Addict Torah: Vayikra 5784/2024

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Leonard Cohen

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in

Vayikra Rabbah 1:3

The Holy One blessed be He said to Moses: As you live, from all the names that you were called, I will call you only by the name that Bitya daughter of Pharaoh called you: “She called his name Moses” (Exodus 2:10). “He called to Moses.” (Leviticus 1:1)

Rabbi David Kasher, ParshaNut, p. 204-205

It is an astounding fact of Moses’ life story that he received his name not from his own family, but from an Egyptian – and not just any Egyptian, but the daughter of the Pharaoh. And she did not just name him, she saved him from the Nile and raised him as her own. The child of the man who sought to kill Moses was to become his savior. Indeed, she became his second mother, not only in that she adopted him, but in the very real sense that she gave him life. Bitya, the daughter of Pharaoh, like God, created a new light in a time of great darkness and – also like God – she then named what she had created. And so God, to honor her, would only call out to Moses using the name that Bitya gave him that day at the river. So when Moses heard God calling out to him from the Tent of Meeting, somewhere deep in his consciousness he was transported back to his own first moment of being called. When he heard his name emerge from the mouth of the Almighty, he was suddenly back in his basket, drifting up amongst the reeds, by the bank of the Nile, his fate unknown. And then, just as suddenly, he was being lifted – and held, and fed. And he was given a name. “She called him, ‘Moses,’ for she said, ‘I drew him up out of the water.” (Exod. 2:10) Up, out of the water, and into caring arms. He had been saved. When God called out to Moses, it was a mother’s voice he heard.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 162

We believe that God called not just to Moses alone. We believe that God is calling to us all the time. One reason God calls out is that God is lonely when we are gone from God’s presence. God wants us, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, z”l, teaches in God in Search of Man; God is searching for us, and God needs us. What happened at Mount Sinai is still happening; what happened in the wilderness is still happening. God is still calling to us.

Rabbi David Jaffe, in The Mussar Torah Commentary, p. 149, 153

Our parashah begins the description of how to engage in this relationship. Indeed, the Hebrew word for “sacrifice” is korban, from the root ק-ר-ב, meaning “to draw close.” The entire sacrificial system is an exercise in drawing close and being in relationship with God—and, by extension, with oneself and others. Embedded in the details of the sacrificial system are clues to having successful relationships. The middah of generosity (n’divut, נְדִיבוּת) is central to the process...The sacrificial system, so prominent in Leviticus and Numbers, is a model for being in relationship, for drawing close. Ratzon, “desire,” may be the most important element of becoming close to God and others. However, ratzon can be fleeting. We may feel a connection one day and not on the next. Through concrete acts of thoughtfulness, giving, and love, n’divut, “generosity,” helps us turn our ratzon for closeness into habitual behavior. From this internalized sense of responsibility for each other and for God, we create real closeness.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 584

The contents of Leviticus are diverse but unified by the theme of holiness.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Leviticus: The Book of Holiness, p. 27

The universe is the space God makes for man. The holy is the space man makes for God.

Richard Elliott Friedman, Commentary on the Torah, p. 1485, Kindle edition

Sinai. In Exodus, the universe—the land, waters, and sky—is in disarray. Following that, Leviticus is concerned with orderliness, arrangement.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, Vol. 2, loc 657, Kindle edition

Genesis 1 and Leviticus are closely intertwined, since the project of dividing and separating is at least as crucial to the latter as it is to the former. As Robert Alter writes, “There is a single verb that focuses the major themes of Leviticus—‘divide’ (hivdil)” (what I have been rendering, following NJPS, as “separate”)...There seems to be an element of “walking in God’s ways” here: Just as God has separated and ordered, so Israel must engage in separation and ordering.

Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, The Everyday Torah, p. 164, Kindle edition

With the book of Leviticus, we return to the heart of the Torah, to remarkable passages that translate the lofty values of Sinai into the concrete practices of everyday life, passages that instruct how to infuse the most mundane of deeds with the glow of sanctity and how to invest every moment of our day with the intimacy of God's presence.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 585

The modern temper tends to discount prescribed ritual in favor of spontaneous religious expression. Yet something in the human soul responds to ritual...There is something comforting about the familiar, the recognizable, the predictable. There is something deeply moving about performing a rite that is older than we are...at crucial times, it is important for us to know that we are 'doing it right.' There is power in the knowledge that we are doing what generations of people before us have done in similar situations, something that other people in other places are doing at the same time and in the same way. And rituals, including prescribed prayers, tell us what to do and say at times when we cannot rely on our own powers of inspirtation to know what to do or say.

