TorahParsha

When you matter

 

i

God speaks

of the man who brings a sacrifice

in God’s holy Tent:

how he lays hands on the animal

and slaughters it before God.

And God speaks

of how after the priests sprinkle the animal blood

and prepare the animal parts

they must set the fire on the altar

and lay wood on the fire

and lay the animal on the fire.

 

ii

First comes the man

who comes to God.

Then comes the priest

with God’s fire.

*

This is the opposite

of the Creation of the world,

that begins with God’s Light

and culminates in Man.

Here, it is a person

who triggers God’s flame.

                                                            

iii

Here is the amazing dialogue:

Our world begins with God’s Light;

when we come to God

we let God’s Light begin.

 

____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

___

Leviticus 1:1-9

I have read this according to the simple reading of the passage, but the Halakha is clear that the flame is constantly on the altar. See Leviticus 6:5-7 and Maimonides Temidin Umusafin Chapter 2.

___

Purim quiz: What’s wrong with this week’s email? Send the answer and I’ll announce the mistake & your name next week. -a

 

www.TorahParsha.com

 

What if you are not perfect?

for Parshat VaYikra 

 

i

God tells us of the sacrifices

we must bring in God’s Tent,

God’s home.

*

First He speaks of the sacrifices we bring

as gifts of the heart.

Then He speaks of the sacrifices we bring

as acts of penance.

*

We begin addressed as the pious ones.

We end addressed as sinners.

 

ii

Perhaps this ordering is so

because the closer you get to God

the more your sins matter:

the more perfect you become

the more imperfect you are revealed to be.

 

iii

But perhaps, also,

it is that a home is something you come to in love

and a home is the place you come back to

after you wander away.

Once you say:

This is my home,

you are always welcome—

perfect,

imperfect,

it does not matter.

*

And we make God’s home

into our home:

so that perfect,

imperfect,

we are always welcome,

we are always at home,

whatever we are.

 

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

Leviticus Chapters 1-5

www.TorahParsha.com

Why it is good to be incomplete

for Parshat VaYikra

 

i

God’s Tent

is described thus:

many boards

many curtains

many cloth pieces

many vessels

brought together.

 

iii

When you offer God an animal

you offer blood

you offer fat

you offer kidneys

you offer the tail.

When you offer God grain

you separate out

a piece to go on the altar,

a piece to eat.

When you offer God bread,

you break the bread.

 

iv

A thing that is whole

cannot connect

to something else

to someone else.

A thing that is whole

cannot connect to God.

It is whole,

it leaves no room.

*

Fragments have room.

Fragments can connect.

 

v

A person of Israel

is part of a family

is part of a tribe

is part of the nation of God.

He is only a fragment.

Because he is a fragment

he is special.

 

 

_____

Shabbat Shalom,

Abe

___

For simplicity’s sake, I have dealt with elements of the sacrifices of specific animals and specific types of bread-offerings as if they were uniform across all animals / bread offerings (also, the text suggests that not all bread offerings are broken). Thematically, however, I think my point holds

___

www.TorahParsha.com

What is a home?

 for Parshat VaYikrah

i

Cain gives a gift, a minchah, to God.

Abel, too, brings his minchah.

God accepts Abel’s gift

and rejects Cain’s.

Cain kills Abel.

*

In God’s Tent, too,

you can bring a

a minchah,

a gift,

before God.

*

This is the Tent

all Israel built

from material they offered together,

from the work they shared.

 

ii

When every man is for himself

in a world of winner-take-all

there cannot be enough to go around.

Even a gift comes to violence.

*

A home is an inversion of this.

Together we take a small place

and make it a wide world.

Sometimes that place

is large enough to house God.

 

_____

Shabbat shalom,

Abe

 

Please pray for Neshama Emuna bat Batya

TorahParsha.com

 

The Hidden Things are for God

for Parshat Vayikrah

 

i
God explains how the Children of Israel may bring sacrifices to Him in His dwelling-place. So He brings the Children of Israel in to His hidden realm.

*
Soon God describes atonement-sacrifices for sins of unlawful hiding. Like the case of the man who keeps his neighbor's lost object, denying that he holds it. And like the case of the man who, hiding what he knows, does not stand witness in court.

*
The hidden things are for God, a later verse says.

If we are to enter into God's house, into His realm, then we join Him in His burden over hidden things.

ii
Cain killed his brother, Abel, and hid him in the ground.

God asked Cain: Where is Abel, your brother? and Cain answered Him: Am I my brother's keeper?

*
But now we share the hidden realm with God.

Cain's answer is not possible any more.  

