You can find the rest of the parsha text on Chabad.org at Vayikra.
33 thoughts on “Vayikra”
Wendy Berk
From Rabbi Arthur Green
“Every gift offering should be salted. Do not omit salt, the covenant of your God, from any gift; add salt to every offering” (2:13).
To what “covenant” does this refer? Is there indeed a “covenant of salt?” RaSHI tells us that it goes back to Creation. On the second day, God made the firmament and divided the waters. Because of that division, there is no “It was good” said of the second day. The lower waters (mayyim taḥtonim), those of the ocean, were salty, while the upper waters, source of rain from above the earth, were to be fresh. The lower waters wept, saying: “We too want to be near to our Creator!”
This is an etiological tale, an explanation of why tears are salty. The world’s first tears were those of the sea! God recognized the injustice done to the lower waters (like that done to the moon – another classic feminine symbol – in a famous Talmudic tale), and that is why He could not say that the day was “good.” He then promised them that one day their time would come. Their salt would be offered on the altar; in that way they would indeed have a chance le-hakriv, “to come near.”
Every human tear partakes of those original tears of the lower waters. The lowly of this world, the taḥtonim, all want a chance. They too want to be close to their Creator. Carry the salt of their tears with you in each offering you give, now in the form of prayer.
But carry with you also the tears of the sea herself. How must she weep today, being treated by humanity like a huge garbage dump.
Parashat Vayikra – 5785
March 31, 2025
by Rabbi Rena Kieval
Receiving the Call
By Rabbi Rena Kieval
It begins with a call. We are at the center of the Torah, the Book of Leviticus, and Moshe has just overseen the elaborate construction of the mishkan. Now that the sanctuary is complete, God will relay to Moshe and to the kohanim, in painstaking detail, the rituals and rules to be practiced in that sacred space. But first, there is a call to Moshe, a call which gives this book of the Torah and this parashah their name, Vayikra. Why the call? What does it mean to us to be called? Many of us have felt called to serve, to carry out a specific role, or called more generally to be our best selves. Who, or what, calls us, and how do we receive that call? Two curious features in the opening verse of our parashah help us explore these questions.
The first verse of our parashah contains two verbs of speech – vayikra and vayedaber – he called and he spoke. It is assumed that the subject of both verbs is God, but in the text the “caller” is anonymous. A precise translation would read, “And ‘he’ called to Moshe, and God spoke to him from within the Tent of Meeting.” (Lev. 1:1) The structure is odd; a clearer wording would have been, “And God called to Moshe, and spoke to him from within the Tent of Meeting.” Why the awkward wording?
A second unusual feature of our verse is the scribal custom of minimizing the letter aleph in the first word, vayikra. These two curiosities in the opening verse have invited multiple interpretations and teachings about Moshe’s call, and more generally about what it means to be called. Many commentators note that the diminished ‘aleph’ leaves the word ‘yakar,’ dear or precious, suggesting that God’s call to Moshe from the mishkan, and all of God’s subsequent calls to him, are expressions of love. Others note that the diminished ‘aleph’ mirrors Moshe’s humility, and perhaps comes to teach that in order to hear and receive our true callings, we must minimize ourselves, our own ‘alephs,’ which might stand for the words “ani” or “anokhi,” our “I’s” or our egos, and see the bigger picture.
The Hasidic author of Me’or Einayim draws alternative spiritual teaching from this verse. God is present, he notes, in a “small” form (metzumtzam) within each one of us, represented by the small “aleph” in the text. The ‘small’ inner God calls to us and invites us to turn towards God in whatever ways are needed by each of us. When we hear that call, at first we may not identify its source; we may not recognize that it is the Divine calling to us. That is why, he says, the “call” in our Torah verse is anonymous. Our first experience of a call may be anonymous. However, once a person understands that it is God calling, and when that person then turns towards God, then God can speak (vayedaber) and be identified as the caller, as happens in our verse.
Receiving a call and knowing that God is the caller are steps in a process that happens over time, not instantly. The Israelites, says the Me’or Einayim, needed to endure Egypt, experience Sinai, reside in the wilderness and finally construct the mishkan in order to reach the spiritual point to receive God’s promise, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Ex. 25:8) Now that they have completed the mishkan, God can call to Moshe from the newly constructed Tent of Meeting, and Moshe can hear that call. Now he and the Israelites are ready to incorporate a life with God into their everyday rituals and routines.
In the same way, every one of us is invited by the little divine aleph within us to take steps in our spiritual journeys. Each of us is called to build a sanctuary within ourselves, within our own hearts, to prepare ourselves to receive the calls that define us and guide our actions. As with the Israelites, building that inner sanctuary takes time, and the process will inevitably include highs and lows, crises and gifts.
May we have the strength and the wisdom to prepare sanctuaries both in our communities and within our hearts. May we receive the divine calls made to us in love, and respond as we are called to do.
The laws of sacrifices that dominate the early chapters of the Book of Leviticus are among the hardest in the Torah to relate to in the present. It has been almost two thousand years since the Temple was destroyed and the sacrificial system came to an end. But Jewish thinkers, especially the more mystical among them, strove to understand the inner significance of the sacrifices and the statement they made about the relationship between humanity and God. They were thus able to rescue their spirit even if their physical enactment was no longer possible. Among the simplest yet most profound was the comment made by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Rebbe of Lubavitch. He noticed a grammatical oddity about the second line of this Parsha:
Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them: “When one of you offers a sacrifice to the Lord, the sacrifice must be taken from the cattle, sheep, or goats.”
Lev. 1:2
Or so the verse would read if it were constructed according to the normal rules of grammar. However, the word order of the sentence in Hebrew is strange and unexpected. We would expect to read: adam mikem ki yakriv, “when one of you offers a sacrifice.” Instead, what it says is adam ki yakriv mikem, “when one offers a sacrifice of you.”
The essence of sacrifice, said Rabbi Shneur Zalman, is that we offer ourselves. We bring to God our faculties, our energies, our thoughts and emotions. The physical form of sacrifice – an animal offered on the altar – is only an external manifestation of an inner act. The real sacrifice is mikem, “of you.” We give God something of ourselves.[1]
What exactly is it that we give God when we offer a sacrifice? The Jewish mystics, among them Rabbi Shneur Zalman, spoke about two souls that each of us has within us – the animal soul (nefesh habeheimit) and the Godly soul. On the one hand we are physical beings. We are part of nature. We have physical needs: food, drink, shelter. We are born, we live, we die. As Ecclesiastes puts it:
Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the other. Both have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is a mere fleeting breath.
Eccl. 3:19
Yet we are not simply animals. We have within us immortal longings. We can think, speak, and communicate. We can, by acts of speaking and listening, reach out to others. We are the one life-form known to us in the universe that can ask the question “why?” We can formulate ideas and be moved by high ideals. We are not governed by biological drives alone. Psalm 8 is a hymn of wonder on this theme:
When I consider Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which You have set in place,
what is man that You are mindful of him,
the son of man that You care for him?
Yet You made him a little lower than the angels
and crowned him with glory and honour.
You made him ruler over the works of Your hands;
You put everything under his feet.
Ps. 8:4–7
Physically, we are almost nothing; spiritually, we are brushed by the wings of eternity. We have a Godly soul. The nature of sacrifice, understood psychologically, is thus clear. What we offer God is (not just an animal but) the nefesh habeheimit, the animal soul within us.
How does this work out in detail? A hint is given by the three types of animal mentioned in the verse in the second line of Parshat Vayikra (see Lev. 1:2): beheimah (animal), bakar (cattle), and tzon (flock). Each represents a separate animal-like feature of the human personality.
Beheimah represents the animal instinct itself. The word refers to domesticated animals. It does not imply the savage instincts of the predator. What it means is something more tame. Animals spend their time searching for food. Their lives are bounded by the struggle to survive. To sacrifice the animal within us is to be moved by something more than mere survival.
Wittgenstein, when asked what was the task of philosophy, answered, “To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.”[2] The fly, trapped in the bottle, bangs its head against the glass, trying to find a way out. The one thing it fails to do is to look up. The Godly soul within us is the force that makes us look up, beyond the physical world, beyond mere survival, in search of meaning, purpose, goal.
The Hebrew word bakar, cattle, reminds us of the word boker, dawn, literally to “break through,” as the first rays of sunlight break through the darkness of night. Cattle, stampeding, break through barriers. Unless constrained by fences, cattle are no respecters of boundaries. To sacrifice the bakar is to learn to recognise and respect boundaries – between holy and profane, pure and impure, permitted and forbidden. Barriers of the mind can sometimes be stronger than walls.
Finally, the word tzon, flocks, represents the herd instinct – the powerful drive to move in a given direction because others are doing likewise.[3] The great figures of Judaism – Abraham, Moses, the Prophets – were distinguished precisely by their ability to stand apart from the herd; to be different, to challenge the idols of the age, to refuse to capitulate to the intellectual fashions of the moment. That, ultimately, is the meaning of holiness in Judaism. Kadosh, the holy, is something set apart, different, separate, distinctive. Jews were the only minority in history consistently to refuse to assimilate to the dominant culture or convert to the dominant faith.
The noun korban, “sacrifice,” and the verb lehakriv, “to offer something as a sacrifice,” actually mean “that which is brought close” and “the act of bringing close.” The key element is not so much giving something up (the usual meaning of sacrifice), but rather bringing something close to God. Lehakriv is to bring the animal element within us to be transformed through the Divine fire that once burned on the altar, and still burns at the heart of prayer if we truly seek closeness to God.
By one of the ironies of history, this ancient idea has become suddenly contemporary. Darwinism, the decoding of the human genome, and scientific materialism (the idea that the material is all there is) have led to the widespread conclusion that we are all animals, nothing more, nothing less. We share 98 per cent of our genes with the primates. We are, as Desmond Morris used to put it, “the naked ape.”[4] On this view, Homo sapiens exist by mere accident. We are the result of a random series of genetic mutations and just happen to be more adapted to survival than other species. The nefesh habeheimit, the animal soul, is all there is.
The refutation of this idea – and it is surely among the most reductive ever to be held by intelligent minds – lies in the very act of sacrifice itself as the mystics understood it. We can redirect our animal instincts. We can rise above mere survival. We are capable of honouring boundaries. We can step outside our environment. As Harvard neuroscientist Steven Pinker put it: “Nature does not dictate what we should accept or how we should live,” adding, “and if my genes don’t like it they can go jump in the lake.”[5] Or, as Katharine Hepburn majestically said to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put on earth to rise above.”
We can transcend the beheimah, the bakar, and the tzon. No animal is capable of self-transformation, but we are. Poetry, music, love, wonder – the things that have no survival value but which speak to our deepest sense of being – all tell us that we are not mere animals, assemblages of selfish genes. By bringing that which is animal within us close to God, we allow the material to be suffused with the spiritual and we become something else: no longer slaves of nature but servants of the living God.
[2] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1953), p. 309.
[3] The classic works on crowd behaviour and the herd instinct are Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (London: Richard Bentley, 1841); Gustave le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: T. F. Unwin, 1897); Wilfred Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (London: T. F. Unwin, 1916); and Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Viking Press, 1962).
[4] Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape (New York: Dell Publishing, 1984).
[5] Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 54.
When a sculpture adorns a garden,
it adds to the garden’s beauty.
When that sculpture is confused with the Oneness
that infuses that garden,
it’s an idol.
When we think that a piece
of the Indivisible Whole
is the One, the Only One,
the One to be worshipped,
we miss the Mystery of Oneness
that’s larger than Time,
vaster than Space,
that we’re an infinitesimal bit
of a Unity that’s larger than we’re capable of truly imagining,
that despite admonitions
to bring sacrifices,
to worship,
what we truly need to do
is to say thanks.
Depriving ourselves of something of value
was a way to begin to appreciate
Interconnected Reality.
Expressing gratitude
without seeking dominion
is our next step
in beginning to understand that Reality.
Shekhinah spoke to Moses saying
not with a sound,
not with words,
not even thoughts.
At that instant, Moses, all of us
noticed the wonder of Oneness,
that all that we know is we don’t know,
that the Mystery is the proof of the deepest connection.
Physicists tell us that this Universe was built almost in balance.
Pure balance means a positive charge for every negative one.
The result of that is no-thing-ness.
But one infinitesimal bit of quanta has a positive charge
instead of a negative one,
and, as a result, this Universe exists:
Micro/Macro/dark energy/dark matter and All.
We read about the korbanot, the sacrifices, and
think that this conversation’s irrelevant.
But a sacrifice engages all our senses,
the smell of what’s burnt,
the taste of what’s created,
the touch of the thing offered,
the sight and sound of the spectacle;
engages us to notice
the Interconnectedness of Being.
Prophets heard the call
not by hearing a sound.
They heard the breath
and knew It was the Name of Every Thing
Yah!
Our parsha, which deals with a variety of sacrifices, devotes an extended section to the chattat, the sin offering, as brought by different individuals: first the High Priest (Lev. 4:3-12), then the community as a whole (Lev. 4:13-21), then a leader (Lev. 4:22-26) and finally an ordinary individual (Lev. 4:27-35).
The whole passage sounds strange to modern ears, not only because sacrifices have not been offered for almost two millennia since the destruction of the Second Temple, but also because it is hard for us to understand the very concepts of sin and atonement as they are dealt with in the Torah.
The puzzle is that the sins for which an offering had to be brought were those committed inadvertently, be–shogeg. Either the sinner had forgotten the law, or some relevant fact. To give a contemporary example: suppose the phone rings on Shabbat and you answer it. You would only be liable for a sin offering if either you forgot the law that you may not answer a phone on Shabbat, or you forgot the fact that the day was Shabbat. If, for a moment, you thought it was Friday or Sunday. So your sin was inadvertent.
This is the kind of act that we don’t tend to see as a sin at all. It was a mistake. You forgot. You did not mean to do anything wrong. And when you realise that inadvertently you have broken Shabbat, you are more likely to feel regret than remorse. You feel sorry but not guilty.
We think of a sin as something we did intentionally, yielding to temptation perhaps, or in a moment of rebellion. That is what Jewish law calls be-zadon in biblical Hebrew or be-mezid in rabbinic Hebrew. That is the kind of act we would have thought calls for a sin offering. But actually, such an act cannot be atoned for by an offering at all. So how are we to make sense of the sin offering?
The answer is that there are three dimensions of wrongdoing between us and God. The first is guilt and shame. When we sin deliberately and intentionally, we know inwardly that we have done wrong. Our conscience – the voice of God within the human heart – tells us that we have done wrong. That is what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden after they had sinned. They felt shame. They tried to hide. For that kind of deliberate, conscious, intentional sin, the only adequate moral response is teshuvah, repentance. This involves (a) remorse, charatah, (b) confession, vidui, and (c) kabbalat le-atid, a resolution never to commit the sin again. The result is selichah umechilah, God forgives us. A mere sacrifice is not enough.
However, there is a second dimension. Regardless of guilt and responsibility, if we commit a sin we have objectively transgressed a boundary. The word chet means to miss the mark, to stray, to deviate from the proper path. We have committed an act that somehow disturbs the moral balance of the world. To take another secular example, imagine that your car has a faulty speedometer. You are caught driving at 50 miles per hour in a 30 mile an hour zone. You tell the policeman who stops you that you didn’t know. Your speedometer was only showing 30 miles per hour. He may sympathise, but you have still broken the law. You have transgressed the speed limit, albeit unknowingly, and you will have to pay the penalty.
That is what a sin offering is. According to Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch it is a penalty for carelessness. According to the Sefer Ha-Chinuch it is an educational and preventive measure. Deeds, in Judaism, are the way we train the mind. The fact that you have had to pay the price by bringing a sacrifice will make you take greater care in future.
Rabbi Isaac Arama (who lived in Spain in the 15th century) says that the difference between an intentional and an unintentional sin is that in the former case, both the body and the soul were at fault. In the case of an unintentional sin only the body was at fault, not the soul. Therefore a physical sacrifice helps, since it was only the physical act of the body that was in the wrong. A physical sacrifice cannot atone for a deliberate sin, because it cannot rectify a wrong in the soul.
What the sacrifice achieves is kapparah, not forgiveness as such but a “covering over” or obliteration of the sin. Noah was told to “cover” (ve-chapharta) the surface of the Ark with pitch (Gen. 6:14). The cover of the Ark in the Tabernacle was called kapporet (Lev. 25:17). Once a sin has been symbolically covered over, it is forgiven, but as the Malbim points out, in such cases the verb for forgiveness, s-l-ch, is always in the passive (venislach: Lev. 4:20, Lev. 4:26, Lev. 4:31). The forgiveness is not direct, as it is in the case of repentance, but indirect, a consequence of the sacrifice.
The third dimension of sin is that it defiles. It leaves a stain on your character. Isaiah, in the presence of God, feels that he has “unclean lips” (Is. 6:5). King David says to God, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin” – “me-chatati tahareni” (Ps. 51:4).
About Yom Kippur the Torah says:
“On that day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you [letaher etchem]. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.”
Lev. 16:30
Ramban says that this is the logic of the sin offering. All sins, even those committed inadvertently, have consequences. They each “leave a stain on the soul and constitute a blemish on it, and the soul is only fit to meet its Maker when it has been cleansed from all sin” (Ramban to Lev. 4:2).
The result of the sin offering is tehora, cleansing, purification. So the sin offering is not about guilt but about other dimensions of transgression. It is one of the stranger features of Western civilisation, due in part to Pauline Christianity, and partly to the influence of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, that we tend to think about morality and spirituality as matters almost exclusively to do with the mind and its motives. But our acts leave traces in the world. And even unintentional sins can leave us feeling defiled.
The law of the sin offering reminds us that we can do harm unintentionally, and this can have psychological consequences. The best way of putting things right is to make a sacrifice: to do something that costs us something.
In ancient times, that took the form of a sacrifice offered on the altar at the Temple. Nowadays the best way of doing so is to give money to charity (tzedakah) or perform an act of kindness to others (chessed). The Prophet said so long ago, in God’s name:
“For I desire loving-kindness, not sacrifice.”
Hosea 6:6
Charity and kindness are our substitutes for sacrifice and, like the sin offering of old, they help mend what is broken in the world and in our soul.
Vayikra – Setting the Scene
Vayikra, Leviticus 1:1−5:26
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI DANIEL MIKELBERG
As we begin Vayikra, The Book of Leviticus, we say goodbye to the Biblical stories that we may be more familiar with. The foundational narratives of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph and his siblings have passed. In Vayikra, the Israelites are well on their way to the Promised Land. The focus of this book is laws. Yes, it has stories too, but the spotlight is on healthy practices and detailed descriptions of sacrificial offerings. The Hebrew word for sacrificial offering is “korban,” which means, “to draw close.” This is ironic, since today we may be put off by the sometimes-gruesome descriptions of the ritual preparation of animals. However, we can learn from the ancient practices of the near east about being strategic and purposeful with setting the stage for meaningful ritual.
Our tendencies might be to brush off these sections of Torah. After all, we haven’t made sacrificial offerings for more than 2,000 years. However, as a rabbi, my advice is to do the opposite and turn our attention to these Biblical words, though they may appear irrelevant at first glance. Yes, we can find meaning from these detailed descriptions, even when they include grotesque slaughtering, slicing, and scorching. All our senses are engaged. For example, Leviticus 2:14-16 describes:
“You shall bring new ears [of grain] parched with fire, grits of the fresh grain, as your meal offering of first fruits. You shall add oil on it and lay frankincense on it; it is a meal offering. And the priest shall turn a token portion of it into smoke.”
Let us imagine ourselves as ancient Israelites witnessing the Mishkan (tabernacle), the religious shelter where the ancient priests made regular korbanot(sacrifices). As we approached, we would have been presented with a medley of experiences for our senses. Obviously, there would have been unique sights to see; perhaps most noteworthy would have been the smoke representing mysteries rising to the heavens. The sounds of the crying animals would have been off putting, but also perhaps grounding as matters of life and death were placed front and center. The smell would have resembled a campfire, something which may call to mind both meaningful and scary memories for many of us. Touch was mainly experienced by the priests. They were empowered to ritualize these gifts and create a sacred space.
Our modern practices are very different, but our intent of “drawing near” parallels that of the ancient near east: becoming closer to God and one another. Our faith journeys are also enriched by our sensory experience. Clergy and lay leaders alike are regularly called to be meticulous about creating a sacred space. In fact, all of us can consider ourselves priests as we facilitate rituals in our own homes. When the COVID pandemic was at its peak, I would regularly ask virtual worshipers to make sure that their space was free from distractions. This could mean tidying it up or finding a relatively quiet space. Similarly, on the bima , we place great care in making sure that the image is one of rich symbols, formal dress, and coordinating colors.
As a Movement, we pride ourselves on the music we offer. There are more subtle sounds too, like the sparking of a match to light the Shabbat candles. Granted, less emphasis is placed on smell in today’s services, but nothing beats the aroma of fresh baked challah on Friday afternoon. On Havdalah , spices are used to ensure that we keep a bit of Shabbat with us in the coming days.
Touch is an interesting sense to reflect upon. While we’ve depended on holding our siddurim in our hands for generations, today we often depend on virtual t’filah . This shift leaves our hands free to clap, hold hands, and even embrace.
Formal prayer is no longer an everyday experience for some of us. To lift our spirits and find comfort, we are called to rely on creating a setting that speaks to each of our senses. In other words, we need to set the stage. This responsibility falls on all of us. When meaningfully assembled, we can draw near to God and each other, making offerings of ourselves. When delving into the stories of Leviticus, rather than creating distance, let’s try to close the gap and do the best we can to follow the Israelites as we make a sacred space.
After the high drama of Exodus, we arrive at the beginning of the third of the Five Books which make up the core of the Hebrew Bible. Genesis portrayed creation, Exodus described liberation, and God’s presence now dwells among the people Israel, filling the Tabernacle. We are ready to receive instructions from the Holy One about how to behave and how to make offerings in the Tabernacle.
This book is known in English as “Leviticus” (from the ancient Greek and Latin referring to the priestly tribe of the Israelites, “Levi”). In Hebrew, the first word in the book (and in the parsha which bears the same name) is “VaYikra”, meaning “and He called”, referring to God’s calling out instructions to Moshe.
These instructions emphasize ritual, legal, and moral practices rather than beliefs. In a way, we are being told how to conduct ourselves now that we’ve received the gift of Torah. The details of each different type of sacrifice to be offered in the Temple correspond to distinct prohibitions detailed in the laws of the Torah.
Just before beginning this inventory of actions designed to repair our relationship with God after erroneous, sinful or misguided action we see the word “VaYikra”— God calls out from the Tent of Meeting. This ‘calling’ proves to the people that, indeed, the Holy Source is dwelling among them and is about to tell them how to act as a Holy People. A specific peculiarity in the way the word “VaYikra” is scribed in every Torah scroll caught my attention, and that of many other commentators.
The final Hebrew letter in the word, an aleph, is written in miniature. Many commentators have speculated on the origin and meaning of this traditional scribal practice. They note that if the aleph was totally missing, the word would be ‘VaYikar’, meaning ‘and he happened’, which doesn’t sound as if it were an intentional Divine act, but an accidental occurrence. Rashi comments, based on the Midrash: [Genesis Rabbah 52:5] Vayikar is an expression ordinarily used to denote events of a casual character, an expression for something shameful, an expression for an unclean happening. But the aleph is NOT missing, it is intentionally scribed —in miniature. The Baal HaTurim (14th -century Spain) explains that the small aleph is a reflection of Moses’ humility. Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, the Chassidic Rabbi from 19th -century Poland, states that the smallness of the aleph calls attention to it and gives it prominence, to teach us the importance of humility. (He is the same person who teaches that one of our pockets should contain a piece of paper saying: ”I am but dust and ashes” and in the other pocket should be a piece of paper saying: “For my sake was the world created.”). Clearly, this tiny aleph is calling out to readers “Drash me”!
Here is another speculation, based on the idea that not only is the aleph miniature, but it also makes no sound. The very first letter in our alphabet is silent. Bet is the first letter written in the Torah, beginning the word “Breishit”. Aleph is the sound of all potential creation, the silence out of which Creation occurs. The expression “VaYikra” refers to creation in Genesis (Gen 1:5 and others). Just as silence holds the potential for Creation in Breishit, the silent and scaled down aleph of VaYikra hints at an important question: “What is a silent call?” Psalm 65:2 states “lecha dumia tehilla—-to You, silence is praise”. We use the expression “to feel called” for the pull toward the Divine, which Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi referred to as “theotropism”. In Ecclesiastes we read: “A time to keep silence and a time to speak”. We use silence in prayer, as in the silent Amida. In Pirkei Avot, Shimon says: “I have found nothing better for a person than silence.” When we pray for our lips to be opened prior to the Amida, we recognize that silence is a powerful precursor to prayer.
Perhaps this scribal tradition is a reminder that prior to performing the rituals detailed in the psukim that make up the remainder of this Biblical book, we need to be silent, to listen, as Elijah did in 1 Kings 19:12, for that still small voice of the Divine. The tiny aleph of VaYikra reminds us of the immense power of silence.
May each of us find time to be silent and listen for a call during this week of VaYikra.
“God Does Not Play Dice with the Universe”
By Rav Rachel Adelman
In this essay, I want to unfold one word for you, like a map by which we might direct our path towards this coming season of Purim, in language play on va-yiqra’ / va-yiqar. This week’s Torah reading opens:
And [He] called to Moses [vayiqra’ el Moshe] and the LORD [Yhwh] spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting saying: Speak to the Israelites and say to them…. (Leviticus 1:1-2)
It’s an odd beginning, as the subject of the action is initially hidden. Where is the agent of the verb “and He called [va-yiqra’]”? Why doesn’t the narrative introduce God as the one who summons Moshe?
Do I quibble overmuch, when the very next phrase mentions the LORD (Yhwh) as the speaker? I think not! So many paragraphs in the Torah open, unambiguously: “And the LORD spoke to Moshe, saying…. [Va-yomer Yhwh ’el Moshe…. or “Va-yeddaber Yhwh ’el Moshe le’emor].”
