SPEAK

TO THE ISRAELITE PEOPLE, AND SAY TO THEM: WHEN ANY OF YOU PRESENTS AN OFFERING

OF CATTLE TO THE LORD YOU SHALL OFFER YOUR OFFERING FROM THE HERD OR FROM THE

FLOCK.

(Vayikra 1:2))

The Sacrifices: Of You? Of Animals?

What does it say previously

about this matter? When one has thus sinned and, realizing his guilt, would

restore that which he gained through robbery (Vayikra 5: 23) and

afterwards, This is the ritual of the burnt offering (6:2).

If you want to offer a sacrifice, never rob anything from anyone. Why? Because,

in connection with the burnt offering, God loves justice and hates robbery.

When can you make a burnt offering that is acceptable to Me? When your hand has

no part of robbery. David said: Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who

may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart (Tehillim 24:3-4). From the beginning of the laws of sacrifices we learn, when mikem [any of you, but also from you – not from the

possessions of others] presents an offering…

The Holy one Blessed be He said:

When you offer sacrifice to me, be like Adam [a play on the verse, When any

of you – adam- presents an offering] who could not steal from others

because he was the only person in existence.

(Yalkut Shimoni

Vayikra 6: 480)

Adam ki yakriv mikem [When

any of you presents]: This

may be read as allowing for human sacrifice, since it could have been

formulated less ambiguously as Adam mikem ki yakriv. However, Scripture

has avoided this and prohibited it [human sacrifice], and so the verse should

be rendered: If a person from amongst you wishes to make an offering to God,

you should offer cattle or sheep, but not humans. And that is what the prophet said: Which

I never commanded, never decreed, and which never came to My mind (Jeremiah 19: 5). And that is why the section regarding sacrifices begins with the word

adam [human being], to tell you that humans will be the sacrificers and

not the sacrificed.

(Rabbeinu Behayeiy on

Vayikra 1:2)

It is written: Which I never

commanded, never decreed, and which never came to My mind (Jeremiah 19: 5).

Which I never commanded – This is the son of Mesha King of Moav, as

it is written: So he took his firstborn son, who was supposed to succeed him

as king, and offered him up as a burnt offering (II Kings 3: 27).

Never decreed – this is Yiftah.

And which never came to My

mind – That is Isaac,

Abraham's son.

(Ta'anit 4a)

Adam ki yakriv mikem korban

Lord] One must understand

why the word adam appears several times in Leviticus. In my humble

opinion, it appears that if Adam had not sinned, sacrifice would be practiced

in a completely different way, in the spiritual manner of angels, as God said,

"I want words" (Shemot Rabbah

38:4). That is why it begins

with the word adam, as if to say that Adam's sin made this form of

redress, i.e., the presenting of an offering of cattle, necessary.

(Yodei Binah, pg. 57)

And He Called to Moses – and Who

Heard?

Pinchas Leiser

My words are largely based upon Prof. Y.

Leibowitz's Sheva Shanim shel Sihot al Parashat HaShavua, pp. 438-441.

My prayer is that, in due time, they shall bring redemption to a wounded and

bleeding world.

Rashi,

following the Sages (Yoma 4a), makes a precise textual inference:

And

He called to Moses (Vayikra 1:1)-This implies that the Voice went on and

reached his [Moses's] ears only, but all the other Israelites did not hear it.

(Rashi

quotes based on Silberman translation)

An

interesting question arises in this connection: On whom does the hearing

depend, on the speaker or on the listener? Or perhaps on both of them? (The

halakhah regarding the blowing of the shofar comes to mind. As the RaMBaM

formulated it, "He does not fulfill his obligation until both hearer and

blower have proper intention" – Hilkhot

Shofar 2:4).

In

addition, what is the instrument through which one "hears" the voice

of God? Rashi's further comments shed some light on the kinds of voice and

hearing involved:

From

the Tent of Meeting – This

teaches us that the Voice broke off and did not issue beyond the Tent of

Meeting.

Since

we have not been informed that the Tent of Meeting was surrounded with a sealed

acoustical wall and a sophisticated system of insulation – it did not even have

a roof – we can assume that we are dealing with a rather different kind of

"voice" and "hearing."

The midrash Tannaim

Sifra (Chapter 5) further clarifies the

issue:

Could

it be [that the Voice was not heard outside the Tent] because it was weak? The

words et hakol [the Voice] teach us otherwise: The Voice is

understood in Scripture [in accordance with the verse]: The Voice of the

cedars (Tehillim 29:4). If so, why does it say from the Tent of

Meeting? This teaches us that the voice was cut off [from being heard

outside the Tent].

According to the

above, ability to hear the Voice is not limited by hearing problems or

acoustical issues. Rather, it is dependent upon the will of the Speaker, or

that of the listener, or upon the relationship between Speaker and listener.

Yeshayahu

Leibowitz (in his Sheva Shanim Shel Sihot al Parashat Ha'Shavua) cites

the Midrash HaGadol on this topic, which presents a particular reading

of the Sifra selection brought by Rashi:

Could it be that [the Voice] was weak? The word hakol [the

Voice] as understood in the Writings, teaches us otherwise. And if so, why

does this one [Moses] hear it and this one [Israel] not hear it? Rather, all

those whom God wants to have hear it, do hear it, and the rest do not hear it.

