We are now beginning a new book of the Torah, Vayikra also known as Leviticus. It contains the instructions for the Levitical Priesthood and the various offerings. How can we relate to this book today? Here’s what I gleaned from just the first few verses.
In verse 2, we read: “…adam mi yakriv יַקְרִיב mikem korban קָרְבָּן l’YHVH…”. The noun “adam” refers to humanity, any human being, so here it means that any human, who was willing, could yakriv – draw near to GOD with a korban, an offering. Yakriv and korban stem from the same Hebrew root, kuf-resh-vet קרב – kerev, which means to draw near, to approach. In verse 3, we see two more words from this same root – korbano קׇרְבָּנוֹ֙ יַקְרִיבֶ֑נּוּ yakrivenu, andיַקְרִ֣יב yakriv is repeated.
Kerev is so important it is repeated five times in the first two verses! Remember Hebrew is a language of pictures, so what is this picture showing us? Could it be that any “adam” – any human, male or female, native-born or ger (stranger among us) was free to bring an offering to the Mishkan if they wanted to approach the Divine? It is awesome that we can be granted that access.
It also tells us in verse 3 that the type of offering was an “ola” translated as a burnt offering, but it is better understood as “elevate or ascend”. It’s an offering that allows people to be spiritually elevated as they approach. The same root for ola is used when people make Aliyah to Israel, they are called olim, plural of olah. They ascend to the Holy Land, Israel.
For context, let’s see who God and Moses were speaking to and when. These newly freed slaves worked one full year – this time for themselves – to build the Mishkan. It was completed on the first day of the first month of the second year which is the month of Nisan, at Pesach. That’s our new year; it would be a new beginning for this fledgling community. They had been humbled or shall I say humiliated by their great error committed with the Golden Calf, the Egel Zahav. They knew how guilty they were; they had witnessed the Levites kill 3000 of their family, friends, and neighbors and they probably heaved a sigh of relief that they were still alive.
This was just the beginning of their journey. This Mishkan would be the focal point where the people of Israel, native and stranger, would now begin to refocus their attention away from the gods of Egypt with all its pagan practices toward the God of their fathers and His practices. They had forgotten Him amidst the pomp and glory of Egypt’s wealthy temples and extravagant lifestyle. They had grown fat, safe in the land of Goshen under Joseph’s care until a new pharaoh, fearful of their growing numbers and status, decided to enslave them. When he sent out the command to kill all Israelite male babies, anti-Semitism became the order of the day. Sound familiar? The god of Egypt went to war with the God of Israel. This has been repeated throughout the history of our people wherever we have been scattered…right up until today. Vayikra shows us how to fight this spiritual war.
Verse 4 tells us that the person bringing a bull had to “lay”סָמַ֣ךְ his hand on the bull’s head (the word “lay” in Hebrew is semicha, used when someone is ordained for their spiritual role). The offering would be accepted by GOD who would then לְכַפֵּ֥ר l’kaper, cover the person bringing it. Isn’t it great to know that God has us covered; and that we can feel safe!
Verse 9 describes how the “adam”, the person, bringing the offering had to watch as its entrails and legs were washed with water, and the cohen burnt it on the altar as an offering by fire, of a pleasing aroma toיהוה. What about this could be pleasing to God? In the next verse, we read that they could also bring a pigeon or a turtledove. The description of what was done to the bird is horrible… “The cohen shall tear it open by its wings, without severing it, and turn it into smoke on the altar, upon the wood that is on the fire. It is an offering, an offering by fire, of pleasing aroma to יהוה.” If I didn’t know that God is merciful, compassionate, and loves His creation, I wouldn’t want anything to do with this God! These pictures are so gruesome. Is our God a bloodthirsty God who requires the shedding of innocent blood to be appeased? Isn’t that what the pagan gods demanded?
What is our Torah teaching us? How can we make any sense of this; especially to apply to our lives today? Imagine if you owned a flock of sheep, goats, cows and bulls and you had to choose the best of them, a young bull without blemish, and watch it being cut to pieces and burnt up. How would it make you feel to know that this innocent, beautiful young possession of yours, had to die because of something that you did? What a hard way to learn a lesson! But more than this, we are being shown that the pagan rituals of the day were cruel, merciless and an abomination to our God. I believe that this is His way of showing us just how horrendous their types of offerings were, offerings that were supposed to appease their gods.
