Parashat Shemini: Now, Yes, Now

For Congregation Ner Shalom, March 21, 2014
[Sorry for the long delay in posting.] 

There is a moment in this week's parashah that caught my attention this year for the first time. It has to do with Aharon, whom we really don't speak very much about. Moshe is the star of our desert epic and religion-formation narrative, of course, and Miriam has been reclaimed and placed centrally by many of us in order to slake our desperate thirst for female leadership in Torah.

But Aharon? Who is he? We don't get much sense. His character is wooden. He is usually doing or saying something with Moshe or with Miriam. We don't get much of him alone. He is also a prophet, by all standards. He gets spoken to by God, but it's not like the love affair God has with Moshe. When God speaks to Aharon, it is business talk. Aharon is the High Priest Elect, and Moshe's second in command. But still, somehow, he manages to be both central and peripheral. Face it, people used to write songs about Moshe. Now people write songs about Miriam. But no one sings about Aharon.

But now, in the Book of Leviticus, the Priestly Code, is when Aharon comes into his own. He becomes ritually relevant. He is no longer just a spare Moses; he begins his priestly work.

Over the past two weeks, since the launching of Leviticus, we have covered 8 full chapters of ritual instructions. Instructions for the priests, all about accepting offerings, doing sacrifices, managing the public matters of sin, guilt, forgiveness, and worship. This is the job of the priests, of the High Priest in particular. And if it is all done correctly, then God will appear right there, in the Tent of Meeting. If it is not done correctly, terrible things could happen, as in fact they do just a few verses down the road.

But here in Parashat Shemini, shemini meaning "the eighth," it being the eighth day of Aharon's consecration as a priest along with his family; and the completion of the eighth chapter of instructions, now at last the priestly practice is ready to begin. Moshe tells Aharon & Sons to gather their bulls and goats and rams and meal and oil and all the items and ingredients that had been laid out by God through Moshe, so that they can atone for their own sins and begin their holy service for the people. The Cohanim collect all these things and they, and the entire people, draw near to the Tent of Meeting.

And then, although Torah doesn't say it explicitly, you know that all eyes turn to Aharon. A silence falls, punctuated only by bleats of sheep. This is the moment when the Children of Israel will move at last from theory to practice. From being a people receiving the law to a people fulfilling the law. This is a moment where preparation and action are in equipoise, like two sides of teeter-tauter. And no one moves.

Moshe then says - krav: go, approach.

קרב על המזבח ועשה את חטאתך ואת עולתך וכפר בעדך ובעד העם 

ועשה את קרבן העם וכפר בעדם כאשר צוה יי

"Go, draw near to the altar and do your sin offering and your olah-offering and make atonement for yourself and for the people; make the people's sacrifice and provide atonement for them as Adonai commands."

These words are the Cohen's job description. Which Aharon knew. He'd been there also for the delivery of all of the laws and rituals. So why did Moshe need to say it? Perhaps the words are formulaic, for the sake of ceremony. Aharon takes on the mantle of priesthood in this moment, and the prophet articulates his duty. "Go now," says the Prophet, "and be the Priest. Do these things for yourself and for the people, as God commands."

Ceremonial rhetoric, like oaths spoken at an inauguration. Because sure enough, as soon as he says them, the text reports, vayikrav Aharon el hamizbeach, Aharon approached the altar.

But even though it sounds like it could be official language, it's not clear that it is. Rashi, the great Medieval French commentator, thinks that Moshe needed to say this in fact to get Aharon moving. Rashi imagines Aharon to be in discomfort. He says, shehayah Aharon bosh v'yarei lageshet - Aharon was embarrassed and afraid to approach. Yarei, afraid, perhaps in the sense of plain fear, perhaps in the sense of awe and overwhelm. Rashi then imagines a conversation right there between the brothers, just out of the people's hearing. Moshe asks, "Why are you embarrassed? This is what you were selected for."

In Rashi's fantasy, Moshe makes an argument for destiny. Of course Aharon can do his appointed task; he was chosen for just this purpose. The very fact is testimony enough. And how reminiscent that is of the the story of Esther that we read this week (the two stories only collide on Jewish leap years like this). Esther hesitates when called upon to act on behalf of the people. Mordecai says to her, "Who knows if you didn't come to the throne for just such a moment as this?" And, reassured that great wheels of destiny are in motion, she acts.

In any event, Rashi's midrash arises out of this puzzling moment of pause between the completion of the instructions, and Aharon moving to follow them, a pause that could have lasted into infinity if Moshe had not said, "Krav, go, approach..."

Now, I'm not a big believer in destiny, as you all know. But I do believe that we're all better prepared to handle what comes next than we think. Aharon was ready, not necessarily because God selected him, but because he prepared as if God had.

Two weeks ago I talked about the idea that we each have inside of us a pintele Kohen, a tiny priest, that manages those great personal priestly functions - atonement, forgiveness, praise, remembering, honoring, redeeming, reclaiming, caring, soothing. All of our priestly functions that perhaps no one else even sees.