Perhaps the elision of God as subject here is meant to highlight that we readers are en media res—really in the middle of a story, picking up from where we left off at the end of the Book of Exodus. There, Moshe had just finished setting up the mishkan, when the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and God’s presence filled the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:32). Yet Moshe was excluded from entering until he was summoned at the opening the Book of VaYiqra (Leviticus), when God literally called him in: VaYiqra’ ’elav. (Lev. 1:1)
Alternatively, perhaps the origin of the voice, the subject of the summons, “VaYiqra‘”—and He called—is elusive to Moshe? The Masoretes (the scribes responsible for adding vocalization and other diacritical marks to the Torah) hint at this with an orthographic comment. The silent letter aleph, the last letter of the five-letter word, VaYiqra’, is tiny, suspended as one might signal an ordinal number—a suffix of the enth degree. This points to another reading—instead of “call” or “summon” (qof.resh.aleph.), one might read it as “happen upon” (qof.resh.heh.).
There’s a hidden message here. Maybe God’s voice is heard, at first, as a call that happens upon [va-yiqar] Moshe, just as prophecy happened to Balaam: “Va-yiqar Elohim ‘el Bil ‘am—And God met or happened upon Balam.” (Numbers 23:4; and again in v. 16) Indeed, the verb qof.resh.heh. is associated with happenstance, a chance meeting, a seemingly accidental encounter—like an impure “nocturnal emission” [miqreh lilah] that happens to a man. (Deuteronomy 23:11)
On a less tainted note, the verb is deployed by Abraham’s servant as he stands by the well in Padan-aram, asking for a sign or omen to help him choose the right bride for Isaac:
And he said, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please make it happen in my presence this day [haqreh n’a lefanai ha-yom], and deal graciously with my master Abraham….” (Genesis 24:12).
Paradoxically, the servant is calling for Divine Providence—for God to make it happen (haqreh, the root qof.resh.heh. in the causative, hiphil). Yet it is he, a mere mortal, who initiates the test, a sign by which he might know the young woman to be worthy of Abraham’s son. And, indeed, Rebekah proves herself worthy by offering him a drink from her jug and watering all the camels as well.
Luck be a Lady Tonight.
This verb connotes happenstance, which might be both providential and of human initiative; palpable as the God-of-small-things who inheres in the World yet made manifest by mortal summons.
Most auspiciously, the verb qof.resh.heh. is associated with the encounter with Amalek, which we read on Parashat Zakhor (on the Shabbat before Purim, in addition to the weekly Torah portion):
Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how he happened upon you [qorkha] on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you; he did not fear God. (Deuteronomy 25:17-18)
Rashi (on Deut. 25:18) relates this verb, qorkha—happened upon you—to chance, miqreh, happenstance; also qeri and tum’ah, an impure emission that defiles a man. That is, Amalek encountered the Israelites, and then, undeterred by fear of God, struck down all the stragglers in the back—the old and the infirm, the women and the children. Ruthless. Deliberate. Indeed, an ill-fated encounter—impure, tainted with evil!
This chance encounter with evil characterizes the relations between Israel and Amalek ever after. The verb rears its hoary head again twice in the Megillah, like the two-headed dog, Orthrox, of Greek mythology. In Megillat Ester, we read in chapter 4:
“Mordechai told him [Hatach, the messenger of Queen Esther] about all that had happened to him [qarahu]” (Est. 4:7), and again, in chapter 6, “Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his supporters all that had happened to him [qarahu]….” (Est. 6:13).
In the first report “of all that happened [qarahu]” to Mordecai, he may recount his refusal to bow down to the viceroy—not anticipating the consequences—and the decree of genocide, initiated by Haman, descendant of Amalek and enemy of the Jews, which would effectively be paid for by the 10,000 talents of silver placed in the King’s coffer. The second report, “of all that happened to him [qarahu],” that is to Haman, marks the beginning of the cascade of reversals; when that enemy of the Jews was compelled to parade Mordecai about, dressed in the king’s robes and on the king’s horse, with the proclamation: “So shall be done to the man whom the king desires to honor.” (6:10-11)
Accidental happenstance? Miqreh?
It depends on how we view chance occurrences. The very holiday of Purim is named for “the lot,” Pur—goral h’u (Est. 3:7, 9:24; cf. 9:26, 29). Yet, we take the randomness rampant throughout the story, those comic happenstances or chance encounters—what Avivah Zornberg calls the Dis-providential—and turn them around, nahafokh-hu. We make human meaning of them, and then sanctify this holiday-of-chance, Purim, in historical time, summoning the God-of-small-things to Earth.
Albert Einstein once famously pronounced: “God does not play dice with the Universe.” Yet, he was the scientist who discovered the time-space warp, and in critical conversation with quantum mechanics, ruled by the random emissions of quarks, subject only to probabilities. (I don’t really know what a quark is, but I do know that Modern Physics is not deterministic!) So, what did Einstein mean?
Let me venture an answer, returning to the opening of this week’s Torah reading. “And [He] called to [va-yiqra ‘el] Moshe….” (Lev. 1:1) This was a summons from within the Holy of Holies, that most sacred of places. To Moshe, it may have been a mere murmur at first, a seeming chance encounter, a miqreh—but then it became clear to the prophet that it was purposeful; it was the LORD speaking: “….and Yhwh spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying….”
The story of Esther and the Holiday of Purim depicts a topsy turvy world of seeming random events: drunken feasts and supposed beauty pageants, where an orphaned Jewish girl becomes Queen; and Mordecai, whose refusal to bow down to Haman prompts a decree to destroy all the Jewish people, eventually becomes second to the king.
How do we interpret all these chance reversals? Who knows? Perhaps Esther attained royal position for just such a moment! (Esther 4:14) What summons her to step into the breach, to hear the call? Within our hearts we listen to the World—like Moshe, like Esther—initially not knowing the origin of the voice that summons us forward (va-yiqra’ ‘el), attuning our ears to all that seems incidental and accidental, be-miqreh; in turn these incidents and accidents acquire meaning, perhaps even meaning divinely given.
When Adar comes in, our happiness is increased. But when Vayikra comes in, we feel as if the Promised Land of great stories and heroes is far, far away.
Torah scholars through the centuries have tried to give us reasons to rejoice in these endless passages on the most minute and bloody details of sacrifices, but it is hard to say they have succeeded. Some point out that we are moving from a physical to a spiritual journey. After all, the book begins with the words “And God called.” Called – not just spoke.
Others point out how the details of ritual sacrifice were transformed so that Judaism and the Jewish people were able to survive thousands of years without a temple. Reconstructionist prayers have embraced this break by eliminating prayers for the restoration of the temple sacrifices.
But let me suggest a wholly different way of approaching these very difficult passages. Try embracing them. Try taking on the feeling of what it means to be living in a society in which this is the form worship takes. After all, this form of worship, using sacrifices as its center, has had a long history of success. It must offer people something for this to be the case. Use these weekly parshiot to explore what that might be.
To that end, let me offer some questions to guide you in your embrace of Vayikra. Consider that this is a very physical approach to spirituality. Those of us who practice yoga know that physical practices can lead to spiritual development. These laws of korbanot (sacrifice) are regarded as hukkim (laws that for which we have no rational understanding) as opposed to the mishpatim, which are the sorts of legislative laws we think of. So pay attention to the most minute details of the practices. Notice what is a sin (pesha) versus an error (het).
Try to feel what it would mean to have this sort of practice and how it would affect you spiritually. What does it mean in 1:4 when it says, the burnt offering “will be accepted for him, to atone for him?” Are sins against neighbors also sins against God? If so, why within this system? Recall that the Hebrew for sacrifice (korban) is related to the word to cause to draw near (hakriv). What is being drawn closer? To what? The burnt offering is the “olah” – the one who rises up. What is it that is rising up?
Consider how the different purposes of the laws of sacrifice and the ways they operate: to expiate wrongful acts (Lev. 4:2) and then let them go; to expiate social or communal wrongdoing (4:13); and to ask forgiveness and to forgive trespassers (5:20 – 26).
In your study, consider also that all of us in every era will commit some form of sin. This means that every system needs to have a system of forgiveness and expiation. Compare how well our own system of public expiation on the High Holy Days satisfies this function compared with the system of sacrifices. Would the vividness of the blood and death of animals, who are dying as a result of our actions, make us want to amend our ways? Would it remind us that we too will die and force us to consider how we therefore want our lives to be remembered?
Since death is an irrevocable act, would it make us consider that our repentance should be irrevocable? Compare this to our current Jewish methods of penance and those of the Catholic confession and penance. Would the sacrifices give us a greater appreciation for the sanctity of life? Would it make us more reluctant to take life? Or would it just harden our hearts to suffering? Would it make us feel we could game the system – sin and sacrifice, sin and sacrifice?
Finally, consider the number of prophets who rail against sacrifices? Today we would be repulsed by the blood and carnage? What was the Prophets’ concern?
SALT OF THE EARTH, AND THE HEAVENS – Parshat Vayikra
Leviticus is full of substances. Between its detailed account of the sacrifices and its nasty catalog of impurities, this is a book that is blazing with fire, dripping with blood, flaking with skin, and rotting with mold. There is flesh and fat, oil and grain, ashes and smoke, water and wine.
And so, we will not be surprised to find in Leviticus the mention of that most familiar of minerals: salt.
You shall season your every meal offering with salt… (Leviticus 2:12)
וְכָל-קָרְבַּן מִנְחָתְךָ, בַּמֶּלַח תִּמְלָח
What is surprising, however, is the second part of that verse:
… you shall not omit from your meal offering the salt of the covenant with your God.
Salt of the covenant? What covenant? It seems unlikely that this is a reference to the great covenant forged between God and the Children of Israel, for that one already has its famous symbols: the tablets from Sinai; the Sabbath; the circumcision rite. So instead, the commentators begin to wonder if there might be some other covenant represented by salt.
Rashi’s answer, as usual, is the most intriguing:
A covenant was sealed with salt, from the six days of creation. For the lower waters were promised they would be offered on the altar, in the form of salt.
שהברית כרותה למלח מששת ימי בראשית, שהובטחו המים התחתונים ליקרב במזבח במלח
This requires a bit of unpacking. The covenant in question, it seems, was made between God and water. The reference to “lower waters” comes from the opening chapter of Genesis, on the second day of Creation, when God creates the sky, as follows:
God made the sky by separating the water under the sky and the water above the sky, and it was so. (Gen. 1:7)
So now there are upper waters (in the clouds, maybe?) and lower waters (the oceans, seas, lakes, etc.), and according to Rashi, the lower waters refused to be taken down until they were promised they would eventually be brought back up. This return happens in the form of salt, which is extracted from the ocean, seasons the offerings, and then travels upward in smoke.
We assume that Rashi is basing this narrative on a Midrash, although strangely, no one is able to identify the source. There is another Midrash, however, that adds some emotional color to this story of divided waters:
Rabbi Berechya said: When the lower waters were separated, they were weeping. (Genesis Rabbah 5:4)
The waters now are not just jostling for high position. They are crying like a family being torn apart. The lower waters long to go up in order to be reunited with their other half.
The great Jewish philosopher of Prague, Rabbi Yehuda Loew – the ‘Maharal’- in his super-commentary on Rashi, explains it this way:
There is, in this Midrash, a great secret. For everything always wants to to be raised up. As it says in the Talmud, ‘we increase in holiness and never decrease.’ So when the lower waters were separated from the upper waters, and turned into low things, this was the opposite of the order of creation and existence, where everything is always longing to be raised. Therefore, they refused to be divided until God promised them that they would be offered on the altar, and finally achieve elevation.
ויש במדרש הזה דבר נעלם מאוד, לפי שכל הדברים תמיד הם הולכים להעלות, ומעלין בקודש ולא מורידים (ברכות כח. ) , ומים תחתונים נבדלו מן עליונים ונעשו תחתונים, וזהו הפך סדר הבריאה והמציאות, שהולך הכל להתעלות תמיד. ולפיכך, לא היו נבדלים מהם עד שהבטיח השם יתברך אותם להיות קרבים על המזבח, שיקנו ההתעלות
Here is a vibrant, enchanted, picture of the world. Everything is reaching up! Everything is seeking elevation! The whole world is filled with yearning and aspiration, looking toward the heavens, demanding to be taken up.
But more than that, what the lower waters are longing for is to be reunited with the upper waters. All longing for elevation is actually a longing for one’s other half. And, conversely, all longing for love is a longing for elevation.
And so we, too, are like those lower waters. We are yearning for an experience of completeness, for the feeling of transcendence that comes from finding the one we have been searching for. When we lay our offerings upon the altar – or, today, our slices of challah on the table – and sprinkle them with salt, we are calling on God to honor this covenant, and bring us back to our upper waters.
Let us all be reunited with our other half. Let us be raised up by love.
Leviti-cus
How pure is it?
Not always so pure. Purity is not – generally – a part of my vocabulary though the Levitical sensibility intrigues me.
How pure is it?
I will have to get out of my head for a second. Live into the question. And the matter of intention: everything, this act, this word, this gesture, this work, the gift of pure intention, to enter an action a commitment a giving yourself over to a body of work with purity. Is that what you mean: How pure is it? Not always so pure.
How pure is it?
Always a problem. But I think the intention creates purity. An act-as-if concept, within the not-so-pure comes the pure. It rises. The act itself transforms, transforms even intention. You make the commit, launch, find your purity then launch. The work itself transforms. Transforms the participant most of all. I think I get that.
So how pure is it?
Try this: Something has been corrupted. The seal has been broken so to speak. We clean it up. Purify. Something gets into the oil. Some obstacles to the gift, someone withholds. Someone something always withholds, don’t let it be you. It’s a narrow bridge, don’t get in your own way. You don’t withhold anything. Make your intention pure. You are not attached to outcomes, you are attached only to the purity of act, word, entry, intention. How pure is it?
Seems pure to me. I am your teacher. I am inside now. I will never leave you.
jsg
“Korbonot and Closeness: Revisited”
By Rabbi Cheryl Weiner
In 2013, in considering this parshah, I asked some questions that I want to reconsider from a different frame of reference. How do we fulfill our yearning for closeness with divine energy? How do we establish our relationship with God? How do we ask for forgiveness for our behaviors? How do we thank and praise God? I pose these questions today in relation to climate change and regulations.
The word for sacrifice in Hebrew is korbon, which shares the root of the word for becoming close, so, inherent in the act of sacrifice is the kavannah/the intention of becoming closer to God. In the Chabad Hasidic tradition, when we bring the animal sacrifice to God, we are bringing the animalistic part of ourselves to the sacrifice. When we burn the sacrifice in part or in whole, we are burning that aspect of ourselves that represents the sin that we have committed, our hubris, and our failings in the moral domain. When we bring an offering that is not an atonement, we are bringing our gratitude and our yearning and intention to come closer to God.
Perhaps a better translation for sacrifice today is offering. What are the ways that we can offer something of ourselves to become closer to God? How can we sanctify our relationship to God through some action that either represents atonement for our various sins or that offers praise and recognition for the gifts that we have received?
Today, I ponder these questions with a sense of urgency related to our body politic. How are we as a nation prepared to offer some aspect of comfort in our lives to benefit the planet? What is it that we can do to expatiate the sins of our age? And what is the nature of those sins. Chet— the sin we commit inadvertently, the mistake that we make. Avon— the sin that we commit with full knowledge and intention towards another human being. Pesha-— the sin that we commit as a transgression, a crossing the line to disobey God’s will. If we inadvertently polluted in the past, perhaps this was a mistake, an error in judgment or knowledge. If we then pollute intentionally through ignoring regulations, isn’t this a violation of the pubic trust? However, if we intentionally do away with the regulations themselves, aren’t we in some way in rebellion against God’s will? Aren’t we commanded to care for the earth?
Some would say that we sacrifice jobs or monetary gain or our freedom by imposing regulations. Rather, I would say that regulations are the constraints that provide us with the freedom to live in safety and security. Regulations are researched and put into place as protections for our well-being, not as a hindrance to progress, not as a handicap to economic growth or the creation of jobs. Just as the “siyyug to Torah”, the gates of our laws that contain the Torah, regulations function as a safety net.
Sometimes we need to sacrifice in order to become whole. As a society, we need to learn to sacrifice, to find new solutions to challenges, to break through to a new form to bring us closer to God. When we speak of korbonot/sacrifices in the modern world, our atonement for sins of misusing or abusing our planet. We need to learn to offer praise and gratitude for our resources. Our sages say, as it is below, so it is on high. We can transform the world by the offerings that we make of ourselves, to sacrifice in the short term perhaps, to find long term solutions to protect the planet. We can find joy in the appreciation of the resources that we have and celebrate them by finding power solutions that harness the earth’s creative potential through wind, or solar, or wave energy. Through a process of atonement as well as gratitude, we can bring ourselves closer to the manifestation of God’s goodness in the creation of God’s world and our own.
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST – Parshat Vayikra
Does our God have a sense of smell?
In Psalm 115, there is a scathing critique of idolatry that mocks the lifelessness of fetishized statues and totems – specifically their lack of any sensory powers:
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak; eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear; noses, but cannot smell… (vv. 5-6)
So don’t be fooled by the vivid, carved features on the faces of these figurines! They are oblivious, inanimate, dead. Surely these are no gods!
But what is the implication here about our God? Is it that the real God does see and hear, taste and smell? Or is it that ascribing the human senses to God is altogether ridiculous?
That latter approach might appeal to the rationalists among us, but the Book of Leviticus seems to push the other position: yes, God can smell things. In the opening chapters of this middle volume of the Torah, we find ourselves running through a list of various forms of animal sacrifice, and after each one, the same phrase is repeated:
A pleasant scent to the Lord. ( ריח ניחוח לה׳ )
These offerings will go up in flames, the smoke will rise, and – it seems – God will smell it, and be pleased. And this isn’t just some obscure reference we pass by once. That phrase will appear a total of sixteen times in the Book of Leviticus! Add seventeen more in the Book of Numbers, and three earlier appearances in the Book of Exodus, and you have thirty-six mentions of this “pleasing scent” to describe the smoke of the Tabernacle sacrifices. It seems that not only can God smell – God does it all the time!
Now what in the world can that mean? Because surely, unlike the sculptured idols from the verse in Psalms, our God doesn’t have a nose and an olfactory system! We know that by the medieval period, Jewish theology has arrived at a clear consensus that God has no physicality at all. But even here in the Torah, much is made of the formlessness of God. Even when we use words like the “face” or the “hand” of God, we assume these are metaphors, symbolic representations of some aspect of God’s being. What, then, would God’s sense of smell symbolize?
My friend and colleague, Rabbi Joe Schwartz, reminded me that Marcel Proust is credited with giving articulation to the theory that smell is the sense most linked to memory. In what is considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th-century, Remembrance of Things Past, Proust writes: “When nothing else subsists from the long-distant past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered…the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls… bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory.” Indeed this notion, now so familiar to us, that smell evokes involuntary memories more powerfully than any other sense, is often referred to as the ‘Proustian Phenomenon.’
Remarkably, however, the very same concept appears in the writings of the 18th-century German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. An enlightenment thinker who worked with Lessing and was admired by Kant, Mendelssohn is best known for his attempt to reconcile traditional religious belief with participation in modern civil society. But he also wrote a commentary on the Torah, the Biur (which was widely admired by later Wissenschaft scholars, and is often cited by Nechama Leibowitz). And in Mendelssohn’s commentary on Exodus, in the very first appearance of the phrase, “A pleasant scent to the Lord” in relation to the offerings of the Tabernacle, he writes the following:
The sense of smell, in the Holy [Hebrew] Language, corresponds to the power of memory in the soul, for the idea of memory is the remaining impression in the soul, after the tangible experience has passed. That is the unique property of scent… and for this reason it says, “A pleasant scent” – that is, one which will provoke the desired memory before God.
Amazing. There you have the Proustian Phenomenon, two centuries before Proust! But now we might ask of Mendelssohn, what is this desired memory we want God to have? What is it that the Book of Leviticus will attempt to recall to the Divine consciousness sixteen times – nine in our parsha alone?
To answer that question, we will rely on a straightforward linguistic connection. For there is only one place in the Torah before the Tabernacle is built where that very same phrase, “a pleasing scent to God,” is used. And that is in the story of Noah.
After the 40-day flood, after all life on earth has been destroyed except for the family of Noah and the animals he saved, after the dove Noah sends out returns with an olive branch and proves that the waters have receded, Noah steps timidly out of the ark and onto dry ground again. And the first thing he does – maybe he was the first person ever to do it – was to build an altar to the Lord, and…
Taking of every pure animal and every pure bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelled the pleasant scent… (Gen. 8:20-21)
There it is, ריח ניחוח, that same “pleasant scent.” And God smells it, and then this is what God says:
The Lord smelled the pleasant scent and the Lord said to His Heart, “Never again will I doom the earth because of humanity, for the urges of a person are evil from his youth. Never again will I destroy every living thing as I have done.
So when we burn sacrifices on the altar of the Tabernacle, we are recalling the sacrifices on the first altar, and we are asking God to remember God’s promise. No, that’s not right, exactly. We are not asking. We are attempting to trigger the Divine memory, to produce an involuntary recollection with the scent of the same smoke that God smelled just before God made the promise that day, never again to destroy us.
And when do we send forth that scent? When do we offer sacrifices? At times when we have sinned. We have incurred Divine wrath, and are attempting to find atonement through these offerings. How exactly does that work, the commentators have long wondered? Does the animal stand in for us, acting as a substitute for our own deserved death? Is it simply the act of surrendering something of value that shows our contrition?
Or is it that we are able, with the very fires of that offering, to remind God of God’s commitment to be merciful? To remind God of what God realized back at the beginning of history. That we are born with terrible urges we cannot always control. That this is who we are. That God made us this way, after all.
And the priest shall turn it into smoke on the altar, for a pleasant scent to the Lord. Thus, the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven. (Lev. 4:31)
The American Declaration of Independence speaks of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Recently, following the pioneering work of Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, there have been hundreds of books published on happiness. Yet there is something more fundamental still to the sense of a life well-lived, namely, meaning. The two seem similar. It’s easy to suppose that people who find meaning are happy, and people who are happy have found meaning. But the two are not the same, nor do they always overlap.
Happiness is largely a matter of satisfying needs and wants. Meaning, by contrast, is about a sense of purpose in life, especially by making positive contributions to the lives of others. Happiness is largely about how you feel in the present. Meaning is about how you judge your life as a whole: past, present and future.
Happiness is associated with taking, meaning with giving. Individuals who suffer stress, worry or anxiety are not happy, but they may be living lives rich with meaning. Past misfortunes reduce present happiness, but people often connect such moments with the discovery of meaning. Furthermore, happiness is not unique to humans. Animals also experience contentment when their wants and needs are satisfied. But meaning is a distinctively human phenomenon. It has to do not with nature but with culture. It is not about what happens to us, but about how we interpret what happens to us. There can be happiness without meaning, and there can be meaning in the absence of happiness, even in the midst of darkness and pain.[1]
In a fascinating article in The Atlantic, ‘There’s more to life than being happy’[2], Emily Smith argued that the pursuit of happiness can result in a relatively shallow, self-absorbed, even selfish life. What makes the pursuit of meaning different is that it is about the search for something larger than the self.
No one did more to put the question of meaning into modern discourse than the late Viktor Frankl, who has figured prominently in this year’s Covenant and Conversation essays on spirituality. In the three years he spent in Auschwitz, Frankl survived and helped others to survive by inspiring them to discover a purpose in life even in the midst of hell on earth. It was there that he formulated the ideas he later turned into a new type of psychotherapy based on what he called “man’s search for meaning”. His book of that title, written in the course of nine days in 1946, has sold more than ten million copies throughout the world, and ranks as one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.
Frankl knew that in the camps, those who lost the will to live died. He tells of how he helped two individuals to find a reason to survive. One, a woman, had a child waiting for her in another country. Another had written the first volumes of a series of travel books, and there were others yet to write. Both therefore had a reason to live.
Frankl used to say that the way to find meaning was not to ask what we want from life. Instead we should ask what life wants from us. We are each, he said, unique: in our gifts, our abilities, our skills and talents, and in the circumstances of our life. For each of us, then, there is a task only we can do. This does not mean that we are better than others. But if we believe we are here for a reason, then there is a tikkun, a mending, only we can perform, a fragment of light only we can redeem, an act of kindness or courage or generosity or hospitality, even a word of encouragement or a smile, only we can perform, because we are here, in this place, at this time, facing this person at this moment in their lives.
“Life is a task”, he used to say, and added, “The religious man differs from the apparently irreligious man only by experiencing his existence not simply as a task, but as a mission.” He or she is aware of being summoned, called, by a Source. “For thousands of years that source has been called God.”[3]
That is the significance of the word that gives our parsha, and the third book of the Torah, its name: Vayikra, “And He called.” The precise meaning of this opening verse is difficult to understand. Literally translated it reads: “And He called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying …” The first phrase seems to be redundant. If we are told that God spoke to Moses, why say in addition, “And He called”? Rashi explains as follows:
And He called to Moses: Every [time God communicated with Moses, whether signalled by the expression] “And He spoke”, or “and He said”, or “and He commanded”, it was always preceded by [God] calling [to Moses by name].[4] “Calling” is an expression of endearment. It is the expression employed by the ministering angels, as it says, “And one called to the other…” (Isaiah. 6:3).
Vayikra, Rashi is telling us, means to be called to a task in love. This is the source of one of the key ideas of Western thought, namely the concept of a vocation or a calling, that is, the choice of a career or way of life not just because you want to do it, or because it offers certain benefits, but because you feel summoned to it. You feel this is your meaning and mission in life. This is what you were placed on earth to do.
