Dvar Torah Parsha Vayikra 5783

Vayikra 1:1 – 5:26

We now begin the book of Vayikra, or “He called” in Hebrew. At large they refer to it as Leviticus. It’s known formally as Torat Kohanim, “Instructions for the Priests.” In essence, per the commentary in Etz Chaim, it is a prescription for proper worship of the G_d of Israel. The first seven chapters of Vayikra (Leviticus) outline the Biblical sacrifice system, five of those seven which we will be looking at today.

In our parsha, we learn the laws of karbanot, the animal and meal offerings brought to the sanctuary. They are as follows per Chabad.org:

1.Olah, the ascending offering that is fully burnt and offered to Hashem atop the alter.

2.Minchah, five varieties of meal offerings prepared with flour, olive oil, and frankincense.

3.Zevach Shelamim, or peace offering, also known as an offering of well-being, where the meat was eaten by the one bringing the offering, after parts are burned on the alter and parts shared with the kohanim. Interesting sidenote: The meat for this offering must be consumed by the next day, encouraging the donor to invite others including the poor, lest it go to waste.

4.Chatat, brought to atone for accidental transgressions committed by the High Priest, the entire community, the king, or the ordinary Jew.

5.And finally, asham, the guilt offering brought by one who has appropriated property of the Sanctuary, who is in doubt whether they transgressed a divine prohibition, or who has committed a betrayal against Hashem by swearing falsely to defraud a fellow man. We are responsible, not only for the wrong we do, but the wrong done by not doing what we should. Also, restitution was necessary before the sacrifice.

Offerings must be free will, belonging to you and not stolen, without blemish, to express love for Hashem, NOT to impress the neighbors. Even as we begin our parsha, Etz Chaim points out that the wording begins in the singular, but soon shifts to plural. A Chasidic master (unnamed by Etz Chaim) taught that we enter the sanctuary as individuals, but the experience of worship leads us to transcend our separateness and become a part of community.

The Parsha speaks of the pleasing odor. Ibn Ezra, who lived in the 11th and 12th century CE, suggests that the gift of pleasing odor, rather than pleasing to Hashem, rather it is the prayers of the worshiper that pleases G_d as the sweet odor is to the human. Rashi, an 11th century commentator says what is pleasing to Hashem is not the aroma, rather that the people Israel are doing G_d’s will.

So it was not uncommon in Biblical times, indeed it was generally the rule in religions throughout the Near and Middle East to practice animal sacrifice. It remained the practice until the destruction of the second temple. After that, the Sanhedrin, led by Rabbi Gamaliel II, first decided the sacrifices could happen in a person’s home, but then reversed that, saying karbanot could no longer happen anywhere in the absence of a priest or a temple. But buried in all of this, per Cantor David Fair with the URJ, there is an answer. Korban, according to JPS is never translated as a sacrifice, rather as an offering. One such offering is prayer.

What does an offering entail? So, anyone who reads my dvars knows that I am a devoted follower of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory. He offers some interesting thoughts worth repeating here. He focuses on the words “happiness” and “meaning.” Happiness is mostly a matter of satisfying needs and wants. Meaning on the other hand is about how you feel in the present, and how you judge your life as a whole, past, present, and future. Happiness is associated with taking, meaning with giving. Vayikra, Rashi tells us, means being called to a task in love. Some are called to a vocation or life choice, not because the benefits are good, but for a higher calling. Such a call requires sacrifice but sacrifice gladly given. An offering if you please.

I believe each of us receive those calls to act on something outside of ourselves. It is ours to heed when we receive such a summon. It might be fixing a wrong, healing or comforting one who is sick, meeting a need, all ways that we are responding to a calling from Hashem, an invitation to offer of ourselves. We make sacrifices, sacrifices perhaps of time, money, a part of ourselves because we are summoned by that voice in our heart to do so. Again, from Rabbi Sacks in his book To Heal a Fractured World, “Where what we want to do meets what needs to be done, that is where G_d wants us to be.”

For me, I’ve grown old and require a wheelchair to do the work my legs once did. But there are still callings to be heeded. We each have things we can do. We Jews know the value of life. In his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl who survived the death camps noticed those that lost the will to live, died. All while many discovered that those who found a meaning for their life, survived. “Life is a task”, he would say, but “the religious man differs from the apparently irreligious man only by experiencing his existence not simply as a task, but as a mission.”

From my perspective, happiness is nice, but it comes and goes. But meaning, a life’s mission is the heart, the soul of Be-ing. The essence of sacrifice said Rabbi Shneur Zalman, is that we offer ourselves. In a bygone era, that meant giving of your produce, animal, and vegetable to show love towards an entity higher than oneself. Today, we show that love through our gifts of time, money, labor, something of ourselves. And prayer, individually and communally. We each come into this world with a purpose, every one of us. We choose whether to answer that calling, but when we do, we gain meaning.

Baruch Hashem and L’Chaim.