Then Moshe said to Aaron: “Come forward to the altar and sacrifice your sin offering and your burnt offering, making expiation for yourself and for the people; and sacrifice the people’s offering and make expiation for them, as Hashem has commanded.” (Vayikra 9:7)

The Meshech Chochma asks the following question, “If Aharon is bringing an offering for his own sin, how could it atone for the sin of the rest of the Jewish people?” He answers this question by quoting the Gemora that tells us that if someone is punished because of you, you will be punished as well. Not only that, but the Gemora tells us that a person who caused another person to sin, is not permitted to enter the “michitzaso shel Hashem” – the same place as Hashem.

This idea has always been a bit difficult for me to understand. One would possibly think that this is because the prohibition of – “before a blind person do not place a stumbling block” is so severe that this is the reason why he would be punished so severely. However, we find in Shut HaBach Hachadashos 43 that even if the person did nothing wrong but via him something negative happened to someone else, he will be included in this punishment. He quotes a Chazal which says that Hashem accosted Dovid Hamelech because so many people got punished through incidents that had to do with him. Yet Dovid did nothing wrong in any of those incidents.

I believe that as hard as this is to understand, the answer is found in the words of the Meshech Chochma himself. The Meshech Chochma explains that the reason that Aharon sinned at the incident of the Golden Calf was because of his concern for Bnei Yisrael. If Aharon would be punished for their sin, then Klal Yisrael would also be punished and would therefore need an atonement because they caused his sin. However, what I find compelling is that if Aharon would receive his atonement, then Klal Yisrael would also be vindicated for that which they caused to happen. Why should that be? They did nothing to deserve atonement!

Punishments often are actually the consequences of one’s actions. One is not “punished” by his hands being burned when he puts them in a fire – that is just the effect of the fire on the hands. So too, a sin affects the person in a way that the byproduct of his action is his punishment. That is the natural outcome of the act, which distanced him from Hashem. All those involved in this happening are somewhat responsible for that person’s soul being distanced from Hashem. And therefore, they too will be affected (by also being distanced from Hashem). If that is the case, when the person repents for his sin, his association with Hashem is repaired, which automatically brings the people involved back to Hashem, as the person who sinned is no longer distant from Hashem. They don’t need to repent as they did nothing wrong in the first place.

A friend of mine connected this to the flip side: The gemora tells us that if a person lost money and it was found by a poor person, he gets a reward as if he gave charity directly to the poor person, because a poor person has benefitted from his means. Now that is not fair! The person was not planning to give charity at all! Why should he get a reward?! The answer is that at the end of the day, this person has affected a positive change to someone else, and his association with that positive change will bring him reward.

I believe that to many of us, the concept that we are not alone in our service to Hashem is a given. But this shows us that we are all really in this together and that the civic responsibility that we have to one another is much greater than we thought

May we all merit to cause others only good and not bad, even by mistake.