TORAH SPARKS

 

Parshat Vayikra

March 25, 2023 | 3 Nissan 5783

Torah: Leviticus 1:1-5:26 Triennial: Leviticus 1:1-2:16

Haftarah: Isaiah 43:21-44:23


 

Our Role

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt
Parashah

The first parashah of the Book of Leviticus, the record of laws about purity and impurity and the priests who enforce them, is written from our point of view. It details our experience as ordinary Israelites of offering sacrifices. We learn our own choreography and then it is through the eyes of the ordinary Israelites that we watch the choreography of Aaron and the priests. We are invited into the ritual. We are meant to hear the laws and we are meant to understand them. We are meant to participate in ritual and understand what the priests are doing when they do their part.

 

These laws are presented to us, unmitigated, by Moses. The priests do not tell us how they will be priests and how we should relate to them. Rather, we all hear at the same time of the rules for sacrifice. We, the community, take precedent over the priests. In line with Aviva Zornberg s exploration of Leviticus in the shadow of the Golden Calf, it makes sense to elevate us, the people. We are the ones who could ask for the priests to turn to idolatry, as we did with the making of the Golden Calf. We are also the ones who can keep the priests from turning to idolatry, by knowing how they and we ought to relate to God.

 

Within this dynamic, it is worth considering how the incident of the Golden Calf affected Moses s relationship with God. Our parashah opens with these words, And he called to Moses and the LORD spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying. It seems to begin in media res. God s name is not mentioned as the one who calls to Moses; it is assumed we know that. Rashi uses the absence of a subject for he called in order to bind the opening of Leviticus back to the closing of Exodus. Exodus ends with Moses, having directed the building of God s house, now separated from God, who is inside that house. We read And the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle. And Moses could not come into the Tent of Meeting, for the cloud abode upon it and the glory of the LORD filled the Tabernacle. Moses, who had once spoken to God face to face, who had entered into the divine cloud on Mount Sinai, is now unable to enter God s presence. Perhaps, post Golden Calf, there is a period when Moses is less wanted, less invited. This, according to Rashi s reading, begins to change with the opening of Leviticus. The glory of God from the verse in Exodus calls out to Moses. God reengages Moses in speech. It will be after the installation of the priests, according to Rashi, that Moses is welcomed back into the Tent of Meeting, back into the presence of God.

 

Exodus Rabbah 19:2 explains Moses s presence with God at Mount Sinai and his initial distance from God at the Tent of Meeting differently. The midrash has Moses say, To Mount Sinai, whose superiority was only temporary, and whose holiness was the holiness of three days, I could not ascend until the Word was spoken to me. But the superiority of this, the Tabernacle of Meeting, is an eternal superiority, and its holiness is an eternal holiness. It is certainly proper that I not enter therein until I am spoken to from before the Lord. It picks up on the fact that Moses is called to Mount Sinai, just as he will be called to the Tent of Meeting in our parashah, and as he had been called after he turned aside at the burning bush. The midrash stresses the holiness of the Tent of Meeting as an eternal dwelling place for God. While revelation happened at Mount Sinai, relationship happens at the Tent of Meeting.

 

God calls Moses into a new stage of being with God. God is living in Moses s midst and Moses has to learn how to coexist with God on an everyday basis. The way to do this is through us, through the everyday people. We are called. We are the ones who will be in relationship with God through all of our actions. We are the ones who learn how to bring sacrifices to God s dwelling place. When God calls Moses back into the Tent of Meeting, Moses knows this time that we have his back. We are not occupying ourselves by building idols. Instead, we become the lived experience of human-divine relationship. By living our lives, we transform a moment on Sinai into an eternal reality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


How Do You Worship?

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb
Haftarah

You have not brought Me the sheep of your burnt offerings,
Nor have you honored Me with your sacrifices
(Isaiah 43:23)

After reading an entire parashah of sacrifices, the haftarah from Isaiah the prophet calls the people to task for not bringing the sacrifices. It seems a bit strange considering how many times we read of sacrifices in the Tanakh. (Remember Saul who claimed that the people would not kill the choicest of Amalek s livestock since those were to be sacrificed to God?) Consulting traditional commentators takes us to different readings and different realities.

Rashi reads v. 23 closely and notices that it says that you have not brought ME the sheep he assumes that they did practice sacrifice, but the intended recipient of the sacrifices was not the God of Israel but rather other gods. Tanakh history is replete with worship of other gods, making such a reading reasonable. Additional support comes from the continuation of the haftarah which speaks of idol worshipers. This prophecy would be another in a long line of anti-foreign gods worship messages.

Malbim focuses on the same words, but his understanding was quite different. When God emphasizes brought ME God means for Me . The people brought the sacrifices to God, but God is telling them that He is not in need of the sacrifice. According to Malbim this is a debate about the essence of God. The pasuk is arguing against the people who consider sacrifices as a way of manipulating God to do a person s will, lest the person withholds sacrifices that God needs. Are they truly worshiping God when they bring a sacrifice? Do they believe that they are fulfilling God s needs? While sacrifices have passed from our world of worship, some people may still share these thoughts and sentiments in their relationship with God.

A completely different direction is taken by Ibn Ezra, the exegete trying to understand the text in its historical context. For him, this section in the book of Isaiah are the words of a later prophet speaking to those exiled from Judah. You have not brought Me burnt offerings – in Babylon. This is perhaps the most astonishing of the readings. Abarbanel, who lived several centuries later, wondered what Ibn Ezra had in mind. Did he expect the Jews in Babylon to sacrifice outside the Land of Israel?! Perhaps this is a debate that Ibn Ezra is hinting at.

