Written for the Women of Reform Judaism Pacific District Convention Sisterhood Shabbat - March 24, 2023 - Temple B’nai Torah in Bellevue, WA

This week’s parasha kicks off the third book of Torah. The cosmos-spawning myth that began in Breishit, Genesis, flows into Shemot, or Exodus, where it becomes the story of a particular people—the Israelites, the Jewish people , our inciting incident and origin story. And now the narrative picture pulls in even closer. We arrive at Vayikra, Leviticus. While the romanized name points to the Levites as the primary focus of the book, the Hebrew title comes from its opening phrase, which can be translated as “Adonai called.” Vayikra begins with the voice of God calling out to Moses from the Tent of Meeting. And that’s fitting, because literally and metaphorically, Vayikra is our calling. Literally, this is one of just two instances of Adonai calling to Moses, rather than speaking to him—the other being at Sinai.

Metaphorically, it’s in Vayikra—not the portion, but the book—that we are told “You shall be holy for I, Adonai your God, am holy.” It’s the heart of our covenant with Adonai. Leviticus is like our terms and conditions. The End User License Agreement, or EULA, for Torah.

And a lot of that is expressed in the very specific details of the rituals of the temple and the priesthood. This week, for example we read about the sacrifice of various animals and foods as well-being offerings, offerings of purgation, and more. But one of the beauties of the text of the Torah is that the way it’s written is simultaneously terse and poetic. Because of how relatively few words are used in the five books of Torah, and how many ways some of the same Hebrew roots are used and re-used in words with different meanings and interpretations, we have a text with this richness and abundance of nuance despite not having a very broad vocabulary or a lot of detail—because of not having a very broad vocabulary or a lot of detail. That’s part of why the text has held up to such long scrutiny, right? Midrash gives us the image of Torah as a gem with 70 facets, and the way it is written is one of the lights by which we see some of those facets.

Like the way the word for sacrifice, korban, comes from the same root that gives us words for drawing near, for close, for near relatives. That connection leads some, like Rabbi Tamara Cohn Eshkenazi and Everett Fox, to translate korban not as “sacrifice,” but as a “near-offering” to emphasize the importance of closeness to the concept being communicated.

In fact, that same kuf-resh-bet root at the heart of korban shows up twice in the opening phrase of Leviticus 1:2, adam ki yakriv mikem korban l’Adonai, with yakriv referring to drawing close to bring the offering, and korban referring to the offering itself—framing both the sacrifice as well as the act of presenting it as being about nearness.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, z”l, points to another nuance of the text, how the placement of mikem, or “of you,” in that phrase opens up ambiguity: what we frequently read in English as “when one of you offers a sacrifice,” could also be read as “when a person offers a sacrifice of you”—a statement that we are to make offerings of ourselves, highlighting the very personal nature of the ritual.

So we have a portion full of instructions for sacrifices, korbanot, near-offerings. And while it is very much a text about literal flesh and blood sacrifices, the very language used to discuss those offerings points to these other meanings that speak to us still, even now when the idea of literal sacrifice is somewhere between merely uncompelling and downright discomforting for many of us. And one of those central meanings that we find is the importance of drawing near.

Judaism lends a lot of weight to the ideas of cohesion and separation. Kadosh, the Hebrew word we often render in English as holy, can also mean separated, cut off. Indeed, a lot of Leviticus deals with the idea of separation or distinction as a key element of holiness.

And yet ours is not a tradition of hermits and lone thinkers. We understand that distinction is not isolation.

Twice in the Torah, we read that it’s bad, lo tov, not good for a human to be and act entirely alone. God is the first one to make that observation, watching adam, the first human, in Eden. In a world where everything was good, it was still not good to be alone, so God gave us the community of other humans. The second time, Moses’ father-in-law Yitro sees Moses struggling to answer all the needs of the Israelites and intervenes by casually drawing up a multilevel judiciary system.

And in Vayikra, we find God laying out a series of occasions which demand that we draw near, that we come into community with each other, as part of being holy.

In our reading this week we find ritual, shaped around the human need of connection, elevated to the level of obligation.

We need interpersonal nearness. I don’t particularly mean physical nearness—I’m a primarily digital congregant, myself—but emotional closeness. Spiritual community. And the stories I’ve heard this weekend and from many dear women I’ve met in the last few years tell me that so, so many women turn to WRJ and specifically Sisterhood for that very closeness.

Sisterhood is one of the thousand, thousand ways we have found to keep fulfilling the need to draw near, to bring ourselves close to God and to each other—despite the passage of time, despite all the change in the world—as part of our continual charge in each generation to keep the essential spark of Torah alight and active in our lives.

This week we read about how one substance might be used in place of another for offerings; someone who could not afford a certain type of animal could substitute what they could afford. The Sages of our tradition point out that the same substitution would not work for a rich person. The value of a sacrifice is a personal, not absolute, calculation.

And I think it’s fair to say that this convention weekend did not arrive without a fair number of sacrifices of different types: of the free time of chairs and organizers and committee members; of the energy and labor of so many to make arrangements and sweat details; of time away from families for the weekend to come be part of the experience we make together here.

Increasingly, our time and attention is demanded and commodified by society. That makes the offering we give to each other of ourselves—offerings of our time in preparing for events like this, and coming to them, offerings of care and attention that we can freely give each other in spaces, like Sisterhood, that we create—it makes them all the more precious.

I’m… really not very outgoing. I know it’s lo tov, not good, to be alone…But still I need to be brought out of myself and into community. Which is why I’m so intensely grateful to the women of TBT Sisterhood in particular, and the organization of Sisterhood more generally, for creating so many opportunities to draw near—from volunteering to social brunches, fundraising to weekends of learning and celebration and joy like this one. Even (perhaps especially) for the little humdrum moments of procedure and quiet, behind-the-scenes work that are a necessary part of a group of people continually learning how to be and function together.

Because what we get out of it—the joy that we find here, the learning that only comes from being exposed to the thoughts of others, the nourishment and enrichment that fills us up when we’re able to come together like this, is a beautiful part of spiritual life. And that doesn’t happen—certainly not in society as we know it right now, where it’s harder and harder to find a space besides libraries and places of worship where we can simply be without an expectation of spending money or producing value—without the concerted and sustained effort of so many.

When God calls out to Moses at the start of Vayikra, Moses is instructed to speak to b’nei Yisrael, the children of Israel. It is very clear that the discussion of near-offerings is for the whole Israelite community, not just the priests. The one presenting an offering in this passage is referred to by the word adam, like the first human being, created male and female, who midrash playfully explores being both and more. The one presenting an offering is also referred to by the word nefesh, or soul. This is not just for the Levitical priesthood, not just for the men of Israel. The need for connection, for near-bringing, applies to us all.

So on this Shabbat, I want to thank all the many many people who have worked so hard to bring us this delightful weekend. I want to thank the Sisterhood leadership at all levels for everything you do to keep extending the invitation to draw close.

And I want to thank all the many women across the Pacific District and elsewhere who have enriched the lives of their Sisterhoods and synagogues with their participation. No matter how small or quiet our presence may be, offering our time and attention to each other is a rich and holy gift.

Shabbat shalom!