This week’s Torah portion is Shemini, which means 8th. This eighth day was to be a grand holiday, the day on which the priests offered sacrifices on behalf of the people in the newly built Tabernacle for the very first time. All the Israelites were assembled there. They had made the Tabernacle and the priests vestments just as they had been commanded. The priests offered the sacrifice exactly as God instructed them and the cloud of God’s glory, showing God’s approval, appeared to them, letting them know that God was happy with them. Then tragedy struck. The Torah says, “Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu each took his fire pan, they put fire in them and placed incense upon it and they brought before God an alien fire that God had not commanded them. A fire came for the from before God and consumed them and they died before God.”(Levit 10:1-2)
This is one of three notable instances in the Torah in which fire is associated with misfortune. Twice in Numbers fire injures us. The Torah says (Num. 11:1) “The people took to seeking complaints. It was evil in the ears of God and God heard; God’s wrath flared and a fire burned against them and it consumed at the edge of the camp.” Just a few portions later, “They journeyed from Mt. Hor by the way of the Sea of Reeds to go around the land of Edom and the spirit of the people grew short on the way. The people spoke against God and Moses, ‘why did you bring us up from Egypt to die in this wilderness, for there is no food and no water and our soul is disgusted with the insubstantial food.’ God sent fiery serpents against the people and they bit the people.” (Num. Chukat) In these three passages we can see that the fire, or the energy for the burning, came from the people themselves. In each instance, these people were acting for themselves alone, not for the greater good. Rabbi R.S. Hirsch brings out the very important point that the two sons, Nadav and Abihu, took their own fire pans, not the holy objects that belonged to the nation to make this sacrifice. This tells us that they were concerned with their own prestige, their own ideas, and their own power.
The people who complained in the book of Numbers had lost sight of the reason for their wandering, the reason behind the existence of the Jewish nation, and its mission. Shemini tells us that there is a mission, a reason for us to participate in the what th S’fat Emet calls a “system of restraint,” which could mean the laws in the Torah, or even just the dietary laws at the end of this portion. There is a reason for everything that has been asked of us. There is the right kind of fire and a wrong kind of fire. From our small vantage point, none of it makes sense, when the focus is on ourselves. We literally cannot see the forest for the trees. Rabbi Hirsch says that in idol worship, the aim of the sacrifices was to bend the Gods’ wills to our own, but Judaism concerns the fulfillment of God’s will which is a better life for us all. This requires us to send out the right kind of energy into the world. Not the fire of complaints or of ambition, but the fire of love for goodness, a burning desire to be of help and service to others, the fervent faith that what we do matters vitally in the world, so that God can guide it toward greater goodness and blessing for us all.
We all want to feel important, to live lives in which others look up to us. We all want to live secure lives of comfort and ease, expressing ourselves and fulfilling ourselves. We can achieve these ends by harmonizing our inner fire to serve the unfolding of a higher consciousness in the world, and by exhibiting that consciousness when we interact with others. As Rabbi Hillel famously said in Pirkei Avot, “If I am not for myself, who is for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?” And if not now, when? Our unfolding and the quality of our growth is in our own hands. And anyone who wants to expand into goodness will be encouraged, helped, and lifted from above.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Friday, April 4, 2014
What is Most Holy?
This week’s Torah portion is Tzav, which means, command. God continues to issue instructions for the priest concerning the presentation of sacrifices. The fire on the altar was never to go out. In the mornings, the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, cleared the ashes. Fat and blood were not to be eaten. At the end of this portion, the priests were sanctified for seven days and consecrated to begin their service for God and the people. The first sacrifice mentioned in this portion is the elevation offering, the only one burned in its entirety. What follows are instructions about three other types of sacrifices: the grain or mincha offering, the sin, and the guilt offering. Each of these three offerings were partially consumed by the priests. God tells them that part of each sacrifice will be burned. Then the Torah says, “Aaron and his sons shall eat what is left of it, it shall be eaten unleavened in a holy place, in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting shall they eat it…I have presented it as their share from my fire offerings. It is Kadosh Kadoshim, holy of holies, like the sin offering and like the guilt offering.” Right after that it says, “Whatever touches them shall become holy.”
This phrase, most holy, or holiest of the holies, is said five times in this portion. Whatever touches them shall become holy, is said twice. God is attempting to tell the priests something important, but what is it? The meal offering was the least a person could offer. It was often brought by a person who was poor. Significantly, its holiness is described first among the edible sacrifices. The Midrash quotes Psalm 22:24 (Midrash Rabba III:2) “You that fear God, offer praise; All you the seed of Jacob, glorify The Eternal; And stand in awe of God, you seed of Israel, for God has not despised nor abhorred the lowliness of the poor; Neither hath God Hid the Divine face from him. But when he cried unto God, The Eternal heard.” This tells us that the offerings of the poor are special and precious to God.
