Skip to main content

The Mechitza on the Mizbeach


Usually, the division of the aliyot in a parashah, while driven by a number of factors, is decided by where it ends. There is a fairly iron-clad principle to end an Aliyah on a positive note, and not on a negative note. This week’s parashah gives us plenty of opportunities to do so, since many of the sub-sections end on a positive note.

That being the case, one would think that the fifth aliyah would encompass all of the sin-offerings (Chatat), covered in Vaykra, chapter 4, while the sixth aliyah would open with the beginning chapter 5, which deals with the guilt-offerings (Asham). But, instead, the fifth aliyah ends with 4:26, leaving two last Chattat offerings to be read with the Asham offerings. Why?
Here’s an idea: all the animals offered in the fifth aliyah as it stands are males, and all the animals offered in the sixth aliyah are females.

On the fifth and sixth days of creation, animals and humans - male and female - were created. When they sinned so egregiously that a flood was brought to cleanse the earth of the stain of their sins, both (some) humans and animals rode out the atoning, purifying procedure in the ark, separated by gender. As Rashi explains: when they entered the ark, men and women were listed separately, indicating that they refrained from relations; when they left, they left as couples, indicating the resumption of relations.

Sacrificial offerings may seem to us as mere rituals, but to our forebears, they were highly charged moments of drama, filled with life and death, punishment and its expiation both hovering above the heads of the trembling, anticipating people. Sin was palpable, and it was not a time for even the suggestion of something which might arouse the incessant depredations and suave persuasions of the Yetzer HaRa.


Therefore, I suggest, we recreate a bit of this drama by breaking the Torah reading where we do. May this reenactment have the desired effect of bringing us ever closer to Hashem such that we truly need neither Chattat nor Asham but rather the offerings of joy and exultation of Oneness emerging from the altar in the inner chambers of our hearts.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The One (People) Who Must Not Be Named

Just as Balak brings Bil’am to consider his enemy from various vantage point, likewise does Parashat Balak allow us to view ourselves from the vantage point of others. The main story in Balak is of a single piece, and Am Yisrael appear only as foils for the central story – the interaction of Bil’am with Hashem. What is curious is that not only does Am Yisrael not appear as a real character in the story, we don’t even get a mention. Every time Balak or Bil’am refer to Am Yisrael in the non-visionary passages, they employ indirection: “this people”, “my enemies”, but never Yisrael. It almost feels that they are avoiding speaking the name, one which Bil’am, at least, employs so beautifully in his prophetic speeches. Now, recalling that this story of the interaction of other nations with Am Yisrael is being told in the Torah, I think the message is this: Yisrael is our name in the context of our covenantal interactions with Hashem, just as Hashem’s real name is used only in the conte...
1 comment
Read more

My G-d, a Navaho?

--> Shabbat Shirah, it’s time to sing. Standing on the edge of a Red Sea that has returned to its roiling nature, drowning the fleeing, terrified Egyptian charioteers, Am Yisrael is ecstatic and, with Moshe, breaks into song. They sang in unison a song that welled up from a prophetic vision of redemption that, our sages tell us, outstripped even the visions of Yechezk’el and Isaiah, both of whom “saw” Hashem enthroned on high. The song so permeated the very fabric of being that it is introduced with the imperfect mood of the verb – Az Yashir Moshe… “Then Moshe will sing”, as though the song is every ringing in the background of our Jewishness. So what did they sing? Pure poetry, and therefore, as difficult to feel confident in parsing as it must be even to attempt to imagine what they were feeling at that moment. And yet, we reprise it every day in our morning prayers, as part of Pesukei D’Zimra. Every verse of this song is fit for deep reflection; I’ve chosen...
1 comment
Read more

A Sure Bet

How to begin? This is a dilemma that many of us face repeatedly in various situations in our lives. But none of us have had to face it in quite the way that Hashem needed to confront the problem of beginning at the outset of the Torah. It’s not just that it had never been done before, but, rather, how do you begin when you have no beginning? Ein Sof , the One Without End, is also Ein Tachlit , The One Without Beginning. So the question becomes not only HOW to begin, but WHAT IS “beginning” for such a One? Kabbalah has already extensively dealt with the question of transition from the infinite to the finite, and the entire array and interaction of the sefirot and their various constellations are in part a response to this question. But in addition to the ontological question indicated above, there is an epistemological question of perhaps greater moment: How does Hashem begin the Torah such that people get off on the right foot? How does He avoid embedding the seeds ...
Post a Comment
Read more