Vayikra [and God called] is “my” Torah portion. Vayikra was read during the week of my birth. Vayikra helped me understand Americans’ reaction to September 11. Vayikra gave me a way to think about the holiness of gemilut chesed. And about the balance of words and spaces in Torah. Vayikra is the parashah I had to teach about when I came for my interview at Or Shalom. I love Vayikra so much I even read scholar Jacob Milgrom’s commentary on the parashah – all 378 pages of it – and that’s just the parashah, Leviticus chapters 1-5.
Parshat Vayikra has a very interesting flow of information. First God calls to Moshe from the tent of meeting. Then we get a detailed introduction to exactly how the priests should manage the sacrifices. Finally we get information about when and why someone might bring a sacrifice. To put it in a different way: first comes the invitation, then comes the setting up of the food, then comes the actual interaction.
This structure points me to think of the Mishkan as “God’s Kitchen.”
God’s Kitchen is a little bit like my friend Donna’s kitchen in North Carolina. Any afternoon or evening, I could come by anytime, with or without kids, and sit down on a stool at the kitchen counter. Donna would make us a pot of nana tea – the comfort of mint mixed with the stimulation of caffeine. And then we would chat in the plainest of terms about what was on our minds. How we aren’t sure we are handling difficult coworkers well. How we can deal with feeling ashamed of something we accidentally said. How one of us should interpret a weird, disturbing dream. How we are irrationally angry that we can’t get anyone else in our families to help clean the bathroom. You name it – we dealt with it openly over that nana tea. Donna has an amazing ability to receive everything without judgment. Worries and self-criticism that you would never share with anyone – you could lay it on the table, talk it through, and it would disappear into smoke as a non-issue.
In some ways, sitting down to nana tea in Donna’s kitchen is like visiting the mishkan in Parshat Vayikra. The reasons for bringing a sacrifice are a lot like the reasons for talking over a cup of tea. If you have a special joy to share, you bring a zevach shelamim. If you fixed a problem but still feel bad about it, you bring an asham. If you feel creeped out by something uncanny, or if you need to deal with something hideous in national current events, you bring a khatat.The priest takes your offering, and disappears your problems in smoke.
The beginning of Parshat Vayikra invites us into this kind of intimacy with God. The first pasuk says, Vayikra HaShem el Moshe – God called to Moshe. In our scribal tradition, the last letter of the word vayikra, the Aleph, is written smaller than the other letters of the word, almost as an afterthought. In Biblical Hebrew, “vayikar” means “he manifested” and “Vayikra” means “he called.” The most famous interpretation of the little Aleph says: Moshe didn’t want to be so bold as to think that God called specifically to him, so he tried to leave out the Aleph, and make it look like he just happened to be at the Ohel Moed when God manifested. God, however, insisted on singling Moshe out for personal relationship, and put the Aleph back in – but smaller, as a compromise.
Here is a less famous interpretation, made up by me a few days ago: Perhaps we can read the tiny aleph as suggesting that there are two alternative readings of the word: you could read it vayikar, or you could read it vayikra. You could shift back and forth, like those moving picture toys, with a picture covered in plastic. You hold it onweway and see one picture, hold it another way and see a different picture. Vayikar, vayikra. Vayikar, vayikra. To go a step farther, I’d like to invoke the principle eyn mukdam u’mi’uchar baTorah – nothing really comes before or after anything else in Torah, we can bring interpretations without regard for the normal rules of linear time. In modern Hebrew yakarmeans “precious.” Yakiri means “my precious one.” Bringing that connotation to Torah, we see the first word of the book of Vayikra says, “He called…He made someone precious…He called…He made someone precious.” The word describes the magic of Donna’s kitchen. She invites you in, and in that space, you are precious. Perfect and dear just as you are. Your flaws, your imperfections – insubstantial as smoke. And this is the magic of the mishkan. Through the technology of the sacrifices in God’s kitchen, your self-doubts become as insubstantial as smoke.
In the Haftorah, the prophet Second Isaiah tells us that idols cannot effect this kind of healing transformation. Believe it or not, he specifically tells us that idols don’t have the right kind of kitchens. Isaiah repeats the cooking motif three times in this oracle. Listen to his words. Here he is speaking of how the idolator deals with wood:
Part of it he burns in a fire:
On that part he roasts meat,
He eats the roast and is sated;
He also warms himself and cries, “Ah,
I am warm! I can feel the heat!”
Of the rest he makes a god – his own carving!
He bows down to it, worships it;
He prays to it and cries,
“Save me, for you are my god!”
This is an amazing multilayered description of idolatry. The piece of wood helps to meet the idolater’s material needs – it keeps him warm, it helps him cook. So the idolater says, “you are my god!” A meal in the idolater’s kitchen fulfills physical needs only, and that is the only fulfillment the idolater seeks. That’s one kind of idol worship – losing one’s awareness of spiritual connection, and finding satisfaction only in the superficial. There’s more to Isaiah’s idolater: in the idolater’s kitchen, the very thing that should be burned up becomes the God! The fears, the guilt, the worries – these are not received and released. Instead they grow into guiding principles, leading people into ever more confused decision-making. As Isaiah says,
A deluded mind has led him astray
And he cannot save himself;
He never says to himself,
The thing in my hand is a fraud!
We all have times when we are like Isaiah’s idolater. Difficult, uncomfortable thoughts and feelings may overtake us. We might not recognize ourselves. We might be weighed down with anxiety. We might wonder if we should even have these thoughts and feelings, or if we should tell anyone about it. We might need help figuring out if we are defrauding ourselves!
At these times, we need a kitchen! We need someone who will sit with us, listen and receive without judgment, hold up a mirror, so to speak, with love. It might be a friend like Donna who makes nana tea; it might be a representative of an established organization, like the priests in the mishkan.
The genius of Vayikra lies in its teaching that an individual cannot deal with worries, guilt, creepiness, or disturbing public events alone. Every one of us needs someone who recognizes the weight of thoughts and feelings – even when our material needs are met, even when we have fixed the practical consequences of our mistakes. Every one of us needs someone who can help lighten the load, turn the substantial into vapour. Every one of us needs a meal in God’s kitchen!
— Laura Duhan Kaplan, 2007
Image: Dana De Groot