Peace-Offering in a Time of Pandemic (פרשת צו)

Reading Parshat Tzav (Leviticus 6:1–8:36) in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, the overriding concern of ויקרא (Leviticus) with purification seems all too fitting. There seems no better time for Rashi’s invitation: “Let the pure ones come and study laws of purity.”

Accordingly, it’s hard not to be preoccupied in this week’s portion with the elements of contagion (of holiness, 6:11) and the seven-day quarantine of Aaron and his sons: “And from the entrance of the Tent of Meeting you shall not go out seven days…. [Y]ou shall keep the Lord’s watch and shall not die” (8:33-35). There you have it: a biblical warrant for sheltering in place.

Moreover, the sacrifice of the peace-offering (זבח השלמים), which is described in Leviticus 7:11-16, is also obliquely tied to the theme of illness. Robert Alter translates זבח השלמים as “communion sacrifice,” presumably because it culminates in a communal meal, and the Jewish Publication Society translates it as the “sacrifice of well-being,” but peace-offering seems the best translation because the Hebrew name זבח השלמים is related to the word שלום (peace). The Torah portion tell us this particular type of offering may be brought forward in or for thanksgiving (7:12). Thanksgiving for what? Rashi (following the Talmud, which bases the interpretation on Psalm 107) explains that one should give thanks for recovering from an illness, among other things. And indeed among the great national events that called forth the peace-offering in biblical times was the cessation of pestilence: after David made peace-offerings, a “plague against Israel was checked” (II Samuel 24:25).

With the destruction of the Temple, we can’t follow David’s example, but maybe there is nevertheless still a lesson we can take away from the portion. Why is this particular type of sacrifice called a peace-offering? Some commentators in the Jewish tradition point out that a portion of the offering is burnt on the altar, a portion is given to the כהנים (priests), and the remainder is eaten by the person who brings the offering and his family—in short, everyone gets a part. Thus, as Nehama Leibowitz, paraphrasing Rabbi Yehuda in the Talmud, says: “It harbors ‘peace’ for all parties”: the altar, the priests, and the owners. She cites a commentator named Hoffman who suggests that the peace-offering thereby “reflects the harmony between the offerer, the Lord and His servants.”

Scientific efforts to find a cure for the deadly coronavirus reportedly reflect this spirit of sharing. “While political leaders have locked their borders,” the New York Times reported, “scientists have been shattering theirs, creating a global collaboration unlike any in history.” “What is important,” said the French doctor Yazdan Yazdanpanah, “is to come up with a solution for everyone. The way to achieve that is to collaborate.” Let’s remember that lesson after the crisis.

(פרשת ויקרא) Division and Communion

Judaism is all about distinction, and no book of the Torah exemplifies Judaism’s concern with distinction more than ויקרא (Leviticus in Latin). As the Hebrew and comparative literature expert Robert Alter puts it:

There is a single verb that focuses the major themes of Leviticus—“divide” (Hebrew, hivdil). That verb, of course, stands at the beginning of the Priestly story of creation: “And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness…. And God made the vault and it divided the water beneath the vault from the water above the vault, and so it was.” In this vision of cosmogony, the condition before the world was called into being was a chaotic interfusion of disparate elements, “welter and waste” [תהו ובהו]. What enables existence and provides a framework for the development of human nature, conceived in God’s image, and of human civilization is a process of division and insulation—light from darkness, day from night, the upper waters from the lower waters, and dry land from the latter.

Deconstruction may be the invention of a Jewish philosopher, but nothing could be less Jewish than destabilizing hierarchical oppositions.

Alter argues persuasively that the same process of division we find in בראשית (Genesis) is also “manifested in the ritual, sexual, and dietary laws of Leviticus…. Just as one has to set apart permissible sexual partners from forbidden ones” (the incest taboo), “one must set apart what may be eaten in the great pullulation of living creatures from what may not be eaten” (the laws of kashrut); and the Jewish people, through its acceptance of these categorical divisions, “sets itself apart from other peoples and becomes holy, like God.” Alter adds: “This last element of imitatio dei suggests that God’s holiness, whatever else it may involve and however ultimately unfathomable the idea may be, implies an ontological division or chasm between the Creator and the created world.”

