Parashat Vayikra -- Levitical Intent

This week, we begin a new book of Torah, Vayikra, or Leviticus. As I shared with you at this time last year, I look forward to Leviticus, and its listings of sacrificial laws and gory details of blood and suet, with a secret joy. First of all, when we begin reading Leviticus anew each year it means that spring is here. It means Pesach is coming. It means that the smell of jasmine is ripe in the air, that trees are budding again, and that springtime allergies are in full bloom. Yes, beginning Leviticus each year means longer days, warmer afternoons, and more opportunities for picnics. It also means that we are stepping away from Torah narrative and into a whole new world of textual exploration.

By far, my favorite author to write about Leviticus is Mary Douglas. And so, I was overjoyed to see that Rachel Adler, a professor of mine from rabbinical school and my thesis advisor, sited Douglas so extensively in her URJ Torah commentary this week. Check out her words at http://urj.org/torah/.

This week, I will expand on Dr. Adler’s d’var torah and share with you another assertion of Mary Douglas’. Douglas explains that it is no surprise that contemporary readers have difficulty reading and connecting with the descriptions and laws of Leviticus. This difficulty stems from a basic place: we don’t think like the Levitical authors. Douglas asserts (and this notion may be quite challenging to you) that Leviticus was written by human authors during the 5th century BCE, following the destruction of the First Temple and the exile in Babylon). This discrepancy, this huge gap between the world-view of the Levitical authors and the world-view of Levitical readers, leads to confusion and alienation. It becomes our task as readers, then, to bridge this gap and learn to think “Levitically.”

There is something poetic in the gap between Levitical authors and today’s readers, for, it seems, such a gulf between the text and reality has always existed. Douglas suggests that when the authors of Leviticus set about writing the laws and practices of their community, they also set out to purge their religion of its (previously central) magical elements. Leviticus, then, is at its heart a “resynthesis.” The book reflects the authors’ attempts to meld an imperfect present with an imperfect past, and, through a careful excising of “immoral” elements, create a new future.

The writers of Leviticus, having witnessed the dangers of monarchic rule, attempted to return back to the “roots” of their community through the creation of Leviticus. Having lived through the pains of kingship, they set out to record their past, a time before kings ruled and succumbed to the temptations of power. As they traveled “backward,” though, the authors came into contact with what they understood to be an imperfect past. You see, the Ancient Israelite religion was marked with what had become in the 5th century to be out-of-mode practices, like magic, ancestor worship, oracles, and polytheism. Therefore, they had to “recreate” the past in the lens of an already altered present.

And so, they wrote a book that had no mention of “polytheism, kingship, oracles, ancestors, demons, magic, diviners, healers, and images” (Douglas, Leviticus as Literature, 5). Leviticus, at its core, then, is a radical work: it is an assertion of what spirituality, community, and worship could be. It reflects the authors’ attempt to re-work their tradition in a more perfect form. Leviticus is reform.

Today, we have much to learn from Leviticus and from the Levitical authors. We too are in the process of creating a new future for ourselves. And, for us, as well, future making is a process that is steeped in both the realities of the present and the past (for good and bad). Future making is a challenging process. It forces us to look at open eyes at the world around us and the days that came before us. It forces us to ask difficult questions and dream forward. My blessing for us all this week is that we open ourselves to the treasures that Leviticus has in store for us. May we allow ourselves to delight in a world that is foreign to us. And maybe, we will even be inspired by this foreign book in our work of reforming our world.