The Baal Shem Tov

When Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, saw that the Jewish people were threatened by tragedy, he would go to a particular place in the forest where he lit a fire, recited a particular prayer, and asked for a miracle to save the Jews from the threat. Because of the Holy Fire and faithfulness of the prayer, the miracle was accomplished, averting the tragedy. Later, when the Baal Shem Tov’s disciple, the Maggid of Mezrich, had to intervene with heaven for the same reason, he went to the same place in the forest where he told the Master of the Universe that while he did not know how to light the fire, he could still recite the prayer, and again, the miracle was accomplished. Later still, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sasov, in turn a disciple of the Maggid of Mezrich, went into the forest to save his people. “I do not know how to light the fire,” he pleaded with God, “and I do not know the prayer, but I can find the place and this must be sufficient.” Once again, the miracle was accomplished. When it was the turn of Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn, the great grandson of the Maggid of Mezrichwho, who was named after the Baal Shem Tov, to avert the threat, he sat in his armchair, holding his head in his hands, and said to God: “I am unable to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, and I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story. That must be enough.”

Rabbi Shefa Gold, Torah Journeys, p. 104

Genesis can be read as the descent of the soul...Exodus then shows us the path of liberation, the awakening of the soul to its true essence...through the Mishkan we learn that our Freedom depends on our connection to God and our willingness to make a holy space within us and between us for God to dwell. How can we sustain this connection, this state of holy freedom? This is the question addressed by the book of Leviticus. So often the complications of life seem to draw us away from the perspective of holiness. We become alienated, distracted, complacent, blind to what is essential; deaf to the music at the core of silence; numb to the mystery that dwells at the heart of this life. Our daily struggles often close us off...The blessing of Vayikra is the call to come into harmony, balance, connection and intimacy with the God who has freed us for this love...and not only to return, but to establish for ourselves a system of continual returning.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Yourself and Recovery in Torah, p. 165

How many of us have our egos functioning in proper measure? How many of us have too much plaque and fat in our spiritual arteries, in our minds and with our emotions, to hear the call of God? Are we too arrogant to hear God? Arrogance comes in different forms. The common feeling of not being good enough is actually borne of arrogance, I believe. When I say I am not good enough, I am denying God’s truth that we are all holy souls, partners of and with God, and created in the image of the Divine with a divine purpose and message. Since this is true, how can any of us not be good enough? When we deny truth, we are being arrogant, thinking we know better.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 586

After the Israelites worshiped the Golden Calf, however, God recognized the inability of people to deal with a totally abstract notion of the divine and at that point ordained the details of the sacrificial system. Just as God does not need our prayers although we need to pray, God does not need our sacrifices although we need to offer them to feel God's nearness.

George Robinson, Essential Torah, p. 404, Kindle edition

What constitutes “the right spirit” in which to draw near to God? The rabbis called prayer the service of the heart, and it should come from the heart, from the innermost part of ourselves. Like the offerings made in the Mishkan and the offerings made at the Temple in Jerusalem, it should be a gift to God, given out of a sense of love, of free will, or given as an act of teshuvah, of repentance and returning, turning to God. And it should be the best of ourselves that we can bring.

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Leviticus: The Book of Holiness, p. 24

The priest takes the fire of God, the high drama of sacrificial love, and awe of the Divine Presence – life-changing experiences – and turns them into daily rituals so that they become not rare, exceptional events but routines that shape the character of a nation and transform individual lives. Looked at one way, the priest takes poetry and turns it into prose. Looked at from another perspective, knowing how thin is the veneer of civilisation and how dark the undercurrents of the unconscious mind, the priest takes prose and etches it with poetry. Every day is an encounter with the Divine.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, location 98, Kindle edition

The Mishkan does not merely represent forgiveness; it becomes a therapeutic device for healing the national disorder that is called the Golden Calf. Beginning with the inventory for its building, we find the recurrent theme: “Let the gold of the Mishkan atone for the gold they brought toward the making of the Golden Calf.” The work with the materials of the Mishkan homeopathically counteracts that sin. The image becomes medicalized in some texts: Bezalel, for instance, as the chief craftsman, is credited both as a goldsmith and as a divinely inspired medical student who “applies a plaster to the wound.”[4] God, as Bezalel’s teacher, prides Himself on His student’s uncanny knowledge, his da’at: “It was I who created and taught him!”