The first portion of ויקרא (Leviticus 1:1–5:26) concerns the laws of the קרבות (korbanot), the animal and grain offerings brought to the משכן (Mishkan or Tabernacle). These laws raise the question that the rabbis Maimonides and Nachmanides famously debated in the twelfth century, namely, what is the meaning and purpose of the sacrifices? And to this question we may add another: What do the sacrifices have to do with the process of division that Alter highlights?

Maimonides in his Guide for the Perplexed contends that God did not instruct the Jews to make sacrifices for their own sake but only as a means to wean the Jews away from idolatry and instead to God’s service. He reasons that the Jews were accustomed to the Egyptian practice of sacrificing animals to idols. Because human beings cannot suddenly discontinue everything to which they are accustomed, God permitted the sacrifices to continue while transferring them to His service.

Nachmanides challenged this interpretation, pointing out that Abel and Noah made sacrifices to God in the absence of idolatry. He argued that the “sin” or offense offering described in this week’s portion was a means (as Nehama Leibowitz puts it) to “express man’s readiness to sacrifice himself for his God.” From this perspective, the sacrificial animal is substituted for the person who has committed a transgression.

I’m no rabbinical scholar, but I don’t see a great divide between the views of Maimonides and Nachmanides. Leibowitz suggests that Nachmanides, in contrast to Maimonides, attributed “intrinsic value” to the sacrifices, but that can’t be right. As she later notes, the prophets expressly denied that the sacrifices had instrinsic value, insisting that they were only a means of drawing nearer to God and were only valuable when they served this purpose. So everyone—Maimonides, Nachmanides, and the prophets—characterizes the sacrifices as a means to an end. Maimonides and Nachmanides appear to disagree about the precise nature of that end, but even on this point the difference between them is not great. Maimonides emphasizes not just the rejection of idolatry but also devotion to God’s service. A readiness to sacrifice oneself for one’s God is arguably the most extreme form of service.

Still, what do the sacrifices have to do with the process of division? One answer, as Alter points out, is that the laws of sacrifice carefully regulate access to the sacred space of the sanctuary, preventing the unsanctioned mixture of the sacred and the profane. The two brief stories contained in the book of ויקרא (though not in this week’s portion) illustrate the dangers of such unsanctioned mixture: Aaron’s sons Nadab and Abihu are divinely punished for bringing “alien fire before the Lord” (Leviticus 10), and an Egyptian who profanes God’s sacred name is stoned to death (Leviticus 24). According to the anthropologist Mary Douglas, the entire book of Leviticus is structured by a system of correspondences between the divisions of the Mishkan (holy of holies, sanctuary, outer court), Mount Sinai (summit, perimeter, foot of the mountain), and the body of the sacrificed animal. For example, she argues, this week’s portion prohibits consumption of the suet (Leviticus 3:17) because it “divides the body at the diaphragm below the lower ribs” and thus “corresponds in the body to the boundary of a forbidden sacred space on the mountain.”

But the sacrifices do not only divide; they also connect. As Leibowitz says, the sacrifice “allows us to draw closer to the Almighty.” This is evident from the fact that the word קרבן (sacrifice) is derived from the root ק–ר–ב, from which we also get the word קרוב (close). This interpretation also finds support in the work of Jewish sociologist Émile Durkheim. In Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, first published in 1912, Durkheim argued that sacrifice is not a “tribute or homage” to the deity. Rather, he argued, sacrifice should be seen as an “act of alimentary communion,” a “meal of which the faithful who offer it partake at the same time as the god to whom it is offered.” While some parts of the sacrificial victim are “reserved for the deity,” others are consumed by the celebrants, and in this way sacredness is “communicated to the faithful.” This interpretation casts a new light not only upon the sacrifices themselves but also upon the divisions of the cosmos. If the sacrifices bring us closer to God, then perhaps the ontological chasm that Alter infers between the Creator and the created world is not as unbridgeable as it may at first appear.

