Rabbi Reuben's Weekly Torah Commentary
Vayikra
(Leviticus 1:1-5:26)
We are beginning this week what is for most people, the most boring and uncomfortable book of the entire Torah – Leviticus. It is filled with detailed descriptions of all the various bloody sacrifices and offerings that the ancient Israelites were commanded to bring to the sanctuary in the wilderness and ultimately to the Temple in Jerusalem. It outlines in fine print exactly how the priests are supposed to sprinkle the blood of the sacrifices on the altar, and dab a drop of blood as well on their own bodies in strategic places (like ear and thumb), and how to slaughter a bull or a goat or a sheep in order to properly offer it us as a spiritual and physical gift to God on behalf of the people. Every description grates on our modern ears.
Yes, these offerings were designed to fulfill a variety of specific spiritual, emotional and communal functions. They served as acts of physical expiation for sins committed by one person against another or against God, as an expression of gratitude or thanksgiving in recognition of the blessings we each experience in our lives, or to help in the emotional process of letting go of guilt over something we did that we shouldn’t have or didn’t do that we should have.
The Book of Leviticus is a quite elaborate series of rituals, priestly responsibilities on behalf of the spiritual health of the community as a whole, and specific guidelines as to how the priests were supposed to act as intermediaries between the individual and the community and God in order to maintain the spiritual health of everyone.
It really was remarkable when you stop and think about it. This community of former slaves who had just escaped from hundreds of years of oppression in Egypt, ruled over by not only the Pharaoh but by his legion of Egyptian priests and Sun God worshippers who had ordained the fundamental ideas of right and wrong of ethics and morality for Egyptian society that allowed for the Israelite enslavement in the first place, were now fashioning their own unique spiritual civilization transforming that same institution called “the priesthood” under whose control they had suffered in Egypt for centuries, into a system that exalted the place of the individual human being as reflecting the very image of God.
This is perhaps the true creative genius of Jewish civilization – to take what we experience in each generation and every non-Jewish culture in which we have found ourselves, and find new values and different ways of transforming rituals, customs, holidays, celebrations and ideas into uniquely Jewish expressions of our own fundamental values and way of life. It is the essence of the very name of this week’s Torah portion which also serves as the Hebrew name of the entire book of Leviticus – Vayikra. Vayikra means “And He called.” It is a profound lesson within a single word. It is an eternal challenge to open our minds and souls to the very act of being called to a sacred task. Our own unique sacred task. To challenge ourselves each year, each month, each week to discover to what each of us is feeling called in our own lives. Literally, what is your calling? What are you impelled to do in order to allow your own unique voice to be heard in the world? What is the work of the heart that is yours to do, in order to contribute your own unique gifts to the world? That is this week’s challenge, and in so doing we become what the Torah calls “A kingdom of priests” so that every one of us becomes empowered to help one another bring more holiness, more sacredness, more godliness, more love into the world.