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, pp. 12-13

Rashi reads: “Now, I accede to your prayers not to destroy them. But always, always, when I make an accounting of their sins, then I will bring them to account for a little of this sin, together with their other sins. No punishment ever comes upon Israel that does not contain a little punishment for the sin of the Golden Calf.” This notion, that the effects of the sin, as well as its punishments, will be diffused over many generations, may imply a kind of suspension of the full gravity of the law. Or it may suggest that a residue of that failure will linger forever. It is somehow endemic in human nature, even if only in the quasi-scientific measure of an onki, an alchemically minute quantity of Calf-substance that ferments in all generations...Here, the Golden Calf is no mere episode. Its implications and effects have revealed something about human beings in the world. Rather than excising this pathology with the surgeon’s knife, God offers a possibility of living with it. This will mean bearing the brunt of the challenge it offers to wishful thinking. A sobering truth is also a revelation of a kind.

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, Vol 2., loc. 694, Kindle edition

What happens to a person who has visited the mishkan—and by extension into our own time, who has imaginatively entered the mishkan through close study of Leviticus? Having partaken of, or merely glimpsed, the counterworld that the mishkan represents, a person is changed (at least when the practice “works”). After the glimpse he or she has been afforded, nothing looks quite the same anymore. He or she sees that another reality is possible, that the chaos and suffering he or she observes all around are not ultimately all there is.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 587

2. when any of you presents and offering. The word for 'offering' (korban) comes from the Hebrew root [kaf/resh/bet], meaning 'to bring close' or 'to come close.' When we give a gift to someone we feel close to, we feel even closer after having given the gift. The korban both reflects and reinforces the Israelite's bond to God. The point of the sacrifice is not to feed or to bribe God but to come close to God....3. The olah [burnt offering] is purely a gift to God, with no specific benefit to the donor anticipated, except the satisfaction of having brought the offering to God. Whether brought out of a sense of reverence or out of a sense of guilt, it expresses the idea that everything we have comes from God, given to us only on loan. It is called olah (from the root 'to go up,' as in aliyah), not only because it goes upu in smoke but because it elevates the soul of the person who performs this act of generosity.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, pp. 14-15, Kindle edition

In a similar vein, another midrash minimizes the forty days that officially separate the two moments of Revelation and the Golden Calf. A mere forty days becomes in this challenging midrash: “Not even one day were they with God; [after that] they were [already] calculating how to make the Calf!” The inability to be with God is worked out by gradually whittling away at the numbers, from forty to “not even one day.” Like one who departs on a journey and without any delay at all goes off on the wrong track: “R. Meir said: They stood at Sinai and said with their mouth, We shall do and we shall hear, while their hearts were turned, attuned (mechuvan) to idolatry: ‘They seduced Him with their mouth…but their heart was not steadfast (nachon) with Him’ (Ps. 78:36–37).” Focusing on the core utterance of commitment to God, “Na’aseh ve-nishma—We shall do and we shall hear!” R. Meir declares that this was a moment of “seduction”; heart and mouth are at odds, inner experience pulling away from language. Or, more strongly, language being used by the wayward in order to beguile God. ...Effectively, it undermines the one good moment in a history of backslidings and rebellions. In general, midrashic literature builds on this moment to spell out the people’s commitment to doing even before hearing; to fulfilling the commandments even before trying to understand them. “We shall do and we shall hear” has become the blazon of Israel’s true faith. Here, strangely, na’aseh ve-nishma becomes mere lip service. So powerful is the people’s inner resistance to the Revelation that, even as they mouth the words of faith, they are already creating the Golden Calf.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, p. 22, Kindle edition

Without the acute experience of inertia, without the Calf, would the Mishkan ever have been built? Without the experience of “nothing happens,” would the force of God’s desire—“Let them make Me a Mishkan, and I will dwell in their midst”—ever have come alive in the mind and heart? “Sometimes, the annulling of Torah is its fulfillment” (Bitulah shel torah zeh hu kiyumah).[33] Words like “Exodus” and “Revelation” find their proof in the live possibility of God dwelling in one’s midst. Only after the Calf nullifies that aspiration does the desire for it become real.

