Welcome to The Morning Scroll! I'm Rabbi Deena Cowans from Mishkan Chicago and you're listening to what will be a quick dive into this week's parsha. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on your Jewish literacy, or you’re looking for some inspiration, you’ve come to the right place. This week, we read Parashat Vayikra, “And God called”, the next stage now that God has a new home. We’ll start with a brief recap:
God calls to Moshe from inside the Mishkan and begins a lesson in laws of sacrifice, starting with an olah, a voluntary offering which can be a goat, sheep, cow or bird. There are also voluntary vegan offerings like flour, baked loaves and fried dough, all of with contain olive oil and frankincense. In addition to the voluntary offerings, there was a mandatory barley offering, the Omer, brought on the second day of Passover. Turns out, God likes salty foods, and tells Moshe every single sacrifice should include salt, but pass on anything leavened or with honey. Then, God describes the Shelamim sacrifice, offered voluntarily or as a “thanks” offering, which can be a cow, sheep or goat, and which is partly burned on the altar, partly eaten by the priests, and partly eaten by the person offering it. God tells Moshe the Israelites should never eat blood or certain fats, in the Temple or otherwise. We then get into a third kind of offering, the chatat, which is brought by someone who accidentally commits a sin, whether an individual, a high priest, a king or the court, and a fourth type, the korban oleh ve’yored, an “up and down” sacrifice brought for certain sins, which for a rich person would be a goat or sheep, and for a person of lesser means, a bird or grains. We finish with a 5th type of sacrifice, the Asham, another sin offering, this one specific to someone who isn’t sure they violated a commandment, or who accidentally uses consecrated materials, or who falsely swore about the amount of money they owed someone else.
One of my favorite practices when reading parts of the Torah that feel thin on narrative is to ask myself, “How would I feel if I were an Israelite at the time of the Torah?” It’s a reminder that this series of laws is not just theoretical, but was meant to be lived with. So here’s what I imagine going through the mind of an Israelite living with the laws of this parsha: after so long thinking about doing, I was psyched to finish the construction and get to actually DOING! Until I realized it just meant a whole bunch more detailed laws. But now that I’ve been living with these laws for a while, I’m feeling comforted. After the sin of the golden calf, I felt like SUCH a screw up, so of course I just wanted to give all my fancy stuff to the construction of the Miskan, but to be honest, I was a little worried we were just replacing a calf with a tent, and I had some real anxiety about what happens when we mess up again. But now I know, making a mistake isn’t such a big deal. Sure, the whole public process of owning up to it is tough, and the economic sting of bringing a sacrifice is real, but everyone does it. It’s so common the Torah has tons of laws about it. So I feel kind of relieved, to know that it’s normal and expected to both celebrate life’s wins and own up to our mistakes.
Ok, Zooming back to the 21st century. A lot of these ideas are actually expressed in the Midrash- especially that the Israelites donated lavishly to the Mishkan because of a sense of guilt, and that the laws in the book of Vayikra were meant to be a way to normalize and formalize reacting to guilt. While it might feel silly to us, who don’t have a temple and don’t offer sacrifices, to think about these laws as personally relevant, I think that’s exactly their purpose: to make each and every Israelite feel like they personally have a way to be in relationship with God and their community.
So I want to offer a blessing to this imaginary Israelite as they start to think about a stable and long term relationship with God. And I want to offer a blessing to the ways you have worked on making space for the same kind of stable and long term relationship, whether you call it God, or spirituality, or connection to community. As we read the rest of the Book of Vayikra, I hope you will keep reminding yourself of the holiness of everyday actions.