While today it might seem obvious to Jews around the world that their community needs a center of worship, things were probably less obvious as Jews went into exile in Babylon. While in the land of Israel they had worshiped in local shrines at least until the reforms of Hezekiah and Josiah, could such local shrines exist outside of the land? Ibn Ezra s ambiguous comment should make us aware of the many twists and turns that Jewish worship has taken over time, each having supporters and vehement detractors. The debate about the face of worship is alive and well (and occasionally uncomfortable) until this day.

From Purim to Pesach
Ilana Kurshan
Adventures in Mishnah with My Kids
Pesachim 5:5-9

Two weeks ago, on the Friday before Purim, I went out with my twins to buy accessories for their costumes. I hadn t planned to save it for the last minute. I d told the twins that I refused to buy them pre-made, pre-packaged costumes that they would never wear again; I didn t believe in disposable clothing, and I wanted them to be more creative. Instead, I told them, they had to design their own costumes using materials we had at home, and then I would take them to the store for anything they were still missing. Only now, a few days before the holiday, were they ready to go shopping Tagel needed yellow pipecleaners, and Liav needed a hula skirt.

 

When we arrived at Max Stock a cross between Target and the dollar store I realized my mistake. The lines outside the store snaked back and forth through the parking lot, as if everyone in the city had the same idea. I ought to have realized my mistake. Purim is a big deal in Israel, especially for children. Schools in Jerusalem are off for three and a half days; the half day is costume day, when all the kids come to school dressed up and parade in the streets. Every kid needed a costume, and Max Stock was the place to buy it. But how long would we have to wait?

 

I asked the woman in front of us in line, who was standing with more children than I could count. She told me that they were only allowed to have fifty people in the store at once, so they were letting people in as groups and locking the door behind each group; as soon as one group left, the doors would be unlocked and the next fifty people in line would be ushered in. I nodded. It made sense, especially given the Covid restrictions on too many people congregating indoors at once. But when I heard her explanation, I did think about Purim or the pandemic. I immediately thought about Pesach, still more than a month away.

 

The fifth chapter of the Mishnah in Pesachim, which Matan and I were learning, teaches about the offering of the pesach sacrifice on the day before the holiday. As the Torah teaches (Exodus 12), every Jew had to join a small group of people known as a chavurah who would bring a pesach sacrifice and then eat it together that evening. On the day before Pesach, the Temple courtyard was mobbed, with everyone standing in line with their nervous, bleating lambs, waiting their turn to slaughter. How could the Temple possibly accommodate them all?

 

The Mishnah (5:5) explains that all the people who came to offer their Pesach sacrifices were divided into three groups, based on their place in line. The first group those who had arrived earliest were ushered in first, while everyone else waited outside. Then the doors were locked and the shofar was sounded inside the Temple to mark the occasion ceremoniously. The members of the first group would slaughter their lambs and the priests would stand in rows holding gold and silver basins with which to receive the blood. The Mishnah explains that these basins did not have flat bottoms so that the priests would not set the bowls down at any point, which might lead the blood to congeal. To expedite the process, the priests would stand in place and pass the bowls down the rows, until the last priest would sprinkle the blood over the base of the altar and pass the empty basins back. If a priest was being handed a full basin from the priest on one side of him and an empty basin from the priest on the other side, he had to take the full basin first, because one does not pass over mitzvot. It s a mitzvah to perform all aspects of the pesach sacrifice, which includes throwing the blood on the altar. The more mundane job of passing the basin back could wait.

 

I am thinking about this mishnah when suddenly the doors of Max Stock open and the next group of people is let in. We are not among them; we re too far back in line. The Mishnah in Pesachim teaches that as soon as the first group of Israelites has finished offering their sacrifices, the doors of the Temple were unlocked and the second group was allowed to enter. Once that group finished, the third group known in the Talmud as the lazy group, because they showed up last, we were allowed to enter. It seems we are part of the lazy group, but thankfully the twins were waiting patiently.

 

When we finally entered the store, there were costumes strewn everywhere. There weren t nearly enough hangers for all the costumes on sale, so customers had tried them on and then left them draped on shelves or discarded on the floor. The Mishnah in Pesachim (5:9) teaches that after the blood was thrown on the altar, the animal was hung by its hind legs on hooks affixed to the Temple courtyard so that its entrails could be flayed and offered on the altar. Since there were so many people offering sacrifices on this particular day, there weren t enough hooks. And so sometimes two people would hold up poles on their shoulders and suspend the animal from them. It seems the Temple, too, needed more hangers.

 

While the sacrifices were being offered, the Levites would chant the Hallel which explains why we recite Hallel as part of the Pesach Seder, a ritual that substitutes for the Pesach offering in post-Temple times. If the Levites finished the Hallel but the group had not finished offering their sacrifices, they would repeat the Hallel as many times as necessary, so that each sacrifice had musical accompaniment. However, explains the Mishnah (5:7), they never got through the first recitation of Hallel when it came to the third group. Presumably the third group was smaller, since it was composed only of those who did not make it into the Temple with the first two groups. Or perhaps the third group was so impatient after hours of waiting that they went about their business more quickly.

 

I can relate. I hurry the girls through the store, eager to get out of there as soon as possible. Our costume shopping took much longer than I d planned, and I needed to pick up the little kids from preschool. One twin who will dress up as the sun finds the pipe cleaners she needs to attach to her headband as rays. The other twin who refused to be the moon because matching costumes for twins is so dumb, Ima picks out a hula skirt to wear with the lei she received at a bat mitzvah party. I am full of gratitude for this other Purim miracle that the costume shopping is finally behind us.