I discuss the weekly Torah portion with Rabbi Rabbs Mondays at 7:00 pm PDT on the rabbi’s cam and on YouTube. Facebook Fan Page.
This week we study Parashat Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1-5:26).
* Ancient Israel divided power between the king, the prophet and the priest. There’s no special role for the king in the sacrificial system.
* Reading this week’s Torah portion, I just want to throw up my hands and say, “What the hell?” It’s far removed from our modern sensibility.
* God runs the universe. He wants us to emulate him by making order out of chaos.
* Rabbi Berel Wein writes: “The details of kodshim as written in the Torah and, as expounded and expanded in the Mishna and Talmud, are like the mysterious formulae and equations used by physicists and chemistry professors that are unintelligible to the ordinary man on the street but nevertheless work and accomplish their stated functions and goals.”
I used to need reasons and explanations for everything. In my old age, I’m not as curious. I have more trust in Torah.
* It’s easy to talk about ethics and right and wrong and social policy with secularists, but it is usually hard to talk to them about holiness, the subject of this book of the Torah.
* You get close to that which you sacrifice for. How do you get close to God? I feel close to God at Yosemite and when I’m around holy people and studying Torah.
* It was easier to get close to God when you had the temple and the sacrifices.
* The sacrifices atone for sins against God, not for sins against man. You can’t buy God off for the rotten things you did to your neighbor.
* The Talmud states a couple of reasons for why Roman civilization should be praised. One of the reasons was that they did not marry men to men.
* Rabbi Wein writes: “The Talmud explicitly teaches us that only if a Kohain somehow resembles an angel of God in his behavior and deportment, would people come to study Torah from his mouth and sense the true holiness of the Temple. The task that was placed on the Kohanim was not one of mere rote service in the Temple. It was rather the challenge to be exemplary in behavior, a role model for others, and a teacher of Torah to Israel by deed as well as by word, which would define the true Kohain.”
The Jews are to be priests to the world just as the Cohenim are to be priests to the Jews.
When a Gentile priest walks by in distinctive religious garb, it does have an affect on the world. People speak differently and act differently when a priest is around.
* Do animals have rights? Not in a Torah view. Animals don’t have moral obligations. Animals are here to serve man. The Torah cares about how animals are treated (4th commandment that animals must rest on the Sabbath).
* A great Jewish novel is Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth. The protagonist’s job is as the human right’s commissioner for New York City. The novel is mainly about the guy’s sex life, but despite his constant plooking of shiksas, he’s preoccupied with moral issues. Even this horny hebe still tries to do good.
From Wikipedia: On the first page of the novel, one finds this clinical definition of “Portnoy’s Complaint”, as if taken from a manual on sexual dysfunction:
Portnoy’s Complaint: A disorder in which strongly felt ethical and altruistic impulses are perpetually warring with extreme sexual longings, often of a perverse nature…
The publication of the novel caused a major controversy in American public discourse. The two aspects that evoked such outrage were its explicit and candid treatment about sexuality and obscenities, including detailed depiction of masturbation, which was revolutionary in the late 1960s; and the irreverent portrait of Jewish identity. It sparked an uproar in the Jewish community, even among New York intellectuals such as Irving Howe and Diana Trilling.