According

to this way of thinking, the ability to hear the Voice is conditional upon

divine grace, and God chooses those who will hear His Voice.

In

contrast to this view, we may glean a different notion from the words of Rabbi

Hayim ben Atar, author of the commentary Or HaHayim:

And

He called to Moses: Perhaps

this is intended to speak of God's powers, that He can call out in a great

Voice and be heard only by those whom he chooses. That is the meaning of and

He called to Moses – although He called out, His speech was only heard by

Moses and not by those with Moses.

The

Hebrew expression asher yahpotz – "whom He chooses" – is

ambiguous. Does it mean "whom He chooses," as the Midrash HaGadol

would claim? Or does Rabbi Hayyim ben Atar mean to say that he who chooses

to hear God's Voice will be able to it, making the whole thing dependent on

people themselves?

Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz tries to suggest

that both views share a common element: Whether God's voice only reaches those

special individuals chosen by God, or whether it reaches all people who choose

to hear it, reception of the Voice is not dependent on the Voice itself, but

rather upon the character of the person receiving it. Leibowitz deduces from

this that, in any event, worship of God via the acceptance of the yoke of the

Torah and the commandments can enable people to hear the Voice, and not vice

versa. This is largely compatible with the RaMBaM's theory of prophecy.

The

Tanaitic midrash Sifra, and Rabbi Hayyim ben Atar in its wake, also

expound upon the word leimor ["saying," from the verse The

Lord called to Moses and spoke to him from the Ten of Meeting, saying]:

He spoke with him for Israel's sake and not

for his own sake, for his speaking to Moses was only for Israel's benefit.

Moses,

the greatest of prophets, served as the "pipeline" for transmitting

God's Voice to Israel. This is reminiscent of a verse that follows the Ten

Commandments: "You speak to us," they said to Moses, "and we

shall obey; but let not God speak to us, lest we die (Shemot 21:16).

RaShBaM

explains: "'You speak to us' – If they had not said this, God would

have communicated all of His commandments to them directly."

Moses,

who was capable of "hearing," had to mediate between God and Israel,

which was incapable of "hearing." We can infer from this that a

different kind of hearing was involved, which was not dependent upon auditory

and acoustical factors.

And

what are those words which are heard in our parasha, which opens a series of

parshiyot dealing with the sacrificial worship of God?

RaMBaM's

attitude towards the sacrificial rite, which he explained in the Guide for

the Perplexed, is well known. He saw the sacrifices as a kind of concession

to irrepressible pagan tendencies. The Torah's precisely prescribed rite, which

required painstaking attention to the proper place and method of sacrifice,

would raise it into a form of worship of God.

In

contrast to the RaMBaM, the RaMBaN and others viewed sacrifice as a way to draw

near to God, in which a person could symbolically sacrifice his own animalistic

nature by offering up an animal sacrifice.

It seems to me that, at the end of the day,

the common theme of these two approaches is that God's Voice commands us to

exercise restraint and maximum control over our drives, while not denying the

existence of those drives.

Can

words of prayer or the study of these parshiyot serve as proper substitutes for

the hard work of giving reign to reason, morality, and God's Voice over the

powerful drives which awaken in us in our hours of distress? Do today's

synagogues and batei midrash serve as places where the public is taught

to lend God's Voice control over strange and violent emotions?

This

question may demand ceaseless thought. Perhaps it all depends on the quality of

our hearing of that Voice. Or, perhaps, as Yeshayahu Leibowitz lyrically

expressed it, do the hearer and the speaker of God's Voice stand within the

Tent of Meeting, or outside it?

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom,

is a psychologist.

Who is Affected by Whom?

If it is the anointed priest

who has incurred guilt, le'ashmat

ha'am [so that blame falls upon the people] (4:8).

What is the meaning of the article le' in this verse?

There are two approaches to understanding this

matter, which may be expressed in the words of the Sages: Does the generation –

that is to say, the social, cultural and moral character of a certain

population at a certain time – go according to the Prince (i.e., does the

leadership determine the people's character)? Or does the Prince go with the

people (the leadership is appropriate to the people)? Or as the nations of the

world are wont to say, does each nation get the leaders it deserves?

And so, there are two

interpretations of if it is the anointed priest who has incurred guilt, le'ashmat

ha'am. It can mean that the priest's unintentional sin (i.e., the

leadership's mistakes) cause the people to sin as well. That is to say, the sin

of the anointed priest also incurs guilt for the people. Or it can be

interpreted as saying that the people cause the priest to sin. That is to say,

he sins because the people sins.

This returns us to a problem of

profound social-political significance: Are the generation's faults to be

blamed on the leadership? Or should we say that the character of the leadership

reflects the character of the people? There is an important practical

consequence to the way we answer these questions. In the one case, we can

improve a situation by changing the leadership. In the other case, the people

cannot be changed, and improvement would be dependent upon everyone's improving

himself.

(Y. Leibowitz, He'arot

le'Parshiyot Ha'shavu'a)

Who is the Adam (Person) Who Offers Sacrifice?

Adam includes converts who take the covenant upon

themselves as does Israel, including non-Jews who do so. Even though adam

here means [a member of] Israel, later in the verse we find the word mikem