Dr. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Hidden Order of Intimacy, p. 24-26, Kindle edition

One has, in a sense, engineered one’s own defeat. Something may soften and open. The Talmudic Sages have a powerful expression for this idea: “One does not understand (lit., stand upon) the words of Torah until one has stumbled over them.” The stumbling, the failure is the process by which Torah becomes real: inherent in the spiritual work of reading, studying, and living Torah is the experience of losing the ground under one’s feet. Remotely related to flinching, the metaphor of stumbling evokes both the burlesque and the tragic. There is the moment when human dignity is upended by the banana peel; there is also the graver moment of ruin, perhaps of irredeemable failure. In a kishalon, a stumble, a slippage, saving oneself in mid-fall is not always possible. The business has failed, bankruptcy is declared. It is from despair that standing, understanding arises. In our narrative of the Golden Calf, then, the disruption is the heart of the story. The Calf does not represent an episode followed by a return to the main plot. Rather, it remains for all generations to confront us with the inertia that was always inherent in the moments of highest aspiration. A slip, a jolt, a shock, a knowledge of failure, of not yet—the Tablets inscribed by the finger of God are shattered. Unthinking compassion is recognized as cruelty; moral stupidity gives birth to a keener vision. One’s neighbor is revealed in all her out-of-joint reality and is to be loved. In this movement, God is implicated: a new intimacy with God and neighbor is revealed. This secondary movement of the soul is the subject of the book of Leviticus. On one level, the original revelation contains the seeds of its own erosion. It is neutralized by the banality of the Calf. Out of this despair, the Mishkan emerges. The work of building the structure, creating the sacred objects, has a therapeutic effect. But only in Leviticus do we read of the crises that accompany the process by which the Mishkan, and therefore the people, deeply encounter the divine. Here, the need to wait, to live a life that is used by time, cannot be evaded. Fear and shame gather around the obsession that is the Golden Calf. These, too, must be lived through. In this book, I read Leviticus through the prism of midrashic narratives that connect the surface with the depths of this text. Following my original intuition that the Golden Calf pervades that space, I find, sometimes to my own surprise, how often the Calf, as the moment of slippage in human life, does make its appearance. As in dreams, the details of law and ritual turn out to be haunted by something repetitious, a sense of nameless loss; and by a secondary revelation of a different kind, which involves time and work and the birth of compassion.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 588

3. without blemish. ...An afflicted broken soul, though, could bring an offering and might even be closer to God for having experienced pain and rejection. 'The Lord is close to the brokenhearted' (Ps. 34:19). 'You will not despise / a contrite and crushed heart' (Ps. 51:19, cited in Lev. R. 7:2)

Rashi on Leviticus 1:9

— an odour of ניחוח: one that causes satisfaction to Me by the knowledge that I gave commands and that My will was executed (Sifra, Vayikra Dibbura d'Nedavah, Chapter 6 10; Zevachim 46b).

R. Eliezer Ashkenazi, Maasei Ha-shem, cited in Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in Vayikra, p. 24

The sacrifice is merely 'a sweet savour,' a foretaste of [the sinner's] future actions...every 'sweet savour' used in reference to the sacrifices implies that the offering should be for God as a foretaste of the good deeds which the worshipper is destined to perform...Consequently the sacrifice is regarded as a 'sweet savour to the Lord,' as a foretaste of the good deeds to come.

Menachot 104b

Rabbi Yitzḥak says: For what reason is the meal offering different from other offerings in that the term “an individual [nefesh]” is stated with regard to it? The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: Whose practice is it to bring a meal offering? It is that of a poor individual; and I will ascribe him credit as if he offered up his soul [nafsho] in front of Me.

Berachot 26b

It was stated: Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Ḥanina, said: The practice of praying three times daily is ancient, albeit not in its present form; prayers were instituted by the Patriarchs. However, Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi said that the prayers were instituted based on the daily offerings sacrificed in the Holy Temple, and the prayers parallel the offerings, in terms of both time and characteristics...Isaac instituted the afternoon prayer, as it is stated: “And Isaac went out to converse [lasuaḥ] in the field toward evening” (Genesis 24:63), and conversation means nothing other than prayer, as it is stated: “A prayer of the afflicted when he is faint and pours out his complaint [siḥo] before the Lord” (Psalms 102:1). Obviously, Isaac was the first to pray as evening approached, at the time of the afternoon prayer.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 593