Who Built It 3 (פרשת כי תשא)

Some time ago, I wrote a drash about Parshat Eikev (פרשת עקב) entitled, “Who Built It?” I drew attention to this verse: “And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’ And you will remember the Lord your God, for He it is Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). While the wealthy person is inclined to believe that he is singularly responsible for his own success in life (“I built that”) this portion teaches us otherwise.

Parshat Ki Tisa (פרשת כי תשא) extends this point from economic capital to what sociologists call cultural capital. It’s not just the wealthy person who is inclined to commit the aveirah (עבירה) of believing he built his good fortune on his own. Learned and brilliant people often fall into an analogous error, believing that their intelligence and wisdom made them successful. They too forget the Source of their power—in this case, the power to understand. 

Parshat Ki Tisa makes this point through Bezalel, the man upon whom the Lord calls to manage the construction of the Mishkan (משכן or Tabernacle). Bezalel is chosen for this role because of his wisdom (חכמה), understanding (תבונה), and knowledge (דעת) (Exodus 31:3). But notice what the portion teaches about these qualities. Just as it is the Lord “Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:18), so it is the Lord who imbues Bezalel with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Exodus 31:3). For good measure, the Torah makes clear that the point does not apply to Bezalel alone, for “in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have put wisdom that they may make all that I have commanded” (Ex. 31:6). The verse reminds us of the Source of these qualities and how we are instructed to use them: to build a sanctuary (more figuratively to sanctify the world) so that we may foster the divine presence among us.

Who Built It 2 (פרשת תרומה)

Some time ago, I wrote a drash about Parshat Eikev (פרשת עקב) entitled, “Who Built It?” I drew attention to this verse: “And you will say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand made me this wealth.’ And you will remember the Lord your God, for He it is Who gives you power to make wealth” (Deuteronomy 8:17-18). While the wealthy person is inclined to believe that he is singularly responsible for his own success in life (“I built that”) this portion teaches us otherwise. “Wealth,” I wrote in that drash, “is a social product of many people working together.”


Getting from the Lord “gives you power to make wealth” to “wealth is a social product of many people working together” required some admittedly convoluted reasoning. Parshat Terumah (פרשת תרומה) makes this point more simply and directly. The portion begins with this instruction:
 

וְעָשׂוּ לִי, מִקְדָּשׁ; וְשָׁכַנְתִּי, בְּתוֹכָם

Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them (Exodus 25:8)

A few verses later a further instruction is given concerning the making of the ark (ארון), the primary article of furniture in the Mishkan (משכן or Tabernacle):

וְעָשׂוּ אֲרוֹן

And they shall make an ark… (Exodus 25:10)

Nehama Leibowitz draws attention to the mode of address used here. She quotes the eighteenth-century rabbi Or Ha-hayyim:

The change in the wording from the second person singular [you shall make] to the third person plural [they shall make] is to illustrate that the essence of the Torah can only be fulfilled by Israel as a whole. For instance, a priest cannot fulfill the bestowing of the 24 priestly gifts, the redemption of the firstborn etc., whilst an Israelite cannot fulfil the positive commands of the sacrifices and the same applies to the Levite. But, taken as a whole, the Israelite people can keep the entire gamut of Jewish observances. For this reason the Torah states: “they shall make the ark.”

Nehama Leibowitz also quotes Midrash Tanhuma, which makes a similar point:

We find that when the Holy One Blessed be He instructed Moses to build the Tabernacle He used the expression ועשיתה “thou shalt make” but with regard to the Tabernacle He said: ועָשׂוּ “they shall make.” Why? The Holy One Blessed be He wished to stress that the command applied to each and every Israelite alike. No one should have the excuse to say to his fellow: I contributed more to the ark. Therefore I study more and have a greater stake in it than you! You contributed hardly anything therefore you have no share in the Torah…. That is why it is written (Deut. 33, 4): “An inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.”

If the ark is the product of many people working together, how much more so does this point apply to lesser achievements!