But thinking about Aharon in this verse makes me wonder if sometimes, despite knowing what we have to do, despite knowing that we are fully prepared to do it, we just need someone to say to us, "Now, start."

Yael Raff Peskin and I got together last week. We got into one of those conversations that people who have lost their parents get into. The "so how's your grieving going?" kinds of conversations that would sound shocking to others but are sometimes a big relief to have. She asked how my kaddishing was going. And I reported back that when my father died 14 years ago, I found a minyan every week, even while I was on the road, so that I could say kaddish publicly. But that this time it feels so different, and I haven't really been able to say kaddish, even in private.

And even though she wasn't telling me to do anything in particular, Yael's words had the effect that Moshe's words to Aharon did. They gave me permission to start enacting my duty; to start doing the thing that I'd wanted to do, but somehow couldn't start without a voice saying, "Yes, now, it's okay to start now." Her words empowered me in some ways to start grieving, a kind of grieving I couldn't quite start without someone saying, "Yes, now, it's okay to start now."

How many of our priestly functions - whether it's doing some mitzvot or repairing a relationship or just taking care of ourselves - are we holding back on, knowing what we need to do, but still too embarrassed or overwhelmed or frightened to start. In which case maybe Aharon's story here can serve as the voice that says, "krav, approach the altar, yes, now, start now."

I can't talk about Aharon's moment of hesitation without pointing out one last thing about the Hebrew. Moshe doesn't say to him bo, come, or lech, go. He says krav, approach. Draw near. The word krav shares the same roots as the word korban, which appears later in the very same verse. Korban is translated as "sacrifice" or "offering" but it literally means "drawing near." The offerings to Adonai are for the purpose of our drawing close to something of the Divine. It is a drawing near through sacrifice. Through giving something up of this world. And Aharon knows this. There is something he sacrifices in taking on the kehunah, the priesthood. Perhaps what he gives up is his ability to only represent himself, to just be a guy called Aharon. He lets go of his freedom not to feel responsible for the people and for the world. He accepts a limitation on his ego, he takes on his shoulders the weight of the need of the Children of Israel. He might oversee the offering of the sheep and cattle and unleavened cakes. But he foresees in this moment that he is offering up himself as well, offering up the Aharon that could've been.

And so who can blame him for his moment of hesitation, a moment on the other side of which nothing will ever be quite the same?

And - who can blame any of us for our hesitations? This life, this journey, this wilderness. Who knows where it will lead us? Who knows which choices are reversible and which are not? Who knows the ramifications of anything that our inner priest demands of us?

But still, we're prepared for kehunah, for priesthood. We have received, we have discerned, we have written the instructions. As God said back at Mt. Sinai, "you are a nation of priests." We are prepared. Even prepared to make some sacrifices for the sake of our own holiness and that of our world. We stand in the moment of pause, listening for the voice that will say, krav, draw near, now, yes, now.

Priest, Have a Little Priest!

For Congregation Ner Shalom

So, big news this week. Very big news. No, not the Russians mobilizing on the borders of Crimea. Not jobs. No, the big news, at least in certain circles, is John Travolta and his public mangling of the name of Idina Menzel at the Oscars. Idina Menzel, a Jewish daughter-made-good, who originated famous roles in Rent and in Wicked, playing respectively, the arguably Jewish roles of pushy creative type and green-skinned outcast. She is part of Broadway history and yet is someone still unknown to the masses who are not Broadway buffs, including Travolta. (In fact, the hip, Jewish online Tablet Magazine today speculated that the fact that Travolta didn't know who Idina Menzel was should now dispel all rumors that he's gay.)

But Idina walked out and sang her song, gorgeously of course, despite having just been introduced as Adele Nazeem, which made her sound something like a mix of British pop star and Turkish poet. And a lot of people learned in the process that you have to look a bit beyond name, to just let it go, and you'll be ready to discover something truly beautiful.

Which brings us around to the new book of Torah we begin reading this week, in Hebrew called Vayikra, a beautiful name meaning, "And God called." Because it opens with God calling out to Moshe, and arguably to all of us. A call, a question, awaiting our answer.

But before we get to that, we've got to deal with the other name of this book: Leviticus, a label that has come to symbolize so many things both related and unrelated to the book's actual contents, a handle that sets many a tooth on edge, a word that is used with equal facility as punishment and punchline. A book that challenges, for sure, but is typically dismissed too soon.

You see, even though we've come to associate Leviticus with sexual taboos and suspiciously fixated Bible-thumpers, it is meant to be something different. A holiness code, a ritual system, a guide for moving cleanly through the human world and for bumping shoulders respectfully with the Divine. In this tome are sensible and easily supportable laws of human-human conduct: caring for the poor, loving your fellow, resisting  the allure of hatred. And it contains business ethics as relevant today as 3000 years ago: paying your workers on time, using honest weights and measures, judging fairly. And yes, there's sex stuff too - a sexual ethic that addresses, in the thinking and language of the time, proper and improper relations - many of which we would still consider improper. It's this sexy bit that gets the most press, and has arguably unleashed more harm than anything else in our tradition, through the disproportionate literalism with which it continues to be read in some corners.