 

_____

Originally sent in 2008

 

____

Shabbat Shalom, Abe

____

Please pray for the infant Ayelet Yakira bat Chaya Hinda Matel Nechama, and register for bone marrow for Ayelet. Please pray for the premature infant  Baer Yakov ben Emunah, who has finally come home from the hospital. Please also pray for Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah and for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther.

 www.TorahParsha.com

 

 

Choice (for Parshat VaYikrah)

i

God says: 

When any of you presents an offering to HaShem, you may present it of the herd or of the flock.

*

If you present it of the flock, then offer it on the side of the altar, to the north.

*
This in the Mishkan, the holy place where the people meet God.

 

ii
Often, place is relational:

before Pi-HaKhirot, between Migdol and the sea, before Ba’al Tzefon

In the Mishkan, place is not relational. Place is absolute.

There is a north.

*
If you fix God in your world, you deal in absolutes.

 

iii
In the Mishkan, God offers choice.

One gives of the herd or of the flock.

 

iv

It is in this fixedness that choice comes.

That is how each person finds his own path to God.

 

 

Shabbat shalom, Abe

 

_____
Verses cited:  Lev. 1:2; Ex. 14:2

Please pray for the recovery of Ahuvah Rachel bat Orah, and for Rachel Tovah bat Yehudit Esther

www.TorahParsha.com

Sabbath is Like an Offering (Parshat Vayikrah)

i
The offering you bring in the Temple is brought to the Altar:

the Altar upon which a fire burns continually

the Altar upon which an offering is given twice daily

the Altar that expresses the constant, ongoing nearness of God.

ii
So to bring an offering to the Altar is to approach God’s constant nearness.

*
In this sense, it is not so different to bring an offering than it is to approach the Sabbath, and to welcome it.

Because the Sabbath is our reunion with God week in, and week out—one week following the next.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Eyes to See

i
Of all the people who know us, it is we who know ourselves the least (Kundera).

Our eyes are not mirrors.

*
We live in a community. But we cannot know, truly, how we make others feel.

We live before God. We cannot see ourselves through God's eyes.

ii
Tzara'at is a group of skin disorders. One who thinks he has tzara'at must come to the priest. The priest will say if the skin-sickness is tzara'at.

If the skin-sickness is, indeed, tzara'at, then the stricken one is impure.

*
Only after the priest has declared that the skin-sickness is tzara'at does the stricken one become impure.

Even if a man knows that he has tzara'at, he is not impure until the priest says that he is.

iii
The priest is of the community. The priest is a man near to God.

The priest holds the vantage-point that we do not.

*
The priest is the one who declares us impure.

The priest is the one who tells us if we are still pure.

He is the one who tells us what we are, what we have become.

*
If we want to know ourselves, we must learn to view ourselves from his vantage-point.

~~~~~~~~~

Eating, the Holy

1.
When we bring a sacrifice to God, the text says, God eats of the sacrifice. And we eat of that sacrifice as well.

And in the telling of the sacrifices, the text repeatedly uses the language of eating.

*
To come to a world in holiness is to incorporate it totally. It is to ingest.

2.
Aaron's sons bring strange fire that God did not commanded them, upon the altar in the dwelling-place of God.

This is what kills them.

*
Soon afterward, God commands that the priests may not do sacrifice when they are drunk. They must distinguish between holy and unholy, between clean and unclean.

They must know what is fit for the holy, and what is not fit for the holy.

They may not ingest what will lead them astray.

They must stay alert to strange fires.

*
Then God says the Laws of kashrut: We may eat clean things; we may not eat unclean things.

3.
God is in the world. So the world is holy. So we partake of the world fully--we ingest it--as a holy place.

But we may only partake of the world (we may only ingest of it) in the ways that God has seen fit.

*
All of life is not very different from standing at God's altar.

The Holy Man Lets Meetings Happen

i
This is the Law of the elevation-offering: The priests are to take the ashes away, after the elevation-offering has been burnt up from the fire that the priests set, continually, on the altar in the House of God.

*
The Law does not mention, here, that it is the priests who conduct the service of the elevation-offering.

This Law only mentions how the priests make the altar fit: cleaning it and making its fire permanent.

*
This Law introduces those Laws of sacrifice addressed specifically to the priests.

ii
The priest is a holy man.

Here, then, is what this Law says about the holy man:

The holy man is simply the one who brings constancy and who offers cleanliness to the meeting-spot between the people and God.

The holy man is a facilitator for the closeness between God and the people.

The holy man is not crucial in his own right.

The closeness between the people and God is what is crucial.

~~~~~~~~~