There are many such calls in Tanach. There was the call Abraham heard to leave his land and family. There was the call to Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:4). There was the one experienced by Isaiah when he saw in a mystical vision God enthroned and surrounded by angels:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)
One of the most touching is the story of the young Samuel, dedicated by his mother Hannah to serve in the sanctuary at Shiloh where he acted as an assistant to Eli the priest. In bed at night he heard a voice calling his name. He assumed it was Eli. He ran to see what he wanted but Eli told him he had not called. This happened a second time and then a third, and by then Eli realised that it was God calling the child. He told Samuel that the next time the voice called his name, he should reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.’ It did not occur to the child that it might be God summoning him to a mission, but it was. Thus began his career as a prophet, judge and anointer of Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David (1 Samuel 3).
When we see a wrong to be righted, a sickness to be healed, a need to be met, and we feel it speaking to us, that is when we come as close as we can in a post-prophetic age to hearing Vayikra, God’s call. And why does the word appear here, at the beginning of the third and central book of the Torah? Because the book of Vayikra is about sacrifices, and a vocation is about sacrifices. We are willing to make sacrifices when we feel they are part of the task we are called on to do.
From the perspective of eternity we may sometimes be overwhelmed by a sense of our own insignificance. We are no more than a wave in the ocean, a grain of sand on the sea shore, a speck of dust on the surface of infinity. Yet we are here because God wanted us to be, because there is a task He wants us to perform. The search for meaning is the quest for this task.
Each of us is unique. Even genetically identical twins are different. There are things only we can do, we who are what we are, in this time, this place and these circumstances. For each of us God has a task: work to perform, a kindness to show, a gift to give, love to share, loneliness to ease, pain to heal, or broken lives to help mend. Discerning that task, hearing Vayikra, God’s call, is one of the great spiritual challenges for each of us.
How do we know what it is? Some years ago, in To Heal a Fractured World, I offered this as a guide, and it still seems to me to make sense: Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where God wants us to be.
e-sig
[1] See Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Jennifer Aaker, and Emily N.Garbinsky, ‘Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life’, Journal of Positive Psychology 2013, Vol. 8, Issue 6, Pages 505-516.
[2] Emily Smith, ‘There’s more to life than being happy’, The Atlantic, 9 Jan. 2013.
[3] Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: from Psychotherapy to Logotherapy, New York: A.A. Knopf, 1965, 13.
Any afternoon or evening, any time, with or without kids, I could come over and sit on a stool at the kitchen counter. Donna would make us a pot of nana tea – the comfort of mint mixed with the stimulation of caffeine.
We would chat in the plainest of terms about what was on our minds. How we aren’t sure we are handling difficult coworkers well. How we can deal with feeling ashamed of something we accidentally said. How one of us should interpret a weird, disturbing dream. How we are irrationally angry that we can’t get anyone else in our families to help clean the bathroom.
You name it – we dealt with it openly over that nana tea. Donna had an amazing ability to receive everything without judgment. Worries and self-criticism that you would never share with anyone – you could lay it on the table, talk it through, and it would disappear into smoke as a non-issue.
In some ways, sitting down to nana tea in Donna’s kitchen is like visiting the mishkan (sanctuary) in Parshat Vayikra (Leviticus 1-5). The reasons for bringing a sacrifice are a lot like the reasons for talking over a cup of tea. If you have a special joy to share, you bring a zevach shelamim, a well-being offering. If you fixed a problem but still feel bad about it, you bring an asham, a reparation offering. If you feel creeped out by something uncanny, or if you need to deal with something hideous in national current events, you bring a khatat, a purification offering. The priest takes your offering, and disappears your problems in smoke.
The beginning of Parshat Vayikra invites us into this kind of intimacy with God. The first sentence says, Vayikra HaShem el Moshe – God called to Moshe. In our scribal tradition, the last letter of the word vayikra, the Aleph, is written smaller than the other letters of the word, almost as an afterthought.
Perhaps we can read the tiny aleph as suggesting that there are two alternative readings of the word: you could read it vayikar, as if the aleph weren’t there at all; or you could read it vayikra, pronouncing the aleph. In modern Hebrew, yakar means “precious” and kara means “called.” Perhaps we are supposed to read both meanings. “He called…He made someone precious…He called…He made someone precious.”
This two-faceted word describes the magic of Donna’s kitchen. She invites you in, and in that space, you are precious. Perfect and dear just as you are. Your flaws, your imperfections – insubstantial as smoke.
And this is the magic of the mishkan. Through the technology of the sacrifices in God’s kitchen, your self-doubts become as insubstantial as smoke.
In the Haftorah reading, the prophet Isaiah tells us that idols cannot effect this kind of healing transformation. Believe it or not, he specifically tells us that idols don’t have the right kind of kitchens.
Here Isaiah describes the idolator’s use of wood:
Part of it he burns in a fire:
On that part he roasts meat,
He eats the roast and is sated;
He also warms himself and cries, “Ah,
I am warm! I can feel the heat!”
Of the rest he makes a god – his own carving!
He bows down to it, worships it;
He prays to it and cries,
“Save me, for you are my god!”
The piece of wood helps to meet the idolater’s material needs – it keeps him warm, it helps him cook. So the idolater says, “you are my god!”
But the idolator’s meal fulfills physical needs only. The fears, the guilt, the worries that ought to be burned up are neither received and released. Instead they grow into guiding principles, leading the idolator into ever more confused decision-making.
As Isaiah says,
A deluded mind has led him astray
And he cannot save himself;
He never says to himself,
The thing in my hand is a fraud!
We all have times when we are like Isaiah’s idolater. Difficult, uncomfortable thoughts and feelings may overtake us. We might not recognize ourselves. We might be weighed down with anxiety. We might wonder if we should even have these thoughts and feelings, or if we should tell anyone about it. We might need help figuring out if we are defrauding ourselves!
At these times, we need a kitchen! We need someone who will sit with us, listen and receive without judgment, hold up a mirror, so to speak, with love. It might be a friend like Donna who makes nana tea; it might be a representative of an established organization, like the priests in the mishkan.
Vayikra teaches that an individual cannot deal with worries, guilt, creepiness, or disturbing public events alone. Every one of us needs someone who recognizes the weight of thoughts and feelings – even when our material needs are met, even when we have fixed the practical consequences of our mistakes. Every one of us needs someone who can help lighten the load, turn the substantial into vapour.
Often I share that my life can be divided into two chapters – in the first chapter I experienced God’s love for me by virtue of having a Teacher to Learn from and with. Someone that would share the secrets of Torah that I needed in order to keep my soul alive. The second chapter of my life, the one that I live in now, is defined by walking in the world with Students that I’m blessed to share the Torah I have gathered, and am able to offer them. It is a gift like no other.
I have learned over the years that both Teachers and Students manifest in a form and shape not always expected or anticipated. It keeps my heart open, not knowing when either of them will show up to claim a piece of my heart that their light will ignite.
It is such a manner that Father Henri Nouwen entered my life half a decade ago, when introduced to him by a friend. Those of you who know me know that the fact that Father Henri crossed-over at the age of sixty four, in 1996, is no barrier in declaring him a significant Teacher. On the contrary, I often try to imagine conversations that he and my Teacher Reb Shlomo Carlebach may be conducting in the heavenly realm. Both of them, Men of the Cloth that walked in the world as wounded healers.
It is his words that I hear echoing, as a commentary to Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) quoting Midrash Rabba on Vayikra (Leviticus) 1:2.
The verse in our Torah portion teaches us: “Speak to the Children of Yisrael and say to them, if any man [ADAM] of you brings an offering to God…”
Rashi questions the use of the word ADAM for a person, versus other titles that the Torah could’ve used for one that brings a gift-offering sacrifice. He brings the Midrash that suggests that the use of the word ADAM is to evoke the consciousness of Adam in the Garden of Eden, who ” never offered sacrifices from stolen goods” thus suggesting, here too, that this gift being brought to the Mishkan (tabernacle) was not from stolen goods.
I can’t help but read this in utter dismay – who would think to bring a gift-offering to God from stolen goods??? How could one even ponder such a thing? What would motivate such behavior and how could one, in good faith, put their hands on the animal to be offered on their behalf if it wasn’t theirs?
It is here that I have summoned Father Henri Nouwen to help me unpack that which is so unfathomable to me.
In his book “The One Necessary Thing” on living a prayerful life he speaks of a listening heart. He offers the following:
“The discipline of the heart… makes us aware that praying is not only listening to but also listening with. The discipline of the heart makes us stand in the presence of God with all we have and are: our fears and anxieties, our guilt and shame, our sexual fantasies, our greed and anger, our joys, successes, aspirations and hopes, or reflections, dreams and mental wandering, and most of all our people, family, friends and enemies, in short, all that makes us who we are. With all this we have to listen to God’s voice and allow God to speak to us in every corner of our being. This is very hard since we are so fearful and insecure that we keep hiding ourselves from God.
We tend to present to God only those parts of ourselves with which we feel relatively comfortable and which we think will evoke a positive response. Thus our prayer becomes very selective and narrow. And not just our prayers but also our self-knowledge, because by behaving as strangers before God we become strangers to ourselves.”
Now I can live with Rashi, with the Midrash and with the possibility of “stolen goods.” It is by means of employing the concept of ” Gneivat Da’at.” Literally this concept translates as “theft of mind / consciousness.” When used in context of Jewish law and morality we can speak of a misrepresentation or even an element of deception when presenting a given situation. While it is more often used in the realm of business and commerce (such as the boundaries and definitions of advertisement) I would like to suggest that Father Henri Nouwen is speaking of standing in God’s presence with only a portion of who we are. He alludes to only bringing our favorable traits when standing in God’s presence, appearing to be that person, and not what we may perceive as our dark side. This would then fall under the category of spiritual gneivat da’at, and perhaps this is the way we could understand Rashi.
I would like to pose the possibility that the “stolen goods” that Rashi is speaking of is our misrepresentation of the totality of our being when in the presence of God. While I personally can identify with the fear that showing up with our totality may bring, I can also touch upon the joy, gratitude and relief in knowing that I am who I am; that God sees me in all that I am; that I can be loved by the Divine regardless of the flaws that I myself don’t allow myself to acknowledge. I believe that it is being seen in such a way by God that will, in time, avail me to own those parts of myself that I shun.
It is with this understanding that the Alexander Rebbe (R’ Yisrael Dantziger, 1853-1910) understands the word in our opening verse, ” Me’kem” / “of you” – the gift-offering we bring is meant to come “from ourselves,” or as the Rebbe expresses, “from our desires” – this is an opportunity to offer, to elevate our desires to and with God; those desires that we are happy to share in daylight, and those that we barely allow to breathe some fresh air at night when no one is around. And if you ask, would this not be a blemished offering being brought to God, I would respond by saying: “If you whole-heartedly put your hands on its head, if you own it as also being a part of you, then you are bringing the most holy offering of all! It is not blemished but rather whole, for you are whole!” I believe this is the first step to our personal redemption and exiting of Egypt.
May we dwell this Shabbat in the trust and faith necessary to bring such offerings to God. May this Shabbat Rosh Chodesh avail us of a new way of standing in the world. May the hiddenness of the moon give us the courage to grow in our truth and shine in all that we are when she comes to completion Seder night!
Shabbat Parashat Vayikra
March 16, 2014 / 5 Nisan 5773
By: Rabbi Aaron Alexander,
Associate Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
We Need To Talk
Torah Reading: Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26
Haftarah Reading: Isaiah 43:21 – 44:23
“We need to talk.” I apologize if these words create residual trauma and I’ve probably already scared you off. But at least we’re in this together. Each of us has likely been on the other side of this ominous phrase at one point or another, and probably guilty of saying it, too. It just stings.
Let’s harness the pain, briefly, and take a moment to reflect on the elusive art form of difficult-conversation starters. The book of Leviticus, Va-Yikr’a, begins:
And God called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying… (Lev. 1:1)
At first glance this feels pretty direct. God has what to say to Moses, so God calls him and begins a lengthy discourse on all means of sacrifice. A closer look, though, reveals a slight difficulty. Namely, why did God have to call to Moses before speaking to him? They are both in the Tent of Meeting and a simple, “And God spoke to Moses,” would have been enough of an introduction to the communication that follows.
The prodigious commentator, Rashi, smoothes this over by explaining that the ‘call’ was not of the dinner-bell variety, a ‘come and get it’ scene many of us experienced in our youths as supper approached. Rather, this was a gentle and thoughtful invitation, a tender communication from God to Moses.
As Rashi puts it: “The language of “calling” is an expression of affection, a similar articulation used by the ministering angels in conversation with one another, as it says, ‘And one called to the other (v’ka-ra zeh-el-zeh ve-amar)…’ ” (Rashi to Lev. 1:1)
The paradigm set forth is of angels seamlessly interacting. How potent. It didn’t matter, therefore, what God called to Moses before giving him endless instructions, and it wasn’t important that Moses and God were already occupying the same space. Rather, it was the caring way in which God called Moses. God asked Moses to join the conversation and allowed Moses to be as fully present as possible. While God and Moses were not necessarily about to get into an awkward or dicey conversation (okay, maybe dicey), this interpretation does offer insight into precarious-conversation starters.
How often do we find ourselves in the same room with another person, poised to enter into a difficult conversation, but also at a loss for words? How does one create an inviting space with room for both participants to express themselves, authentically, while still willing to give something to the other? Our natural tendencies of avoidance, discomfort and/or nervous anticipation often result in communication that is more passive-aggressive, or likely just aggressive: In our homes, synagogues, schools, or offices, all potentially sacred and safe spaces, all potentially hazardous and contentious.
The Torah offers us a slightly different model of engagement: loving invitation. Even in an assumed safe space, an ohel mo’ed interaction demands thoughtful, kind, and honest entry. Jumping right in with a “we need to talk” followed by whatever needs to be said may not allow the listener to prepare for the difficult message to be delivered. The example set forth by God and angels offers an alternative access point for the adrenaline-filled moments that can consume our day-to-day experience. I wish I could offer a one-size-fits-all phrase or invitation. The challenge is that each opportunity demands precisely the kind of warmth that Moses must have heard when God called him in that Tent. And that differs, significantly, in every friendship, partnership, and union.
There is no avoiding confrontation in any relationship. That is a truth. But thoughtfully and intentionally introducing and transforming potentially heated interactions into fertile ground for openness and readiness may go a long way in warding off some of the residual discomfort that often lingers for much too long.
Actually, I think I want to go back and start this commentary differently. Do over?
This week begins the first parsha of the book of Leviticus, Vayikra- “He called”. It gives instructions about five different kinds of sacrifices which the Israelites were to offer. These five sacrifices can be seen as a paradigm of life, each one a symbol for a particular way of approaching this moment.
The first is the Olah, or “Elevation” offering. This offering was unique in that it was burned completely on the altar, with nothing left over. This hints at giving ourselves entirely to the task of this moment. We tend to see this moment as a mere stepping-stone to another moment, and we are often doing one thing while our minds are somewhere else. The Olah hints that if we wish to live in an “elevated” way- that is, free from mundane stresses and worries, we paradoxically need to completely bring ourselves to the mundane. We need to “burn ourselves” completely in this moment, without leaving over part of our minds to dwell on something else.
The second is the Minkha, or “gift” offering. This was a grain offering, brought by those who were not wealthy enough to bring animal offerings. This hints at the wisdom of humility and the willingness to offer of ourselves what we can, even if we think it is inadequate, or that the work required is “below” us. It is the willingness to serve the needs of this moment, without imposing our own preconceptions.
The third is the Shlamim, or “Peace” offering. This offering was brought out of gratitude and praise. It brought peace partially because the priests and the offerer both enjoyed it as food, and partially because it was supposed to have a peaceful effect on the world in general. This hints at dedicating our actions toward universal benefit for all. When we act, we do so because we have some particular motivation. If we take a moment to dedicate our actions to universal benefit, this will give our actions and even our decision-making process a special quality of openness and generosity.
The fourth and fifth are the Hatat and the Asham- the “Sin” offering and the “Guilt” offering. Their purpose was to correct and make healing for wrongs committed. It is good to remember that we have not always been perfect. Whenever we do anything, we are not acting from a clean slate, but rather we act against a hidden karmic background. Keeping this in mind will allow us to approach this moment with humility and the intention for healing whatever negativity lingers from the past. It will also help us accept what happens to us moment by moment, cleansing us from the arrogance of resisting things we don’t like- “How could this happen to me?” Instead, let us accept what is, and offer ourselves to this moment as a force of healing.
May these five offerings manifest themselves in our lives toward greater awakening to the spiritual potential of this moment, always.
Leviticus chapter 5 teaches that someone brings a chataat offering when they overhear a curse, witness a crime, learn about a crime, touch a corpse without knowing it, or blurt out an oath.
Some commentators translate chataat based on its use of the root cheyt – sin – and understand it as a “sin-offering.” They focus discussion on cases where the curses, oaths, witnessing, and contact with death are associated with misdeeds. For them, offering the chataat is part of the process of atoning for a crime.
Others translate chataat based on its function of helping to remove ritual impurity. In the Levitical system, ritual impurity is associated with psycho-spiritual discomfort when boundaries are suddenly violated. These commentators understand the chataat as a “purification offering.” They recognize the fear that can result when we see or hear terrible things, blurt out words that come from a hidden part of us, or suddenly realize that we have come into contact with death. For them, the chataat is part of the process of self-understanding and release.
From this second perspective, the chataat is a gift of compassion from the cohanim (priests) to the people. The chataat offers an opportunity to pause, reflect on the upset, and let it go. Without such a pause, fears may be held secretly inside and compound over time, moving us to attack ourselves as well as others. The cohanim recognized the importance of witnessing the troubles of others, helping them come to self-knowledge and providing rituals that restore stability. From them we can learn some new tools for compassionately support people in our lives.
Parshat Vayikra
Torah Reading for Week of March 18-24, 2012
“The Worth of Our Salt”
By Rabbi Janet Madden ‘11
Parshat Vayikra (“and He called”) provides a how-to guide that lays out the taxonomy of Temple sacrifices, each category of which calls for particular types of animals, birds or grain. In contrast to the compelling narratives of Beresheit and Shemot, this section of the Torah, replete with rules instead of stories, demonstrates a new level of maturity in the relationship between the people and the Holy One, expressed through communal participation in the sacrificial rites, and even more powerfully, by the responsibility of every individual to bring offerings. The specificity of the instructions accompanying each kind of sacrifice makes clear that sacrifice is not a pro forma obligation. That each sacrifice is a holy act is emphasized by the articulation of the concomitant state of intentionality on the part of the person who brings the specified offering and by prescribed actions by the cohanim who perform the sacrificial rites on the behalf of the people. Vayikra demonstrates that sacrifice is the visceral expression of the relationship between G-d and Israel through its emphasis on the nuances and complexities of the sacrificial rites and, most of all, through its reiteration that whether the offering is bird, animal or grain, there is a single component that unifies every offering: salt.
So ubiquitous and inexpensive today that we take it for granted, salt held an elevated status in all cultures of the ancient world both for its function as food preservative and as seasoning. In contrast to pagan sacrificial rites in which blood was drunk and salt was not used, salt’s role in ancient Israel is embodied in its status in Temple sacrifices, which eschewed the consumption of blood and mandated the addition of salt, a substance that defined the Land in the form of Yom Ha-Melah, the Salt Sea. Salt appears throughout the Tanach as a symbol of permanence and, particularly, as a symbol of covenantal relationship. The declaration that “All the sacred gifts that the Israelites set aside for the Lord…shall be an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for you and for your offspring as well” in Parshat Korach explicitly establishes the relationship of salt and sacrifice in the context of sacrifice and covenant. Chronicles 13:5 tells us that the Davidic line is established by a covenant of salt. Ezekial 16:4 reports that in ancient Israel, newborns were rubbed with salt, and Ezra 6:9 and 7:22 record that large quantities of salt were delivered to the post-exilic Temple for use in sacrifices, underscoring Vayikra’s instruction about the use of salt in each kind of offering.
It is easy to understand the sacrificial requirement of salt in the context of meat, since salt would have removed blood from the altar, much as today we use salt as a purifying and consecrating agent in kashering. More intriguing and poignant is the inclusion of salt in the grain sacrifices, which presages how we use salt ritually today. Pablo Neruda’s depiction of salt’s “broken voice” and “mournful song” in his “Ode to Salt” captures the emotional undercurrent of how we commemorate the Temple’s destruction in our custom of sprinkling salt over bread after making the blessing over it.
Me’am Loez records the legend that at the Creation, when the lower world was parted from the firmament and the waters of the heavens from the waters of the seas were separated, the seas begged the Creator to be placed closer, not off in the distance. In order to reassure the seas that they had not been abandoned or rejected, they were granted the privilege of providing salt for all Temple sacrifices. Similarly, our mindful ritual use of salt brings us closer to our history, our traditions, and our G-d. Salt, as Neruda understands, is not merely the “dust of the sea”; in the “smallest, miniature wave from the saltcellar…we taste infinitude.”
From Rabbi Miles Krassen
Va-Yiqra 5771 according to Sefer Az Yashir Moshe (Meta-Torah)
The infinitesimal Alef calls to Moshe and (then) the Source of Compassion speaks to him in the mind space where Divinity and Humanity meet. (Leviticus 1:1).
The Meta-Moshe Rabbenu (Rinpoche) has immediate access to Divine guidance under all circumstances. At that level one doesn’t need a Temple to go to or any particular spiritually enhancing context in order to approach the Shekhinah. You yourself are a Sanctuary and the Shekhinah is in and around you and even speaks through you.
But, how do we “get there?” Our Sages tell us that Divinity is broadcasting an evolutionary current at all times that seeks to bring us into alignment (teshuvah). This infinitesimally subtle vibration is however all too rarely perceived. In fact, although we receive it quite frequently, the level of confusion that characterizes most of us in our misconception of Reality prevents us from “getting the message”— the Divine “love-taps” that are subtly seeking our attention. This subtlety of Divine transmission is required by the evolutionary process itself, commonly thought of in terms of “reward and punishment” (karma). If the broadcast were louder and clear enough for everyone to hear, there would be no possibility of evolution as no effort would ever be required of us. If that were the case, there would be no way to feed the Shekhinah and the Atzmut, the very essence of ALL THAT IS (Eyn Sof), would have no basis for manifesting as EVERYTHING in time and space.
The difference between an un-awakened person and a Tzaddiq-in-training may be measured by the degree of sensitivity that a person has to this subtle sound current. The Noam Elimelekh says a Tzaddiq-in-training is not a person whose behavior is always perfect, but rather a person who is extremely sensitive to the guidance coming from the subtle current that let’s one know when a course correction is required. In the state of “sleep,” even though we may think we are awake, we act mechanically. When our behavior is challenged, we immediately become defensive, dishonest, and in denial. But for the awakened tzaddiq-in-training, even though incapable of measuring up to anyone’s conceptual idea of idealized perfection, the least “misstep” is heartbreaking. That very acute presence of Conscience within is an indication that one is sensitive to the call of the infinitesimally subtle “Alef” that guides Moshe Rinpoche.
Whenever Moshe consciously responds to the “call” of the vibration of the infinitesimally subtle Alef, it transforms the mind-stream of the Tzaddiq into a condition called Ohel Mo’ed (mind space where Divinity and Humanity meet). In that special “meeting place,” the vibration of the infinitesimally subtle Alef expands into the transmission of a compassionate and evolutionary teaching. In this parashah the process begins with the transmission of a teaching concerning fundamental ways of drawing closer to the primordial state of inseparability from the Shekhinah. These fundamental ways of drawing closer to the Shekhinah are called “sacrifices” (“korbanot’) because each requires a certain form of conscious suffering.
Tell those on the evolutionary path that if they want to draw closer to the Shekhinah, they should make conscious sacrifices that refine the ‘beast,’ the source of unregulated desires (“min ha-behemah”), sacrifices should be made through the center of awareness (“min ha-baqar”) and through unification of Source and Manifestation (“min ha-TZoN”). (Leviticus 1:2)
The primary and most general sacrificial path is called “from the beast” because it points to the efforts we need to make in order to bring our total animal nature into a higher level of refinement. This is basically the same image Plato used in regard to the horse and carriage that requires a driver if it is to go in an evolutionary direction. The general path of conscious sacrifice includes all forms of self-discipline that regulate and direct unconscious drives that increase our confusion. What is being sacrificed on this general path is the unchecked and relentless pursuit of satisfying our cravings on all levels.
To achieve the general purpose of conscious suffering in order to become more than a beast, there are two supporting inner paths. The first is called: “BaQaR,” which literally means “from the herd” but alludes to the center of awareness, based on the Hebrew root BQR that implies critical insight (BiQQuR). This is the inner sacrificing of mindless confusion. In order to follow this path, it is necessary to make the effort to cultivate constant mindful awareness— to maintain as much as possible the condition of being present to all that one is experiencing.
Deeper than this is the second inner path called: “TZoN,” literally “from the flock.” However, according to Kabbalah we know there are secrets hidden in the letters TZadi Alef and Nun that have to be deciphered in order to disclose a deeper hidden teaching. The letters TZadi and Alef equal 91 which is the sum of the two Holy Names, YHVH (26) and ADNY (65). Thus the sum of these two letters alludes to the unification of the two Holy Names representing Source (YHVH) and Manifestation (ADNY). When the two are ONE, they express the mystery of Divine Love. This love flows from the highest Source all the way down like the final form of the letter Nun (see the first Torah in Liqqutey MoHaRaN) expressing the power of drawing down Divine Grace (Hesed) to the most manifest level of Malkhut. This capacity to radiate Hesed (real kindness) in actuality within the world itself flows spontaneously and directly from the ultimately inseparable union of Source and Manifestation. Thus the sacrifice of “TZoN” is the path of complete non-dual unification. This path is followed by realizing, remaining in, remembering, and returning to the state of Knowledge that existed before we were born and which can be recalled as we evolve in our embodied condition. (See B.Talmud, Niddah 30). Whoever practices this path in life sacrifices ego-identification at the very deepest level (bittul bi-metziut).
