Bat Kol International, Weekly Torah Nuggets
Parashat Vayikra. Leviticus 1:1-5:26
The LORD called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying: Speak to the Israelite people, and say to them: When any of you presents and offering of cattle to the LORD, (s)he shall choose [the] offering from the herd or from the flock. (Lev 1:1-2)
Vayikra is a difficult book for a modern person to read with reverence and appreciation. Its main subject matter – animal offerings and ritual impurity – seems remote from contemporary concerns. Yet almost half of the 613 mitzvot of the Torah are found in this book, the text with which young children traditionally began their Jewish education. The modern temper tends to discount prescribed ritual in favour of spontaneous religious expression.
Yet something in the human soul responds to ritual. There is something comfortable about the familiar, the recognizable, the predictable. There is something deeply moving about performing a rite that is older than we are, one that goes back beyond the time of our parents and grandparents. 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 inspiration to know what to do or say.
Reflection:
“Ritual is a way of giving voice to ultimate values. Each of us needs a sense of holiness to navigate the relentless secularity of our lives” [Schorsch]. For the Israelites of Biblical times, it must have been gratifying to know what to do when they wanted to approach God at crucial moments of their lives, in need or in gratitude. In this context, consider, what according to you is the purpose of sacrifice – to make things sacred, to set them apart, or to make amends, to appease the wrath of God, etc.?
Prepared by Roy da Silva, India
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“Since the spiritual patrimony common to Christians and Jews is thus so great, this sacred synod wants to foster and recommend that mutual understanding and respect which is the fruit, above all, of biblical and theological studies.”
Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions: Nostra Aetate, No. 4