If it's almost April, it must be time to start ויקרא. In an interview published two weeks ago in The Forward, Slate editor David Plotz says: "Leviticus is mocked and derided because the first 13 chapters are a combination of tedium, irrelevance and weirdness." So it's always a challenge to find something interesting and meaningful here. Well, this is what I learned last week.
Last week's portion outlined the five types of קרבנות (sacrifices). The word קרבן (sacrifice) is derived from the root ק–ר–ב, from which we also get the word קרוב (close)-- I should have seen that one, since I learned קרוב last year in Israel and found it a very handy word, especially when explaining to taxi drivers where I lived. Hence, קרבן literally means coming closer (to השם, not to הדירה שלי).
I also learned that there is a Great Debate between the medieval rabbis Maimonides and Nahmanides about the rationale of the קרבנות: are they a means of weaning the people from idolatry and pushing them along the path to a higher stage of spiritual development (namely, prayer), as Maimonides would have it, or did the קרבנות have some intrinsic value, as Nahmanides argues? Each view has its own problems, but I wonder whether Nahmanides isn't guilty of what sociologists call goal displacement, a process in which means become ends in themselves. If so, I'm sure there's a קרבן to atone for that.
