May 27th: Bechukotai
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
The flow of time in the Torah is sometimes difficult to remember. Whereas Genesis tells stories that happened over some two thousand years—from 3760 BCE (Creation of the World) to about 1500 BCE (the relocation of the Hebrews to Egypt), Exodus tells stories from a much shorter amount of time. Other than the initial story of “a new Pharoah” arising “who did not know Joseph” and the imposition of forced labor on the Hebrews, almost all of Exodus takes place over some eighty-two years—and everything after the Burning Bush (in Chapter 3) takes place over about two years. According to the Biblical chronology, Moses is about eighty years old when he is called by God from the Burning Bush. The Exodus process—with “Let My people go” and all the plagues—takes about a year. Then, after the Israelites leave Egypt, the rest of the Book of Exodus takes about a year. As we read in Exodus 20.17 (the last chapter of the book), “In the first month of the second year, on the first of the month, the Mishkan/Tabernacle was set up.”
We then get to the Book of Leviticus—which we complete this week. Here is the last sentence of Leviticus: “These are the commandments that the Lord gave Moses for the Israelite people on Mount Sinai.” (Leviticus 27.34) This conclusion and summary of the book reminds us that the entire book—all twenty-seven chapters divided among ten weekly portions—happens while the Israelites are still at Mount Sinai, a place where they arrived some two and a half months after departing slavery in Egypt.
This small passage of time will come up in several weeks when we read in Numbers 9 about the first Passover observance—the first anniversary of the original Passover night back in Egypt.
The forty years of wandering in the wilderness are all in Numbers, and Deuteronomy is Moses’ farewell address before he passes away and the Children of Israel enter The Land.
So, what do we have in all of these Levitical “commandments that the Lord gave Moses for the Israelite people on Mount Sinai?” Most in Leviticus are about ritual life. There are rules for the many different categories of sacrifices and for various communal sacred practices—such as the Sabbatical and Jubilee Years that we studied last week in Behar. So much of the early part of the book is devoted to priestly procedures that the Rabbis referred to it as Torat Kohanim (The Torah of the Priests), which was picked up by the Greek Leuitikon and then the Latin Leviticus. Of course, the official Hebrew name is based on the first important word in the book, Vayikra: “Vayikra el Moshe, And He (the Lord) called to Moses.”
In the traditional understanding of the Torah, this interlude of a handbook for the priests was included in God’s original organization of our religion. The priests needed to know exactly what to do. However, for those who see the Torah as a composite document, woven together from four pre-existing texts of ancient Israel, Leviticus is considered the province and the instruction manual for the Kohanim, the priests who officiated in the sacrificial cult.
Some wonder whether it was ever intended to be read and studied by non-priests. Not that it was a secret. Rather it was a technical manual which non-priests did not need to read. (I do not read medical textbooks, auto repair manuals, or do computer programming; I trust the professionals to do so—and I appreciate their expertise.) If this were the case, then some wonder whether the ritual restrictions on food were for general Israelite practice or just for ritual/sacrificial events. We discussed this curious possibility several weeks ago (March 25th in Shemini) when we read about prohibitions of slaughtering animals away from the Tabernacle and then read about how to slaughter animals away from the Tabernacle. Perhaps the rules of Kashrut were only for the priests, with regular Israelites observing them only during sacrificial rituals.
Our Torah portion, Bechukotai, begins with some very dramatic passages about obeying or disobeying God’s commandments. If we obey God’s commandments, wonderful things will happen. But, if we do not obey God’s commandments, misery and calamity and starvation and every kind of terrible thing will be our fate. Both the blessings and the curses section (Leviticus 26) are quite poetic, and one can sense in the elevating and doom-saying poetry an attempt by the ancient author to imbue the message with emotional intensity.
However, we moderns must ask (some 2500-3000 years after these words were recorded), “Exactly which commandments are we to follow?” Given the different and sometimes contradictory rules outlined in the Torah (remember the four different ancient sources) and the many adaptations of the Rabbis and their disciples over the centuries, the identification of exactly what God wants us to do is uncertain and subject to many different opinions. When we read an ancient passage about “observing all the mitzvot of the Lord,” does this include the many layers of development in the Rabbinic and Talmudic periods and all the innovations and changes enacted by various Rabbis over the centuries? Does the phrase “all My commandments” include the innovations or applications of the Baal Shem Tov or Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lladi (the founder of Chabad Chasidism) or Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (the founder of Modern Orthodox Judaism) or any other Torah sage? What about the refinements and adaptations of the Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Torah sages: are they closer or further from the Will of God?
The challenge for modern Jews who revere our ancient texts is to look at them not as irrevocable instructions from God but rather as the efforts of pious and wisdom-seeking Jews to navigate this life in consecrated ways—to search for holiness and godliness in every aspect of their lives—and thus to be vehicles for God’s presence in the world.
I believe that the ancient authors of Leviticus—as well as the rest of the Torah—were engaged in this quest and recorded their best insights and wisdom in the texts that have grown to be so important in our Jewish Tradition.