This week we begin the book of Vayikra, which as the third and middle book of the Torah, places it in the center, in the heart of the Torah.

 

Vayikra can be hard to relate to  - the detailed descriptions of animal sacrifice, with its blood and gore – can keep us at arms length. What could this possibly have to do with us today?

 

The term sacrifice, from the Latin, means “to make something holy”, and has the connotation of giving something up.

 

But in Hebrew the word Korban means “brought near”. Offering korbanot on the altar, was the way the Israelites drew nearer to God. As the commentator Nehama Leibowitz writes, sacrifices were “a symbol and expression of a person’s desire to purify him/herself, and become reconciled with God”.

 

We just spent many weeks reading about the details of the construction of the Temple. The Temple, to the Israelites, was where God resided. Bringing a sacrifice to the Temple was like visiting God’s dwelling place. Its not hard to imagine the awe one must have felt during this experience.

 

If we look at Vayikra through that lens, it takes on a meaning deeper than the details and instructions of what kinds of animals were brought, and how they were slaughtered.

 

We all yearn to draw near to God, in whatever form we imagine God or the Divine to be. Reading Vayikra shows us how we once drew near to God.

 

Prayer is one of the things that took the place of sacrifices after the destruction of the Temple. Maimonides said that prayer, as opposed to sacrifices, is a better means of obtaining nearness to God, and that it can be offered everywhere by every person.

 

While prayer can be a very powerful experience, there is something so visceral and tangible about the rituals described in Vayikra. Maybe that is why it is placed so centrally in the Torah. Rather than write this book off, we can read Vayikra as the Jewish people’s process of deepening our ongoing relationship with the Divine.