Orthodox Jewish Parashat Vayikra

From: "Hebraic.Heritage.Newsgroup@sol.wwwnexus.com"
<Hebraic.Heritage.Newsgroup@sol.wwwnexus.com>
To: Parasha-Page List <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>, Weekly Torah List
<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
Subject: Orthodox Jewish Parashat Vayikra
Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 14:55:57 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

From: Yeshivat Har Etzion's Israel Koschitzky Virtual Beit Midrash
To: heb_roots_chr@geocities.com
Subject: Parashat Vayikra

YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
*********************************************************

INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA

by Rav Jonathan Mishkin

PARASHAT VAYIKRA

Substituting Sefer VaYikra

As we begin to read Sefer VaYikra this week, it is
not uncommon for people to feel somewhat burdened by the
parshiyot they are about to endure in the long and
complicated journey through this the "Priests' Manual."
We are actually faced with two immediate challenges. The
first is the meaning behind the sacrificial system.
Various philosophers have presented different approaches
to the ancient practices of animal sacrifices, several of
which we will mention below. The second difficulty we
encounter is that although the sacrifices represent a
large portion of the Jewish ritual laws, they are
essentially irrelevant to today's practice of Judaism.
With the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in the
first century CE, the sacrifices ceased - their laws,
details and related philosophies relegated to the realm
of academia. There they await the rebuilding of the
Temple and their reinstitution.

The sacrifices, however, are far from forgotten.
Besides the yearly reading of the Torah portions
detailing the biblical commandments, the daily prayers
contain several passages on these topics. Among the
readings is a paragraph from Numbers 28 (verses 1-8)
which describes the KORBAN TAMID - the daily offering
which was brought both in the morning and the evening.
The verses are preceded by this short prayer:

May it be your will, Lord our God, and the God of our
forefathers, that you have mercy on us and pardon us
for all our errors, atone for us all our iniquities,
forgive all our willful sins; and that you rebuild
the Holy Temple speedily, in our days, so that we may
offer to you the continual offering that it may atone
for us, as you have prescribed for us in your Torah
through Moses, your servant, from your glorious mouth
as it is said...

The Tamid offering description is then read followed
by a second short prayer:

May it be your will, Lord our God, and the God of our
forefathers, that this statement we have read be
considered before you valuable and acceptable as if
we have actually sacrificed the Korban Tamid in its
proper hour and place and according to all of its
laws.

These prayers contain two ideas : the first is a
request that the sacrificial system be re-implemented (a
theme that appears often in Jewish prayers); the second
is a request that meanwhile God accept the mere reading
of the Torah's descriptions as a substitute for the
actual ritual slaughter and offering of animals.

The source for this idea is a gemara in Tractate
Ta'anit (27b) which reads as follows:

R. Jacob ben Acha said in the name of R. Assi: Were
it not for the MA'AMADOT heaven and earth could not
endure, as it is said, "And he said: O Lord God,
whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?"
(Genesis 15:8) Abraham said: Master of the Universe,
should Israel sin before Thee will You do unto them
[as You have done] to the generation of the Flood and
to the generation of the Dispersion? God replied to
him: No. He then said to Him: Master of the
Universe, "Let me know whereby I shall inherit it."
God answered: "Take Me a heifer of three years old,
and a she-goat of three years old." Abraham then
continued: "Master of the Universe! This holds good
while the Temple remains in being, but when the
Temple will no longer be what will become of them?"
God replied: "I have already long ago provided for
them in the Torah the order of the sacrifices and
whenever they read it I will deem it as if they had
offered them before Me and I will grant them pardon
for all their iniquities."