But mostly the book is about ritual. Leviticus is the Levitical code. An instruction manual for the Levites, laying out all the ritual they will practice or oversee. The Levites, as you might recall, are a tribe of Israel, the descendants of Levi, one of Jacob's 12 sons. But unlike the other tribes, they do not possess a parcel in the Promised Land. Instead they have a function. They serve in the mishkan, in the Tabernacle in the desert, and later in the Temple. Which means that they are both the ritual guardians and the bureaucratic class of ancient Israel - part cleric, part clerical.

And one family, one clan from among the Levites, the Kohanim, were charged with being the priests. They would receive the offerings brought by the people, offerings whose requirements start getting laid out this very week, right at the top of the book. All sorts of offerings. Beasts, birds, first fruits, meal offerings. Guilt offerings. Shlamim - peace offerings, or offerings for the purpose of making something whole. The priests would offer the sacrifices. They'd slaughter the animals. They'd sprinkle the blood. They'd add incense to make the reyach nichoach - the scent that is pleasing to God: a smell of smoke and herbs and burning meat that is as irresistible to God as the nearly identical smell of sizzling bacon is to a Jew on a Sunday morning.

The priests, dressed in special garments that marked them as the human-divine gatekeepers, would enact all this ritual, grisly ritual to be sure, and they would become the vehicles for atonement and expiation. For fulfillment of a vow, for completion of an endeavor. The priestly ritual would bring a spiritual stamp of completion to an earthly problem posed. The Kohanim represented the people to God and God to the people. In doing so, they were a human reminder that what we do on earth is also l'shem shamayim, for the sake of Heaven. We are accountable to the Divine, our actions and inactions affect the Divine. They were a reminder that there is something overarching, unifying, sanctifying our homes and our fields and our bodies and our relationships.

I've often wondered why we read all the priestly instructions every year. Yes, we read it because we read all of Torah; the cycle of it is ancient. But the cycle could also have been changed by the rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple. They could have chosen to make the priestly code something that we read on the side, voluntarily, as we do later books of the Bible. But no, we read them year in, year out. Fixed.

It seems to me that although the Temple rituals described are no longer viable in the absence of an actual Temple, the need for such ritual, or the needs that those rituals addressed, are still alive in each of us. There are times I need forgiveness, or to express my gratitude, or give voice to my sorrow, to honor a new beginning or an ending. Modern rabbinic Judaism, the Judaism we know, gives us mechanisms for doing those things. Yom Kippur, Hallel, Kaddish, Shehecheyanu.

But I'd like to suggest that the synagogue and its liturgy are not the only successors to the Temple in Jerusalem. Each of us is its successor too.

There is a lovely tradition that in every Jew there exists a pintele Yid. A tiny spark of Jewishness.  The pintele Yid is the Jewish part of each of us that endures, no matter how Jewish or not we choose to live. But maybe that pintele Yid is in fact a kohen. Maybe in each of us is a spark of kehunah, of priesthood. In each of us is a human-divine gatekeeper, robed in holy garments. A part of us that serves us, that serves our inner Temple. A part that has the final say on matters of spirit. This is the part that can, at last, when needed, say, "Forgiven." And can say, "It's done." And can say, "It is l'shem shamayim, for the sake of Heaven." When we feel heard by God, or forgiven, or blessed, or loved, perhaps that sensation is coming from, or through, our pintele Kohen, our tiny internal priest.

It might be that our internal priests dictate a different kind of ritual than we saw in the Temple in olden days or that we see in the synagogue today. Private ritual. Maybe our pintele Kohen decides the right dinner to help relieve a terrible day. Or the right walk to take after having been laid up in bed with an illness. The right person to call to share your good news. When to stop working and go do yoga. Where to hang the wonderful old photo of grandma.

How does your inner priest know what the right ritual is? Experience. Instinct. Svara - the Talmudic idea of an inner moral impulse that is at least as important in guiding us as the specifically enumerated mitzvot of Torah.

The pintele Kohen, the little priest, is, or should be, a Big Kahuna among our often-conflicting inner voices. A reminder that we are holy, and the fires of that holiness need to be tended, like the fires of the altar in the Temple.

And this - the vision of ourselves as holy, holy enough to require priesthood and holy enough to embody it - is perhaps the most enduring and beautiful aspect of the Book of Leviticus. The book that is better called by its Hebrew name, Vayikra, the book that reminds us that we are called, and that our lives - both our spiritual lives and our lives on this earth plane - are the answer to that call.

This book, Vayikra, is like a certain under-appreciated Broadway star. A daughter of Israel, with a great set of pipes; it sings a song that can raise our spirits and our sights. And ultimately, it doesn't matter at all if we get the name right.