The Gift

This week’s Torah portion is Vayikra, which means, and He called. God calls to Moses in this first portion in the book of Leviticus, a book mostly dedicated to instructions for the priests. God tells Moses how sacrifices should be offered and introduces five different categories of sacrifice: Elevation or burnt offerings which were voluntary offerings to allow a person to draw closer to God; Mincha or meal offerings composed of unleavened cakes or fine flour; the offerings of well being, for good fortune and blessings received, also known as feast peace offerings, and the sin and guilt offerings, for unintentional transgressions of a person or the nation. For people who were used to bringing sacrifices, this system provided a way to maintain and extend one’s relationship with God. It also provided a means of atonement; of cleansing oneself of sin and guilt. The possibility of atonement is a central principle of Judaism. As presented here, in the first two portions of Vayikra, it seems quaint, outdated, barbaric, and unnecessary; and it is easy to distance ourselves from the need to perform these rituals. But we all know and accept that we are far from perfect. We know w make mistakes. The question is: do we really need to atone for the mistakes we make? At the end of this weeks reading it says that if a person sins unintentionally, that person shall make restitution and add a fifth to it. This statement is rather amazing, in that it does not speak of an intentional sin, but of a mistake: something the person was not aware of at the time. Now for something like this we would think that we would need to put matters right: to make some kind of settlement or restitution and then things would be fine. After all, it was something we didn’t mean to do. Having made up for it, it should be over and done with. We would try to forgive ourselves and move on. But in this passage, God is trying to tell us that this is not so. In fact, the Torah is trying to make us aware that we do far more damage than we know, even when our sins or mistakes are unintentional. When they are intentional, it is even worse. Atonement is something that we should be seeking every day, and in the weekday Amidah, it is there, in two of the Eighteen Benedictions, the Shemonah Esrei, which few of us do each day, as our orthodox ancestors used to do. These two prayers, one for Repentance, and one for Forgiveness, are not said on Shabbat. They ask God to help us to return, to draw us near and to help us to repent. The second prayer asks God to forgive us as we acknowledge our sins and mistakes. In Midrash Rabba, “R. Akiba taught in the name of R. Simeon b. Azzai: Go two or three seats lower and take your seat, until they say to you, Come up, rather than that you should go up and they should say to you, ' Go down. Better that people say to you ‘come up, come up, ' and not say to you, ' go down, go down; and so used Hillel to say: ' My self-abasement is my exaltation, my self-exaltation is my abasement.”
If we didn’t need atonement, we would already be close to God. The sages teach that it is our sin, or human imperfections, that keep us distanced from the Divine Presence. We actively prevent ourselves from having a closer relationship with God by creating divisions between ourselves and others. That is the sad truth of human imperfection: that we have tremendous power to divide and we use it to keep ourselves away from the joy of living that we could be experiencing. That is the bad news. The good news is that we have the power to choose differently; that we have more power to influence our lives much more than we know. At the time when sacrifice was practiced, the blessings that we did not receive were symbolized by the animals we raised, fed, and cared for, but that we did not get to eat. The blessings were wasted and literally went up in smoke. All that we worked for we could not enjoy. And life still works that way. The mechanism of atonement, also read as at-one-ment, has been given to us as a gift; a gift that we should be using more than we do. Making mistakes is inevitable. It’s how we humans learn best: we fall down and pick ourselves up and try to do better Eventually after falling numerous times, hopefully, we learn how not to make that same error. If we can make fewer errors our lives can be better. But what of the commandment of the added fifth? This is what I call active repair: doing extra. Going above and beyond what is asked of us, so that we don’t allow the damage we cause to remain in the world. What might active repair look like? It might be working for social justice, to relieve the pain of others. And it could also be an attempt to be like God for people: having the God-like perspective of acceptance, forgiveness, giving, and being there by putting the needs of others first and our own needs second. This way of being can unite earth and heaven. The Zohar writes about this as well: “When a person rectifies their actions by means of the offering, all is firmly established and knit together in complete unity, as it is written, when a person brings near, that is, unites what should be.” (Section 3:5b) We can be cleansed only as we cleanse. We can be loved only as we love. We become clear before God by the sincerity of our intention to do no harm and to promote harmony. King Solomon said in the book of Proverbs (4:18) “The path of the righteous is like shining sunlight, continuously growing brighter like the midday sun.” Let us be like the righteous, rather than creating darkness, let us strive to be of those who give light. It is a destination that is ultimately part of our destiny, and atonement can take us there.