Weekly Torah Portion - VaYikra (Leviticus 1:1 - 5:26)

This coming Shabbat, Jews all over the world will read in synagogue the VaYikra Torah portion (Leviticus 1:1-5:26). This is the first portion of the book of Leviticus - the third book out of the five books of Moses, and a book with a lot of technical details about the service of the Jewish Priests (Levites: people from the tribe of Levy; and Kohanites: Aaron and his children). But in the Torah, even in the most technical portions, there are always deep ethical, philosophical and psychological lessons and messages for all of humanity to learn and for all generations. Let's try to delve in. If you have any ideas of your own that you would like to share with me, I would love to hear them. Knut - thank you for commenting, it's nice to know you're reading this! Comments from other people are welcome as well! 

Our portion starts with the Hebrew word VaYikra (ויקרא), meaning: "and (G-d) called..." G-d calls Moses, and only then He speaks to him. G-d calls man and seeks him out actively. He doesn't just let us be or speaks vaguely in the hope that we will hear Him. He calls to us and seeks us out actively, and we in return have to try to heed the call, each of us with our own calling, and engage in a life sustaining dialogue with G-d.

If you look closely at the Hebrew text, the word ויקרא is spelled with a smaller "Aleph" (א), as follows: ויקרא. Aleph is the first letter of the Hebrew Alphabet, and also the first letter in G-d's name: אלקים. Our sages teach that in His calling to us, humans, G-d has somewhat shrunk Himself, so to speak, made Himself smaller, in order to "make room" for us to act, to manifest our talents and gifts, to utilize our G-d given gifts (which each of us is endowed with) to benefit our fellow men and the entire world. In G-d's calling to Moses (and to all of us), G-d is asking that we act to the best of our ability using whatever we have to benefit the world and beautify it, to make it a better, more goodly place to live in - each of us to the best of our abilities, in our own small corner of the world.
To be happy people we have to believe that we have an intrinsic value, that we didn't come to the world for nothing - that we have something that is uniquely ours to do here, to give to the world, and only we can find out what it is and do it. If we lose this sense of self worth, we won't do anything and we will sink into melancholy and depression. The way to prevent it (and to spring out of it if we had already sunk in it) is to realize what we can do for others, and to actually do it. Some of us are gifted artistically, some of us have charisma and magnetic power, some of us are gifted musically or linguistically - each of us should take whatever talent we have, and make use of it to make the world a better place.  

This week's portion deals with five kinds of offerings that people can bring to atone for their sins: burnt offering, cereal offering, peace offering, purification offering, reparation offering. Each offering has its own set of rules and instructions for bringing it. Reading about such offerings in our day and age, when the Tabernacle and the Temple are no longer in place and haven't been for more than 2000 years now, makes us, modern readers, feel alienated: what value is there for us in such teachings? What can we learn from them? And why did people in ancient times have to sacrifice those poor animals? Does G-d really want such offerings? 

First, let's consider the Hebrew word for offering: Korban (קורבן). This word has an additional meaning: sacrifice. When we look at its root letters,  ק.ר.ב, we can see that these are the same root letters of the Hebrew word Karov (קרוב), which means "close" (as in closeness). So there is a semantic connection between the words offering/sacrifice and the word for closeness. The idea in bringing offerings is to give up something big in order to get closer to G-d. In ancient time, people's wealth was measured in terms of how much cattle they had, how many cows, sheep, goats, and how many fields and produce they had. A bull was a very expensive piece of property, perhaps like a Mercedes in our time. Giving up a bull, bringing it to the priests and seeing this expensive property being burnt on the altar and then eaten, was not an easy thing to do. People did it usually in order to show how deeply sorry they felt about certain sins that they have committed. By giving up a very expensive piece of property (and seeing it killed and burnt in front of one's very eyes), the sinner tried to ask for G-d's forgiveness and in the process become closer to G-d after feeling alienated from Him because of sin. A poor person, who did not own bulls, could bring a vegetarian offering or a pigeon instead. The important thing is that the offering would be something that is very expensive for that person's means.

Today, when the Temple is no longer in place (its giant stones can be seen scattered around the place where the Temple used to stand, next to the Western Wall), and no one knows where the Holy Ark is (probably buried somewhere below the Al-Aqsa mosque in the Temple Mount in Jerusalem), we don't have the custom to bring offerings. Our modern day sensibilities makes most of us shudder to the thought of slaughtering animals and dealing with their blood. This job is spared today to people who work in slaughter houses. The rest of us buy clean, nicely packed meat in the supermarket and don't have to deal with blood. How can we understand the relevance of sacrificing to our own lives today?

The great rabbi, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook of blessed memory said that when the Temple will be (peacefully) rebuilt in the future, all the offerings will be vegetarian, for the consumption of the Kohanites. 

So, does G-d really need our offerings? In contrast to idol-worshiping cultures, in which their idols are believed to be "eating" the offerings, in Judaism the sacrifice is meant as an act with a psychological impact on the individual, something that helps man attain forgiveness by showing one's true sorrow for one's sins and by showing one's readiness to pay heavily for one's sins. G-d does not need our offerings. We need our offerings to be and feel clean of sin and therefore worthy of being close to G-d. 

What do we do now, when there are no offerings instituted? We can still implement the same principle and translate it to our world view. We can give something expensive that we own (doesn't have to be our Mercedes) in favor of a cause that serves to make up for our sins. It can come in the form of a generous donation to a cause we believe in and want to strengthen, or giving some money to a less fortunate individual who can really use some extra funds. It can come in the form of investing a portion of our time and energy in acting to promote a cause we believe in or in helping an individual in need, any kind of need. We can give of our time to the needy - visiting lonely elderly people at their homes or visiting the sick at hospital, giving of our time to help young mothers who have many kids, anything that would benefit someone else and would make this world a better place.The important thing is that once we sacrifice something of our own, it has to be something big enough for us to feel it's meaningful. 

The leaders of the nation - the president of each tribe - are also to bring their own offerings to G-d, to show their submission to the one Leader that is above the rest of us. If sacrifices were instituted today, we would have expected to see PM Netanyahu walking the relatively short walk from his official residence to the Temple and sacrificing his own offerings.

This Shabbat is called Shabbat Zachor (the Shabbat just before Purim). So we will also read the Zachor portion ("remember what Amalek did to you..."; Deuteronomy 25:17-19). Halacha (Jewish Law) requires each Jew to hear the reading of that portion. Amalek symbolizes the world view in which there is no G-d, and everything that happens in the world is just the result of coincidence. Judaism stands in total opposition to this world view. In Jewish thought and belief, everything is meaningful, and nothing is left to chance, because G-d is one, an omnipresent, omniscient and omnipotent G-d. To attest for this, there is a special meaning in reading and hearing the Zachor portion. Amalek attacked us in the desert just when we started losing faith. To eradicate Amalek and the amalekite world view, all we have to do is strengthen our faith in G-d.

Shabbat Shalom to you all! 

With love from Jerusalem,

Revital