Sacrifices and Rituals

A short reflection on Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26)

This week, we start a new section of the Torah, Vayikra, aka Leviticus aka the Book of Priestly Laws. For those of you who love stories this isn’t the book for you. There’s no Adam and Eve eating forbidden apples, no Abraham wandering around having adventures in the land of Canaan, no Moses arguing with the Pharaoh and threatening him with plagues. Just a lot of laws.

Here’s the basic idea of today’s Torah portion, “I’ve been bad! Let’s sacrifice something!” Vayikra is filled with commandments and instructions on what to do when you break them. And the main response to every bad action is – time to make a sacrifice.

Over half of the 613 commandments come from Vayikra — laws about the priesthood, laws about sacrifice, laws about kashrut, laws about holidays, and laws about holiness. Even without stories, this book was so important to the early Israelites because it created the structure for their religious observations.

Structure. That’s the words of the day.

Leviticus teaches us that when you do something wrong, you have structures which can be used to return you to your normal state of being. When you do something wrong, you’re not left guessing as to what to do afterwards. Nope, you’re given a structure on how to move forward.

This structure has another name — ritual.

And, in Leviticus, those rituals are centered on five types of sacrifices. Today, rituals are key to our lives.

The cool thing about rituals is that they give us structure at scary moments. Someone just had a baby? That’s scary. SO, what do we do? We hold celebrations on the eighth day to honor the new child. Getting married? Scary! So, what do we do? We throw a party called a wedding! Someone dies. What do we do? We gather for a funeral and for shiva minyans. Turning 13? Scary age! What do we do – we have a service and a party in your honor. Moments of transition always contain a bit of fear. So, it’s best to create structure – a ritual – to help us through these moments.

The Hebrew word for sacrifice is Korban. But, more literally, it means “That which draws us close.” The idea of the sacrifice was to draw us close to God, to holiness, and to right our ship that had veered off course. Sacrifices were the structure for creating rituals that drew us back into community and closer to goodness. The rituals of sacrifice enabled us to retain our community and individual wholeness while also drawing closer to holiness. Today our rituals have changed but they still accomplish the same goals.

VAYIKRA SUMMARY FROM THE URJ

God instructs Moses on the five different kinds of sacrifices that were to be offered in the sanctuary:

The olah or “burnt offering” was a voluntary sacrifice that had a high degree of sanctity and was regarded as the “standard” offering. The entire animal, except for its hide, was burned on the altar. (1:1-17)
The minchah or “meal offering” was a sacrifice made of flour, oil, salt, and frankincense that was partly burned on the altar and partly given to the priests to eat. (2:1-16)
The zevach sh’lamim or “sacrifice of well-being” was a voluntary animal offering from one’s herd, sometimes brought to fulfill a vow. (3:1-17)
The chatat or “sin offering” was an obligatory sacrifice that was offered to expiate unintentional sins. This offering differs from the others in the special treatment of the blood of the animal. (4:1-5:13)
The asham or “penalty offering” was an obligatory sacrifice of a ram that was required chiefly of one who had misappropriated property. (5:1-26)

For more information on this Torah portion go to: https://reformjudaism.org/torah/portion/vayikra