We must emphasize that this last promise does not
appear in the Torah text but is being suggested by R.
Assi. In the original Hebrew text God says that if the
Jews read the sacrifices, "MA'ALEH ANI ALEIHEM KE-ILU
HIKRIVUM." This phrase "MA'ALEH AL" is a curious one and
appears often in the Talmud in a slightly different form.
For example, in Berakhot 10b, R. Yosi is quoted in the
name of R. Chanina who, in turn, was repeating something
he heard from R. Eliezer ben Yaakov: "If a man entertains
a scholar in his house and lets him enjoy his
possessions, MA'ALEH ALAV HA-KATUV KE-ILU - Scripture
accounts it to him as if he had sacrificed the daily
burnt-offering." Similarly, R. Joshua ben Levi makes
this statement in Sota 5b: "Come and see how great are
the lowly of spirit in the esteem of the Holy One,
Blessed be He, since when the Temple stood, a man brought
a burnt-offering and received the reward of a burnt-
offering, a meal-offering and he received the reward of a
meal-offering; but as for him whose mind is lowly,
MA'ALEH ALAV HA-KATUV KE-ILU - Scripture ascribes it to
him as though he had offered every one of the sacrifices;
as it is said, 'The sacrifices of God are a broken
spirit' (Psalms 51:19).

I must confess that I have very little idea of what
the Talmud means by the phrase MA'ALEH ALAV HA-KATUV KE-
ILU, and my research has failed to turn up anything other
than the literal translation.

Does the Talmud mean that if one reads the
sacrifices, respects scholars or is humble, he is granted
the same reward as if he had actually brought the
sacrifices, or is he granted only partial reward since it
is only KE-ILU - it is only AS IF he had brought the
sacrifice. And although our initial quote of R. Assi has
God promising that He Himself will consider reading like
doing, who exactly is making these equations in the other
statements - KATUV - Scripture? Does this mean that the
Torah's presentation of the sacrifices somehow includes
other possible ways of fulfilling these biblical
commands? Presumably, respecting scholars, or being
humble, (or taking the four species on Sukkot - see Sukka
45a; there are a whole range of statements like these) is
considered before God as equivalent to the sacrifices and
not before Scripture. Lastly, what do the words MA'ALEH
ALAV mean? Literally they say that "it is raised before
him (the person who is getting credit for the
sacrifices)" but why is the word "raised" used here when
it might make more sense to say "it is recorded as if..."
or "he is credited with?"

As I mentioned, I do not understand the phrase or
how it relates to the dynamics of the Torah's system of
reward and punishment. But I do have a further question
to which I will propose a theory. The phrase MA'ALEH
ALAV HA-KATUV is not unique to issues related to
sacrifices - it is an approach found across the Talmud
connected to the substitution of various mitzvot. One
such expression says that thought alone is equivalent to
performance of any actual commandment.

R. Ashi says: If a man thought to fulfill a
commandment and he did not do it, because he was
prevented by force or accident, then the Scripture
credits it to him - MA'ALEH ALAV HA-KATUV - as if he
had performed it (Berakhot 6a).

Again, I am having somewhat of a difficulty
understanding this statement. To be sure, there are
plenty of Jewish scholars who write of the greater
importance that the human mind and emotions have over
action. Rabbeinu Nissim Gerondi (also known as Ran, 14th
century) writes, for example, in his 5th Sermon (in
Derashot HaRan) that there are three types of mitzvot:
the first type includes those commands which are based
entirely on the mind and hardly use the body at all.
Examples of this would be the command to believe in the
existence of God, to believe in Divine Providence and to
believe in reward and punishment. The second class of
mitzva comprises those injunctions which require the Jew
to act but which include either a concomitant emotion
(acts of kindness towards others) or an historical
remembrance (eating matza on Pesach). The third group of
mitzvot is called CHUKIM and are those commandments whose
meaning is unknown (kashrut for example). These last
laws also involve the mind in their performance since the
Jew must think that he is acting according to God's will.
The Ran, thus, concludes that all mitzvot are rooted in
the heart, that thought is the foundationof the service
of God.

But this cannot mean that Judaism is a religion of
thought rather than deed. Were a person to claim that he
was thinking about giving charity, few people would agree
that that is a substitute for actually providing the
needy with money or food. All the Ran seems to be saying
is that ours is not a culture of automatons, that going
through the motions is an insufficient method of
fulfilling God's will.

