TWO MINUTES OF TORAH | VAYIKRA | LEVITICUS 1:1-5:36

We enter into the most densely packed and archaic book of the Torah this week, the book of Leviticus. I say “archaic,” because the rituals outlined within it are no longer practiced; in fact, they haven’t been since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE. The topic is in the (Latin) name: LEVIticus. It is a book about the work of the Levites and the Cohanim, the Priestly class that was destroyed along with the Temple. It contains some of the most problematic verses of Torah, and yet, it remains at the heart of our Torah.

The name of this week’s parsha, and in fact of the whole book (in Hebrew) is Vayikra, “God called out.” God calls out to the people giving them strict instructions as to how they are to encounter God, how they are to seek expiation for their wrongdoings, and in many places, how they are to interact with each other in a holy way. To read Leviticus as a static text outside of its historical context makes it a dangerous text. Verses within it have been weaponized (18:22 for instance) when read outside of their context. When we fail to interrogate the text and ask what it is trying to do, we render it useless. Leviticus is an instruction manual for an extinct technology. As we make our way through this middling book of Torah, I invite us to keep this in mind as we do. The Hebrew word for sacrifice, korban, comes from the root word karov, to draw near. The sacrifices listed within the text were God’s way of explicitly telling the Israelites how to draw near. We are only a few weeks out from the incident of the Golden Calf, the first breach of trust between the Israelites and God; but God is still reaching for the Israelites. These are the two foci I keep in my field of vision as I prepare to dive back into a text that I dread; drawing near and calling out. The rituals may no longer exist, but the reminder that God wants us to draw near, and that God calls out to us is eternal