This week’s parashah, Vayikra, the first in the Book of Leviticus, introduces our forebears’ manual for creating and sustaining holiness among the Israelites, beginning with a discussion of ritual animal sacrifice. However, the Hebrew word for sacrifice, korban, doesn’t mean “to give up something”, as it does in English. Rather, it means, “to approach”. For our ancestors, sacrifice was a method for drawing nearer to God. The Torah explicitly commands that the Israelites must bring the very best of their flocks and herds, tamim, “without blemish”, to draw closer to God’s compassion and mercy (Leviticus 3:1). Centuries later, the prophet Malachi admonishes the Judeans and the priests of Jerusalem for failing to live up to this standard; suggesting that God will scorn the Judeans because they scorn God’s table: “You offer defiled food upon My altar, yet you ask, ‘How have we defiled You?’ By saying, ‘God’s table may be treated with scorn.’ [...]

This week’s parashah, Vayikra, the first in the Book of Leviticus, introduces our forebears’ manual for creating and sustaining holiness among the Israelites, beginning with a discussion of ritual animal sacrifice. The parashah discusses five different types of offerings including the chatat, often referred to as the sin offering, and the asham, often known as the guilt offering. Modern translators, however, suggest a more helpful translation of these offerings; calling chatat the purgation offering and asham the reparation offering. In renaming these sacrifices, translators have helped us understand our forebears’ worldview in a much more meaningful way. For our ancestors, transgressions of civil or ritual law contaminated the public sphere. That contamination had to be removed through a purgation offering. However, some transgressions not only introduced contamination, they also ruptured the very fabric of the public sphere and therefore, required a reparation offering to repair the damage. We see this in our own lives. For some offenses, a [...]