By Elijah Stone
How are you doing on this lovely day? Well I hope you’re all feeling wonderful, and that you’re ready to talk a bit about sacrificial offerings in this week’s parsha! Wooo! Sacrificial offerings!
Look here for a summary.
This week’s parsha is Vayikra, and it’s all about minute details about brunt offerings at the Tabernacle. Just for a little recap last week’s parsha was about the creation of the tabernacle, the vessel of the divine spirit while the Jews are wondering around the desert. For our modern day audience the last week’s parsha is a highlight of jubilation, as it was the act of intentional creation, but this week’s parsha is about minute details on something we haven’t done in quite some time. So what relevance does this weeks parsha have today? What lesson can we learn and apply to today? Well in order to answer these questions we must dig a little deeper into the purpose of the offerings. Instead of focusing on how to prepare an animal for an offering let us consider how the types of offering can be seen as an outlet, a way to deal with your guilt or shame, and even atone for sins you might have made. To make an offering was you dealing with you sins or ill feelings with god and your community. That’s what makes this parsha so interesting, because there was a system that ensured a communal way of healing. The tabernacle was a place for the people, and it was used as a place for people to struggle with their relationship
to god. I find this idea of communal healing is marvelous, and it leaves me thinking about what structures within Habonim exist for us to do that. We have feedback, and we have checkins, but that’s not really it, those are interpersonal. I guess we have havdallah, and for me that can be a place of healing, and it’s done as a community. But, I still think that’s not quite there yet, because making an offering would be an intentional decision to go and publicly declare you sins, or any other feeling that is plaguing you. During Havdallah things just kind of come out, completely beyond your control, and your crying uncontrollably… nope? Just me? Ok then…. Anyways. The point is within our intentional community we don’t (as far as I know) have an intentional communal way of healing that is regular. He have the community that can do it and have it be wonderful we just need to create the structure.
Here are some parshot I consulted in writing this:
http://www.jewishrecon.org/resource/drawing-close-sacrifice