For the source text click/tap here: Yevamot 5
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The mitzvah of yibum (levirate marriage) is an example of the classic rule aseh dokheh lo ta’aseh – that performance of a positive commandment can push aside a negative commandment.
Our daf continues its discussion of other such cases and their sources.
Someone suffering from tzara’at – Biblical leprosy – is obligated to remove himself from the community until he recovers. Once his lesions are declared to be non-leprous, he undergoes a ritual purification ceremony as preparation for his return to the community, which involves shaving off all of the hair on his body (see Vayikra 14:1-9). This commandment stands in apparent contradiction to the prohibition forbidding shaving one’s peyot (see Vayikra 19:27), yet is expressly permitted by the Torah – another case of aseh dokheh lo ta’aseh.
We explore the conflict between the 2 principles as well as a further discussion of the unique properties of the laws of Tzaraas and the curious relationship between Sir Francis Bacon and a mysterious Jew in his New Atlantis, first published in 1627, a year after its author’s death, the first book by an Englishman to view science as a dominant institution in the emerging world.