May we blessed to become increasingly sensitive to the call of the infinitesimally subtle Alef vibration. May we respond to this Divine Call with sincere efforts of realignment (teshuvah) and share its message to inspire others. May we commit ourselves to the paths of conscious sacrifice that ultimately can enable us to become truly kind and awake beings in this very world as embodiments of non-dual Reality.
Shabbat shalom!
Faithfully transcribed from the subtle Alef vibration by
Moshe Aharon (Ladizhyner) for the Shekhinah, Va-Yiqra 5771
When You call me
speak louder than you did with Moses
I may not hear the diminished alef*
the sound of affection
You used with him.
I am listening with everything I have
I am listening for the right word
the true story.
Let the pure come and occupy themselves
with the pure —
so said the wondrous Rav Assi [Lev.R.7:3]
3rd – 4th century
student of Rav Shmuel in Nehardea (al-Anbar)
companion of Rav Ammi,
What they talked about —
everything.
And G*d called to Moses
And G*d spoke to him
From the tent of meeting
Saying —
*The Alef is the vav and two yuds
human-being-li-ness and G*d-li-ness
both
the Alef suspended between
the foundational lower world
and the reach to the upper world
hand above
underneath everlasting arm
connected by the sitting
And.
We are connected
above and below
the Alef is diagrammatic — the human being
planted in the lower world
reaching for the upper world.
Week’s Energy for Parshas Vayikra
Rav DovBer Pinson
Beyond the Past/Re-scripting the Future
This week’s Torah reading begins with the words “And Hashem called to Moshe/Moses…saying, speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: When a man from [among] you brings an offering…”(1:1-2) Thus begins the third book of the Torah, the book of Vayikra, known as Leviticus. This book speaks in great length of the various forms of Korbanos / offerings.
Offerings were brought to atone for past negative actions, and so they represent a state of purity, as if one is ‘beginning again’. It is a tradition (Shach, Y’D 245:8), to begin teaching a child Torah with the third book of the Torah, the book of Vayikra. The Midrash says; “Let the pure (child) come and study (the laws of) the pure.” (Vayikra Rabba 7:3)
In Temple times, offerings were used to achieve atonement, and as such, they represent a state of purity. The idea of the offering is a ‘new beginning’.
The verse says, “Adam, Ki Yakriv Mikem” which is commonly translated as “When a man from [among] you brings an offering.” A more literal translation would be, “a person, who offers of himself.”
The person who wished to atone would bring an offering with the intention that they were giving of their very own self. When they gave of their earnings, it represented a relinquishing of their ego, a letting go, as it were.
Atonement is really Re-Alignment.
The principle of cause and effect means that each action creates a reaction. Positive actions have positive effect and negative actions create negative reactions. A positive reaction causes a balanced, equalizing energy, while a negative reaction creates an energy imbalance.
A negative action in the past, based on the laws of cause and effect, will create an inevitable negative consequence. Therefore, what is needed is a shift, a rebalancing in the present, to undo the effects of the past wrongdoing.
When a person would bring an offering of an object, which was a representation of themselves, the balance was restored and a new beginning initiated. The offerings brought purity. The concept of purity being an unsoiled reality – a new beginning and a fresh start.
Time which flows from a perspective of Yesh/existence, which is ego, is as such; what happened in the past is indelibly imprinted on the present, and subsequently gives birth to the future. This is the universe of karmic cause and effect.
Yet, when a person offers from him or herself, which is a selfless giving, they are leaving behind the world of Yesh/existence/ego and entering into the world of Ayin – emptiness, no-thing-ness. From this place of Ayin- unattached to a past, they can chart a new course for their future.
The Torah The Energy of the Week:
Beyond the Past/Re-scripting the Future
In order to reverse the karmic effects of negative deeds in our past – we need to go beyond the reality of cause and effect.
In a world of strict natural order – there is no way to reverse the laws of cause and effect.
However, going beyond our natural state of being, transcending our ego, as it were, we create a new reality for ourselves and rewrite the script of our future.
This week’s Torah reading imbues us with the energy to undo negative reactions from our past, giving us the strength to perform more selfless acts of goodness.
We are able to go beyond our ego and render our ego more transparent. Through ego-less acts of kindness we break the patterns of negativity and enter a brand new state, fresh with undiscovered possibility.
“Vayikra el Moshe, And He called to Moses….” In last week’s double parashah, Vayak-hel-P’kudei, Moshe set up the Mishkan with the Ohel Mo-ed, the Tent of Meeting at its heart, and it was filled with the cloud of Holy Presence, the Shekhinah, the In-Dwelling Divine. So full of God was this place, that Moses hung back and could not enter. He had to be called by Ha-Shem, invited into relationship with the Holy. In order for a human being, even one so awake as Moses, to enter into direct relationship with the Divine, space must be made. The Mystery must draw back a bit into itself—and so “vayikra,” he called, the first word of our parashah, has a tiny aleph at the end, smaller than the rest of the letters, to symbolize, according to some, God’s tzim tzum, the pulling back of Self that makes space for another to enter.
Vayikra, the book of Torah that gives in minute detail the particulars of priestly service in the Mishkan/Temple, can be read as a tractate on holy relationship. When we look through the surface of its instructions about sacrifices and purifications from skin diseases and emissions to the spiritual truths hinted at in its depths, we may begin to understand the brilliance of our tradition in offering us a blueprint for right relationship, the means to practice the art of teshuvah, or return.
What makes possible the maintenance of a brit, a covenant with the Divine or with a person for that matter, given our humanity and the inevitability of our falling away from clarity and devotion, is the ever-present possibility Vayikra lays out of t’shuva—the ability through our focused intention, our actions, our prayers, to clear the clogged channels of connection. We easily distracted, easily obsessed human beings are here gifted with the means to restore awareness, to restore balance, to return to a loving state, in our relationships with each other and, underlying, supporting, and shining through those, each in our unique relationship with the Mystery, the Great Truth.
For the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness, the Presence was always visible as a cloud by day and a fire by night hanging over, resting upon the Mishkan. What is this powerful image of God-made-visible to an entire people? None other than the cloud and the fire of the ever-present, ever-active sacrificial altar, emanating morning and evening a ray-akh ni’khoakh, a pleasing aroma, meant to soothe, placate, re-calibrate the relationship between this visible earthly plane and the invisible, unimaginable realm of the Divine.
So what can be our sacrificial altar, the locus of action and focus of attention that helps us maintain clarity and flow in our earthly and our heavenly relationships, within ourselves, with our friends and family and community, and with the Mystery that Sources and Holds us all?
In her profound Torah Journeys, Rabbi Shefa Gold teaches that “the blessing of Vayikra is the call to come into harmony, balance, connection and intimacy with the God who has freed us for this love,” for this loving service. (Torah Journeys, p. 104) And the challenge is to continually grow into that freedom through practices of return. Reb Shefa asks us to make our prayer practice as powerful, as visceral, and as intense as the sacrifice of animals was for our ancestors. Can our davennen engage every sense—the sense of smell, of vision, of taste, of kinesthesia? Can it awaken our blood and vibrate our souls? And can our actions in the daily world—our words, our deeds, our work, our care for others—be informed by such practice, engaging us in a constant web of interconnectedness that grows God in the world?
As for the power and primacy of teshuvah, of which our prayer practice is an integral part, Rav Kook quotes Yoma 86b: “Great is teshuvah for it brings healing to the world, and an individual who returns is forgiven and the whole world is forgiven with her.” (Bokser, Abraham Isaac Kook, p. 56) “Teshuvah was planned before the creation of the world, and it is for this reason the foundation of the world.” (Ibid., p. 55) “This quality of raising what is lowly in life toward greatness never ceases at any time, at any hour. This is the meaning of full teshuvah….”(Ibid., p. 98), an ongoing day-by-day, moment by moment process, not something we do once a year during the High Holy Days, but, along with the practice of Shabbat, Judaism’s core spiritual practice. Through teshuvah, an ongoing consciousness practice that allows us to restore right relationship in all dimensions, we become “a nation of priests and a holy people,” a gathering of persons striving toward connection with the Holiest of Holies
It is an ancient tradition that little boys who have learned their Aleph-Beis and are just starting to read, commence their study of the CHUMASH (Five Books of Moses) with VAYIKRA. “Let pure souls come to study the laws dealing with purity.” For a cynical, sophisticated age that feels entitled to call anything and everything into question, the Torah code of sacrifices and purification may appear ancient, primitive, complicated and irrelevant. But if we are willing to explore the Torah with the fresh eyes of children, ready to take the word of G-d on trust, with faith and belief, we can discover that the sacrificial system contains the keys to repentance and the healing of the soul and the entire world.
The theme of sacrifices enters Genesis and Exodus in a number of places. Adam, Cain and Abel, Noah and Abraham all offered sacrifices. Moses’ declared purpose in taking the Children of Israel out of Egypt was to bring sacrifices, and the animal sacrifices brought at the time of the Giving of the Torah were described (Ex.24:5), as were the sacrifices that were to be brought at the inauguration of the Sanctuary (Ex. ch. 29). However, it is here in the opening parshahs of LEVITICUS that the sacrificial system of the Torah is laid out in detail. The universal significance of this teaching is brought out in the use by the Torah of the word ADAM in introducing the sacrificial commandments: “.when a MAN (ADAM) would bring a sacrifice.” (Lev. 1:2). The sacrificial system comes to heal man’s alienation from G-d through atoning for his sins and bringing him back into a relationship of peace with Him. This is the ultimate rectification of Adam’s sin of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This sin caused the mix-up of good and evil in this world that is the root of all subsequent sin.
VAYIKRA begins with the laws of the OLAH, “elevation” or “ascending” offering, which could either be an ox, a sheep or a goat, a dove or pigeon, or take the form of a MINCHAH offering of wheat in the form of flour or unleavened loaves or wafers. In the case of an animal OLAH offering, the blood of the animal was splashed on the sides of altar, while its fat and other portions were burned on the altar. The OLAH offering comes to atone not so much for “sins of commission” — something a person did — as for “sins of omission”, what he failed to do (such as if he failed to fulfil a positive commandment). The laws of OLAH are followed by the laws of SHELAMIM, the peace-offering, an animal sacrifice whose blood and fat were offered on the altar but whose meat was shared between the priests and the one who brought the offering. The SHELAMIM sacrifice is a celebration that signifies that man has made his peace with G-d.
Next come the laws of CHATAS, the sin-offering brought for unwitting violation of Torah prohibitions whose willful infringement carries the penalty of excision. Different kinds of animals are to be brought and different procedures of atonement apply depending on whether the sinner is a private individual, the “Prince” (Nasi, king or leader), the Supreme Court (Sanhedrin) or the High Priest. [Rashi on Lev. 4:22 comments: Happy is the generation whose leader is able to admit he made a mistake and who tries to make amends.]
The last part of Parshas VAYIKRA contains commandments relating to a variety of CHATAS (“Sin”) and ASHAM (“Guilt”) offerings for specific sins. It is noteworthy that while some of the sins in question are bound up purely with man’s relation with G-d (such as unwittingly entering the Sanctuary or eating sacrifices while ritually impure), there are certain sins in man’s behavior to his fellow men that also make him liable to a sacrifice. These include the sin committed by one who, having received goods or money on trust, subsequently denies it under oath. This is at once a sin against G-d and against the person from whom he received the goods or money. It is normal and natural for a person to choose a private place without witnesses in order to entrust someone with valuable goods or money for safekeeping. Besides the two people involved, the only other “witness” to the transaction is G-d Himself, who knows what really happened. If the trustee invokes the name of G-d to swear falsely in denial of what G-d knows, this is a denial of G-d Himself. Not only must the trustee return the goods or money together with a twenty-five per cent supplement. He must also make amends to G-d by bringing a sacrifice.
The book of Vayikra (Leviticus) is the text at the center of the Torah, the kernel around which the other books form a kind of parenthesis or embrace. Now we’re getting into the heart of things.
And the blood of things, and the entrails of things, the kidneys and the fat of things. In this week’s portion, Vayikra, we dive straight into instructions for making korbanot, usually rendered in English as “sacrifices” though the word really means “drawings-near,” as in “offerings which draw us near to God” (or maybe “draw God near to us.”)
Sacrifice-as-worship is wildly foreign to us today. Burnt offerings and offerings of meal; offerings of well-being, and expiation offerings to atone for sins — this stuff feels pretty far out. In this week’s portion we read that when a person unwittingly incurs guilt with regard to any of the mitzvot, that person shall bring such-and-such an offering to be slaughtered, and the fat and blood shall be burned. Could this be further from our understanding of teshuvah as a personal (and individualized) process of soul-searching and turning-toward-God? This is a valuable reminder that avodah, service of God, was once physical and concrete.
It’s easy to feel a disjunction between what we read here, and the form of worship we take for granted now. And the text doesn’t acknowledge that at all. God doesn’t say, “this is how you shall draw near to Me now, for the time being; later on, when humanity is maybe a little bit more evolved, you’ll find other ways of approaching My presence, offering thanks, and seeking to atone for your misdeeds.” It might make our lives easier now if those words were in there — if God had given us an advance alert that someday our paradigm for relationship with God would change. That we would grow to be capable of finding connection through words, instead of bodily fluids and ashes.
But those words would have been disconcerting and painfully baffling to our ancestors. In the days of sacrifice, who could have imagined the satisfaction, joy, and genuine connection we would find in our strange modern worship — our shelves of siddurim (prayerbooks), our minhagim (customs) and nuscha’ot (melody-systems), our piyyutim (liturgical poems) and improvisational prayers? The arrow of linear time moves us in one direction only — which means that we always look back on what was, while our ancestors couldn’t imagine what would be.
But we inhabit circular time as well as linear. Every year we return to the new moon of Nisan. Every year, just as we bid farewell to the book of Shemot, which in English we call Exodus, we prepare ourselves to relive the exodus from Mitzrayim which that book chronicles. And every year we re-enter the sacrificial space of Vayikra, this dip back into a consciousness which considered the careful sacrifice of animals to have transformational effect.
As it happens, this year I’m reading these verses with new eyes. These last few months I’ve had a complicated new relationship with the physical stuff inside my body: the muscles and fat, the blood and nerves and kidneys. I have a clearer understanding of just how complex the body is, and how ultimately mysterious. For all that medical science has achieved (and believe me, I value modern medicine more than words can express), there’s still so much we don’t understand.
So when I immerse in this week’s Torah portion, that’s what really moves me: the mystery of physical bodies. The clear sense that there’s a direct connection between our flesh and the Holy One of Blessing, even if we can’t articulate what that connection is. The sense that what we really want to offer up to God is the life that courses through our bodies — life which ultimately comes from God, and returns to God; which can be sensed but not touched; which can be burned but not ultimately consumed.
The book of Leviticus begins with the Laws of sacrifice for the individual, the congregation and the priests.
THE BLESSING
AS WE STEP INTO THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS, we move to another level of spiritual development and pause to take stock of our journey. Genesis can be read as the descent of the soul and its contraction into physical form. It is the story of incarnation and as the story ends we find ourselves enslaved in the narrow perspectives of physical reality.
Exodus then shows us the path of liberation, the awakening of the soul to its true essence, which interpenetrates the Divine Essence. God must find a way into our hearts and we must find a way into the heart of Reality… which is God-consciousness. The story of Exodus ends with the building of the Mishkan, which is the vehicle for this interpenetration. Through the Mishkan we learn that our Freedom depends on our connection to God and our willingness to make a holy space within us and between us for God to dwell.
How can we sustain this connection, this state of holy freedom?
This is the question addressed by the book of Leviticus. So often the complications of life seem to draw us away from the perspectives of holiness. We become alienated, distracted, complacent, blind to what is essential; deaf to the music at the core of silence; numb to the mystery that dwells at the heart of this life. Our daily struggles sometimes close us off from the flow of the Great Love.
The blessing of Vayikra is the call to come into harmony, balance, connection and intimacy with the God who has freed us for this love… and not only to return, but to establish for ourselves a system of continual returning.
THE MEDICINE that Vayikra gives us for the dis-ease of our alienation from God is described in the language of Korbanot, the “sacrifices.” Literally, Korbanot means “bringing ourselves near” again to God. The Korbanot were a powerful and eff ective means of engaging all of the senses, witnessing the power of Life and Death, and then sharing a sacred meal in the Presence of God. The result was experienced as total purification – removal of obstructions and a re-connection to the flow of God’s love and presence. And for a time this was a spiritual technology that worked well.
THE SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE
OUR TRADITION TELLS US that prayer now takes the place of the sacrifices. The spiritual challenge of Vayikra is to make our prayer-life as powerful, as intense, and as effective as the sacrificial system was for our ancestors.
Can the word of a prayer engage the senses fully? Can we taste it? Smell it? Touch it? Feel its blood? Hear its music and the silence within it? Witness its passage into the void? See in it the shadow of death and the spark of life? Do we leave our prayer feeling purified, our burdens lifted?
Our ancestors celebrated their new state of connection by sharing a sacred meal with the priests and with God. After praying in community, can we also make our celebrations holy? Can we eat these sacred meals – our Kiddush and Oneg Shabbat gatherings1 – knowing that each bite of our feast is also tasted and enjoyed by God?
Wendy’s comment: I encourage you to click on the link to this parsha on Reb Shefa’s website . Under Guidlines for Practice she lists the sacrifices of Olah, Sh’lamin, and Chatat and describes the spiritual illnesses associated with these offerings and the chanted phrase that can be the medicine.
1Kiddush, literally “sanctification,” and Oneg Shabbat, literally “Sabbath joy,” have come to refer to the celebrations following Sabbath services, which can range from simple cake and soda to elaborate sit-down meals.
2 Psalms 23:5
3 Lamentations 4:21
And the priest will make them go up in smoke, a food offering by fire, for a soothing fragrance. All fat belongs to God. A law for all time for your generations: You will not eat any fat, nor any blood, in any of your settlements. (Leviticus 3:16-17–Vayikra)
chalev = fat, especially abdominal fat
dam = blood
The blood and the abdominal fat of livestock are reserved for God in chapter 3 of the book of Leviticus, Vayikra, which provides instructions for making zevach shelamim, the animal sacrifices that are offered by an individual for the sake of “wholeness”. This type of offering is not made for atonement, but rather to express gratitude to God, or to confirm peace with the people invited to share the feast afterward.
In brief, a man brings an unblemished cow, sheep, or goat to the altar, leans his hand against the animal’s head, and then slaughters it. The priests dash the animal’s blood against all sides of the altar. The priests burn the fat covering the entrails, liver, and kidneys. The fragrance of the smoke is the donor’s gift to God. Then the donor and his guests eat the meat in celebration (and according to Leviticus 7:31-35, the priests are given the breast and the right thigh to eat).
Splashing blood is certainly a dramatic ritual, and fat burns well. But fat and blood are not merely reserved for the ritual at the altar. The Torah prohibits the people from eating any abdominal fat, or any blood, anywhere. Even far away from the altar, even in a time when there is no temple, abdominal fat and blood are reserved for God. Why?
A reason for not consuming blood is given in Leviticus 17:14: You may not consume the blood of any flesh, because the nefesh (soul, animating force) of all flesh is its blood. Genesis 9:5-6 also links blood with the nefesh of a human or animal, and forbids humans to eat flesh with the blood still in it. (Ramban wrote that someone who eats an animal’s blood dilutes his own nefesh and becomes less spiritual, more animal.)
So blood is equated with the nefesh, the animating force that makes a creature alive. What does abdominal fat stand for?
Rabbi R.S. Hirsch wrote that the blood of an animal is its essence, while the fat is what it produces for its own needs. The essence of an animal must never become a human being’s essence, and the needs of an animal must never become a human being’s needs. Human nature must not be equated with animal nature.
I would add that abdominal fat is stored up as a reserve calorie supply against a hungrier time. It’s like a pot of silver buried against hard times; in modern terms, it’s like a stock portfolio. Stockpiling resources can be a good strategy. But we must not become so attached to our stock portfolios that we despair when the market plunges. We cannot really control our savings, so in a way they do not really belong to us. The fat belongs to God.
Similarly, it’s good to tend to our health, to enjoy each day of life, to “choose life” for ourselves and others. But my life, my nefesh, ultimately belongs to God.
With the construction of the Tabernacle complete, the holy structure began to fulfill its primary purpose: a conduit for communication between God and Moses. “I will commune with you there, and I will speak to you from above the ark-cover” (Ex. 25:22). Before each actual communication, God would first summon Moses to the tent, with a Voice that only Moses could hear.
“God called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Communion Tent.” (Lev. 1:1)
What was the nature of this Divine call?
The Miniature Aleph and the Four-Pronged Shin
The word Vayikra (‘God called’) is written in an unusual fashion. The final letter, the aleph, is miniature. Did God command Moses to write it that way? Or was this an expression of Moses’ extraordinary humility — an attempt to ‘hide’ the aleph, so that it would appear that God only happened (“vayikar”) to speak with Moses, in a way similar to the chance prophetic experiences of the evil prophet Balaam?
Another unusual letter may be found in the tefillin (phylacteries) worn on the head. Usually, the letter shin is written with three upward strokes, but the shin embossed on the left side of the tefillin has four. Some commentaries connect this peculiar shin to the Midrashic description of the Torah’s transmission to Israel as black fire engraved on white fire. What does this mean? What are these black and white fires?
Black Ink on White Parchment
When we think about a Torah scroll, we usually only consider the letters themselves, written in black ink. Yet, the Talmud (Menachot 29a) rules that every letter in a Torah scroll must be completely surrounded by parchment. This requirement is called “mukaf gevil.” This means that the white parchment around the letters is an integral part of the Torah. In fact, the white space is a higher form of Torah. It is analogous to the white fire of Sinai — a sublime, hidden Torah that cannot be read in the usual manner.
There is a delicate balance between black and white in the Torah. The shirot, the poetic portions in the Torah, are written in a special fashion, like a wall constructed from layers of black and white bricks. These poetic sections are the loftiest parts of the Torah. Consequently, they have more white space — they contain a greater measure of the esoteric white fire. If a scribe were to write other sections of the Torah in this special layout, the Torah scroll would be rendered invalid. After the Torah was revealed and restricted to our limited world, it must be written with the appropriate ratio of black to white.
What about the four-pronged shin on tefillin? The mitzvah of tefillin is closely connected to the manifestation of Torah after its revelation into the finite world. “All of the peoples of the land shall see that the name of God is called upon you, and they shall be in awe of you” (Deut. 28:10, Menachot 35b). Thus, tefillin correspond to the lower realm of black fire, and are marked with a shin bearing an extra measure of black.
We can deepen our understanding of the white and black fires by considering another example of white space in the Torah. Extra space is left blank to separate sections of the Torah. The Sages explained that these separations allowed Moses to reflect upon and absorb the previous lesson. In other words, the white fire corresponds to the loftier realm of thought and contemplation. The black fire of the letters, on the other hand, is the revelation of intellect into the more concrete level of speech — a contraction and limitation of abstract thought.
The Divine Call Before Revelation
The distinction between white and black fire also sheds light on God’s call to Moses before speaking with him. The Voice summoning Moses to enter the tent was in fact the Divine call from Sinai, “an infinite call that never ceased” (Deut. 5:19). The summons would reach Moses as he stood outside the tent, before being constrained within the four walls of the Tabernacle. This Voice was not a revelation of Torah, but an overture to its revelation. It belonged to the esoteric white fire of Torah, before its constriction and revelation into the physical world.
This is the reason that Moses made the aleph of the Divine call smaller. Since it belonged to the realm of white fire, the summons required an extra measure of white space over black ink. On the surface, Moses’ miniature aleph humbly implies a diminished state of the revealed Torah of black fire; but on a deeper level, it reflects an increase in knowledge of the hidden Torah of white fire.
From Rabbi Arthur Green
“Every gift offering should be salted. Do not omit salt, the covenant of your God, from any gift; add salt to every offering” (2:13).
To what “covenant” does this refer? Is there indeed a “covenant of salt?” RaSHI tells us that it goes back to Creation. On the second day, God made the firmament and divided the waters. Because of that division, there is no “It was good” said of the second day. The lower waters (mayyim taḥtonim), those of the ocean, were salty, while the upper waters, source of rain from above the earth, were to be fresh. The lower waters wept, saying: “We too want to be near to our Creator!”
This is an etiological tale, an explanation of why tears are salty. The world’s first tears were those of the sea! God recognized the injustice done to the lower waters (like that done to the moon – another classic feminine symbol – in a famous Talmudic tale), and that is why He could not say that the day was “good.” He then promised them that one day their time would come. Their salt would be offered on the altar; in that way they would indeed have a chance le-hakriv, “to come near.”
Every human tear partakes of those original tears of the lower waters. The lowly of this world, the taḥtonim, all want a chance. They too want to be close to their Creator. Carry the salt of their tears with you in each offering you give, now in the form of prayer.
But carry with you also the tears of the sea herself. How must she weep today, being treated by humanity like a huge garbage dump.
From Academy for Jewish Religion
Parashat Vayikra – 5785
March 31, 2025
by Rabbi Rena Kieval
Receiving the Call
By Rabbi Rena Kieval
It begins with a call. We are at the center of the Torah, the Book of Leviticus, and Moshe has just overseen the elaborate construction of the mishkan. Now that the sanctuary is complete, God will relay to Moshe and to the kohanim, in painstaking detail, the rituals and rules to be practiced in that sacred space. But first, there is a call to Moshe, a call which gives this book of the Torah and this parashah their name, Vayikra. Why the call? What does it mean to us to be called? Many of us have felt called to serve, to carry out a specific role, or called more generally to be our best selves. Who, or what, calls us, and how do we receive that call? Two curious features in the opening verse of our parashah help us explore these questions.
The first verse of our parashah contains two verbs of speech – vayikra and vayedaber – he called and he spoke. It is assumed that the subject of both verbs is God, but in the text the “caller” is anonymous. A precise translation would read, “And ‘he’ called to Moshe, and God spoke to him from within the Tent of Meeting.” (Lev. 1:1) The structure is odd; a clearer wording would have been, “And God called to Moshe, and spoke to him from within the Tent of Meeting.” Why the awkward wording?