Agent and Principal (פרשת משפטים)

Last week’s Torah portion, Mishpatim (משפטים), includes an intriguing reference to a mysterious agent sent by God to assist the Jewish people in its journey to the Promised Land:

הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי שֹׁלֵחַ מַלְאָךְ, לְפָנֶיךָ, לִשְׁמָרְךָ, בַּדָּרֶךְ; וְלַהֲבִיאֲךָ, אֶל-הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר הֲכִנֹתִי. הִשָּׁמֶר מִפָּנָיו וּשְׁמַע בְּקֹלוֹ, אַל-תַּמֵּר בּוֹ:  כִּי לֹא יִשָּׂא לְפִשְׁעֲכֶם, כִּי שְׁמִי בְּקִרְבּוֹ.

Robert Alter translates the passage this way:

Look, I am about to send a messenger before you to guard you on the way and bring you to the place that I made ready. Watch yourself with him and heed his voice, do not defy him, for he will not pardon your trespass, for My name is within him (Exodus 23:20-21).

Alter comments that “the frankly mythological terms of the preceding narrative—the pillars of cloud and fire, the Destroyer in Egypt—invite us to imagine the messenger as a fearsome agent of God, perhaps human in form like the divine messengers in Genesis, leading the people through the wilderness.”

The 1985 JPS translation, the Sapirstein translation, and my grandmother’s 1957-1960 Menorah Press translation render the passage similarly except, in contrast to Alter’s more literal translation, they translate the Hebrew word מלאך as angel rather than messenger. The English word angel is derived from the Greek angelos, which literally means messenger or envoy.

Rashi explains that the messenger or angel is none other than Metatron (מטטרון), “whose name is like the Name of his Master,” meaning that its numerical value is equal to שדי (Shaddai, the Almighty). For Rashi, this is the meaning of “My name is within him,” though I am reminded of the much later legends about the golem, in some versions of which the clay creature is animated by placing a slip of paper or a tablet inscribed with the name of God under its tongue. Rashi adds that Metatron will not pardon trespass for two reasons: first, as an angel who is free of the evil inclination (יצר הרע) and does not sin, he is unaccustomed to forgiving; and second, “he is only an emissary [שליח] and does nothing but fulfill his mission.”

What else do we know about Metatron? Gershom Scholem, the great Israeli scholar of Jewish mysticism, noted that the Talmud mentions Metatron in the context of its polemics against Jewish heretics like Elisha ben Abuyah. He writes:

Elisha b. Avuyah saw Metatron seated [in a vision] and said, “perhaps there are two powers,” as though indicating Metatron himself as a second deity. The Talmud explains that Metatron was given permission to be seated only because he was the heavenly scribe recording the good deeds of Israel. Apart from this, the Talmud states, it was proved to Elisha that Metatron could not be a second deity by the fact that Metatron received 60 blows with fiery rods to demonstrate that Metatron was not a god, but an angel, and could be punished…. It is however thought that the appearance of Metatron to Elisha b. Avuyah led him to a belief in dualism.

Scholem’s discussion thus leads us to the Jewish heretic Elisha ben Abuyah, also called Akher (the Stranger), who became the model for Isaac Deutscher’s conception of the “non-Jewish Jew.” As Deutscher explained in his famous 1958 essay:

The Jewish heretic who transcends Jewry belongs to a Jewish tradition. You may, if you like, see Akher as a prototype of those great revolutionaries of modern thought: Spinoza, Heine, Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, Trotsky, and Freud. You may, if you wish to, place them within a Jewish tradition. They all went beyond the boundaries of Jewry. They all found Jewry too narrow, too archaic and too constricting. They all looked for ideals and fulfillment beyond it…. It was this that enabled them to rise in thought above their societies, above their nations, above their times and generations, and to strike out mentally into wide new horizons and far into the future.

Now, Deutscher may be right that the Jewish heretic is the more farsighted individual with the wider horizon. But isn’t there a corresponding danger for the heretic that he will mistake, from his detached viewpoint, the agent—an agent without mercy—for the principal?