By Emily Rogal
“G-d’s hand is in the world
like my mother’s hand in the guts of the slaughtered chicken
on Sabbath eve.”
-- Yehuda Amichai
“The Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying, ‘Speak to the Israelite people” (Leviticus 1:1). This begins Vayikra, the first section of the book of Leviticus. Leviticus is primarily concerned with issues of purity, holiness, separation, and essentially, getting everyone on the same page: we’ve left Egypt, now what? Leviticus lays out a plethora of laws for how the Israelites can be a holy people. Vayikra tells us that there are five types of sacrifices that can be made to G-d - olah (sacrifices given to G-d just for kicks), minchah (meal offerings), shelamim (peace offerings), chatat (sin offerings), and asham (guilt offerings). By approaching the altar and sacrificing the chosen animal for one of the above reasons, one can erase their transgressions and become pure and holy once more.
While I was reading this text, I couldn’t help but wonder, what tools do we have in our tradition to achieve some sense of holiness? What technologies do we have at our disposal to encounter sacredness? In a lot of ways, these questions remind me of a question that I wrestle with, what does it mean to be a good Jew? Does being a good Jew mean performing as many mitzvot as possible? Does having the most incredible Bat Mitzvah party in your town count as “good Judaism”?
For me personally, I’m just now learning what it means to be a “good Jew.” My father is a devout Roman Catholic, while my mother was raised in a reform Jewish household. I was raised with one foot firmly planted in each of these traditions - a baptism, a Hebrew baby naming, a communion, and eventually a Bat Mitzvah. I knew about Jesus
and Veggie Tales, bagels and Noah and his arc. In high school, I “chose” Judaism. But what exactly did that mean? I hardly knew any of the prayers. My closet was sorely lacking Bar/Bat Mitzvah t-shirts. I interacted with Judaism primarily in a social setting, through that strange but true connection that gets formed when you realize “Oh, you’re Jewish? Me too!” But in a lot of ways, I felt separated from Judaism. For whatever reason, I just felt as though I wasn’t doing enough.
In my freshman year of college, I became more religious. Not in the sense that I was keeping kosher or running out to find a Chabad husband, but in the sense that I was building my own Jewish identity. I was lucky to have teachers that helped me to create my own space within Judaism, to approach the proverbial altar, a space of sacredness, to offer myself. Just because I wasn’t the most halakhically observant person, I still felt Jewish because I decided I was Jewish.
Someone once told me that “it was a shame that Reform and Conservative Judaism would be dead in one hundred years.” I’ve never truly been able to work through this cruel statement until I worked with this week’s parsha. In particular, a commentary by the medieval rabbi Rashi. Rashi writes of Leviticus 1:17 that “regarding an animal offering the Torah
says “a pleasing fragrance to G‑d,” and regarding a bird offering the Torah also says “a pleasing fragrance to G‑d.” This comes to tell you that whether one offers much or offers little, it is pleasing to G‑d—so long as one directs his heart to heaven . . .” Essentially, what Rashi is saying is that, it doesn’t matter what you sacrifice. Simply to approach the altar is to fulfill your duty.