A second unusual feature of our verse is the scribal custom of minimizing the letter aleph in the first word, vayikra. These two curiosities in the opening verse have invited multiple interpretations and teachings about Moshe’s call, and more generally about what it means to be called. Many commentators note that the diminished ‘aleph’ leaves the word ‘yakar,’ dear or precious, suggesting that God’s call to Moshe from the mishkan, and all of God’s subsequent calls to him, are expressions of love. Others note that the diminished ‘aleph’ mirrors Moshe’s humility, and perhaps comes to teach that in order to hear and receive our true callings, we must minimize ourselves, our own ‘alephs,’ which might stand for the words “ani” or “anokhi,” our “I’s” or our egos, and see the bigger picture.
The Hasidic author of Me’or Einayim draws alternative spiritual teaching from this verse. God is present, he notes, in a “small” form (metzumtzam) within each one of us, represented by the small “aleph” in the text. The ‘small’ inner God calls to us and invites us to turn towards God in whatever ways are needed by each of us. When we hear that call, at first we may not identify its source; we may not recognize that it is the Divine calling to us. That is why, he says, the “call” in our Torah verse is anonymous. Our first experience of a call may be anonymous. However, once a person understands that it is God calling, and when that person then turns towards God, then God can speak (vayedaber) and be identified as the caller, as happens in our verse.
Receiving a call and knowing that God is the caller are steps in a process that happens over time, not instantly. The Israelites, says the Me’or Einayim, needed to endure Egypt, experience Sinai, reside in the wilderness and finally construct the mishkan in order to reach the spiritual point to receive God’s promise, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Ex. 25:8) Now that they have completed the mishkan, God can call to Moshe from the newly constructed Tent of Meeting, and Moshe can hear that call. Now he and the Israelites are ready to incorporate a life with God into their everyday rituals and routines.
In the same way, every one of us is invited by the little divine aleph within us to take steps in our spiritual journeys. Each of us is called to build a sanctuary within ourselves, within our own hearts, to prepare ourselves to receive the calls that define us and guide our actions. As with the Israelites, building that inner sanctuary takes time, and the process will inevitably include highs and lows, crises and gifts.
May we have the strength and the wisdom to prepare sanctuaries both in our communities and within our hearts. May we receive the divine calls made to us in love, and respond as we are called to do.
From Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
Why Do We Sacrifice?
VAYIKRA
The laws of sacrifices that dominate the early chapters of the Book of Leviticus are among the hardest in the Torah to relate to in the present. It has been almost two thousand years since the Temple was destroyed and the sacrificial system came to an end. But Jewish thinkers, especially the more mystical among them, strove to understand the inner significance of the sacrifices and the statement they made about the relationship between humanity and God. They were thus able to rescue their spirit even if their physical enactment was no longer possible. Among the simplest yet most profound was the comment made by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Rebbe of Lubavitch. He noticed a grammatical oddity about the second line of this Parsha:
Speak to the Children of Israel and say to them: “When one of you offers a sacrifice to the Lord, the sacrifice must be taken from the cattle, sheep, or goats.”
Lev. 1:2
Or so the verse would read if it were constructed according to the normal rules of grammar. However, the word order of the sentence in Hebrew is strange and unexpected. We would expect to read: adam mikem ki yakriv, “when one of you offers a sacrifice.” Instead, what it says is adam ki yakriv mikem, “when one offers a sacrifice of you.”
The essence of sacrifice, said Rabbi Shneur Zalman, is that we offer ourselves. We bring to God our faculties, our energies, our thoughts and emotions. The physical form of sacrifice – an animal offered on the altar – is only an external manifestation of an inner act. The real sacrifice is mikem, “of you.” We give God something of ourselves.[1]
What exactly is it that we give God when we offer a sacrifice? The Jewish mystics, among them Rabbi Shneur Zalman, spoke about two souls that each of us has within us – the animal soul (nefesh habeheimit) and the Godly soul. On the one hand we are physical beings. We are part of nature. We have physical needs: food, drink, shelter. We are born, we live, we die. As Ecclesiastes puts it:
Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: as one dies, so dies the other. Both have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is a mere fleeting breath.
Eccl. 3:19
Yet we are not simply animals. We have within us immortal longings. We can think, speak, and communicate. We can, by acts of speaking and listening, reach out to others. We are the one life-form known to us in the universe that can ask the question “why?” We can formulate ideas and be moved by high ideals. We are not governed by biological drives alone. Psalm 8 is a hymn of wonder on this theme:
When I consider Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which You have set in place,
what is man that You are mindful of him,
the son of man that You care for him?
Yet You made him a little lower than the angels
and crowned him with glory and honour.
You made him ruler over the works of Your hands;
You put everything under his feet.
Ps. 8:4–7
Physically, we are almost nothing; spiritually, we are brushed by the wings of eternity. We have a Godly soul. The nature of sacrifice, understood psychologically, is thus clear. What we offer God is (not just an animal but) the nefesh habeheimit, the animal soul within us.
How does this work out in detail? A hint is given by the three types of animal mentioned in the verse in the second line of Parshat Vayikra (see Lev. 1:2): beheimah (animal), bakar (cattle), and tzon (flock). Each represents a separate animal-like feature of the human personality.
Beheimah represents the animal instinct itself. The word refers to domesticated animals. It does not imply the savage instincts of the predator. What it means is something more tame. Animals spend their time searching for food. Their lives are bounded by the struggle to survive. To sacrifice the animal within us is to be moved by something more than mere survival.
Wittgenstein, when asked what was the task of philosophy, answered, “To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.”[2] The fly, trapped in the bottle, bangs its head against the glass, trying to find a way out. The one thing it fails to do is to look up. The Godly soul within us is the force that makes us look up, beyond the physical world, beyond mere survival, in search of meaning, purpose, goal.
The Hebrew word bakar, cattle, reminds us of the word boker, dawn, literally to “break through,” as the first rays of sunlight break through the darkness of night. Cattle, stampeding, break through barriers. Unless constrained by fences, cattle are no respecters of boundaries. To sacrifice the bakar is to learn to recognise and respect boundaries – between holy and profane, pure and impure, permitted and forbidden. Barriers of the mind can sometimes be stronger than walls.
Finally, the word tzon, flocks, represents the herd instinct – the powerful drive to move in a given direction because others are doing likewise.[3] The great figures of Judaism – Abraham, Moses, the Prophets – were distinguished precisely by their ability to stand apart from the herd; to be different, to challenge the idols of the age, to refuse to capitulate to the intellectual fashions of the moment. That, ultimately, is the meaning of holiness in Judaism. Kadosh, the holy, is something set apart, different, separate, distinctive. Jews were the only minority in history consistently to refuse to assimilate to the dominant culture or convert to the dominant faith.
The noun korban, “sacrifice,” and the verb lehakriv, “to offer something as a sacrifice,” actually mean “that which is brought close” and “the act of bringing close.” The key element is not so much giving something up (the usual meaning of sacrifice), but rather bringing something close to God. Lehakriv is to bring the animal element within us to be transformed through the Divine fire that once burned on the altar, and still burns at the heart of prayer if we truly seek closeness to God.
By one of the ironies of history, this ancient idea has become suddenly contemporary. Darwinism, the decoding of the human genome, and scientific materialism (the idea that the material is all there is) have led to the widespread conclusion that we are all animals, nothing more, nothing less. We share 98 per cent of our genes with the primates. We are, as Desmond Morris used to put it, “the naked ape.”[4] On this view, Homo sapiens exist by mere accident. We are the result of a random series of genetic mutations and just happen to be more adapted to survival than other species. The nefesh habeheimit, the animal soul, is all there is.
The refutation of this idea – and it is surely among the most reductive ever to be held by intelligent minds – lies in the very act of sacrifice itself as the mystics understood it. We can redirect our animal instincts. We can rise above mere survival. We are capable of honouring boundaries. We can step outside our environment. As Harvard neuroscientist Steven Pinker put it: “Nature does not dictate what we should accept or how we should live,” adding, “and if my genes don’t like it they can go jump in the lake.”[5] Or, as Katharine Hepburn majestically said to Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen, “Nature, Mr Allnut, is what we were put on earth to rise above.”
We can transcend the beheimah, the bakar, and the tzon. No animal is capable of self-transformation, but we are. Poetry, music, love, wonder – the things that have no survival value but which speak to our deepest sense of being – all tell us that we are not mere animals, assemblages of selfish genes. By bringing that which is animal within us close to God, we allow the material to be suffused with the spiritual and we become something else: no longer slaves of nature but servants of the living God.
[1] Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Likkutei Torah (Brooklyn, NY: Kehot, 1984), Vayikra 2aff.
[2] Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1953), p. 309.
[3] The classic works on crowd behaviour and the herd instinct are Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (London: Richard Bentley, 1841); Gustave le Bon, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (London: T. F. Unwin, 1897); Wilfred Trotter, Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War (London: T. F. Unwin, 1916); and Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power (New York: Viking Press, 1962).
[4] Desmond Morris, The Naked Ape (New York: Dell Publishing, 1984).
[5] Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 54.
Inspired by the Haftorah:
When a sculpture adorns a garden,
it adds to the garden’s beauty.
When that sculpture is confused with the Oneness
that infuses that garden,
it’s an idol.
When we think that a piece
of the Indivisible Whole
is the One, the Only One,
the One to be worshipped,
we miss the Mystery of Oneness
that’s larger than Time,
vaster than Space,
that we’re an infinitesimal bit
of a Unity that’s larger than we’re capable of truly imagining,
that despite admonitions
to bring sacrifices,
to worship,
what we truly need to do
is to say thanks.
Depriving ourselves of something of value
was a way to begin to appreciate
Interconnected Reality.
Expressing gratitude
without seeking dominion
is our next step
in beginning to understand that Reality.
Yah called.
Shekhinah spoke to Moses saying
not with a sound,
not with words,
not even thoughts.
At that instant, Moses, all of us
noticed the wonder of Oneness,
that all that we know is we don’t know,
that the Mystery is the proof of the deepest connection.
Physicists tell us that this Universe was built almost in balance.
Pure balance means a positive charge for every negative one.
The result of that is no-thing-ness.
But one infinitesimal bit of quanta has a positive charge
instead of a negative one,
and, as a result, this Universe exists:
Micro/Macro/dark energy/dark matter and All.
We read about the korbanot, the sacrifices, and
think that this conversation’s irrelevant.
But a sacrifice engages all our senses,
the smell of what’s burnt,
the taste of what’s created,
the touch of the thing offered,
the sight and sound of the spectacle;
engages us to notice
the Interconnectedness of Being.
Prophets heard the call
not by hearing a sound.
They heard the breath
and knew It was the Name of Every Thing
Yah!
From Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
The Dimensions of Sin
VAYIKRA
Our parsha, which deals with a variety of sacrifices, devotes an extended section to the chattat, the sin offering, as brought by different individuals: first the High Priest (Lev. 4:3-12), then the community as a whole (Lev. 4:13-21), then a leader (Lev. 4:22-26) and finally an ordinary individual (Lev. 4:27-35).
The whole passage sounds strange to modern ears, not only because sacrifices have not been offered for almost two millennia since the destruction of the Second Temple, but also because it is hard for us to understand the very concepts of sin and atonement as they are dealt with in the Torah.
The puzzle is that the sins for which an offering had to be brought were those committed inadvertently, be–shogeg. Either the sinner had forgotten the law, or some relevant fact. To give a contemporary example: suppose the phone rings on Shabbat and you answer it. You would only be liable for a sin offering if either you forgot the law that you may not answer a phone on Shabbat, or you forgot the fact that the day was Shabbat. If, for a moment, you thought it was Friday or Sunday. So your sin was inadvertent.
This is the kind of act that we don’t tend to see as a sin at all. It was a mistake. You forgot. You did not mean to do anything wrong. And when you realise that inadvertently you have broken Shabbat, you are more likely to feel regret than remorse. You feel sorry but not guilty.
We think of a sin as something we did intentionally, yielding to temptation perhaps, or in a moment of rebellion. That is what Jewish law calls be-zadon in biblical Hebrew or be-mezid in rabbinic Hebrew. That is the kind of act we would have thought calls for a sin offering. But actually, such an act cannot be atoned for by an offering at all. So how are we to make sense of the sin offering?
The answer is that there are three dimensions of wrongdoing between us and God. The first is guilt and shame. When we sin deliberately and intentionally, we know inwardly that we have done wrong. Our conscience – the voice of God within the human heart – tells us that we have done wrong. That is what happened to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden after they had sinned. They felt shame. They tried to hide. For that kind of deliberate, conscious, intentional sin, the only adequate moral response is teshuvah, repentance. This involves (a) remorse, charatah, (b) confession, vidui, and (c) kabbalat le-atid, a resolution never to commit the sin again. The result is selichah umechilah, God forgives us. A mere sacrifice is not enough.
However, there is a second dimension. Regardless of guilt and responsibility, if we commit a sin we have objectively transgressed a boundary. The word chet means to miss the mark, to stray, to deviate from the proper path. We have committed an act that somehow disturbs the moral balance of the world. To take another secular example, imagine that your car has a faulty speedometer. You are caught driving at 50 miles per hour in a 30 mile an hour zone. You tell the policeman who stops you that you didn’t know. Your speedometer was only showing 30 miles per hour. He may sympathise, but you have still broken the law. You have transgressed the speed limit, albeit unknowingly, and you will have to pay the penalty.
That is what a sin offering is. According to Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch it is a penalty for carelessness. According to the Sefer Ha-Chinuch it is an educational and preventive measure. Deeds, in Judaism, are the way we train the mind. The fact that you have had to pay the price by bringing a sacrifice will make you take greater care in future.
Rabbi Isaac Arama (who lived in Spain in the 15th century) says that the difference between an intentional and an unintentional sin is that in the former case, both the body and the soul were at fault. In the case of an unintentional sin only the body was at fault, not the soul. Therefore a physical sacrifice helps, since it was only the physical act of the body that was in the wrong. A physical sacrifice cannot atone for a deliberate sin, because it cannot rectify a wrong in the soul.
What the sacrifice achieves is kapparah, not forgiveness as such but a “covering over” or obliteration of the sin. Noah was told to “cover” (ve-chapharta) the surface of the Ark with pitch (Gen. 6:14). The cover of the Ark in the Tabernacle was called kapporet (Lev. 25:17). Once a sin has been symbolically covered over, it is forgiven, but as the Malbim points out, in such cases the verb for forgiveness, s-l-ch, is always in the passive (venislach: Lev. 4:20, Lev. 4:26, Lev. 4:31). The forgiveness is not direct, as it is in the case of repentance, but indirect, a consequence of the sacrifice.
The third dimension of sin is that it defiles. It leaves a stain on your character. Isaiah, in the presence of God, feels that he has “unclean lips” (Is. 6:5). King David says to God, “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin” – “me-chatati tahareni” (Ps. 51:4).
About Yom Kippur the Torah says:
“On that day atonement will be made for you, to cleanse you [letaher etchem]. Then, before the Lord, you will be clean from all your sins.”
Lev. 16:30
Ramban says that this is the logic of the sin offering. All sins, even those committed inadvertently, have consequences. They each “leave a stain on the soul and constitute a blemish on it, and the soul is only fit to meet its Maker when it has been cleansed from all sin” (Ramban to Lev. 4:2).
The result of the sin offering is tehora, cleansing, purification. So the sin offering is not about guilt but about other dimensions of transgression. It is one of the stranger features of Western civilisation, due in part to Pauline Christianity, and partly to the influence of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, that we tend to think about morality and spirituality as matters almost exclusively to do with the mind and its motives. But our acts leave traces in the world. And even unintentional sins can leave us feeling defiled.
The law of the sin offering reminds us that we can do harm unintentionally, and this can have psychological consequences. The best way of putting things right is to make a sacrifice: to do something that costs us something.
In ancient times, that took the form of a sacrifice offered on the altar at the Temple. Nowadays the best way of doing so is to give money to charity (tzedakah) or perform an act of kindness to others (chessed). The Prophet said so long ago, in God’s name:
“For I desire loving-kindness, not sacrifice.”
Hosea 6:6
Charity and kindness are our substitutes for sacrifice and, like the sin offering of old, they help mend what is broken in the world and in our soul.
From reformjudaism.org
Vayikra – Setting the Scene
Vayikra, Leviticus 1:1−5:26
D’VAR TORAH BY: RABBI DANIEL MIKELBERG
As we begin Vayikra, The Book of Leviticus, we say goodbye to the Biblical stories that we may be more familiar with. The foundational narratives of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and Joseph and his siblings have passed. In Vayikra, the Israelites are well on their way to the Promised Land. The focus of this book is laws. Yes, it has stories too, but the spotlight is on healthy practices and detailed descriptions of sacrificial offerings. The Hebrew word for sacrificial offering is “korban,” which means, “to draw close.” This is ironic, since today we may be put off by the sometimes-gruesome descriptions of the ritual preparation of animals. However, we can learn from the ancient practices of the near east about being strategic and purposeful with setting the stage for meaningful ritual.
Our tendencies might be to brush off these sections of Torah. After all, we haven’t made sacrificial offerings for more than 2,000 years. However, as a rabbi, my advice is to do the opposite and turn our attention to these Biblical words, though they may appear irrelevant at first glance. Yes, we can find meaning from these detailed descriptions, even when they include grotesque slaughtering, slicing, and scorching. All our senses are engaged. For example, Leviticus 2:14-16 describes:
“You shall bring new ears [of grain] parched with fire, grits of the fresh grain, as your meal offering of first fruits. You shall add oil on it and lay frankincense on it; it is a meal offering. And the priest shall turn a token portion of it into smoke.”
Let us imagine ourselves as ancient Israelites witnessing the Mishkan (tabernacle), the religious shelter where the ancient priests made regular korbanot(sacrifices). As we approached, we would have been presented with a medley of experiences for our senses. Obviously, there would have been unique sights to see; perhaps most noteworthy would have been the smoke representing mysteries rising to the heavens. The sounds of the crying animals would have been off putting, but also perhaps grounding as matters of life and death were placed front and center. The smell would have resembled a campfire, something which may call to mind both meaningful and scary memories for many of us. Touch was mainly experienced by the priests. They were empowered to ritualize these gifts and create a sacred space.
Our modern practices are very different, but our intent of “drawing near” parallels that of the ancient near east: becoming closer to God and one another. Our faith journeys are also enriched by our sensory experience. Clergy and lay leaders alike are regularly called to be meticulous about creating a sacred space. In fact, all of us can consider ourselves priests as we facilitate rituals in our own homes. When the COVID pandemic was at its peak, I would regularly ask virtual worshipers to make sure that their space was free from distractions. This could mean tidying it up or finding a relatively quiet space. Similarly, on the bima , we place great care in making sure that the image is one of rich symbols, formal dress, and coordinating colors.
As a Movement, we pride ourselves on the music we offer. There are more subtle sounds too, like the sparking of a match to light the Shabbat candles. Granted, less emphasis is placed on smell in today’s services, but nothing beats the aroma of fresh baked challah on Friday afternoon. On Havdalah , spices are used to ensure that we keep a bit of Shabbat with us in the coming days.
Touch is an interesting sense to reflect upon. While we’ve depended on holding our siddurim in our hands for generations, today we often depend on virtual t’filah . This shift leaves our hands free to clap, hold hands, and even embrace.
Formal prayer is no longer an everyday experience for some of us. To lift our spirits and find comfort, we are called to rely on creating a setting that speaks to each of our senses. In other words, we need to set the stage. This responsibility falls on all of us. When meaningfully assembled, we can draw near to God and each other, making offerings of ourselves. When delving into the stories of Leviticus, rather than creating distance, let’s try to close the gap and do the best we can to follow the Israelites as we make a sacred space.
From AJR/CA
Parshat Vayikra – 2 Nisan 5783
By Rabbi Min Kantrowitz
After the high drama of Exodus, we arrive at the beginning of the third of the Five Books which make up the core of the Hebrew Bible. Genesis portrayed creation, Exodus described liberation, and God’s presence now dwells among the people Israel, filling the Tabernacle. We are ready to receive instructions from the Holy One about how to behave and how to make offerings in the Tabernacle.
This book is known in English as “Leviticus” (from the ancient Greek and Latin referring to the priestly tribe of the Israelites, “Levi”). In Hebrew, the first word in the book (and in the parsha which bears the same name) is “VaYikra”, meaning “and He called”, referring to God’s calling out instructions to Moshe.
These instructions emphasize ritual, legal, and moral practices rather than beliefs. In a way, we are being told how to conduct ourselves now that we’ve received the gift of Torah. The details of each different type of sacrifice to be offered in the Temple correspond to distinct prohibitions detailed in the laws of the Torah.
Just before beginning this inventory of actions designed to repair our relationship with God after erroneous, sinful or misguided action we see the word “VaYikra”— God calls out from the Tent of Meeting. This ‘calling’ proves to the people that, indeed, the Holy Source is dwelling among them and is about to tell them how to act as a Holy People. A specific peculiarity in the way the word “VaYikra” is scribed in every Torah scroll caught my attention, and that of many other commentators.
The final Hebrew letter in the word, an aleph, is written in miniature. Many commentators have speculated on the origin and meaning of this traditional scribal practice. They note that if the aleph was totally missing, the word would be ‘VaYikar’, meaning ‘and he happened’, which doesn’t sound as if it were an intentional Divine act, but an accidental occurrence. Rashi comments, based on the Midrash: [Genesis Rabbah 52:5] Vayikar is an expression ordinarily used to denote events of a casual character, an expression for something shameful, an expression for an unclean happening. But the aleph is NOT missing, it is intentionally scribed —in miniature. The Baal HaTurim (14th -century Spain) explains that the small aleph is a reflection of Moses’ humility. Simcha Bunim of Peshischa, the Chassidic Rabbi from 19th -century Poland, states that the smallness of the aleph calls attention to it and gives it prominence, to teach us the importance of humility. (He is the same person who teaches that one of our pockets should contain a piece of paper saying: ”I am but dust and ashes” and in the other pocket should be a piece of paper saying: “For my sake was the world created.”). Clearly, this tiny aleph is calling out to readers “Drash me”!
Here is another speculation, based on the idea that not only is the aleph miniature, but it also makes no sound. The very first letter in our alphabet is silent. Bet is the first letter written in the Torah, beginning the word “Breishit”. Aleph is the sound of all potential creation, the silence out of which Creation occurs. The expression “VaYikra” refers to creation in Genesis (Gen 1:5 and others). Just as silence holds the potential for Creation in Breishit, the silent and scaled down aleph of VaYikra hints at an important question: “What is a silent call?” Psalm 65:2 states “lecha dumia tehilla—-to You, silence is praise”. We use the expression “to feel called” for the pull toward the Divine, which Rabbi Zalman Shachter-Shalomi referred to as “theotropism”. In Ecclesiastes we read: “A time to keep silence and a time to speak”. We use silence in prayer, as in the silent Amida. In Pirkei Avot, Shimon says: “I have found nothing better for a person than silence.” When we pray for our lips to be opened prior to the Amida, we recognize that silence is a powerful precursor to prayer.
Perhaps this scribal tradition is a reminder that prior to performing the rituals detailed in the psukim that make up the remainder of this Biblical book, we need to be silent, to listen, as Elijah did in 1 Kings 19:12, for that still small voice of the Divine. The tiny aleph of VaYikra reminds us of the immense power of silence.
May each of us find time to be silent and listen for a call during this week of VaYikra.
From The Hebrew College
“God Does Not Play Dice with the Universe”
By Rav Rachel Adelman
In this essay, I want to unfold one word for you, like a map by which we might direct our path towards this coming season of Purim, in language play on va-yiqra’ / va-yiqar. This week’s Torah reading opens:
And [He] called to Moses [vayiqra’ el Moshe] and the LORD [Yhwh] spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting saying: Speak to the Israelites and say to them…. (Leviticus 1:1-2)
It’s an odd beginning, as the subject of the action is initially hidden. Where is the agent of the verb “and He called [va-yiqra’]”? Why doesn’t the narrative introduce God as the one who summons Moshe?
Do I quibble overmuch, when the very next phrase mentions the LORD (Yhwh) as the speaker? I think not! So many paragraphs in the Torah open, unambiguously: “And the LORD spoke to Moshe, saying…. [Va-yomer Yhwh ’el Moshe…. or “Va-yeddaber Yhwh ’el Moshe le’emor].”
Perhaps the elision of God as subject here is meant to highlight that we readers are en media res—really in the middle of a story, picking up from where we left off at the end of the Book of Exodus. There, Moshe had just finished setting up the mishkan, when the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and God’s presence filled the Tabernacle (Exodus 40:32). Yet Moshe was excluded from entering until he was summoned at the opening the Book of VaYiqra (Leviticus), when God literally called him in: VaYiqra’ ’elav. (Lev. 1:1)
Alternatively, perhaps the origin of the voice, the subject of the summons, “VaYiqra‘”—and He called—is elusive to Moshe? The Masoretes (the scribes responsible for adding vocalization and other diacritical marks to the Torah) hint at this with an orthographic comment. The silent letter aleph, the last letter of the five-letter word, VaYiqra’, is tiny, suspended as one might signal an ordinal number—a suffix of the enth degree. This points to another reading—instead of “call” or “summon” (qof.resh.aleph.), one might read it as “happen upon” (qof.resh.heh.).
There’s a hidden message here. Maybe God’s voice is heard, at first, as a call that happens upon [va-yiqar] Moshe, just as prophecy happened to Balaam: “Va-yiqar Elohim ‘el Bil ‘am—And God met or happened upon Balam.” (Numbers 23:4; and again in v. 16) Indeed, the verb qof.resh.heh. is associated with happenstance, a chance meeting, a seemingly accidental encounter—like an impure “nocturnal emission” [miqreh lilah] that happens to a man. (Deuteronomy 23:11)
On a less tainted note, the verb is deployed by Abraham’s servant as he stands by the well in Padan-aram, asking for a sign or omen to help him choose the right bride for Isaac:
And he said, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, please make it happen in my presence this day [haqreh n’a lefanai ha-yom], and deal graciously with my master Abraham….” (Genesis 24:12).
