A Modest Solution to a High Priest’s Pollution

Rabbinic knotty texts relate:
that Yom Kippur they’d tie a rope
around the High Priest’s ankle, great
precaution for this Jewish Pope.

If ever the High Priest would die
in the Holiest of Holies,
they hoped to pull the rope they’d tie
around someone who might decease

in the Holy of the Holies. Never
entering it themselves, this proph-
ylactic measure, kosher-clever,
allowed the safe removal of
impurity that was the sequel
to the passing of the Highest
Priest, proof that we all are equal
in death. Though God is surely biased
to favor this Priest’s prayers, pollution,
the consequence of his sad death,
required promptly a solution
the moment that he lost his breath,
and caused the opposite of what
Jews pray for, fasting Yom Kippur,
the purity that’s likely not—
dearly departed—to endure.

In “Tzarich Iyun: The Kohen Gadol’s Rope,” Rabbi Dr. Ari Zivotofsky writes: “On Yom Kippur, when the Kohen Gadol entered the Kodesh Hakodashim (Holy of Holies) in the Beit Hamikdash (Temple), a rope was tied to his ankle so that in case he died, there would be a way to extricate his body. Fact: While there was a real concern about the Kohen Gadol’s survival, there is no reference to this practice in the Mishnah, Talmud or Midrash. The Zohar does, however, state that a gold chain was tied to the Kohen Gadol’s ankle, but other sources, both halachic and Aggadic, could cause one to question this claim.”

Gershon Hepner is a poet who has written over 25,000 poems on subjects ranging from music to literature, politics to Torah. He grew up in England and moved to Los Angeles in 1976. Using his varied interests and experiences, he has authored dozens of papers in medical and academic journals, and authored “Legal Friction: Law, Narrative, and Identity Politics in Biblical Israel.” He can be reached at gershonhepner@gmail.com.