The Mishkan was where God would wean us away from those rituals. In forming the new nation, their paradigms would have to change. You and I might say we’re not involved in paganism. We don’t support sacrificing virgins on the altar to appease the gods. But let’s put that into today’s terms. For example, I may serve a god named “convenience”. How many abortions are committed every year simply because it’s not a convenient time to have a child? According to The Guttmacher Institute: Roughly 121 million unintended pregnancies occurred each year between 2015 and 2019. Of these unintended pregnancies, 61% ended in abortion. This translates to 73 million abortions per year. This was a genocide of babies!
Can we understand the repercussions of this from the Creator’s perspective? Didn’t He tell us in His Commandments, “Do not commit premeditated murder.” No matter how we try to explain it, it doesn’t change the Truth. This should cause us to want to “draw near, to approach our God and beg Him for forgiveness.
Tomorrow we will celebrate the Feast of Purim. Our haftarah portion tells us that our prophet Samuel confronted King Saul saying… “the LORD sent you on a mission: Go and utterly destroy the sinful Amalekites and fight them until you have exterminated them.”
Today’s liberals would balk at such an order after all, aren’t they more humane than God? What they don’t understand is the level of evil to which the Amalekites had descended.
Neither did King Saul who said to Samuel: “But I did obey the voice of the LORD. I went on the mission the LORD sent me. I captured Agag, the king of Amalek, and I have completely destroyed the Amalekites. But the people took the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the devoted things to sacrifice to the LORD your God in Gilgal.’
Saul refused to acknowledge that he had disobeyed God’s command. It wasn’t convenient.
“But Samuel replied, Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obedience to the LORD’s command? Surely, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to comply better than the fat of rams. For rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is like iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, He has also rejected you from being king.’
Even though Samuel killed King Agag, the hatred in those who had been kept alive festered and grew against the Israelites until five hundred years later, Agag’s descendant, Haman became viceroy of Shushan. That was in modern-day Iran where the Israelites were living after their first captivity into Babylon. Haman’s hatred of the Jews had been passed down through the generations from the time of Saul and had built up to such an extent that Haman devised a plan to destroy every last one of us…and almost succeeded. If King Saul had obeyed God, there would have been no Haman and perhaps today, there would be no Hamas! Arafat claimed to be a descendant of the Amalekites. His poison has spread throughout the Middle East where our people today are still being held captive by these evil people.
God wants to protect us from the consequences of our poor choices and to cover us as He said in verse 3, “l’kaper” after we approach Him to ask to be forgiven for our transgressions. Bringing an offering to the Mishkan was admitting that we had done something that displeased our Avinu Shebashamayim, our Father in heaven. How do we know what displeases Him? – by the Ten Commandments that He gave us. We are to use His commandments as the guidelines for our behavior. We are a chosen community accountable to God first and then to each other. The cohanim were the link between God and His people. The five types of offerings covered the areas in which humans fail to be presentable to Him. I know how I feel when I do something wrong. It starts to eat me up inside until I am forced to deal with it. If I don’t, I can become physically and emotionally ill. At that time, I would have taken an offering to the cohen. Today, I need to work it out with myself, my God, and the people I hurt. If I don’t, the consequences not only affect me but everyone involved and that can spread further than I know.
Why is it so important for everyone to follow the precepts of the Torah, the written Torah for what it says and not how others, including scholars, interpret it for us? When people take the liberty of changing His Words, like King Saul did to cover up his failure to comply, it may seem harmless, but is it not. Why would God tell us not to add or take away anything from what He had handed Moses? When we do, it is as if we are saying that we are gods and that our words, our practices, and our rituals are more important than His. This is the same as taking His name in vain. Isn’t what we are seeing in the world today? Isn’t this the cause of the increasing chaos?
I started with the Hebrew words “kerev” – to approach, to draw near and “olah” – to elevate. Whenever anyone wants to approach the Creator, He made the way for us to do that. No one can force us to bring our offering, which represents our transgression, to God; each of us has to bring it of our own volition. That is the way we fight our spiritual war both on a personal and community level. When we do, we take one more step to heal ourselves and the planet…that’s Tikkun Olam.
Shabbat Shalom
Peggy Pardo