Does our God need to be appeased?
This second portion of the book of Leviticus, Vayikra, continues the Korbanot, the offerings. It is vital to remember that the Creator made us…We didn’t make Him. We also all want to tell the Creator what He wants instead of listening to him. He is not seeking our apologies; He wants our obedience, but as they say, “It’s easier to ask for forgiveness instead of asking for permission”.
Many prophets in the Scriptures have spoken against the bringing of sacrifices or offerings by the people, such as in Jeremiah 7, in which the Creator said that He didn’t ask them to bring Him sacrifices. Then why is He asking them to do precisely that in Vayikra? The essence of the Korbanot or offerings was to rebuild their broken relationship with GOD and their acknowledgment of who He is compared with who they are. The Creator wanted to help them understand how to have a relationship with Him. He was also addressing a very specific people, at a very specific time when they understood things very differently than we do today. He was redirecting them away from the sacrifices to the gods to turn their attention toward Him.
The offerings were meant to rebuild the broken relationship with GOD when we acknowledge where we stand in relation to Him. Bechirah Chofsheet, Free Will is essential to this. The Creator never imposes Himself upon us; instead, He steps back so that we can willingly approach Him. The offerings were “voluntary”, but once they decided to bring them, they had to be done in a specific way.
In this Parashah, Tzav (Command), the word Torah is repeated – the Torah for the Ola, the Shelamim, the Chataah, the Asham and the Mincha. What does the word Torah mean? It was mistranslated from the Greek as nomos, law, a legalistic term; however, Torah means teachings, guidance or instructions, something completely different than what has been imposed on it over the years.
Parashat Vayikra emphasized the Calling of the individual; we are each called by our name because we are important to Him. Here in Tzav, we see the calling of Israel as an institution, beginning with the Cohanim, the Priesthood, who were responsible for leading and instructing the people on how to sanitize the offerings and turn away from pagan rituals. Israel would need to be weaned from the slave mentality learned in Egypt before they would enter the Promised Land.
How many of us can say that we are entirely free from ideas or concepts, religious or otherwise, imposed upon us as we were growing up; things we are holding onto, blinding us from the Truth of the Creator? That’s why it is essential to see how the Creator instructed the priests and showed them exactly what to do. In that way, the people would not bring the offerings wherever or in whatever manner they believed to be correct.
What are these passages trying to tell us today?
Our God is a God of order, not chaos; He is a God of freedom; He is not libertine. How are we failing as a people in the world? We are falling into moral chaos with few consequences. The Scriptures are clear about what we can and cannot do. Modern thinking is that everything is okay and all we need is love. It sounds so beautiful! As long as you kill your neighbor with love, we are okay. We have to live with the responses from the extreme right and the extreme left. This is the same as the old pagan understanding of appeasement. Politicians and religious leaders insist that we are better off not discussing true issues as long as we live with love. We are being muzzled and accused of hate speech by those who have the ostrich mentality. We are afraid of upsetting people by telling them the truth.
What does this have to do with the Korbanot? Why was the Creator so demanding with the Cohanim? This is the key to Judaism…the more that is given to us, the more is required of us, i.e., the more responsible we are. The higher our position, the stricter our ethical behavior needs to be, because so many people are focused upon us. The higher position does not make a person better or closer to the Creator, it simply entails more responsibility.
How often have I repeated this concept: First, the Creator gave us the gift of Emunah, Faith and Faith combined with action produces Bitachon, Trust. Many of you can say that you believe in God, but how many trust Him? Next, we have Bechirah Chofsheet, the greatest gift the Creator gave us…Free Will with which He allows us to make our own choices, good or bad. Many atheists or agnostics say: “How can I believe in a God who allows so much injustice, pain and suffering in this world?” Let me ask you this: why are we pointing our fingers at the Creator and not at ourselves? Injustice is not done by the Creator; we are the ones who are unjust. He doesn’t kill; we do. We blame guns for the killings, but who is making them and who is holding them? We refuse to accept personal responsibility.
Free will is followed by Kavanah, Intention. This is why the Korbanot were so important. The Creator gave Israel the opportunity to bring the offerings to Him voluntarily to demonstrate that we humans have Free Will, while the animals that we would bring as offerings had no free will. Humans have the capability to think, to reason, to choose wrong from right, while animals do not; they are instinctive.
We were to leave paganism behind, where the sacrifice of animals was done as appeasement to their gods. Our God is not looking to be appeased or bought. It had to be a willing offering, not coerced out of fear. The key word here is “willing”. The offerings were brought by people who realized that they had done something wrong; that they were cut off from a relationship with the Creator, which needed to be reestablished. In these portions, the only offerings brought were for involuntary or unintentional faults. There was no offering for voluntary errors.
1 Samuel 15:22 says, “Is the LORD pleased with burnt offerings and sacrifices? No! He is pleased with obedience to the LORD’s voice; truly obedience is better than sacrifice, submission better than the fat of the animals. Rebellion is a sin of sorcery, presumption the crime of idolatry.” Rebellion, doing things our own way is like sorcery, hocus-pocus and presuming that we are better than anyone else, making ourselves idolators, godlike.
To understand the offerings, we need to know that the Creator wants us to be responsible for our actions. In Tehillim, Psalms 51:18-19, King David, after he had sinned with Bathsheba, was destroyed from within and wanted to mend his relationship with the Creator. He said, “For You do not delight in sacrifice, or else would I give it; You have no pleasure in burnt offering; the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.” How much clearer can He be?
Is our God a God of wrath whose blood-thirsty nature can only be satisfied by the killing of innocent animals? Is the only thing that can quench His wrath a bath of blood? Is that our God? Is He the God who would never forgive us when we do teshuva; when we come to Him willingly with an open heart, begging Him to hear us? Does He only accept the sacrifice of a person, an animal or something else so that we can go free? That is not what the Torah teaches us; we need to be responsible for what we have done, and that no one else can pay for our sins.
It’s very easy to accept hocus-pocus religions, perform certain rituals or follow people with supposed great ideas, but instead let us follow the way that the Creator has set down for us. In what direction is the world heading today? GOD made us moral people, and rebellion makes us immoral. The greatest tragedy is when we become amoral, like a sociopath or a psychopath, where we have no conscience or believe that everything and everyone is ok. Let’s not be afraid to say that what they are doing is wrong or worry about who we are to tell that to people. The politicians allow people to get away with murder while attacking others who are not politically correct. We live in a world that needs to be politically, sociologically and theologically correct. The world says that we are free to do whatever we do; yes, we are, but we have a conscience and we are responsible for what we do. There are consequences for our actions. This is why the Korbanot are so important. With them, we are coming before the Creator to admit that we have failed Him, that we are sorry and that we need to make it right because we want to continue our relationship with Him.
Who are the ones who judge us? We are our own worst judges. The Creator does not judge; He is ready to forgive us, but we are the ones who have trouble forgiving ourselves and others. If the Creator has told us what to do, let us be obedient to Him and not follow what the world is telling us.
Shabbat Shalom
Ranebi