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TORAH SPARKS

 

Parashat Vayikra, Shabbat Zachor

March 12, 2022, 9 Adar II 5782

Torah: Leviticus 1:1-5:26; Triennial 4:27-5:26;

Maftir: Deuteronomy 25:17-19

Haftarah: I Samuel 15:2-34


 

Moshe, Hillel, and Frederick the Mouse

Ilana Kurshan

 

In the transition from Exodus to Leviticus, the Torah shifts from describing the construction of the Mishkan to describing its operations. At the end of the book of Exodus, Moshe was in charge of the Mishkan, transmitting God s architectural instructions and ensuring that the structure was built in accordance with all that God commanded Moshe. Now, with the start of Leviticus, the Mishkan becomes the domain of Aaron and the priests, who are responsible for the system of sacrificial worship. No wonder, then, that the midrashic rabbis imagine Moshe standing off in the wings at the start of our parashah, unsure of his role and reluctant to resume center stage until summoned by God. God s call to Moshe at the start of our parashah is read by the rabbis as a lesson in the value of humility, which is surprisingly more about self-assurance than about self-effacement.

 

The midrashic rabbis (Leviticus Rabbah 1:5) pick up on an apparent redundancy in the opening verse of our parashah: The Lord called to Moshe and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting (1:1). If the Torah tells us that the Lord called to Moshe, why does it also have to state that the Lord spoke to him? Aren t these verbs essentially synonymous? The midrash explains that Moshe was standing off to the side and thus God had to first call him over before speaking to him, saying, For how long will you keep yourself low? The time waits but for you! The rabbis contend that this is the same posture Moshe adopted at the burning bush, when he hid his face from God; as per the midrash, it is also the posture he adopted and at the Red Sea, when God said, If you do not split the sea, no one else will, and then again at Sinai, when God had to call Moshe up the mountain. The rabbis present Moshe as a model of humility, concluding that one ought to go two or three seats lower and take your seat. Better that people should say to you: Come up, come up, and not say to you: Go down, go down. They compare Moshe to Hillel, who was also famous for his self-effacement, arguing that it is better to underestimate oneself than to err on the side of self-aggrandizement.

 

And yet the midrash suggests that as Moshe stands outside the Mishkan with his head bent and his hands in his proverbial pockets, God has grown somewhat exasperated with him: For how long will you keep yourself low? This does not seem to be the humility that God desires. The rabbis explain that Moshe was reluctant to come forward because he was uncertain as to what he could contribute. He has watched as the Israelites donated gold and precious stones to the Mishkan, and he doubts what he can add. Everyone has brought their voluntary offerings to the Mishkan, and I have brought nothing (Leviticus Rabbah 1:6). God, seeing Moshe s despondence, said to him, As you live, your speech is more beloved to me than all. Moshe thinks he has nothing to offer, but God assures him that his eloquence is valued most highly. He is like the mouse named Frederick in Leo Leonni s eponymous picture book, whose gift is not the corn and nuts and wheat and straw that all the other mice gather for the winter, but the beautiful poem about blue periwinkles and red poppies which he composes to sing to the other field mice once the days have grown gray and dark.

 

Moshe, who has always doubted his powers of speech, is perhaps being once again reminded that his gifts are not just a reflection of his own innate talents, but of what God has instilled in him: Who gives man speech? Who makes him dumb or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? (Exodus 4:11). If Moshe denigrates himself too much, he risks denying and depriving the others of his God-given gifts. After all, it is the very same Hillel famous for his humility who would arrive at the festival of the water-drawing on Sukkot and say, If I m here, everyone is here (Sukkah 53a). Hillel realized that if he, in spite of his humility, could share his gifts with the world, then surely everyone else could as well. We are not meant to lay low and downplay our talents, but to use them to enrich those around us like Frederick, who responds to the other mice s plaudits Frederick, you are a poet! by blushing, taking a bow, and saying shyly, I know it.

 

The construction of the Mishkan is frequently analogized to the creation of the world, with the Mishkan imagined as a Garden of Eden (see, for instance, Tanchuma Pekudei 2). If so, then we might read God s first call to Moshe in our parashah as analogous to God s first call to Adam in the garden: Where are you? An omniscient God has no need to ask Adam about his whereabouts; rather, God is asking Adam to take responsibility for his actions. God does not want Adam to hide away shamefully, just as God does not want Moshe to stand off to the side with lowered head. Adam, instilled with the knowledge of good and evil, is being called to repent for his wrongdoing. And Moshe, instilled with divine powers of speech, is being called to continue to be a conduit for God s word. Both must come forth and own up to what is expected of them.

