Tazriah 5774

This week’s Torah reading, Tazriah, oozes, flakes, and sticks.  When a person’s skin has a swelling, discoloration, rash, or burn, he or she is to call the priest.  The priest will declare whether the person is “tameh/ritually unclean” or “tahor/ritually clean.”

We regularly use the categories of “unclean” and “clean” – unclean goes in the hamper, clean goes into the drawer.  But the categories of “ritually unclean” and “ritually clean” have ceased to have currency for us.  We’ve lost the vocabulary to describe spiritual health and un-well-ness.  Even so, we have an innate sense of when we need to restore our balance so that we can continue properly.

After a fight, we need to restore balance.  After witnessing a car crash, we need to offer thanks.  We wash our hands after handling meat, even if we were wearing gloves.  We know we shouldn’t leave the cemetery and head right to the preschool.  It’s not that we’re carrying contagion, but rather that the essence of one doesn’t mix with the essence of the other.  Human beings need to transition from one state to the other.  Through time and ritual, we become ritually pure once again.

These categories were very real for the ancients.  Perhaps they were more in touch with their spiritual states; perhaps they were obsessed with something that didn’t really exist.  We cannot know.  Modern life, with all its bells and whistles, makes awareness of our spiritual nature difficult.  And it is even harder to be aware when we lack words to describe it.

Unlike our biblical ancestors, we do not believe that disease is an expression of our spiritual states.  Even so, it behooves us to think of the bad energy we bring from one experience to the other, the spiritual baggage we carry with us.  It’s worth considering how to shed it.

Sh'mini 5774

The mishkan is up and running, having been duly consecrated.  Now, Moses tells Aaron and his sons, “today the Eternal will appear to you.”  It’s all systems go.

What a horror, then, when two of Aaron’s sons are incinerated by God after they offer “alien fire” on the altar.  “And fire came forth from the Eternal and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of the Eternal” (Parshat Sh’mini, Leviticus 10:2).

The episode is shocking on many levels, and it also can also teach us spiritually.  The rabbinic commentators have argued for centuries about what “strange fire” actually means, but I notice that the sons are devoured by the same force they promoted  –  fire.  Isn’t it the case that the world gives us what we look for?

I have observed that …

• Angry people find reason to be angry.
• Fearful people have lots of opportunities to fear.
• Negative people experience a negative world.
• Joyful people experience joy throughout the day.
   

To be clear, I do not believe in phony philosophies that hold that one’s mere thoughts create their reality.  Thoughts turn to mindsets, and mindsets shape the way we see and react to the world.  They do not, I am certain, summon good, evil, joy, or pain into our lives.  There’s plenty of all these to go around.

Rather, I think that our mindset shapes what we see – so that we notice the good, evil, joy, or pain in our lives when that’s what we expect to find.  It’s not that what we put into the world comes back to us.  Instead, we see in the world what we expect to see.

Tzav 5774

To prepare for their ordination, Aaron and his sons eat parts of the sacrifice.  They consume the offering of meal and meat; the rest is turned to smoke on the altar.  They dress in priestly garb, are anointed with oil, and are consecrated to God.

The fire of the altar is long since burnt out; the priesthood is no more.  Still, the act of preparing and consuming food remains a sacred one.  Many Jewish customs derive from the priests’ ritual behavior.  The Talmud transforms the Temple’s altar into the kitchen table (BT B’rachot 55a).  We wash hands before we eat bread because priests did so, too.  Shabbat challah represents the showbreads offered when the Temple stood.

When we offer blessings before eating, we elevate the act from an animal need to a sacred act.  When we restrict what we consume by following the laws of kashrut, we impose a discipline on ourselves that develops self-control.  Through these several steps, we pay attention to what we eat and drink, and elevate ourselves in the process.

Few members of our community make the blessings over food.  Some eat meat of all species.  No matter what your practice, try -- just this week -- to bring consciousness to your eating.  Pay attention to the choices you make and the flavors in your mouth.  Pause and offer thanks.  In so doing, you can become more attuned to yourself, your community, and God. 

We are what we eat.  Let’s make ourselves holy.

Vayikra 5774

And so we begin Leviticus/Vayikra.  It is a playbook on how to sacrifice animals to God.

In the coming weeks, we’ll read of bulls, rams, goats, turtle doves, and grain turned to smoke.  We’ll learn about washing entrails, and dashing blood on the altar.  We’ll study the different classifications of offering:  sin, burnt, purgation, expiation, and wholeness.  We’ll ponder the rules of kashrut, especially which animals cannot be eaten.  We’ll hear about ritual impurity after childbirth.  We’ll contemplate diseases of the skin and of buildings.

What does this have to do with us?  Why should we pay attention through the long slog of Vayikra?

The Hebrew word for sacrifice, l’hakriv holds a clue.  Its root, koof-resh-vet, signals its true meaning:  drawing near.

The ancients offered sacrifices as a way to draw near to God.  According to Arnie Eisen, “giving things of value to God is part of that effort, and so is giving up things of value to us. Both are instruments of drawing near, overcoming distance, making right what had been wronged” (JTS Torah Commentary).

While we no longer offer animal sacrifice, the human need to draw near to God remains.  We long to connect with the Source of the Universe.  We long to transcend our finite natures, and partake in the Great Mystery of Creation.  We do this through prayer.  We do this through silence.  We do this in song.  We do this in nature.  We do this through denial, and we do this through pleasure and beauty.  We do this by trying our best.

For the next 10 weeks, let this be our quest:  to remember that we are more than “To Do” lists, more than mere clusters of atoms.  Let us draw close to God, the Source of All.