The Mishna says that the K"G would refrain from eating Erev Y"K, lest it cause him to be asleep. The Gemorah then goes on to say the issue at hand is in fact tumah.
My question is if we are concerned for the fact that he might fall asleep, shouldn't we also be concerned, that he won't eat, and he then is negligent in performing the mitzvah doraysa of eating on Erev Y"K.
Marc Merrill, Jamaica Estates, USA
Several answers may be given to this question:
1. The Mishnah does not say that they did not let the Kohen Gadol eat at all. Rather, the Mishnah states that they did not allow him to eat a lot. Since he was allowed to eat a bit, he could fulfil the Mitzvah of eating on Erev Yom Kippur with the amount that he was permitted to consume.
2) However, you might challenge this answer on the grounds of what Rashi writes in Rosh Hashanah (9a, DH Kol), that the more a person eats and drinks on Erev Yom Kippur, the better it is, so the question would be, why did they not let the Kohen Gadol eat a lot in order to fulfil the Mitzvah in the best possible way? To answer this objection, we may suggest a different answer and point out that the Mishnah states that the Kohen Gadol was actually allowed to eat for most of Erev Yom Kippur, and only close to sunset did they prevent him from eating a lot. Since he had been eating for the majority of the day, he thereby had already fulfilled the Mitzvah of eating on Erev Yom Kippur.
(In reality, however, I think that the performance of the Mitzvah in the optimal manner would not be a sufficient reason to neglect our atempts to prevent the Kohen Gadol from falling asleep later on, because the possibility that the Kohen Gadol might become Tamei is more serious than the possibility that he may not fulfil the Mitzvah of eating in the best possible way, since he clearly performs the basic Mitzvah of eating even if he does not eat so much.)
3. A source that one is not obligated to eat all through the day in order to fulfil the Mitzvah is the Perishah (Tur OC 604:2). He writes that the Torah commands us to eat on the ninth in order to make it clear that the reason we fast on the tenth is the holiness of the day of Yom Kippur and not simply because we do not want to eat. If the Torah would have allowed us to fast on the ninth, one might have thought that the reason we fast on the tenth is also because we prefer this form of conduct and not because it is a Mitzvah. Accordingly, if one eats for part of the ninth, there is also a sufficient distinction between the ninth and the tenth, and it is clear that the reason we fast on the tenth is the holiness of Yom Kippur and not merely because of our whim.
4. In summary, the Kohen Gadol did perform the Mitzvah of eating on Erev Yom Kippur, both through what he ate for the majority of the day, and also by eating in smaller amounts towards the end of the day.
Kol Tuv,
Dovid Bloom