Between a Rock and a Hard Place
If we were to compare the Book of Exodus to a “rock” (as in Mt. Sinai) and the Book of Numbers to a “hard place” (as in the “wilderness”), then the Book of Leviticus would be somewhere “between a rock and a hard place.” My sense is that for most Reform Jews, reading the third book of the Torah, Leviticus, is more a function of calendar than choice: a tough, unavoidable literary landscape with only a few rest stops or scenic overlooks. It’s just a territory we must traverse in order to get to the next major site on our annual pilgrimage through the Five Books of Moses.
-Rabbi Lance J. Sussman
Levitical Toolkit
Vayikra is an optimistic book. It assumes the world is a well-integrated ecosystem that comes with a troubleshooting guide for when things go wrong. Vayikra doesn’t blame people for things going wrong, it offers a toolkit to restore the ecosystem.
-Dr. Tamara Eskenazi
Priest and Prophet
The Prophet is essentially a one-sided man. A certain moral idea fills his whole being, masters his every feeling and sensation, engrosses his whole attention. He can only see the world through the mirror of his idea… His whole life is spent in fighting for this ideal with all his strength; for its sake, he lays waste his powers, unsparing of himself, regardless of the conditions of life and the demands of the general harmony. He remains always a man apart, a narrow-minded extremist, zealous for his own ideal, and intolerant of every other…
It is otherwise with the Priest. He appears on the scene at a time when Prophecy has already succeeded in hewing out a path for its Idea. But the Priest has not the strength to fight continually against necessity and actuality; his tendency is rather to bow to the one and come to terms with the other. Instead of clinging to the narrowness of the Prophet, and demanding of reality what it cannot give, he broadens his outlook and takes a wider view of the relation between his Idea and the facts of life. Not what ought to be, but what can be, is what he seeks.
-Ahad Ha'am, Priest and Prophet, 1893
Olat Tamid
But in the last analysis, perhaps it was the great reformer...Rabbi David Einhorn, who got it right when he renamed his 1856 prayer book Olat Tamid, “The Eternal Sacrifice,” using the vocabulary of Leviticus 1 and its description of the burnt sacrifices as his basic spiritual metaphor. The ancient sacrifices may have been appropriate centuries ago. But for us, Rabbi Einhorn, and other Reform Jews, prayer, study, and good deeds are the eternal spiritual sacrifices on the altars of our hearts.
-Rabbi Lance J. Sussman