Many kids who grow up in the Modern Orthodox world spend what is called, “a gap year,” studying in Yeshivas or seminaries in Israel before going off to college. So the summer after I finished high school, I packed up and headed to study in Israel. During that year, for various reason, I ended up switching to a small yeshiva in Tsfat for the second half of my gap year. This experience truly lived up to the gap part of the phrase gap year. Living in Tsfat was a truly unique experience, not like anything I had ever done before, or like anything I have done since.
I can vividly remember sitting and studying in the Yeshiva one day towards the end of the year when out of the blue the head of my school, the rosh yeshiva, came up behind me, clopped me on the back and said דניאל you might leave tsfat, but tsfat is never going to leave you. When I think back to how different life was when I lived in tsfat, sometimes I wonder about what he could’ve meant. After tsfat I went to college, I struggled with my beliefs and have evolved in my religious perspective, I’m a very different Jew today than I was back then. But there was something about that experience that I can look back on fondly and has influenced the way I feel about Judaism and my connection to God. That feeling of closeness which I was able to experience somewhat naively back then, and have seldom experienced since, has been monumental in influencing the decisions and beliefs which have led me down the path I have chosen.
The necessity of developing memories which connect us to God is something I see reflected in this week’s Parsha. This week, we begin reading from the book of ויקרא, Leviticus. The parsha consists mostly of a list of all the different types of sacrifices which were to be brought in the tabernacle, and later in the temple in Jerusalem.
It’s no secret that the sacrifices are an aspect of Judaism that many if not most of us have a really difficult time connecting with. In today’s day and age many of us find it hard to relate to animal sacrifice. Some of us might even be turned off by its seemingly primitive and animalistic nature. But despite our moral or esthetic discomfort with the idea of sacrifices, we can’t ignore the fact that these sacrifices are important in Judaism. We mourn the destruction of the temple and the loss of our ability to bring sacrifices, our prayer services are modeled after the temple sacrifices, a hope for a time when we can once again bring sacrifices in the temple is incorporated into our daily prayers.
In the beginning of this week’s Parsha there are a number of strange things which have prompted many commentaries over the ages. The Parsha opens with God calling out to Moses telling him to speak to the Jewish people and instruct them on how to offer sacrifices.
If this section of the torah is supposed to be a practical guide for bringing sacrifices then why is God speaking to Moses, why not deliver the instructions through Aaron, the high priest? After all it is primarily his responsibility to make certain they are done right. Yet any commands to Aaron are not mentioned at this point.
Furthermore, the introduction of sacrifices into Jewish ritual life would seem to be more appropriate if it had begun with פרשת צו where the technical details for the priests of how to do sacrifices is outlined. So why does God give the list of the types of sacrifices before teaching the priests anything about their role in making sure the sacrifices were done right?
But the biggest question is in the first verse which says, “God called to Moses and said to him.” It’s a redundancy which doesn’t have a parallel. Usually the Torah either says that God called to Moses, or God spoke to Moses, so what is being added here by saying both?
All these problems can be resolved if we realize that the primary purpose of this week’s Parsha is not to teach us the practical laws of the sacrifices. The torah is teaching us that first and foremost sacrifices are about giving human beings the opportunity to engage God in a relationship. It’s not about a religious cult practice irrelevant to most except the chosen few, rather it is a model of the many ways to develop a relationship with God in a way that is open to and important to everyone. This is why the God is addressing Moshe in this week’s Parsha. Who better to teach the Jewish people this lesson about engaging in a relationship with God than Moses, the man who spoke to God פנים אל פנים, face to face?
Rashi gives us insight into why it was particularly important that Moses was the one to introduce sacrifices into Jewish life even though he would not be the one to perform the service. Rashi comments on the word ויקרא, explaining that it is לשון חיבה. The best way to translate this phrase is a type of loving or endearing statement.
The word ויקרא is used in Isaiah to describe the way the angels glorify god’s name, which you might recognize from our prayer service in the קדושה prayer. Before the angels proclaimed God’s glory, they would call out to each other, וקרא זה אל זה ואמר.... Rashi understands the angels calling out to each other as an act of love, they would call out to each other giving each other permission to be part of the group before they would glorify God’s name. Just as they called out to each other in love, here in our Parsha God calls out to Moshe with love.
God and Moses have been engaged in a deep and complicated relationship. Moses tries to say no to God when told to go to Egypt, Moses reprimands God when God wants to destroy the Jewish people for sin of the golden calf, and Moses also calls out to God in sadness and frustration when he needs to. But Moses is also the first one to sing praises of God אז ישיר משה… For Moses, God’s presence was real, it was a complicated relationship; it wasn’t just an abstract object of prayer. God was to be constantly engaged in a relationship at different times, in different ways, and with different emotions.
Moses argues with God, he rationalizes with God, he praises God, he also obeys God and so much more, but most importantly he spoke to God פנים אל פנים face to face. He engaged God in a deep personal relationship.
This is why the sacrifices needed to be taught by Moses to all the people. Moses’ message was that it is not only possible, but necessary to engage God. We shouldn’t just observe and praise God; Sometimes we should get angry or disagree; we should ask God for help with the same passion and realness that we fight with God; we need find ways to bring God into the entirety of our lives to highest degree possible.
The sacrifices are a model for engaging God in a variety of ways and times in order to build a deep and complicated relationship. The word itself קורבן, means to come close. In what ways should we come close? Most of us think of sacrifices as either something priests did on holidays with little to no connection to the average person, but really they are a symbol for the potential of the individual to have a personal relationship with God. There are many different ways to bring sacrifices and many different reasons to bring sacrifices. The sacrificial practice given to us by god serves as a model of relationship building between man and God. Just as there are so many different sacrifices, there are many different ways for a person to engage in a relationship with God. For example some people experience God in acts of charity, others connect through studying, and for others through prayer.
All the details of the sacrifices can be seen as symbols to represent ways of bringing God into the vast sea of human experience. There were sacrifices for guilt, gratitude, holidays, lifecycle events, atonement, sometimes by free will, sometimes they were commanded. They all involved acts of moving, waving, pouring, throwing, sprinkling, and confessing as symbols of things that people do being part and parcel of the sacrifice experience. And there were different types of things which were sacrificed, bulls, lambs, goats, sheep, cows, birds, oil, flour, wheat, fruits, and produce. These varieties can represent varieties of people and each person’s ways of connecting. And the way in which the same person connects differently at different times of the year or different times of their lives.
This idea is very important to me when I reflect on my experience in Tsfat. The feeling and culture in Tsfat made it possible for me to engage in a relationship with God in a way that we usually don’t ever have the time or inclination to do. There aren’t a lot of distractions in Tsfat. Sometimes at night I would find the time to sit alone in corner of the old city and talk to God. It gave me an opportunity to talk about what was on my mind, express ideas, concerns, doubts, desires and to do it in a way that was directed at God. While I have not been able to replicate this experience, and to be honest I’m not sure I’d still want to, nevertheless I look back on that experience with a longing for the closeness that I felt back then, and more than 10 years later those experiences still help me focus and connect when I pray today.
And so the lesson of Parshat Vayikra is, whether we can bring sacrifices today like they did in the temple or just find the time to imagine and meditate, or something else, the message of finding ways to personally connect to God still resounds. We may not be Moshe, but we are his descendants and we need to find a way to engage God as a real presence in our lives like hedid. If you’re not sure how to do this talk about it with a loved one, a friend, a Rabbinical figure, but try. ויקרא ה' אל מושה was just the beginning, God is calling out to all of us begging us to call him back.
When you reach out to God, you may be surprised to find God reaching back.
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