Paradoxically, the servant is calling for Divine Providence—for God to make it happen (haqreh, the root qof.resh.heh. in the causative, hiphil). Yet it is he, a mere mortal, who initiates the test, a sign by which he might know the young woman to be worthy of Abraham’s son. And, indeed, Rebekah proves herself worthy by offering him a drink from her jug and watering all the camels as well.
Luck be a Lady Tonight.
This verb connotes happenstance, which might be both providential and of human initiative; palpable as the God-of-small-things who inheres in the World yet made manifest by mortal summons.
Most auspiciously, the verb qof.resh.heh. is associated with the encounter with Amalek, which we read on Parashat Zakhor (on the Shabbat before Purim, in addition to the weekly Torah portion):
Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how he happened upon you [qorkha] on the way, when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you; he did not fear God. (Deuteronomy 25:17-18)
Rashi (on Deut. 25:18) relates this verb, qorkha—happened upon you—to chance, miqreh, happenstance; also qeri and tum’ah, an impure emission that defiles a man. That is, Amalek encountered the Israelites, and then, undeterred by fear of God, struck down all the stragglers in the back—the old and the infirm, the women and the children. Ruthless. Deliberate. Indeed, an ill-fated encounter—impure, tainted with evil!
This chance encounter with evil characterizes the relations between Israel and Amalek ever after. The verb rears its hoary head again twice in the Megillah, like the two-headed dog, Orthrox, of Greek mythology. In Megillat Ester, we read in chapter 4:
“Mordechai told him [Hatach, the messenger of Queen Esther] about all that had happened to him [qarahu]” (Est. 4:7), and again, in chapter 6, “Haman told Zeresh his wife and all his supporters all that had happened to him [qarahu]….” (Est. 6:13).
In the first report “of all that happened [qarahu]” to Mordecai, he may recount his refusal to bow down to the viceroy—not anticipating the consequences—and the decree of genocide, initiated by Haman, descendant of Amalek and enemy of the Jews, which would effectively be paid for by the 10,000 talents of silver placed in the King’s coffer. The second report, “of all that happened to him [qarahu],” that is to Haman, marks the beginning of the cascade of reversals; when that enemy of the Jews was compelled to parade Mordecai about, dressed in the king’s robes and on the king’s horse, with the proclamation: “So shall be done to the man whom the king desires to honor.” (6:10-11)
Accidental happenstance? Miqreh?
It depends on how we view chance occurrences. The very holiday of Purim is named for “the lot,” Pur—goral h’u (Est. 3:7, 9:24; cf. 9:26, 29). Yet, we take the randomness rampant throughout the story, those comic happenstances or chance encounters—what Avivah Zornberg calls the Dis-providential—and turn them around, nahafokh-hu. We make human meaning of them, and then sanctify this holiday-of-chance, Purim, in historical time, summoning the God-of-small-things to Earth.
Albert Einstein once famously pronounced: “God does not play dice with the Universe.” Yet, he was the scientist who discovered the time-space warp, and in critical conversation with quantum mechanics, ruled by the random emissions of quarks, subject only to probabilities. (I don’t really know what a quark is, but I do know that Modern Physics is not deterministic!) So, what did Einstein mean?
Let me venture an answer, returning to the opening of this week’s Torah reading. “And [He] called to [va-yiqra ‘el] Moshe….” (Lev. 1:1) This was a summons from within the Holy of Holies, that most sacred of places. To Moshe, it may have been a mere murmur at first, a seeming chance encounter, a miqreh—but then it became clear to the prophet that it was purposeful; it was the LORD speaking: “….and Yhwh spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying….”
The story of Esther and the Holiday of Purim depicts a topsy turvy world of seeming random events: drunken feasts and supposed beauty pageants, where an orphaned Jewish girl becomes Queen; and Mordecai, whose refusal to bow down to Haman prompts a decree to destroy all the Jewish people, eventually becomes second to the king.
How do we interpret all these chance reversals? Who knows? Perhaps Esther attained royal position for just such a moment! (Esther 4:14) What summons her to step into the breach, to hear the call? Within our hearts we listen to the World—like Moshe, like Esther—initially not knowing the origin of the voice that summons us forward (va-yiqra’ ‘el), attuning our ears to all that seems incidental and accidental, be-miqreh; in turn these incidents and accidents acquire meaning, perhaps even meaning divinely given.
From Reconstructing Judaism
Drawing Close to Sacrifice
By Ellen Dannin
When Adar comes in, our happiness is increased. But when Vayikra comes in, we feel as if the Promised Land of great stories and heroes is far, far away.
Torah scholars through the centuries have tried to give us reasons to rejoice in these endless passages on the most minute and bloody details of sacrifices, but it is hard to say they have succeeded. Some point out that we are moving from a physical to a spiritual journey. After all, the book begins with the words “And God called.” Called – not just spoke.
Others point out how the details of ritual sacrifice were transformed so that Judaism and the Jewish people were able to survive thousands of years without a temple. Reconstructionist prayers have embraced this break by eliminating prayers for the restoration of the temple sacrifices.
But let me suggest a wholly different way of approaching these very difficult passages. Try embracing them. Try taking on the feeling of what it means to be living in a society in which this is the form worship takes. After all, this form of worship, using sacrifices as its center, has had a long history of success. It must offer people something for this to be the case. Use these weekly parshiot to explore what that might be.
To that end, let me offer some questions to guide you in your embrace of Vayikra. Consider that this is a very physical approach to spirituality. Those of us who practice yoga know that physical practices can lead to spiritual development. These laws of korbanot (sacrifice) are regarded as hukkim (laws that for which we have no rational understanding) as opposed to the mishpatim, which are the sorts of legislative laws we think of. So pay attention to the most minute details of the practices. Notice what is a sin (pesha) versus an error (het).
Try to feel what it would mean to have this sort of practice and how it would affect you spiritually. What does it mean in 1:4 when it says, the burnt offering “will be accepted for him, to atone for him?” Are sins against neighbors also sins against God? If so, why within this system? Recall that the Hebrew for sacrifice (korban) is related to the word to cause to draw near (hakriv). What is being drawn closer? To what? The burnt offering is the “olah” – the one who rises up. What is it that is rising up?
Consider how the different purposes of the laws of sacrifice and the ways they operate: to expiate wrongful acts (Lev. 4:2) and then let them go; to expiate social or communal wrongdoing (4:13); and to ask forgiveness and to forgive trespassers (5:20 – 26).
In your study, consider also that all of us in every era will commit some form of sin. This means that every system needs to have a system of forgiveness and expiation. Compare how well our own system of public expiation on the High Holy Days satisfies this function compared with the system of sacrifices. Would the vividness of the blood and death of animals, who are dying as a result of our actions, make us want to amend our ways? Would it remind us that we too will die and force us to consider how we therefore want our lives to be remembered?
Since death is an irrevocable act, would it make us consider that our repentance should be irrevocable? Compare this to our current Jewish methods of penance and those of the Catholic confession and penance. Would the sacrifices give us a greater appreciation for the sanctity of life? Would it make us more reluctant to take life? Or would it just harden our hearts to suffering? Would it make us feel we could game the system – sin and sacrifice, sin and sacrifice?
Finally, consider the number of prophets who rail against sacrifices? Today we would be repulsed by the blood and carnage? What was the Prophets’ concern?
From Rabbi David Kasher
SALT OF THE EARTH, AND THE HEAVENS – Parshat Vayikra
Leviticus is full of substances. Between its detailed account of the sacrifices and its nasty catalog of impurities, this is a book that is blazing with fire, dripping with blood, flaking with skin, and rotting with mold. There is flesh and fat, oil and grain, ashes and smoke, water and wine.
And so, we will not be surprised to find in Leviticus the mention of that most familiar of minerals: salt.
You shall season your every meal offering with salt… (Leviticus 2:12)
וְכָל-קָרְבַּן מִנְחָתְךָ, בַּמֶּלַח תִּמְלָח
What is surprising, however, is the second part of that verse:
… you shall not omit from your meal offering the salt of the covenant with your God.
וְלֹא תַשְׁבִּית מֶלַח בְּרִית אֱלֹקיךָ, מֵעַל מִנְחָתֶךָ
Salt of the covenant? What covenant? It seems unlikely that this is a reference to the great covenant forged between God and the Children of Israel, for that one already has its famous symbols: the tablets from Sinai; the Sabbath; the circumcision rite. So instead, the commentators begin to wonder if there might be some other covenant represented by salt.
Rashi’s answer, as usual, is the most intriguing:
A covenant was sealed with salt, from the six days of creation. For the lower waters were promised they would be offered on the altar, in the form of salt.
שהברית כרותה למלח מששת ימי בראשית, שהובטחו המים התחתונים ליקרב במזבח במלח
This requires a bit of unpacking. The covenant in question, it seems, was made between God and water. The reference to “lower waters” comes from the opening chapter of Genesis, on the second day of Creation, when God creates the sky, as follows:
God made the sky by separating the water under the sky and the water above the sky, and it was so. (Gen. 1:7)
וַיַּעַשׂ אֱלֹקים, אֶת-הָרָקִיעַ, וַיַּבְדֵּל בֵּין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מִתַּחַת לָרָקִיעַ, וּבֵין הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מֵעַל לָרָקִיעַ; וַיְהִי-כֵן.
So now there are upper waters (in the clouds, maybe?) and lower waters (the oceans, seas, lakes, etc.), and according to Rashi, the lower waters refused to be taken down until they were promised they would eventually be brought back up. This return happens in the form of salt, which is extracted from the ocean, seasons the offerings, and then travels upward in smoke.
We assume that Rashi is basing this narrative on a Midrash, although strangely, no one is able to identify the source. There is another Midrash, however, that adds some emotional color to this story of divided waters:
Rabbi Berechya said: When the lower waters were separated, they were weeping. (Genesis Rabbah 5:4)
אָמַר רַבִּי בֶּרֶכְיָה, לֹא פֵּרְשׁוּ הַמַּיִם הַתַּחְתּוֹנִים מִן הָעֶלְיוֹנִים אֶלָּא בִּבְכִיָּה
The waters now are not just jostling for high position. They are crying like a family being torn apart. The lower waters long to go up in order to be reunited with their other half.
The great Jewish philosopher of Prague, Rabbi Yehuda Loew – the ‘Maharal’- in his super-commentary on Rashi, explains it this way:
There is, in this Midrash, a great secret. For everything always wants to to be raised up. As it says in the Talmud, ‘we increase in holiness and never decrease.’ So when the lower waters were separated from the upper waters, and turned into low things, this was the opposite of the order of creation and existence, where everything is always longing to be raised. Therefore, they refused to be divided until God promised them that they would be offered on the altar, and finally achieve elevation.
ויש במדרש הזה דבר נעלם מאוד, לפי שכל הדברים תמיד הם הולכים להעלות, ומעלין בקודש ולא מורידים (ברכות כח. ) , ומים תחתונים נבדלו מן עליונים ונעשו תחתונים, וזהו הפך סדר הבריאה והמציאות, שהולך הכל להתעלות תמיד. ולפיכך, לא היו נבדלים מהם עד שהבטיח השם יתברך אותם להיות קרבים על המזבח, שיקנו ההתעלות
Here is a vibrant, enchanted, picture of the world. Everything is reaching up! Everything is seeking elevation! The whole world is filled with yearning and aspiration, looking toward the heavens, demanding to be taken up.
But more than that, what the lower waters are longing for is to be reunited with the upper waters. All longing for elevation is actually a longing for one’s other half. And, conversely, all longing for love is a longing for elevation.
And so we, too, are like those lower waters. We are yearning for an experience of completeness, for the feeling of transcendence that comes from finding the one we have been searching for. When we lay our offerings upon the altar – or, today, our slices of challah on the table – and sprinkle them with salt, we are calling on God to honor this covenant, and bring us back to our upper waters.
Let us all be reunited with our other half. Let us be raised up by love.
From Rav DovBer Pinson
Vayikra: The Healing Power of the Letter Aleph
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From Rabbi James Stone Goodman
Leviti-cus
How pure is it?
Not always so pure. Purity is not – generally – a part of my vocabulary though the Levitical sensibility intrigues me.
How pure is it?
I will have to get out of my head for a second. Live into the question. And the matter of intention: everything, this act, this word, this gesture, this work, the gift of pure intention, to enter an action a commitment a giving yourself over to a body of work with purity. Is that what you mean: How pure is it? Not always so pure.
How pure is it?
Always a problem. But I think the intention creates purity. An act-as-if concept, within the not-so-pure comes the pure. It rises. The act itself transforms, transforms even intention. You make the commit, launch, find your purity then launch. The work itself transforms. Transforms the participant most of all. I think I get that.
So how pure is it?
Try this: Something has been corrupted. The seal has been broken so to speak. We clean it up. Purify. Something gets into the oil. Some obstacles to the gift, someone withholds. Someone something always withholds, don’t let it be you. It’s a narrow bridge, don’t get in your own way. You don’t withhold anything. Make your intention pure. You are not attached to outcomes, you are attached only to the purity of act, word, entry, intention. How pure is it?
Seems pure to me. I am your teacher. I am inside now. I will never leave you.
jsg
From AJR/CA
“Korbonot and Closeness: Revisited”
By Rabbi Cheryl Weiner
In 2013, in considering this parshah, I asked some questions that I want to reconsider from a different frame of reference. How do we fulfill our yearning for closeness with divine energy? How do we establish our relationship with God? How do we ask for forgiveness for our behaviors? How do we thank and praise God? I pose these questions today in relation to climate change and regulations.
The word for sacrifice in Hebrew is korbon, which shares the root of the word for becoming close, so, inherent in the act of sacrifice is the kavannah/the intention of becoming closer to God. In the Chabad Hasidic tradition, when we bring the animal sacrifice to God, we are bringing the animalistic part of ourselves to the sacrifice. When we burn the sacrifice in part or in whole, we are burning that aspect of ourselves that represents the sin that we have committed, our hubris, and our failings in the moral domain. When we bring an offering that is not an atonement, we are bringing our gratitude and our yearning and intention to come closer to God.
Perhaps a better translation for sacrifice today is offering. What are the ways that we can offer something of ourselves to become closer to God? How can we sanctify our relationship to God through some action that either represents atonement for our various sins or that offers praise and recognition for the gifts that we have received?
Today, I ponder these questions with a sense of urgency related to our body politic. How are we as a nation prepared to offer some aspect of comfort in our lives to benefit the planet? What is it that we can do to expatiate the sins of our age? And what is the nature of those sins. Chet— the sin we commit inadvertently, the mistake that we make. Avon— the sin that we commit with full knowledge and intention towards another human being. Pesha-— the sin that we commit as a transgression, a crossing the line to disobey God’s will. If we inadvertently polluted in the past, perhaps this was a mistake, an error in judgment or knowledge. If we then pollute intentionally through ignoring regulations, isn’t this a violation of the pubic trust? However, if we intentionally do away with the regulations themselves, aren’t we in some way in rebellion against God’s will? Aren’t we commanded to care for the earth?
Some would say that we sacrifice jobs or monetary gain or our freedom by imposing regulations. Rather, I would say that regulations are the constraints that provide us with the freedom to live in safety and security. Regulations are researched and put into place as protections for our well-being, not as a hindrance to progress, not as a handicap to economic growth or the creation of jobs. Just as the “siyyug to Torah”, the gates of our laws that contain the Torah, regulations function as a safety net.
Sometimes we need to sacrifice in order to become whole. As a society, we need to learn to sacrifice, to find new solutions to challenges, to break through to a new form to bring us closer to God. When we speak of korbonot/sacrifices in the modern world, our atonement for sins of misusing or abusing our planet. We need to learn to offer praise and gratitude for our resources. Our sages say, as it is below, so it is on high. We can transform the world by the offerings that we make of ourselves, to sacrifice in the short term perhaps, to find long term solutions to protect the planet. We can find joy in the appreciation of the resources that we have and celebrate them by finding power solutions that harness the earth’s creative potential through wind, or solar, or wave energy. Through a process of atonement as well as gratitude, we can bring ourselves closer to the manifestation of God’s goodness in the creation of God’s world and our own.
From Rabbi David Kasher
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST – Parshat Vayikra
Does our God have a sense of smell?
In Psalm 115, there is a scathing critique of idolatry that mocks the lifelessness of fetishized statues and totems – specifically their lack of any sensory powers:
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but cannot speak; eyes, but cannot see; they have ears, but cannot hear; noses, but cannot smell… (vv. 5-6)
So don’t be fooled by the vivid, carved features on the faces of these figurines! They are oblivious, inanimate, dead. Surely these are no gods!
But what is the implication here about our God? Is it that the real God does see and hear, taste and smell? Or is it that ascribing the human senses to God is altogether ridiculous?
That latter approach might appeal to the rationalists among us, but the Book of Leviticus seems to push the other position: yes, God can smell things. In the opening chapters of this middle volume of the Torah, we find ourselves running through a list of various forms of animal sacrifice, and after each one, the same phrase is repeated:
A pleasant scent to the Lord. ( ריח ניחוח לה׳ )
These offerings will go up in flames, the smoke will rise, and – it seems – God will smell it, and be pleased. And this isn’t just some obscure reference we pass by once. That phrase will appear a total of sixteen times in the Book of Leviticus! Add seventeen more in the Book of Numbers, and three earlier appearances in the Book of Exodus, and you have thirty-six mentions of this “pleasing scent” to describe the smoke of the Tabernacle sacrifices. It seems that not only can God smell – God does it all the time!
Now what in the world can that mean? Because surely, unlike the sculptured idols from the verse in Psalms, our God doesn’t have a nose and an olfactory system! We know that by the medieval period, Jewish theology has arrived at a clear consensus that God has no physicality at all. But even here in the Torah, much is made of the formlessness of God. Even when we use words like the “face” or the “hand” of God, we assume these are metaphors, symbolic representations of some aspect of God’s being. What, then, would God’s sense of smell symbolize?
My friend and colleague, Rabbi Joe Schwartz, reminded me that Marcel Proust is credited with giving articulation to the theory that smell is the sense most linked to memory. In what is considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th-century, Remembrance of Things Past, Proust writes: “When nothing else subsists from the long-distant past, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered…the smell and taste of things remain poised a long time, like souls… bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory.” Indeed this notion, now so familiar to us, that smell evokes involuntary memories more powerfully than any other sense, is often referred to as the ‘Proustian Phenomenon.’
Remarkably, however, the very same concept appears in the writings of the 18th-century German Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. An enlightenment thinker who worked with Lessing and was admired by Kant, Mendelssohn is best known for his attempt to reconcile traditional religious belief with participation in modern civil society. But he also wrote a commentary on the Torah, the Biur (which was widely admired by later Wissenschaft scholars, and is often cited by Nechama Leibowitz). And in Mendelssohn’s commentary on Exodus, in the very first appearance of the phrase, “A pleasant scent to the Lord” in relation to the offerings of the Tabernacle, he writes the following:
The sense of smell, in the Holy [Hebrew] Language, corresponds to the power of memory in the soul, for the idea of memory is the remaining impression in the soul, after the tangible experience has passed. That is the unique property of scent… and for this reason it says, “A pleasant scent” – that is, one which will provoke the desired memory before God.
Amazing. There you have the Proustian Phenomenon, two centuries before Proust! But now we might ask of Mendelssohn, what is this desired memory we want God to have? What is it that the Book of Leviticus will attempt to recall to the Divine consciousness sixteen times – nine in our parsha alone?
To answer that question, we will rely on a straightforward linguistic connection. For there is only one place in the Torah before the Tabernacle is built where that very same phrase, “a pleasing scent to God,” is used. And that is in the story of Noah.
After the 40-day flood, after all life on earth has been destroyed except for the family of Noah and the animals he saved, after the dove Noah sends out returns with an olive branch and proves that the waters have receded, Noah steps timidly out of the ark and onto dry ground again. And the first thing he does – maybe he was the first person ever to do it – was to build an altar to the Lord, and…
Taking of every pure animal and every pure bird, he offered burnt offerings on the altar. The Lord smelled the pleasant scent… (Gen. 8:20-21)
There it is, ריח ניחוח, that same “pleasant scent.” And God smells it, and then this is what God says:
The Lord smelled the pleasant scent and the Lord said to His Heart, “Never again will I doom the earth because of humanity, for the urges of a person are evil from his youth. Never again will I destroy every living thing as I have done.
So when we burn sacrifices on the altar of the Tabernacle, we are recalling the sacrifices on the first altar, and we are asking God to remember God’s promise. No, that’s not right, exactly. We are not asking. We are attempting to trigger the Divine memory, to produce an involuntary recollection with the scent of the same smoke that God smelled just before God made the promise that day, never again to destroy us.
And when do we send forth that scent? When do we offer sacrifices? At times when we have sinned. We have incurred Divine wrath, and are attempting to find atonement through these offerings. How exactly does that work, the commentators have long wondered? Does the animal stand in for us, acting as a substitute for our own deserved death? Is it simply the act of surrendering something of value that shows our contrition?
Or is it that we are able, with the very fires of that offering, to remind God of God’s commitment to be merciful? To remind God of what God realized back at the beginning of history. That we are born with terrible urges we cannot always control. That this is who we are. That God made us this way, after all.
And the priest shall turn it into smoke on the altar, for a pleasant scent to the Lord. Thus, the priest shall make atonement for him, and he shall be forgiven. (Lev. 4:31)
From Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
The Pursuit of Meaning (Vayikra 5776)
The American Declaration of Independence speaks of the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Recently, following the pioneering work of Martin Seligman, founder of Positive Psychology, there have been hundreds of books published on happiness. Yet there is something more fundamental still to the sense of a life well-lived, namely, meaning. The two seem similar. It’s easy to suppose that people who find meaning are happy, and people who are happy have found meaning. But the two are not the same, nor do they always overlap.
Happiness is largely a matter of satisfying needs and wants. Meaning, by contrast, is about a sense of purpose in life, especially by making positive contributions to the lives of others. Happiness is largely about how you feel in the present. Meaning is about how you judge your life as a whole: past, present and future.
Happiness is associated with taking, meaning with giving. Individuals who suffer stress, worry or anxiety are not happy, but they may be living lives rich with meaning. Past misfortunes reduce present happiness, but people often connect such moments with the discovery of meaning. Furthermore, happiness is not unique to humans. Animals also experience contentment when their wants and needs are satisfied. But meaning is a distinctively human phenomenon. It has to do not with nature but with culture. It is not about what happens to us, but about how we interpret what happens to us. There can be happiness without meaning, and there can be meaning in the absence of happiness, even in the midst of darkness and pain.[1]
In a fascinating article in The Atlantic, ‘There’s more to life than being happy’[2], Emily Smith argued that the pursuit of happiness can result in a relatively shallow, self-absorbed, even selfish life. What makes the pursuit of meaning different is that it is about the search for something larger than the self.
No one did more to put the question of meaning into modern discourse than the late Viktor Frankl, who has figured prominently in this year’s Covenant and Conversation essays on spirituality. In the three years he spent in Auschwitz, Frankl survived and helped others to survive by inspiring them to discover a purpose in life even in the midst of hell on earth. It was there that he formulated the ideas he later turned into a new type of psychotherapy based on what he called “man’s search for meaning”. His book of that title, written in the course of nine days in 1946, has sold more than ten million copies throughout the world, and ranks as one of the most influential works of the twentieth century.
Frankl knew that in the camps, those who lost the will to live died. He tells of how he helped two individuals to find a reason to survive. One, a woman, had a child waiting for her in another country. Another had written the first volumes of a series of travel books, and there were others yet to write. Both therefore had a reason to live.
Frankl used to say that the way to find meaning was not to ask what we want from life. Instead we should ask what life wants from us. We are each, he said, unique: in our gifts, our abilities, our skills and talents, and in the circumstances of our life. For each of us, then, there is a task only we can do. This does not mean that we are better than others. But if we believe we are here for a reason, then there is a tikkun, a mending, only we can perform, a fragment of light only we can redeem, an act of kindness or courage or generosity or hospitality, even a word of encouragement or a smile, only we can perform, because we are here, in this place, at this time, facing this person at this moment in their lives.
“Life is a task”, he used to say, and added, “The religious man differs from the apparently irreligious man only by experiencing his existence not simply as a task, but as a mission.” He or she is aware of being summoned, called, by a Source. “For thousands of years that source has been called God.”[3]
That is the significance of the word that gives our parsha, and the third book of the Torah, its name: Vayikra, “And He called.” The precise meaning of this opening verse is difficult to understand. Literally translated it reads: “And He called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying …” The first phrase seems to be redundant. If we are told that God spoke to Moses, why say in addition, “And He called”? Rashi explains as follows:
And He called to Moses: Every [time God communicated with Moses, whether signalled by the expression] “And He spoke”, or “and He said”, or “and He commanded”, it was always preceded by [God] calling [to Moses by name].[4] “Calling” is an expression of endearment. It is the expression employed by the ministering angels, as it says, “And one called to the other…” (Isaiah. 6:3).
Vayikra, Rashi is telling us, means to be called to a task in love. This is the source of one of the key ideas of Western thought, namely the concept of a vocation or a calling, that is, the choice of a career or way of life not just because you want to do it, or because it offers certain benefits, but because you feel summoned to it. You feel this is your meaning and mission in life. This is what you were placed on earth to do.
