[Avodah] kilayim

[Eli Turkel]

<<The bigdei kehunah contained shatnez because the Torah commanded that they
be made of certain materials.  The same Torah also said that  personal
clothing may NOT contain shatnez.  Obviously if Hashem  Himself commanded that
the bigdei kehunah be made of wool and linen then it was  a mitzva to make
them that way -- not an "aveira lishma"!  Not any kind of  aveirah!

How could Hashem forbid something in one place that He mandates  in
another?  Well, getting back to the subject line of this thread --
"holy  or evil?"
-- I don't think you could possibly call shatnez "evil" since the K'G  wore
shatnez, but you could possibly say that it is an evil /act/ to
misappropriate something holy and use it for your own purposes or use
it in a  manner
that the Torah forbids.>>

There are indeed many case where the Torah mandates something that in
other circumstances
is prohibited. Thus it is a mitzva to perform Yibum while in general
it is prohibited
to marry one's brother's wife. In this case one would normally say
that marrying a sister-in-law
is indeed evil though it is permissible for yibum.

A more extreme case is schechita. A regular bird can be eaten only if
it is slaughtered
through a knife from the front of the bird. OTOH a sacrificial bird is
kosher only if
slaughtered by the fingernail of the cohen anf from the back of the
neck. In this case
the two are diametrically opposite. What is kosher in one case is a
neveliah in the
other case in both directions!
If one defines eating a neveliah as evil how can a cohen eat from such
a bird that
would normally be neveilah if it were a chullin bird.

Reminds me of some of our discussions of timtum halev. If this is
physical then how can
the same act be prohibted for a chullin bird but a mitzva for a
sacxrificial bird and similarly
in the other direction. If it is a metaphysical concept then of course
it depends on what
the Torah commanded

-- 
Eli Turkel