This category of offering was brought by a person who had something to celebrate...zevah sh'lamim is always an individual, never a communal, offering because the feelings of gratitude and well-being from which it flows are very personal. It is called sh'lamim (from shalem, 'whole,' and shalom, 'harmony'), because it is motivated not by guilt or obligation but by a sense of wholeness in the donor's life, a sense of being at peace with one's family, the priests of the Temple, and with God.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 596

The hattat is brought for unintentional violations. Why must we atone for inadvertent sins? Perhaps because we were insufficiently attentive to what we were doing (Hirsch). Carelessness is no excuse for violating God's commandments. Inadvertent sins may reflect a lowering of our guard against temptation. There is a part of us that is inclined to be selfish, to take advantage of others. We must constantly be vigilant against such inclinations. Perhaps we must atone for inadvertent sins because the misdeed, though inadvertent, weighs on our conscience until we do something to atone for it. Because verbal regrets do not strike us as adequate, we must give up something to show our remorse.

Sefer Ha-hinukh (13th c. Spain, anonymous)

...when a man sins, he cannot cleanse his heart merely by uttering, between himself and the wall, 'I have sinned and will never repeat it.' Only by doing an overt act to atone for his sin...only then, will he impress upon his soul, the extent of the evil of his sin, and will take measures to avoid it in the future.

Rabbi Mark Borovitz, Finding Recovery and Yourself in Torah, p. 168

We are all moving closer to our authentic selves. Sometimes this movement comes by doing the next right thing, and sometimes it is through doing the next wrong thing. No, I have not completely lost my mind. When we do the next wrong thing, we are able to learn what path not to travel down. We can fail forward. There is a story of a man who was lost in the forest. He fell into despair, thinking he was lost forever. Suddenly, one day, he saw another person and became elated. He rushed over to the other person and said how happy he was that someone could lead him out of the forest. The other person smiled and said, “I am lost, also.” The man crumbled into uncontrollable and inconsolable crying. The second person said to the man, “Stop crying. Don’t you see, you know some of the ways not to go, and I know other paths not to travel down. By eliminating these wrong paths, we will be able to help each other find our way out of this dark forest and into the light of home.” And they did. The same is true for all of us who feel lost, less than, not good enough, better than, and the like. Together, by right-sizing our egos and hearing the call of God, we will find the light of our places in the world.

Horayot 10b

The Sages taught: The verse states concerning a king: “When [asher] a king sins” (Leviticus 4:22). Rabbi Yoḥanan ben Zakkai said: Happy [ashrei] is the generation whose king feels the need to bring an offering for his unwitting transgression. If the generation’s king brings an offering, you must say all the more so what a commoner will do to atone for his sin, i.e., he will certainly bring an offering. And if the king brings an offering for his unwitting transgression, you must say all the more so what he will do to atone for his intentional transgression, i.e., he will certainly repent.

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 601

We are held responsible not only for the wrong things we do but for the things we should do but do not do.

Leviticus 5:7, 11

(7) But if one’s means do not suffice for a sheep, that person shall bring to יהוה, as the penalty for that of which one is guilty, two turtledoves or two pigeons—one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering...(11) And if one’s means do not suffice for two turtledoves or two pigeons, that person shall bring as an offering for that of which one is guilty a tenth of an ephah of choice flour for a sin offering;

RA & USCJ: Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 604

17. any of the Lord's commandments about things. not to be done. Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev read this text literally: 'one of the Lord's commandments which should not be done.' Based on this reading, he taught, 'sometimes it is possible to perform a mitzvah in such an improper manner that it would have been better not to do it at all.'

Bava Batra 88b

And Rabbi Levi says: Robbing an ordinary person is more severe than robbing the Most High, i.e., taking consecrated property. As with regard to this regular robber, the verse states “sin” before “me’ila”: “If any one sin, and commit a trespass [me’ila] against the Lord, and deal falsely with his neighbor in a matter of deposit, or of pledge, or of robbery, or have oppressed his neighbor” (Leviticus 5:21).

RA & USCJ, Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary, p. 605

Akiva taught that whenever two people enter an agreement, each is relying on the divine dimension of the other, the part of a person that is the image of God and knows what is right and what is wrong, making God a witness to every transaction. To betray that trust is to deny the divine image in ourselves, and to deny God's participation in our activities.