Next the sin and guilt offerings are listed. The priests must eat them in a holy place, for they are kadosh kadoshim, the holy of the holies. Whatever touches them becomes holy. If we think about these three offerings, of the poor, concerning sin, and guilt, we might think that God might regard them with some disdain, or perhaps just tacit acceptance, because they represent wrongdoing. But this disdain is just what the priests are cautioned to avoid. Perhaps they needed to be told about the great holiness of these offerings. What is holy is not the sacrifice itself, but the confession of the person over the sacrifice, the intention to seek forgiveness, and the desire to change. A well-known precept of the Talmud is that. “In the place where penitents stand even the wholly righteous cannot stand.” (Berachot 34b)
The priests were overseeing the most important mechanism that exists for the full fruition of humanity: the elevation of the human soul. We know that the world can only improve if we change. The priests were not to treat these sacrifices lightly, disdainfully, or even in a “business as usual” manner. They were to approach these sacrifices with a deep reverence for the person offering them, and for the spiritual elevation they represented, knowing that they were the midwives to the birth a better world. Through confession, atonement, repentance, and the intention to do better each of us urges the world forward, in tiny increments. The priests observed people and hence the world, slowly improving. By their encouragement and respect for each sacrifice, they were able to promote the highest in the person offering the gift to God.
The meaning for us, who serve as our own priests, is to develop a reverence for our own capacity to grow and intention to change, for “it is most holy.” And we should know that whatever facets of our lives are touched by these changes become holy as well. The human way is to fall down and rise up. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said, “Whenever a person rises from one level to the next, it necessitates that they first have a descent before the ascent. Because the purpose of any descent is always in order to ascend.” (LM 22) If we wish it, our mistakes can be the rungs of the ladder of ascent, that we grasp that rung to pull ourselves up, and then stand upon it. Let us be in awe of our own capacity to grow, which will never end, and experience the holiness of God’s mechanism, the human way, of rising through our mistakes, because we, they too, are holy.
This phrase, most holy, or holiest of the holies, is said five times in this portion. Whatever touches them shall become holy, is said twice. God is attempting to tell the priests something important, but what is it? The meal offering was the least a person could offer. It was often brought by a person who was poor. Significantly, its holiness is described first among the edible sacrifices. The Midrash quotes Psalm 22:24 (Midrash Rabba III:2) “You that fear God, offer praise; All you the seed of Jacob, glorify The Eternal; And stand in awe of God, you seed of Israel, for God has not despised nor abhorred the lowliness of the poor; Neither hath God Hid the Divine face from him. But when he cried unto God, The Eternal heard.” This tells us that the offerings of the poor are special and precious to God.
Next the sin and guilt offerings are listed. The priests must eat them in a holy place, for they are kadosh kadoshim, the holy of the holies. Whatever touches them becomes holy. If we think about these three offerings, of the poor, concerning sin, and guilt, we might think that God might regard them with some disdain, or perhaps just tacit acceptance, because they represent wrongdoing. But this disdain is just what the priests are cautioned to avoid. Perhaps they needed to be told about the great holiness of these offerings. What is holy is not the sacrifice itself, but the confession of the person over the sacrifice, the intention to seek forgiveness, and the desire to change. A well-known precept of the Talmud is that. “In the place where penitents stand even the wholly righteous cannot stand.” (Berachot 34b)
The priests were overseeing the most important mechanism that exists for the full fruition of humanity: the elevation of the human soul. We know that the world can only improve if we change. The priests were not to treat these sacrifices lightly, disdainfully, or even in a “business as usual” manner. They were to approach these sacrifices with a deep reverence for the person offering them, and for the spiritual elevation they represented, knowing that they were the midwives to the birth a better world. Through confession, atonement, repentance, and the intention to do better each of us urges the world forward, in tiny increments. The priests observed people and hence the world, slowly improving. By their encouragement and respect for each sacrifice, they were able to promote the highest in the person offering the gift to God.
The meaning for us, who serve as our own priests, is to develop a reverence for our own capacity to grow and intention to change, for “it is most holy.” And we should know that whatever facets of our lives are touched by these changes become holy as well. The human way is to fall down and rise up. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said, “Whenever a person rises from one level to the next, it necessitates that they first have a descent before the ascent. Because the purpose of any descent is always in order to ascend.” (LM 22) If we wish it, our mistakes can be the rungs of the ladder of ascent, that we grasp that rung to pull ourselves up, and then stand upon it. Let us be in awe of our own capacity to grow, which will never end, and experience the holiness of God’s mechanism, the human way, of rising through our mistakes, because we, they too, are holy.
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