Making Sense of the Sedra: Vayikra

This week’s readings command the attention of both the ritualist and the realist. Vayikra is coupled with Zachor; Vayikra starts off a section which is largely irrelevant to the modern reader, and Zachor is the existential imperative – the survival of our people. As 2022 / 5782 is a leap year, the reading of Zachor prior to Purim (which occurs in Adar II), means that even as we read which animals are brought to the slaughter in the Tabernacle, we, the Israelites are warned against attack and invasion by a desert tribe who were sworn to our demise. Both themes involve taking life: killing other beings, animal creatures of God’s own handiwork and design, apparently to serve Him and forestalling inevitable catastrophe by mounting an attack on Amalek wherever the opportunity presents itself.

The admixture of Amalek and sheep is not a good one. In the Haftorah, the prophetic piece read after Zachor on this Shabbat, King Saul is severely reprimanded by the prophet Samuel for taking the sheep of Amalek to sacrifice in Gilgal. In an onomatopoeically endowed harangue of the king, Samuel says: “Umeh kol hatzon,” (what is this bleating of sheep I hear?). Samuel then goes on to demolish the entire concept of sacrifices in terms of their relevance to pleasing God: “Has the Lord a desire of burnt offerings and peace-offerings, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than a peace-offering; to listen, than the fat of rams.”

If so, where does this leave the Torah’s institution of korbanot, the sacrifices brought to atone for sins, as peace offerings and for life cycle events? This troubled Maimonides, Judaism’s greatest codifier of law and practice. He states that korbanot was implemented in the Torah to wean off the Israelites from idolatry, a comment clearly traceable to the reader of Scripture. The taking of animal life as a ritual was first practised by Abraham at the altar where he places his son Isaac. Later, Moses is intimately concerned with the Israelites’ faith allegiance, emerging from Egypt, as they learned to trust the God of their ancestors to redeem them. Moses feared that once they were a free people, Israel may elect to self- immerse in the voodoo-like practices of the Egyptians and Canaanites. Fertility rites came with the worship of devils. Devil worship favoured rancid, rotting meat, and worshipping fire and rain as the work of different gods in the pantheon of deities.

A re-reading of Vayikra in context of devil worshipping culture partly redeems its relevance to us. Vayikra speaks of purifying rather than putrefying; of washing and burning rather than attracting the flies of Beelzebub – the Lord of the Flies – to feast on rotten flesh. In contradistinction to voodoo practice, entrails in the Tabernacle would not be read for magical meaning, but placed by the ashes on the altar of sacrifice, which are sanitary and contain no biological material of value to voodoo practice.

Making sense of the Torah is to read for meaning, and see the parallel in our own lives and times, both generally, and in relation to the current crisis in the Ukraine. The imperative to reflect Zachor means that we must support the Ukrainian people facing an existential threat.