There are many such calls in Tanach. There was the call Abraham heard to leave his land and family. There was the call to Moses at the burning bush (Ex. 3:4). There was the one experienced by Isaiah when he saw in a mystical vision God enthroned and surrounded by angels:
Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” And I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:8)
One of the most touching is the story of the young Samuel, dedicated by his mother Hannah to serve in the sanctuary at Shiloh where he acted as an assistant to Eli the priest. In bed at night he heard a voice calling his name. He assumed it was Eli. He ran to see what he wanted but Eli told him he had not called. This happened a second time and then a third, and by then Eli realised that it was God calling the child. He told Samuel that the next time the voice called his name, he should reply, ‘Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening.’ It did not occur to the child that it might be God summoning him to a mission, but it was. Thus began his career as a prophet, judge and anointer of Israel’s first two kings, Saul and David (1 Samuel 3).
When we see a wrong to be righted, a sickness to be healed, a need to be met, and we feel it speaking to us, that is when we come as close as we can in a post-prophetic age to hearing Vayikra, God’s call. And why does the word appear here, at the beginning of the third and central book of the Torah? Because the book of Vayikra is about sacrifices, and a vocation is about sacrifices. We are willing to make sacrifices when we feel they are part of the task we are called on to do.
From the perspective of eternity we may sometimes be overwhelmed by a sense of our own insignificance. We are no more than a wave in the ocean, a grain of sand on the sea shore, a speck of dust on the surface of infinity. Yet we are here because God wanted us to be, because there is a task He wants us to perform. The search for meaning is the quest for this task.
Each of us is unique. Even genetically identical twins are different. There are things only we can do, we who are what we are, in this time, this place and these circumstances. For each of us God has a task: work to perform, a kindness to show, a gift to give, love to share, loneliness to ease, pain to heal, or broken lives to help mend. Discerning that task, hearing Vayikra, God’s call, is one of the great spiritual challenges for each of us.
How do we know what it is? Some years ago, in To Heal a Fractured World, I offered this as a guide, and it still seems to me to make sense: Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where God wants us to be.
e-sig
[1] See Roy F. Baumeister, Kathleen D. Vohs, Jennifer Aaker, and Emily N.Garbinsky, ‘Some Key Differences between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life’, Journal of Positive Psychology 2013, Vol. 8, Issue 6, Pages 505-516.
[2] Emily Smith, ‘There’s more to life than being happy’, The Atlantic, 9 Jan. 2013.
[3] Viktor Frankl, The Doctor and the Soul: from Psychotherapy to Logotherapy, New York: A.A. Knopf, 1965, 13.
[4] Rashi to Vayikra 1:1.
From Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan
God’s Kitchen
March 16, 2015
Any afternoon or evening, any time, with or without kids, I could come over and sit on a stool at the kitchen counter. Donna would make us a pot of nana tea – the comfort of mint mixed with the stimulation of caffeine.
We would chat in the plainest of terms about what was on our minds. How we aren’t sure we are handling difficult coworkers well. How we can deal with feeling ashamed of something we accidentally said. How one of us should interpret a weird, disturbing dream. How we are irrationally angry that we can’t get anyone else in our families to help clean the bathroom.
You name it – we dealt with it openly over that nana tea. Donna had an amazing ability to receive everything without judgment. Worries and self-criticism that you would never share with anyone – you could lay it on the table, talk it through, and it would disappear into smoke as a non-issue.
In some ways, sitting down to nana tea in Donna’s kitchen is like visiting the mishkan (sanctuary) in Parshat Vayikra (Leviticus 1-5). The reasons for bringing a sacrifice are a lot like the reasons for talking over a cup of tea. If you have a special joy to share, you bring a zevach shelamim, a well-being offering. If you fixed a problem but still feel bad about it, you bring an asham, a reparation offering. If you feel creeped out by something uncanny, or if you need to deal with something hideous in national current events, you bring a khatat, a purification offering. The priest takes your offering, and disappears your problems in smoke.
The beginning of Parshat Vayikra invites us into this kind of intimacy with God. The first sentence says, Vayikra HaShem el Moshe – God called to Moshe. In our scribal tradition, the last letter of the word vayikra, the Aleph, is written smaller than the other letters of the word, almost as an afterthought.
Perhaps we can read the tiny aleph as suggesting that there are two alternative readings of the word: you could read it vayikar, as if the aleph weren’t there at all; or you could read it vayikra, pronouncing the aleph. In modern Hebrew, yakar means “precious” and kara means “called.” Perhaps we are supposed to read both meanings. “He called…He made someone precious…He called…He made someone precious.”
This two-faceted word describes the magic of Donna’s kitchen. She invites you in, and in that space, you are precious. Perfect and dear just as you are. Your flaws, your imperfections – insubstantial as smoke.
And this is the magic of the mishkan. Through the technology of the sacrifices in God’s kitchen, your self-doubts become as insubstantial as smoke.
In the Haftorah reading, the prophet Isaiah tells us that idols cannot effect this kind of healing transformation. Believe it or not, he specifically tells us that idols don’t have the right kind of kitchens.
Here Isaiah describes the idolator’s use of wood:
Part of it he burns in a fire:
On that part he roasts meat,
He eats the roast and is sated;
He also warms himself and cries, “Ah,
I am warm! I can feel the heat!”
Of the rest he makes a god – his own carving!
He bows down to it, worships it;
He prays to it and cries,
“Save me, for you are my god!”
The piece of wood helps to meet the idolater’s material needs – it keeps him warm, it helps him cook. So the idolater says, “you are my god!”
But the idolator’s meal fulfills physical needs only. The fears, the guilt, the worries that ought to be burned up are neither received and released. Instead they grow into guiding principles, leading the idolator into ever more confused decision-making.
As Isaiah says,
A deluded mind has led him astray
And he cannot save himself;
He never says to himself,
The thing in my hand is a fraud!
We all have times when we are like Isaiah’s idolater. Difficult, uncomfortable thoughts and feelings may overtake us. We might not recognize ourselves. We might be weighed down with anxiety. We might wonder if we should even have these thoughts and feelings, or if we should tell anyone about it. We might need help figuring out if we are defrauding ourselves!
At these times, we need a kitchen! We need someone who will sit with us, listen and receive without judgment, hold up a mirror, so to speak, with love. It might be a friend like Donna who makes nana tea; it might be a representative of an established organization, like the priests in the mishkan.
Vayikra teaches that an individual cannot deal with worries, guilt, creepiness, or disturbing public events alone. Every one of us needs someone who recognizes the weight of thoughts and feelings – even when our material needs are met, even when we have fixed the practical consequences of our mistakes. Every one of us needs someone who can help lighten the load, turn the substantial into vapour.
Every one of us needs a meal in God’s kitchen!
From Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
Shabbat Parashat Vayikra / Shabbat Hahodesh
By: Reb Mimi Feigelson,
Masphiah Ruchanit and
Lecturer of Rabbinic Studies
And there was Night and there was Day – One Day
Torah Reading: Leviticus 1:1-5:26; Numbers 28:9-15
Maftir Reading: Exodus 12:1-20
Haftarah Reading: Ezekiel 45:16 – 46:18
Often I share that my life can be divided into two chapters – in the first chapter I experienced God’s love for me by virtue of having a Teacher to Learn from and with. Someone that would share the secrets of Torah that I needed in order to keep my soul alive. The second chapter of my life, the one that I live in now, is defined by walking in the world with Students that I’m blessed to share the Torah I have gathered, and am able to offer them. It is a gift like no other.
I have learned over the years that both Teachers and Students manifest in a form and shape not always expected or anticipated. It keeps my heart open, not knowing when either of them will show up to claim a piece of my heart that their light will ignite.
It is such a manner that Father Henri Nouwen entered my life half a decade ago, when introduced to him by a friend. Those of you who know me know that the fact that Father Henri crossed-over at the age of sixty four, in 1996, is no barrier in declaring him a significant Teacher. On the contrary, I often try to imagine conversations that he and my Teacher Reb Shlomo Carlebach may be conducting in the heavenly realm. Both of them, Men of the Cloth that walked in the world as wounded healers.
It is his words that I hear echoing, as a commentary to Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 1040-1105) quoting Midrash Rabba on Vayikra (Leviticus) 1:2.
The verse in our Torah portion teaches us: “Speak to the Children of Yisrael and say to them, if any man [ADAM] of you brings an offering to God…”
Rashi questions the use of the word ADAM for a person, versus other titles that the Torah could’ve used for one that brings a gift-offering sacrifice. He brings the Midrash that suggests that the use of the word ADAM is to evoke the consciousness of Adam in the Garden of Eden, who ” never offered sacrifices from stolen goods” thus suggesting, here too, that this gift being brought to the Mishkan (tabernacle) was not from stolen goods.
I can’t help but read this in utter dismay – who would think to bring a gift-offering to God from stolen goods??? How could one even ponder such a thing? What would motivate such behavior and how could one, in good faith, put their hands on the animal to be offered on their behalf if it wasn’t theirs?
It is here that I have summoned Father Henri Nouwen to help me unpack that which is so unfathomable to me.
In his book “The One Necessary Thing” on living a prayerful life he speaks of a listening heart. He offers the following:
“The discipline of the heart… makes us aware that praying is not only listening to but also listening with. The discipline of the heart makes us stand in the presence of God with all we have and are: our fears and anxieties, our guilt and shame, our sexual fantasies, our greed and anger, our joys, successes, aspirations and hopes, or reflections, dreams and mental wandering, and most of all our people, family, friends and enemies, in short, all that makes us who we are. With all this we have to listen to God’s voice and allow God to speak to us in every corner of our being. This is very hard since we are so fearful and insecure that we keep hiding ourselves from God.
We tend to present to God only those parts of ourselves with which we feel relatively comfortable and which we think will evoke a positive response. Thus our prayer becomes very selective and narrow. And not just our prayers but also our self-knowledge, because by behaving as strangers before God we become strangers to ourselves.”
Now I can live with Rashi, with the Midrash and with the possibility of “stolen goods.” It is by means of employing the concept of ” Gneivat Da’at.” Literally this concept translates as “theft of mind / consciousness.” When used in context of Jewish law and morality we can speak of a misrepresentation or even an element of deception when presenting a given situation. While it is more often used in the realm of business and commerce (such as the boundaries and definitions of advertisement) I would like to suggest that Father Henri Nouwen is speaking of standing in God’s presence with only a portion of who we are. He alludes to only bringing our favorable traits when standing in God’s presence, appearing to be that person, and not what we may perceive as our dark side. This would then fall under the category of spiritual gneivat da’at, and perhaps this is the way we could understand Rashi.
I would like to pose the possibility that the “stolen goods” that Rashi is speaking of is our misrepresentation of the totality of our being when in the presence of God. While I personally can identify with the fear that showing up with our totality may bring, I can also touch upon the joy, gratitude and relief in knowing that I am who I am; that God sees me in all that I am; that I can be loved by the Divine regardless of the flaws that I myself don’t allow myself to acknowledge. I believe that it is being seen in such a way by God that will, in time, avail me to own those parts of myself that I shun.
It is with this understanding that the Alexander Rebbe (R’ Yisrael Dantziger, 1853-1910) understands the word in our opening verse, ” Me’kem” / “of you” – the gift-offering we bring is meant to come “from ourselves,” or as the Rebbe expresses, “from our desires” – this is an opportunity to offer, to elevate our desires to and with God; those desires that we are happy to share in daylight, and those that we barely allow to breathe some fresh air at night when no one is around. And if you ask, would this not be a blemished offering being brought to God, I would respond by saying: “If you whole-heartedly put your hands on its head, if you own it as also being a part of you, then you are bringing the most holy offering of all! It is not blemished but rather whole, for you are whole!” I believe this is the first step to our personal redemption and exiting of Egypt.
May we dwell this Shabbat in the trust and faith necessary to bring such offerings to God. May this Shabbat Rosh Chodesh avail us of a new way of standing in the world. May the hiddenness of the moon give us the courage to grow in our truth and shine in all that we are when she comes to completion Seder night!
Shabbat shalom, Chodesh Tov and Chag Sameach.
From the Maqam Project
From Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
Shabbat Parashat Vayikra
March 16, 2014 / 5 Nisan 5773
By: Rabbi Aaron Alexander,
Associate Dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies
We Need To Talk
Torah Reading: Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26
Haftarah Reading: Isaiah 43:21 – 44:23
“We need to talk.” I apologize if these words create residual trauma and I’ve probably already scared you off. But at least we’re in this together. Each of us has likely been on the other side of this ominous phrase at one point or another, and probably guilty of saying it, too. It just stings.
Let’s harness the pain, briefly, and take a moment to reflect on the elusive art form of difficult-conversation starters. The book of Leviticus, Va-Yikr’a, begins:
And God called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying… (Lev. 1:1)
At first glance this feels pretty direct. God has what to say to Moses, so God calls him and begins a lengthy discourse on all means of sacrifice. A closer look, though, reveals a slight difficulty. Namely, why did God have to call to Moses before speaking to him? They are both in the Tent of Meeting and a simple, “And God spoke to Moses,” would have been enough of an introduction to the communication that follows.
The prodigious commentator, Rashi, smoothes this over by explaining that the ‘call’ was not of the dinner-bell variety, a ‘come and get it’ scene many of us experienced in our youths as supper approached. Rather, this was a gentle and thoughtful invitation, a tender communication from God to Moses.
As Rashi puts it: “The language of “calling” is an expression of affection, a similar articulation used by the ministering angels in conversation with one another, as it says, ‘And one called to the other (v’ka-ra zeh-el-zeh ve-amar)…’ ” (Rashi to Lev. 1:1)
The paradigm set forth is of angels seamlessly interacting. How potent. It didn’t matter, therefore, what God called to Moses before giving him endless instructions, and it wasn’t important that Moses and God were already occupying the same space. Rather, it was the caring way in which God called Moses. God asked Moses to join the conversation and allowed Moses to be as fully present as possible. While God and Moses were not necessarily about to get into an awkward or dicey conversation (okay, maybe dicey), this interpretation does offer insight into precarious-conversation starters.
How often do we find ourselves in the same room with another person, poised to enter into a difficult conversation, but also at a loss for words? How does one create an inviting space with room for both participants to express themselves, authentically, while still willing to give something to the other? Our natural tendencies of avoidance, discomfort and/or nervous anticipation often result in communication that is more passive-aggressive, or likely just aggressive: In our homes, synagogues, schools, or offices, all potentially sacred and safe spaces, all potentially hazardous and contentious.
The Torah offers us a slightly different model of engagement: loving invitation. Even in an assumed safe space, an ohel mo’ed interaction demands thoughtful, kind, and honest entry. Jumping right in with a “we need to talk” followed by whatever needs to be said may not allow the listener to prepare for the difficult message to be delivered. The example set forth by God and angels offers an alternative access point for the adrenaline-filled moments that can consume our day-to-day experience. I wish I could offer a one-size-fits-all phrase or invitation. The challenge is that each opportunity demands precisely the kind of warmth that Moses must have heard when God called him in that Tent. And that differs, significantly, in every friendship, partnership, and union.
There is no avoiding confrontation in any relationship. That is a truth. But thoughtfully and intentionally introducing and transforming potentially heated interactions into fertile ground for openness and readiness may go a long way in warding off some of the residual discomfort that often lingers for much too long.
Actually, I think I want to go back and start this commentary differently. Do over?
Shabbat Shalom.
From Brian Yosef Schachter-Brooks
Five Windows to This- Parshat Vayikra
03/14/20130
This week begins the first parsha of the book of Leviticus, Vayikra- “He called”. It gives instructions about five different kinds of sacrifices which the Israelites were to offer. These five sacrifices can be seen as a paradigm of life, each one a symbol for a particular way of approaching this moment.
The first is the Olah, or “Elevation” offering. This offering was unique in that it was burned completely on the altar, with nothing left over. This hints at giving ourselves entirely to the task of this moment. We tend to see this moment as a mere stepping-stone to another moment, and we are often doing one thing while our minds are somewhere else. The Olah hints that if we wish to live in an “elevated” way- that is, free from mundane stresses and worries, we paradoxically need to completely bring ourselves to the mundane. We need to “burn ourselves” completely in this moment, without leaving over part of our minds to dwell on something else.
The second is the Minkha, or “gift” offering. This was a grain offering, brought by those who were not wealthy enough to bring animal offerings. This hints at the wisdom of humility and the willingness to offer of ourselves what we can, even if we think it is inadequate, or that the work required is “below” us. It is the willingness to serve the needs of this moment, without imposing our own preconceptions.
The third is the Shlamim, or “Peace” offering. This offering was brought out of gratitude and praise. It brought peace partially because the priests and the offerer both enjoyed it as food, and partially because it was supposed to have a peaceful effect on the world in general. This hints at dedicating our actions toward universal benefit for all. When we act, we do so because we have some particular motivation. If we take a moment to dedicate our actions to universal benefit, this will give our actions and even our decision-making process a special quality of openness and generosity.
The fourth and fifth are the Hatat and the Asham- the “Sin” offering and the “Guilt” offering. Their purpose was to correct and make healing for wrongs committed. It is good to remember that we have not always been perfect. Whenever we do anything, we are not acting from a clean slate, but rather we act against a hidden karmic background. Keeping this in mind will allow us to approach this moment with humility and the intention for healing whatever negativity lingers from the past. It will also help us accept what happens to us moment by moment, cleansing us from the arrogance of resisting things we don’t like- “How could this happen to me?” Instead, let us accept what is, and offer ourselves to this moment as a force of healing.
May these five offerings manifest themselves in our lives toward greater awakening to the spiritual potential of this moment, always.
Good Shaaabbiiiiss!
From Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan
Vayikra: A Compassionate Offering
Leviticus chapter 5 teaches that someone brings a chataat offering when they overhear a curse, witness a crime, learn about a crime, touch a corpse without knowing it, or blurt out an oath.
Some commentators translate chataat based on its use of the root cheyt – sin – and understand it as a “sin-offering.” They focus discussion on cases where the curses, oaths, witnessing, and contact with death are associated with misdeeds. For them, offering the chataat is part of the process of atoning for a crime.
Others translate chataat based on its function of helping to remove ritual impurity. In the Levitical system, ritual impurity is associated with psycho-spiritual discomfort when boundaries are suddenly violated. These commentators understand the chataat as a “purification offering.” They recognize the fear that can result when we see or hear terrible things, blurt out words that come from a hidden part of us, or suddenly realize that we have come into contact with death. For them, the chataat is part of the process of self-understanding and release.
From this second perspective, the chataat is a gift of compassion from the cohanim (priests) to the people. The chataat offers an opportunity to pause, reflect on the upset, and let it go. Without such a pause, fears may be held secretly inside and compound over time, moving us to attack ourselves as well as others. The cohanim recognized the importance of witnessing the troubles of others, helping them come to self-knowledge and providing rituals that restore stability. From them we can learn some new tools for compassionately support people in our lives.
From AJR/CA
Parshat Vayikra
Torah Reading for Week of March 18-24, 2012
“The Worth of Our Salt”
By Rabbi Janet Madden ‘11
Parshat Vayikra (“and He called”) provides a how-to guide that lays out the taxonomy of Temple sacrifices, each category of which calls for particular types of animals, birds or grain. In contrast to the compelling narratives of Beresheit and Shemot, this section of the Torah, replete with rules instead of stories, demonstrates a new level of maturity in the relationship between the people and the Holy One, expressed through communal participation in the sacrificial rites, and even more powerfully, by the responsibility of every individual to bring offerings. The specificity of the instructions accompanying each kind of sacrifice makes clear that sacrifice is not a pro forma obligation. That each sacrifice is a holy act is emphasized by the articulation of the concomitant state of intentionality on the part of the person who brings the specified offering and by prescribed actions by the cohanim who perform the sacrificial rites on the behalf of the people. Vayikra demonstrates that sacrifice is the visceral expression of the relationship between G-d and Israel through its emphasis on the nuances and complexities of the sacrificial rites and, most of all, through its reiteration that whether the offering is bird, animal or grain, there is a single component that unifies every offering: salt.
So ubiquitous and inexpensive today that we take it for granted, salt held an elevated status in all cultures of the ancient world both for its function as food preservative and as seasoning. In contrast to pagan sacrificial rites in which blood was drunk and salt was not used, salt’s role in ancient Israel is embodied in its status in Temple sacrifices, which eschewed the consumption of blood and mandated the addition of salt, a substance that defined the Land in the form of Yom Ha-Melah, the Salt Sea. Salt appears throughout the Tanach as a symbol of permanence and, particularly, as a symbol of covenantal relationship. The declaration that “All the sacred gifts that the Israelites set aside for the Lord…shall be an everlasting covenant of salt before the Lord for you and for your offspring as well” in Parshat Korach explicitly establishes the relationship of salt and sacrifice in the context of sacrifice and covenant. Chronicles 13:5 tells us that the Davidic line is established by a covenant of salt. Ezekial 16:4 reports that in ancient Israel, newborns were rubbed with salt, and Ezra 6:9 and 7:22 record that large quantities of salt were delivered to the post-exilic Temple for use in sacrifices, underscoring Vayikra’s instruction about the use of salt in each kind of offering.
It is easy to understand the sacrificial requirement of salt in the context of meat, since salt would have removed blood from the altar, much as today we use salt as a purifying and consecrating agent in kashering. More intriguing and poignant is the inclusion of salt in the grain sacrifices, which presages how we use salt ritually today. Pablo Neruda’s depiction of salt’s “broken voice” and “mournful song” in his “Ode to Salt” captures the emotional undercurrent of how we commemorate the Temple’s destruction in our custom of sprinkling salt over bread after making the blessing over it.
Me’am Loez records the legend that at the Creation, when the lower world was parted from the firmament and the waters of the heavens from the waters of the seas were separated, the seas begged the Creator to be placed closer, not off in the distance. In order to reassure the seas that they had not been abandoned or rejected, they were granted the privilege of providing salt for all Temple sacrifices. Similarly, our mindful ritual use of salt brings us closer to our history, our traditions, and our G-d. Salt, as Neruda understands, is not merely the “dust of the sea”; in the “smallest, miniature wave from the saltcellar…we taste infinitude.”
From Rabbi Menachem Creditor
Mar 21, 2012
VaYikra 5772/2012: “The Sacrificial Call”
(c) Rabbi Menachem Creditor
http://rabbicreditor.blogspot.com/2012/03/vayikra-57722012-sacrificial-call.html?spref=fb
From Rabbi Miles Krassen
Va-Yiqra 5771 according to Sefer Az Yashir Moshe (Meta-Torah)
The infinitesimal Alef calls to Moshe and (then) the Source of Compassion speaks to him in the mind space where Divinity and Humanity meet. (Leviticus 1:1).
The Meta-Moshe Rabbenu (Rinpoche) has immediate access to Divine guidance under all circumstances. At that level one doesn’t need a Temple to go to or any particular spiritually enhancing context in order to approach the Shekhinah. You yourself are a Sanctuary and the Shekhinah is in and around you and even speaks through you.
But, how do we “get there?” Our Sages tell us that Divinity is broadcasting an evolutionary current at all times that seeks to bring us into alignment (teshuvah). This infinitesimally subtle vibration is however all too rarely perceived. In fact, although we receive it quite frequently, the level of confusion that characterizes most of us in our misconception of Reality prevents us from “getting the message”— the Divine “love-taps” that are subtly seeking our attention. This subtlety of Divine transmission is required by the evolutionary process itself, commonly thought of in terms of “reward and punishment” (karma). If the broadcast were louder and clear enough for everyone to hear, there would be no possibility of evolution as no effort would ever be required of us. If that were the case, there would be no way to feed the Shekhinah and the Atzmut, the very essence of ALL THAT IS (Eyn Sof), would have no basis for manifesting as EVERYTHING in time and space.
The difference between an un-awakened person and a Tzaddiq-in-training may be measured by the degree of sensitivity that a person has to this subtle sound current. The Noam Elimelekh says a Tzaddiq-in-training is not a person whose behavior is always perfect, but rather a person who is extremely sensitive to the guidance coming from the subtle current that let’s one know when a course correction is required. In the state of “sleep,” even though we may think we are awake, we act mechanically. When our behavior is challenged, we immediately become defensive, dishonest, and in denial. But for the awakened tzaddiq-in-training, even though incapable of measuring up to anyone’s conceptual idea of idealized perfection, the least “misstep” is heartbreaking. That very acute presence of Conscience within is an indication that one is sensitive to the call of the infinitesimally subtle “Alef” that guides Moshe Rinpoche.
Whenever Moshe consciously responds to the “call” of the vibration of the infinitesimally subtle Alef, it transforms the mind-stream of the Tzaddiq into a condition called Ohel Mo’ed (mind space where Divinity and Humanity meet). In that special “meeting place,” the vibration of the infinitesimally subtle Alef expands into the transmission of a compassionate and evolutionary teaching. In this parashah the process begins with the transmission of a teaching concerning fundamental ways of drawing closer to the primordial state of inseparability from the Shekhinah. These fundamental ways of drawing closer to the Shekhinah are called “sacrifices” (“korbanot’) because each requires a certain form of conscious suffering.
Tell those on the evolutionary path that if they want to draw closer to the Shekhinah, they should make conscious sacrifices that refine the ‘beast,’ the source of unregulated desires (“min ha-behemah”), sacrifices should be made through the center of awareness (“min ha-baqar”) and through unification of Source and Manifestation (“min ha-TZoN”). (Leviticus 1:2)
The primary and most general sacrificial path is called “from the beast” because it points to the efforts we need to make in order to bring our total animal nature into a higher level of refinement. This is basically the same image Plato used in regard to the horse and carriage that requires a driver if it is to go in an evolutionary direction. The general path of conscious sacrifice includes all forms of self-discipline that regulate and direct unconscious drives that increase our confusion. What is being sacrificed on this general path is the unchecked and relentless pursuit of satisfying our cravings on all levels.
To achieve the general purpose of conscious suffering in order to become more than a beast, there are two supporting inner paths. The first is called: “BaQaR,” which literally means “from the herd” but alludes to the center of awareness, based on the Hebrew root BQR that implies critical insight (BiQQuR). This is the inner sacrificing of mindless confusion. In order to follow this path, it is necessary to make the effort to cultivate constant mindful awareness— to maintain as much as possible the condition of being present to all that one is experiencing.
