Friday, March 27, 2020

Va-Yikra: Sorry About All This...

It had been my hope and intention to be fully back up and running with my blog posts by now. I mean, I know there's a worldwide pandemic out there, and the eye of this proverbial storm very recently moved across the Atlantic to our shores, but still... I was hoping to my "normal" routines back online, and it's taking me longer to get there. Sorry. I am, however, quite pleased that we've been able to get an active Facebook Community Board up and running, and that we've held a whole host of online prayer services, learning opportunities, sing-along's, and story time for kids! Which, of course, also explains why the blog isn't back to normal speed just yet. Again, sorry.

I offer these apologies, in part for you - my loyal and dedicated readers - but also in part for myself. In this strange, unfamiliar, topsy-turvy world, any opportunities to maintain normal routines is quite welcome. This post isn't going to be up to my usual standards; lacking, among other things, pictures that help tell a story. But nevertheless, I wanted to push myself to write SOMETHING about our parashah, and hopefully I'll be even MORE prepared for next Shabbat! Ok, so here goes:

This week, we launch into the third book of the Torah, Leviticus. And with it come a myriad of laws, rules, strictures, prohibitions, guidelines, blueprints, measurements, design descriptions, and other how-to's to keep the Ancient Temple running smoothly. One thing that jumped out at me from our text this week, reflects one of the main "reasons" for Temple worship. We might ask the question: What did sacrifice DO for our ancient ancestors??? Well, some of the sacrifices were about thanksgiving for good times, hope for uncertain times, and tribute for mandated-celebration-times. But perhaps more than almost all other purposes, sacrifice was established to ask forgiveness. Throughout our Torah portion specifically, the text describes guilt offerings, sin offerings, offerings for unintentional and accidental transgressions, and even differentiates between offerings in response to individual mistakes versus communal ones. Why so sorry all the time???

And this is what jumped out at me for us to think about this week. Do we truly know WHEN to apologize, HOW to apologize, to WHOM we even need to offer our apology, and what it means to be sorry and repentant?? As we all worry about the spread of this horrific pandemic, we often hear people in the media search for "scapegoats": Who is to blame for all of this? But right now, it's honestly not a particularly relevant question. Collectively, we need to acknowledge our failings around caring for the sick, the elderly, and the poor in our country. We need to put aside our bickering, and instead demonstrate humility and concern for one another. And we need to think long and hard about how we've been taking our planet, our environment, and the amenities in our lives for granted, and how ALL THAT has to change. In short, we need a lot less blaming and bluster, and a lot more "sorry." The Torah goes out of its way to even emphasize UNINTENTIONAL transgressions, or ones where leaders need to take responsibility for the wrongdoing of others. The Torah is trying to model behavior for us, which we especially need when it isn't being modeled for us elsewhere.

Sacrifice - whether we want it or not - is once again going to become a word, and a concept we need to grapple with. And if we can also internalize the concept of "sorry," along with humility, contrition, and change, this is all going to become a lot more manageable. Sorry for harping on about this so long...

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