Perhaps the phrase MA'ALEH ALAV HA-KATUV as used
say, by R. Ashi above, concludes with the word KE-ILU -
as if, to say that thinking about a mitzva may not be
equivalent to doing the actual mitzva, it may just be the
best substitute when performance is not possible. This
may help in our understanding of the gemara's suggestion
that we read the sacrifices (Ta'anit 27b): Since the
Temple is destroyed and it is impossible to offer
animals, studying about the sacrifices is the next best
thing. Still, where does that leave the other gemarot
which claim that other actions which seem to have little
to do with sacrifices can serve as a stand-in for their
performance?

I'd like to offer another approach to our issue by
turning to the traditional discussion of sacrifices which
aims to reveal the meaning behind the sacrifice system.
I will quote here an excerpt from Ramban's (R. Moshe ben
Nachman 13th century) commentary on Leviticus 1:9.
Arguing against the Rambam that the sacrifices do indeed
have an inherent purpose, the Ramban writes:

The deeds of man include thought and speech and
actions, God commanded that when a person sins he
shall bring a sacrifice and place his hands on the
animal parallel to his [sinful] deed, and shall
confess orally parallel to his speech, and shall burn
the innards - the kidneys which are the seat of
thought and desire, and the legs - parallel to the
person's arms and legs which do all of his actions,
and shall sprinkle [the animal's] blood on the altar
parallel to his own soul's blood - all this so that
the person shall think about his actions - how he
sinned against God in body and soul. The person
himself deserves to have his own blood spilled and
his own body burned were it not for the grace of the
Creator Who takes a substitute instead.

From the Ramban's perspective, it would seem that
the whole point of korbanot is to correct a fault that
has been committed. Without recognition that the animal
burning up there on the altar should really be the
sinner, the sacrifice has very little meaning. Even the
Rambam (R. Moses ben Maimon) who takes a completely
different, rational and historical approach to the
sacrifices, admits that the kohanim must have purity of
mind when performing in the Temple. Any stray or
improper thought can have dire consequences for the
acceptance of the sacrifice (see Hilkhot Pesulei
HaMukdashim 13:1, 14:1, 18:1). Given these points, we
might be able to explain how reading the sacrifices can
substitute for action. A further gemara in Menachot
(110a) states:

Resh Lakish said: What is the significance of the
verse, "This is the law for the burnt-offering, for
the meal-offering, for the sin-offering, and for the
guilt-offering?" (Leviticus 7:37). It teaches that
whosoever occupies himself with the study of the
Torah is as though he were offering a burnt-offering,
a meal-offering, a sin-offering, and a guilt-
offering.

It seems that this gemara suggests that the study of
the sacrifice passages and not merely their reading is
the substitute for the actual performance. In other
words, if a person reads the passages with the
understanding of their symbolic meaning, if the person
accepts that he has sinned and resolves to repent, then
the recitation of the Torah's descriptions will serve as
the next best thing to offering an animal. But mere
reading of verses with no thought for what they represent
is hardly any substitute at all. Indeed, the Chafetz
Chaim (R. Yisrael Meir HaCohen of Radin, 20th century)
alters the wording of our original gemara. Ta'anit 27b
quotes God as saying that reading is sufficient, but the
Mishna Berura (48:1) states that "he who is OSEK (busies
himself with, studies) the sacrifices and their passages
is considered in God's eyes as if he brought the
sacrifices.

In conclusion, it must be mentioned that the gemara
in Berakhot 26b states that the prayer services that we
have today were instituted as substitutes for (or
parallels to) the sacrifices. Although the Halakhists
debate the minimum amount of concentration and intention
that a person must have to fulfill his obligations for
prayer, it should be obvious that merely articulating
words with no accompanying thought contains little
meaning. Similarly, offering sacrifices or reviewing
their description instead must include intent and desire
to repent and grow closer to God.

YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH
ALON SHEVUT, GUSH ETZION 90433
E-MAIL: YHE@VBM-TORAH.ORG or OFFICE@ETZION.ORG.IL