Deeper than this is the second inner path called: “TZoN,” literally “from the flock.” However, according to Kabbalah we know there are secrets hidden in the letters TZadi Alef and Nun that have to be deciphered in order to disclose a deeper hidden teaching. The letters TZadi and Alef equal 91 which is the sum of the two Holy Names, YHVH (26) and ADNY (65). Thus the sum of these two letters alludes to the unification of the two Holy Names representing Source (YHVH) and Manifestation (ADNY). When the two are ONE, they express the mystery of Divine Love. This love flows from the highest Source all the way down like the final form of the letter Nun (see the first Torah in Liqqutey MoHaRaN) expressing the power of drawing down Divine Grace (Hesed) to the most manifest level of Malkhut. This capacity to radiate Hesed (real kindness) in actuality within the world itself flows spontaneously and directly from the ultimately inseparable union of Source and Manifestation. Thus the sacrifice of “TZoN” is the path of complete non-dual unification. This path is followed by realizing, remaining in, remembering, and returning to the state of Knowledge that existed before we were born and which can be recalled as we evolve in our embodied condition. (See B.Talmud, Niddah 30). Whoever practices this path in life sacrifices ego-identification at the very deepest level (bittul bi-metziut).
May we blessed to become increasingly sensitive to the call of the infinitesimally subtle Alef vibration. May we respond to this Divine Call with sincere efforts of realignment (teshuvah) and share its message to inspire others. May we commit ourselves to the paths of conscious sacrifice that ultimately can enable us to become truly kind and awake beings in this very world as embodiments of non-dual Reality.
Shabbat shalom!
Faithfully transcribed from the subtle Alef vibration by
Moshe Aharon (Ladizhyner) for the Shekhinah, Va-Yiqra 5771
From Rabbi James Stone Goodman
Small Alef Poetry
When You call me
speak louder than you did with Moses
I may not hear the diminished alef*
the sound of affection
You used with him.
I am listening with everything I have
I am listening for the right word
the true story.
Let the pure come and occupy themselves
with the pure —
so said the wondrous Rav Assi [Lev.R.7:3]
3rd – 4th century
student of Rav Shmuel in Nehardea (al-Anbar)
companion of Rav Ammi,
What they talked about —
everything.
And G*d called to Moses
And G*d spoke to him
From the tent of meeting
Saying —
*The Alef is the vav and two yuds
human-being-li-ness and G*d-li-ness
both
the Alef suspended between
the foundational lower world
and the reach to the upper world
hand above
underneath everlasting arm
connected by the sitting
And.
We are connected
above and below
the Alef is diagrammatic — the human being
planted in the lower world
reaching for the upper world.
jsg, usa
From Rav DovBer Pinson
B”H
Week’s Energy for Parshas Vayikra
Rav DovBer Pinson
Beyond the Past/Re-scripting the Future
This week’s Torah reading begins with the words “And Hashem called to Moshe/Moses…saying, speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: When a man from [among] you brings an offering…”(1:1-2) Thus begins the third book of the Torah, the book of Vayikra, known as Leviticus. This book speaks in great length of the various forms of Korbanos / offerings.
Offerings were brought to atone for past negative actions, and so they represent a state of purity, as if one is ‘beginning again’. It is a tradition (Shach, Y’D 245:8), to begin teaching a child Torah with the third book of the Torah, the book of Vayikra. The Midrash says; “Let the pure (child) come and study (the laws of) the pure.” (Vayikra Rabba 7:3)
In Temple times, offerings were used to achieve atonement, and as such, they represent a state of purity. The idea of the offering is a ‘new beginning’.
The verse says, “Adam, Ki Yakriv Mikem” which is commonly translated as “When a man from [among] you brings an offering.” A more literal translation would be, “a person, who offers of himself.”
The person who wished to atone would bring an offering with the intention that they were giving of their very own self. When they gave of their earnings, it represented a relinquishing of their ego, a letting go, as it were.
Atonement is really Re-Alignment.
The principle of cause and effect means that each action creates a reaction. Positive actions have positive effect and negative actions create negative reactions. A positive reaction causes a balanced, equalizing energy, while a negative reaction creates an energy imbalance.
A negative action in the past, based on the laws of cause and effect, will create an inevitable negative consequence. Therefore, what is needed is a shift, a rebalancing in the present, to undo the effects of the past wrongdoing.
When a person would bring an offering of an object, which was a representation of themselves, the balance was restored and a new beginning initiated. The offerings brought purity. The concept of purity being an unsoiled reality – a new beginning and a fresh start.
Time which flows from a perspective of Yesh/existence, which is ego, is as such; what happened in the past is indelibly imprinted on the present, and subsequently gives birth to the future. This is the universe of karmic cause and effect.
Yet, when a person offers from him or herself, which is a selfless giving, they are leaving behind the world of Yesh/existence/ego and entering into the world of Ayin – emptiness, no-thing-ness. From this place of Ayin- unattached to a past, they can chart a new course for their future.
The Torah The Energy of the Week:
Beyond the Past/Re-scripting the Future
In order to reverse the karmic effects of negative deeds in our past – we need to go beyond the reality of cause and effect.
In a world of strict natural order – there is no way to reverse the laws of cause and effect.
However, going beyond our natural state of being, transcending our ego, as it were, we create a new reality for ourselves and rewrite the script of our future.
This week’s Torah reading imbues us with the energy to undo negative reactions from our past, giving us the strength to perform more selfless acts of goodness.
We are able to go beyond our ego and render our ego more transparent. Through ego-less acts of kindness we break the patterns of negativity and enter a brand new state, fresh with undiscovered possibility.
http://www.IYYUN.com
From Rabbi Diane Elliot
Vayikra—A Call to Return
by Rabbi Diane Elliot March 24 2007/ 5 Nisan 5767
“Vayikra el Moshe, And He called to Moses….” In last week’s double parashah, Vayak-hel-P’kudei, Moshe set up the Mishkan with the Ohel Mo-ed, the Tent of Meeting at its heart, and it was filled with the cloud of Holy Presence, the Shekhinah, the In-Dwelling Divine. So full of God was this place, that Moses hung back and could not enter. He had to be called by Ha-Shem, invited into relationship with the Holy. In order for a human being, even one so awake as Moses, to enter into direct relationship with the Divine, space must be made. The Mystery must draw back a bit into itself—and so “vayikra,” he called, the first word of our parashah, has a tiny aleph at the end, smaller than the rest of the letters, to symbolize, according to some, God’s tzim tzum, the pulling back of Self that makes space for another to enter.
Vayikra, the book of Torah that gives in minute detail the particulars of priestly service in the Mishkan/Temple, can be read as a tractate on holy relationship. When we look through the surface of its instructions about sacrifices and purifications from skin diseases and emissions to the spiritual truths hinted at in its depths, we may begin to understand the brilliance of our tradition in offering us a blueprint for right relationship, the means to practice the art of teshuvah, or return.
What makes possible the maintenance of a brit, a covenant with the Divine or with a person for that matter, given our humanity and the inevitability of our falling away from clarity and devotion, is the ever-present possibility Vayikra lays out of t’shuva—the ability through our focused intention, our actions, our prayers, to clear the clogged channels of connection. We easily distracted, easily obsessed human beings are here gifted with the means to restore awareness, to restore balance, to return to a loving state, in our relationships with each other and, underlying, supporting, and shining through those, each in our unique relationship with the Mystery, the Great Truth.
For the people of Israel wandering in the wilderness, the Presence was always visible as a cloud by day and a fire by night hanging over, resting upon the Mishkan. What is this powerful image of God-made-visible to an entire people? None other than the cloud and the fire of the ever-present, ever-active sacrificial altar, emanating morning and evening a ray-akh ni’khoakh, a pleasing aroma, meant to soothe, placate, re-calibrate the relationship between this visible earthly plane and the invisible, unimaginable realm of the Divine.
So what can be our sacrificial altar, the locus of action and focus of attention that helps us maintain clarity and flow in our earthly and our heavenly relationships, within ourselves, with our friends and family and community, and with the Mystery that Sources and Holds us all?
In her profound Torah Journeys, Rabbi Shefa Gold teaches that “the blessing of Vayikra is the call to come into harmony, balance, connection and intimacy with the God who has freed us for this love,” for this loving service. (Torah Journeys, p. 104) And the challenge is to continually grow into that freedom through practices of return. Reb Shefa asks us to make our prayer practice as powerful, as visceral, and as intense as the sacrifice of animals was for our ancestors. Can our davennen engage every sense—the sense of smell, of vision, of taste, of kinesthesia? Can it awaken our blood and vibrate our souls? And can our actions in the daily world—our words, our deeds, our work, our care for others—be informed by such practice, engaging us in a constant web of interconnectedness that grows God in the world?
As for the power and primacy of teshuvah, of which our prayer practice is an integral part, Rav Kook quotes Yoma 86b: “Great is teshuvah for it brings healing to the world, and an individual who returns is forgiven and the whole world is forgiven with her.” (Bokser, Abraham Isaac Kook, p. 56) “Teshuvah was planned before the creation of the world, and it is for this reason the foundation of the world.” (Ibid., p. 55) “This quality of raising what is lowly in life toward greatness never ceases at any time, at any hour. This is the meaning of full teshuvah….”(Ibid., p. 98), an ongoing day-by-day, moment by moment process, not something we do once a year during the High Holy Days, but, along with the practice of Shabbat, Judaism’s core spiritual practice. Through teshuvah, an ongoing consciousness practice that allows us to restore right relationship in all dimensions, we become “a nation of priests and a holy people,” a gathering of persons striving toward connection with the Holiest of Holies
Rabbi Avraham Greenbaum
TESHUVAH
It is an ancient tradition that little boys who have learned their Aleph-Beis and are just starting to read, commence their study of the CHUMASH (Five Books of Moses) with VAYIKRA. “Let pure souls come to study the laws dealing with purity.” For a cynical, sophisticated age that feels entitled to call anything and everything into question, the Torah code of sacrifices and purification may appear ancient, primitive, complicated and irrelevant. But if we are willing to explore the Torah with the fresh eyes of children, ready to take the word of G-d on trust, with faith and belief, we can discover that the sacrificial system contains the keys to repentance and the healing of the soul and the entire world.
The theme of sacrifices enters Genesis and Exodus in a number of places. Adam, Cain and Abel, Noah and Abraham all offered sacrifices. Moses’ declared purpose in taking the Children of Israel out of Egypt was to bring sacrifices, and the animal sacrifices brought at the time of the Giving of the Torah were described (Ex.24:5), as were the sacrifices that were to be brought at the inauguration of the Sanctuary (Ex. ch. 29). However, it is here in the opening parshahs of LEVITICUS that the sacrificial system of the Torah is laid out in detail. The universal significance of this teaching is brought out in the use by the Torah of the word ADAM in introducing the sacrificial commandments: “.when a MAN (ADAM) would bring a sacrifice.” (Lev. 1:2). The sacrificial system comes to heal man’s alienation from G-d through atoning for his sins and bringing him back into a relationship of peace with Him. This is the ultimate rectification of Adam’s sin of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This sin caused the mix-up of good and evil in this world that is the root of all subsequent sin.
VAYIKRA begins with the laws of the OLAH, “elevation” or “ascending” offering, which could either be an ox, a sheep or a goat, a dove or pigeon, or take the form of a MINCHAH offering of wheat in the form of flour or unleavened loaves or wafers. In the case of an animal OLAH offering, the blood of the animal was splashed on the sides of altar, while its fat and other portions were burned on the altar. The OLAH offering comes to atone not so much for “sins of commission” — something a person did — as for “sins of omission”, what he failed to do (such as if he failed to fulfil a positive commandment). The laws of OLAH are followed by the laws of SHELAMIM, the peace-offering, an animal sacrifice whose blood and fat were offered on the altar but whose meat was shared between the priests and the one who brought the offering. The SHELAMIM sacrifice is a celebration that signifies that man has made his peace with G-d.
Next come the laws of CHATAS, the sin-offering brought for unwitting violation of Torah prohibitions whose willful infringement carries the penalty of excision. Different kinds of animals are to be brought and different procedures of atonement apply depending on whether the sinner is a private individual, the “Prince” (Nasi, king or leader), the Supreme Court (Sanhedrin) or the High Priest. [Rashi on Lev. 4:22 comments: Happy is the generation whose leader is able to admit he made a mistake and who tries to make amends.]
The last part of Parshas VAYIKRA contains commandments relating to a variety of CHATAS (“Sin”) and ASHAM (“Guilt”) offerings for specific sins. It is noteworthy that while some of the sins in question are bound up purely with man’s relation with G-d (such as unwittingly entering the Sanctuary or eating sacrifices while ritually impure), there are certain sins in man’s behavior to his fellow men that also make him liable to a sacrifice. These include the sin committed by one who, having received goods or money on trust, subsequently denies it under oath. This is at once a sin against G-d and against the person from whom he received the goods or money. It is normal and natural for a person to choose a private place without witnesses in order to entrust someone with valuable goods or money for safekeeping. Besides the two people involved, the only other “witness” to the transaction is G-d Himself, who knows what really happened. If the trustee invokes the name of G-d to swear falsely in denial of what G-d knows, this is a denial of G-d Himself. Not only must the trustee return the goods or money together with a twenty-five per cent supplement. He must also make amends to G-d by bringing a sacrifice.
From Rabbi Rachel Barenblat
The heart of things (Radical Torah) 2007
The book of Vayikra (Leviticus) is the text at the center of the Torah, the kernel around which the other books form a kind of parenthesis or embrace. Now we’re getting into the heart of things.
And the blood of things, and the entrails of things, the kidneys and the fat of things. In this week’s portion, Vayikra, we dive straight into instructions for making korbanot, usually rendered in English as “sacrifices” though the word really means “drawings-near,” as in “offerings which draw us near to God” (or maybe “draw God near to us.”)
Sacrifice-as-worship is wildly foreign to us today. Burnt offerings and offerings of meal; offerings of well-being, and expiation offerings to atone for sins — this stuff feels pretty far out. In this week’s portion we read that when a person unwittingly incurs guilt with regard to any of the mitzvot, that person shall bring such-and-such an offering to be slaughtered, and the fat and blood shall be burned. Could this be further from our understanding of teshuvah as a personal (and individualized) process of soul-searching and turning-toward-God? This is a valuable reminder that avodah, service of God, was once physical and concrete.
It’s easy to feel a disjunction between what we read here, and the form of worship we take for granted now. And the text doesn’t acknowledge that at all. God doesn’t say, “this is how you shall draw near to Me now, for the time being; later on, when humanity is maybe a little bit more evolved, you’ll find other ways of approaching My presence, offering thanks, and seeking to atone for your misdeeds.” It might make our lives easier now if those words were in there — if God had given us an advance alert that someday our paradigm for relationship with God would change. That we would grow to be capable of finding connection through words, instead of bodily fluids and ashes.
But those words would have been disconcerting and painfully baffling to our ancestors. In the days of sacrifice, who could have imagined the satisfaction, joy, and genuine connection we would find in our strange modern worship — our shelves of siddurim (prayerbooks), our minhagim (customs) and nuscha’ot (melody-systems), our piyyutim (liturgical poems) and improvisational prayers? The arrow of linear time moves us in one direction only — which means that we always look back on what was, while our ancestors couldn’t imagine what would be.
But we inhabit circular time as well as linear. Every year we return to the new moon of Nisan. Every year, just as we bid farewell to the book of Shemot, which in English we call Exodus, we prepare ourselves to relive the exodus from Mitzrayim which that book chronicles. And every year we re-enter the sacrificial space of Vayikra, this dip back into a consciousness which considered the careful sacrifice of animals to have transformational effect.
As it happens, this year I’m reading these verses with new eyes. These last few months I’ve had a complicated new relationship with the physical stuff inside my body: the muscles and fat, the blood and nerves and kidneys. I have a clearer understanding of just how complex the body is, and how ultimately mysterious. For all that medical science has achieved (and believe me, I value modern medicine more than words can express), there’s still so much we don’t understand.
So when I immerse in this week’s Torah portion, that’s what really moves me: the mystery of physical bodies. The clear sense that there’s a direct connection between our flesh and the Holy One of Blessing, even if we can’t articulate what that connection is. The sense that what we really want to offer up to God is the life that courses through our bodies — life which ultimately comes from God, and returns to God; which can be sensed but not touched; which can be burned but not ultimately consumed.
~ Rabbi Shefa Gold’s Torah Journeys ~
Vayikra
(And He Called)
LEVITICUS 1:1 – 5:26
The book of Leviticus begins with the Laws of sacrifice for the individual, the congregation and the priests.
THE BLESSING
AS WE STEP INTO THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS, we move to another level of spiritual development and pause to take stock of our journey. Genesis can be read as the descent of the soul and its contraction into physical form. It is the story of incarnation and as the story ends we find ourselves enslaved in the narrow perspectives of physical reality.
Exodus then shows us the path of liberation, the awakening of the soul to its true essence, which interpenetrates the Divine Essence. God must find a way into our hearts and we must find a way into the heart of Reality… which is God-consciousness. The story of Exodus ends with the building of the Mishkan, which is the vehicle for this interpenetration. Through the Mishkan we learn that our Freedom depends on our connection to God and our willingness to make a holy space within us and between us for God to dwell.
How can we sustain this connection, this state of holy freedom?
This is the question addressed by the book of Leviticus. So often the complications of life seem to draw us away from the perspectives of holiness. We become alienated, distracted, complacent, blind to what is essential; deaf to the music at the core of silence; numb to the mystery that dwells at the heart of this life. Our daily struggles sometimes close us off from the flow of the Great Love.
The blessing of Vayikra is the call to come into harmony, balance, connection and intimacy with the God who has freed us for this love… and not only to return, but to establish for ourselves a system of continual returning.
THE MEDICINE that Vayikra gives us for the dis-ease of our alienation from God is described in the language of Korbanot, the “sacrifices.” Literally, Korbanot means “bringing ourselves near” again to God. The Korbanot were a powerful and eff ective means of engaging all of the senses, witnessing the power of Life and Death, and then sharing a sacred meal in the Presence of God. The result was experienced as total purification – removal of obstructions and a re-connection to the flow of God’s love and presence. And for a time this was a spiritual technology that worked well.
THE SPIRITUAL CHALLENGE
OUR TRADITION TELLS US that prayer now takes the place of the sacrifices. The spiritual challenge of Vayikra is to make our prayer-life as powerful, as intense, and as effective as the sacrificial system was for our ancestors.
Can the word of a prayer engage the senses fully? Can we taste it? Smell it? Touch it? Feel its blood? Hear its music and the silence within it? Witness its passage into the void? See in it the shadow of death and the spark of life? Do we leave our prayer feeling purified, our burdens lifted?
Our ancestors celebrated their new state of connection by sharing a sacred meal with the priests and with God. After praying in community, can we also make our celebrations holy? Can we eat these sacred meals – our Kiddush and Oneg Shabbat gatherings1 – knowing that each bite of our feast is also tasted and enjoyed by God?
Wendy’s comment: I encourage you to click on the link to this parsha on Reb Shefa’s website . Under Guidlines for Practice she lists the sacrifices of Olah, Sh’lamin, and Chatat and describes the spiritual illnesses associated with these offerings and the chanted phrase that can be the medicine.
1Kiddush, literally “sanctification,” and Oneg Shabbat, literally “Sabbath joy,” have come to refer to the celebrations following Sabbath services, which can range from simple cake and soda to elaborate sit-down meals.
2 Psalms 23:5
3 Lamentations 4:21
For Guideline for Practice please click on link to website.
http://www.rabbishefagold.com/vayikra/
From Melissa Carpenter
Fat Belongs to God
And the priest will make them go up in smoke, a food offering by fire, for a soothing fragrance. All fat belongs to God. A law for all time for your generations: You will not eat any fat, nor any blood, in any of your settlements. (Leviticus 3:16-17–Vayikra)
chalev = fat, especially abdominal fat
dam = blood
The blood and the abdominal fat of livestock are reserved for God in chapter 3 of the book of Leviticus, Vayikra, which provides instructions for making zevach shelamim, the animal sacrifices that are offered by an individual for the sake of “wholeness”. This type of offering is not made for atonement, but rather to express gratitude to God, or to confirm peace with the people invited to share the feast afterward.
In brief, a man brings an unblemished cow, sheep, or goat to the altar, leans his hand against the animal’s head, and then slaughters it. The priests dash the animal’s blood against all sides of the altar. The priests burn the fat covering the entrails, liver, and kidneys. The fragrance of the smoke is the donor’s gift to God. Then the donor and his guests eat the meat in celebration (and according to Leviticus 7:31-35, the priests are given the breast and the right thigh to eat).
Splashing blood is certainly a dramatic ritual, and fat burns well. But fat and blood are not merely reserved for the ritual at the altar. The Torah prohibits the people from eating any abdominal fat, or any blood, anywhere. Even far away from the altar, even in a time when there is no temple, abdominal fat and blood are reserved for God. Why?
A reason for not consuming blood is given in Leviticus 17:14: You may not consume the blood of any flesh, because the nefesh (soul, animating force) of all flesh is its blood. Genesis 9:5-6 also links blood with the nefesh of a human or animal, and forbids humans to eat flesh with the blood still in it. (Ramban wrote that someone who eats an animal’s blood dilutes his own nefesh and becomes less spiritual, more animal.)
So blood is equated with the nefesh, the animating force that makes a creature alive. What does abdominal fat stand for?
Rabbi R.S. Hirsch wrote that the blood of an animal is its essence, while the fat is what it produces for its own needs. The essence of an animal must never become a human being’s essence, and the needs of an animal must never become a human being’s needs. Human nature must not be equated with animal nature.
I would add that abdominal fat is stored up as a reserve calorie supply against a hungrier time. It’s like a pot of silver buried against hard times; in modern terms, it’s like a stock portfolio. Stockpiling resources can be a good strategy. But we must not become so attached to our stock portfolios that we despair when the market plunges. We cannot really control our savings, so in a way they do not really belong to us. The fat belongs to God.
Similarly, it’s good to tend to our health, to enjoy each day of life, to “choose life” for ourselves and others. But my life, my nefesh, ultimately belongs to God.
From Rav Kook
Vayikra: Black Fire on White Fire
With the construction of the Tabernacle complete, the holy structure began to fulfill its primary purpose: a conduit for communication between God and Moses. “I will commune with you there, and I will speak to you from above the ark-cover” (Ex. 25:22). Before each actual communication, God would first summon Moses to the tent, with a Voice that only Moses could hear.
“God called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Communion Tent.” (Lev. 1:1)
What was the nature of this Divine call?
The Miniature Aleph and the Four-Pronged Shin
The word Vayikra (‘God called’) is written in an unusual fashion. The final letter, the aleph, is miniature. Did God command Moses to write it that way? Or was this an expression of Moses’ extraordinary humility — an attempt to ‘hide’ the aleph, so that it would appear that God only happened (“vayikar”) to speak with Moses, in a way similar to the chance prophetic experiences of the evil prophet Balaam?
Another unusual letter may be found in the tefillin (phylacteries) worn on the head. Usually, the letter shin is written with three upward strokes, but the shin embossed on the left side of the tefillin has four. Some commentaries connect this peculiar shin to the Midrashic description of the Torah’s transmission to Israel as black fire engraved on white fire. What does this mean? What are these black and white fires?
Black Ink on White Parchment
When we think about a Torah scroll, we usually only consider the letters themselves, written in black ink. Yet, the Talmud (Menachot 29a) rules that every letter in a Torah scroll must be completely surrounded by parchment. This requirement is called “mukaf gevil.” This means that the white parchment around the letters is an integral part of the Torah. In fact, the white space is a higher form of Torah. It is analogous to the white fire of Sinai — a sublime, hidden Torah that cannot be read in the usual manner.
There is a delicate balance between black and white in the Torah. The shirot, the poetic portions in the Torah, are written in a special fashion, like a wall constructed from layers of black and white bricks. These poetic sections are the loftiest parts of the Torah. Consequently, they have more white space — they contain a greater measure of the esoteric white fire. If a scribe were to write other sections of the Torah in this special layout, the Torah scroll would be rendered invalid. After the Torah was revealed and restricted to our limited world, it must be written with the appropriate ratio of black to white.
What about the four-pronged shin on tefillin? The mitzvah of tefillin is closely connected to the manifestation of Torah after its revelation into the finite world. “All of the peoples of the land shall see that the name of God is called upon you, and they shall be in awe of you” (Deut. 28:10, Menachot 35b). Thus, tefillin correspond to the lower realm of black fire, and are marked with a shin bearing an extra measure of black.
We can deepen our understanding of the white and black fires by considering another example of white space in the Torah. Extra space is left blank to separate sections of the Torah. The Sages explained that these separations allowed Moses to reflect upon and absorb the previous lesson. In other words, the white fire corresponds to the loftier realm of thought and contemplation. The black fire of the letters, on the other hand, is the revelation of intellect into the more concrete level of speech — a contraction and limitation of abstract thought.
The Divine Call Before Revelation
The distinction between white and black fire also sheds light on God’s call to Moses before speaking with him. The Voice summoning Moses to enter the tent was in fact the Divine call from Sinai, “an infinite call that never ceased” (Deut. 5:19). The summons would reach Moses as he stood outside the tent, before being constrained within the four walls of the Tabernacle. This Voice was not a revelation of Torah, but an overture to its revelation. It belonged to the esoteric white fire of Torah, before its constriction and revelation into the physical world.
This is the reason that Moses made the aleph of the Divine call smaller. Since it belonged to the realm of white fire, the summons required an extra measure of white space over black ink. On the surface, Moses’ miniature aleph humbly implies a diminished state of the revealed Torah of black fire; but on a deeper level, it reflects an increase in knowledge of the hidden Torah of white fire.
(adapted from Shemuot HaRe’iyah IV)
Copyright © 2006 by Chanan Morrison