 

Like Adam, every human being is created in God s image and furnished with God-given gifts. If we can learn neither to flaunt nor to suppress those gifts, we will internalize the message of the book of Leviticus, namely that sacrificial worship like all religious worship is about giving the best of ourselves and, in so doing, drawing closer to God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Treachery by Mistake
Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

Me ilah (or ma al ) is the term used here for use of an item from the holy for a purpose other than the Mikdash (temple) for which it was intended.

 

Text: Vayikra 5:15-16

15 If a person betrays trust (ma al), and sins unintentionally regarding the holy things of the Lord, then he shall bring to the Lord as his guilt offering a ram without blemish from the flocks, with its valuation in shekels of silver according to the shekel of the sanctuary, as a guilt offering. 16And he shall make restitution for the harm that he has done in regard to the holy thing, and shall add one-fifth to it and give it to the kohen. So the kohen shall make atonement for him with the ram of the guilt offering, and it shall be forgiven him.

      Why might me ilah betrayal of trust, wrongly using holy things, considered something that requires atonement by sacrifice, restitution, and an additional one-fifth of the value?

      All this is conditioned on the person having acted unintentionally. What does the process mentioned here do for the unintentional sinner?

Commentary: R. Saadiah Gaon Vayikra 5:15

Betrays trust it is an issue of breaking a covenant or a command.

      How is using what is intended for something else (especially for the holy) a form of breaking a covenant? What was that covenant about? Between whom and whom is the covenant?

Commentary: Rashi Vayikra 5:15

Betrays trust (ma al) The term ma al everywhere in Scripture denotes "changing". As it says, (I Chronicles 5:25) "And they committed a ma al against the God of their fathers; for they went a whoring after the gods of the people of the land". And similarly, it states of the faithless wife, (Numbers 5:12) "[If any man’s wife goes aside] and commit a ma al to him".

      What kind of change is Rashi referring to?

      How do you understand ma al in Vayikra considering that the Torah discusses an unintentional action?

Commentary: R. David Zvi Hoffman Vayikra 5:14

The meaning of ma al, is as Ibn Ezra already explained: A cover (from here comes the word me il a coat, the outer garment) meaning covering his action or acting by deceit and treachery , and so clothing ( beged , the same root as boged=traitor) enables cover up and treachery.

      If the person mistakenly used what was intended for the holy, where is the lie and the cover up?

      R. D.Z. Hoffman considers me ila (ma al) to be a form of betrayal. Who is betrayed and how? According to the linguistic connection to garments, when might we be at risk of ma al on a social level?

Can God Change?

Bex Stern Rosenblatt

 

In the Dvar Haftarah for Ki Tisa, we thought about whether it was possible for humans to change, how a person could change themselves. In this week s haftarah the same question is posed about God. Can God change? Is the essence of eternity and divinity to never change or to be constantly evolving?

 

The question of God s ability to change is posed around the word nehem. It s a hard word to translate, a word with many variable meanings. It is used to mean to have compassion, to be sorry, to regret, to repent, to comfort, and to be comforted, among other things. The word appears three times in our haftarah portion, opening and closing the portion and once in the middle. We read, in verse eleven as translated by Robert Alter: I repent that I made Saul king, for he has turned back from Me, and My words he has not fulfilled. Likewise, the haftarah closes with verse thirty-five, as translated by Alter: the LORD had repented making Saul king over Israel. But in between these verses we get a most curious statement. We read in verse twenty-nine, as translated by Alter, And, what s more, Israel s Eternal does not deceive and does not repent, for He is no human to repent.

 

The story tells us twice of God repenting (or regretting, etc. depending on how you choose to translate it.) And yet the story also tells us that God does not repent, that repentance is a uniquely human quality. A repentant God is a God who changes, a God who can be constantly evolving. In the story of the haftarah, this makes sense. God had chosen Saul as the first king of Israel and is now changing course, to anoint David as king. It is a very awkward transition, with the succession pangs providing most of the material for the book of Samuel. Surely there could have been a better way to do this. If God had always wanted David to be king, perhaps God could have skipped Saul. One could conclude that God must have initially wanted Saul and then changed God s mind when Saul failed to do as he was ordered.

 

So why are we also told that God does not repent, does not change God s mind? This creates an image of a God who always had everything in a divine plan – a God who intended for Israel to go through the mess of Saul s kingship in order to get to David s kingship. This is the sort of God we refer to when we say things like everything happens for a reason. This is the all-knowing God who has the world s best interests at heart. But this is not a God who is responsive to us, who hears humanity and adjusts the divine plan.

 

Our haftarah tries to have it both ways – both the responsive God and the all-knowing God, the flexible God and the fixed God. There is something wonderful in this paradox, something Godlike, something bigger than we can understand. The essence of divinity can hold both never changing and constantly evolving, even if we cannot.