ירחא דאייר שבתא וריש ירחא דסיון חד בשבת קשיא לרבנן
One Master holds: They were commanded concerning the Sabbath [in general], but not concerning tehumin.<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' Tehum pl. tehumin, q.v. Glos.
');"><sup>5</sup></span> Whilst the other Master holds: They were commanded concerning tehumin too.<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' Raba maintains that it was the sixth day from their encamping only, whilst they departed from Rephidim on the previous day, which was the Sabbath, since the law of tehumin was as yet non-existent. But R. Aha b. Jacob holds that they must have set out from Rephidim on Sunday too, not on the Sabbath, this law already being in existence.
');"><sup>6</sup></span> Come and hear: As to the Nisan in which the Israelites departed from Egypt, on the fourteenth day they slaughtered their Passover sacrifices, on the fifteenth they went forth, and in the evening the first-borns were smitten. 'In the evening': can you think so!<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' For this implies that the death of the first-borns took place after their departure.
');"><sup>7</sup></span> Rather say, The first-borns having been smitten the [previous] evening, and that day was a Thursday. Now, since the fifteenth of Nisan was on a Thursday, the first of Iyar was on the Sabbath,<span class="x" onmousemove="('comment',' Nisan containing thirty days.
');"><sup>8</sup></span>
Shenei Luchot HaBerit
The purpose of these garments was to be לשם ולתפארת, "for dignity and adornment," as stated by the Torah in Exodus 28,2. Genesis 2,28 reports: "Adam and Eve were nude; they did not experience a sense of shame." The serpent became jealous when it saw their nudity. This is the mystical dimension of all the forbidden sexual unions. The serpent had infected humans with a pollutant. The priests were warned by the Torah not to climb the altar by means of steps so as not to reveal even part of their bodies in the process (Exodus 20,23). It is a natural tendency of man to want to climb steps, to become G–d-like, the vision held out to Eve by the serpent in Genesis 3,4. This tendency became outlawed, i.e. ערוה. Adam later was מושך בערלתו tried to conceal the fact that he was circumcised, as stated by our sages in Sanhedrin 38b. The seven days of inauguration of the Tabernacle before Aaron took over in his capacity as High Priest were symbolic of the seven days of creation. On the eighth day Moses called upon Aaron; on that day he was crowned with ten crowns (Rashi on Leviticus 9,1). He was considered as if he had been created anew on that day. On that date Adam was resurrected, so to speak, because Aaron fulfilled the commandment of "sacrificing his own personality," i.e. אדם כי יקריב מכם קרבן, performing an act which reversed the direction Adam had taken, when, instead of cementing his close relations with G–d, he had distanced himself from G–d by eating from the tree of knowledge and bringing death into the world. Nonetheless death henceforth would occur when someone, who was close to G–d (i.e. a priest) would fail to observe all the strictures on the performance of the service in the Tabernacle G–d had placed on the priests, just as death was the consequence of non-observance of G–d's law in the macrocosm, so now death would be the penalty for failing to observe G–d's law within the Tabernacle, the microcosm. At the creation G–d had warned with the words מות תמות; now two sons of Aaron died because they had approached G–d in a forbidden manner, as will be explained in due course.
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