What Biblical SACRIFICES teach us about LOVE & COMMITMENT

It's a pleasant smell to God. I don't know if you find that term by any other mitzvah. When it says honor your parents or give charity, feed the hungry, take care of the widow, love your neighbor, fundamental mitzvah, it doesn't call that as being pleasant to God. For some reason, taking an animal and sacrificing it on the altar the way God wants it is pleasant to God. God likes it. And we have almost an entire book of the Torah, the book of Leviticus, describing in detail how to give God these gifts. Why does he need it? Why is it such a big deal? What is the meaning behind this? Okay, friends, the story begins. We are diving in to the third book of the Torah, book of Leviticus, the book of Vayikra, the portion of Vikra. And what we talk about extensively in this book are corbanot corbanos sacrifices. And that's a hot topic. I remember one of our first chabases uh having like guests from from the community back in Norcal. Um I'm I I didn't realize how controversial animal sacrifices were coming from my little uh naive yeshiva background, you know, and I mentioned something about sacrifices and correct and this person was a vegan and was totally triggered and I was like whoa I didn't realize uh okay select your dvaras with caution right but the reason why I mention uh is not to judge the individual. The reason why I mentioned this is because that inspired a little bit of introspection. It inspired me to think a little bit deeper and do a little bit of research. Why is God interested in corbanis in animal sacrifices? Why is that so important? Of the 613 mitzvah, how many of them are occupied with the details and laws of the carbanes? I I don't know the number, but it's it's uh I'd venture to say close to half, maybe more than half. the one of the most uh I don't know fundamental is a big word but it's a fundamental mitzvah building a base of mikdash building a house for god building a home for god which we had spoke about spoken about in the previous portions we couldn't experience god's revelation at sinai uh long term that wasn't sustainable so we have to build that relationship that's building the temple and the ram says when he defines the mitzvah of building a temple. It's a mitzvah to build a house for God to offer sacrifices. It's like fundamental. It's part of it. It's like a big deal. You can't It's almost inseparable from God's divine presence resting in this world. It's necessary. But let me take the question a little bit further. If you look at the beginning of Leviticus, the first chapter, sentence nine, the Torah says it's an It's a pleasant smell to God. It's pleasant. I don't know if you find that term by any other mitzvah. It doesn't say that fillain is pleasant to God. We obviously know God is pleased by it. He's asking us to do it. But when it says honor your parents or give charity, feed the hungry, take care of the widow, love your neighbor, fundamental mitzvah, it doesn't call that as being pleasant to God. But some for some reason taking an animal and sacrificing it on the altar the way God wants it is pleasant to God. God likes it. And we have almost an entire book of the Torah, the book of Leviticus, describing in detail how to give God these gifts. Why does he need it? Why is it such a big deal? What is the meaning behind this? I want to share with you multiple perspectives among the commentaries among the biblical commentaries. But I want to start with my monities. Mymonities wrote a book called the guide for the perplexed. It's a philosophical work explaining many reasons for mitzvah. And he says this is a little controversial. He says that the reason for carbon the reason for animal sacrifices is because in the back in the day back in biblical times there was a strong desire for sacrificing animals for the sake of idolatry and if God were to say no more idolatry just cut it out cold turkey we couldn't have handled that can't handle the truth. So what God said was, "No more idolatry, but you could still have sacrifices, and you know what? You can give them to me instead." And that would satisfy our craving for animal sacrifices. But it was a mere response to the time because in those times there were idol, there was um idol worship, implying that there isn't necessarily an intrinsic value to it, but it more has historical value. This is what the Rambam writes in his guide for the perplexed. Many of the commentaries disagree with mymonity's statement and they say that perhaps either he's completely just off or he's talking to perplexed people in his guide for the perplexed but he's not actually addressing um the the objective issue, the actual issue. And the reason why is because sacrifices predated idolatry. Who gave the first sacrifice? Who built the first altar? Cain and Abel, right? They ended up killing each other over it. They ended up fighting over it because one brought a better offering than the other. But there was no idolatry yet. their dad Adam was created by the palms of God himself as the Torah describes. So there was no idolatry yet in the days of Noah. There was idolatry, but all those people got washed off the face of the earth. Literally Noah came comes out of the ark and he builds an altar. There's no idolatry yet and he wasn't an idoltor. Um when Messiah comes in the messianic era, the book of Mikah describes how God is going to erase the impurity from the face of the earth. God says, "I'm going to get rid of impurity. I'm going to get rid of idolatry like we pray for in the alenu. There's going to be this time period that we're blame praying for that God is going to remove all impurities and idolatries. We're still going to have sacrifices. And by the way, my describes the sacrifices, what they're going to be like, and what we're going to do in the messianic era, which means he clearly was addressing the perplexed, but not addressing the pure truth. Maybe answering what people needed to hear in that generation. Let's shift over to the Ramban. Not the Rambam with a at the end but the Ramban with at the end another biblical commentator and he says what is the purpose of sacrifices it's much of the sacrifices is part of the tshoua process right part of the forgiveness process and He says that it's not just like, "Oh, I accidentally murdered somebody. Let me go bring that animal sacrifice." Okay, all good. Right. I just sto I just laundered $300,000 from a bank, but it's okay. I brought an animal sacrifice and God forgave me. All good. The Ramban says, "No, no, no. It doesn't work that way. He's on the fairy. You have to have any internet on the You have to have actual toua. You have to have actual remorse. You have to have actual regret. There has to be actual emotional investment in this relationship. And then the sacrifice is emblematic of your investment. The way my monity says it is you're putting that animal on the altar. You're watching what's happening and you're thinking that could have been me. God forbid. I I'm thinking of when we do kaparus, another controversial tradition when we do kaparas um aravium kipper, right? We hold the chicken and we say zaparasi. This is my atonement. This chicken is going to be sentenced to death instead of me. It's not that. Oh, I killed a chicken. Thank you, God. I'm good. But there's a thought process that goes along with it that is emblematic of a deeper. In other words, if somebody were to bring that animal sacrifice with no intention in contrast to other types of mitzvah, by the way, it might not work. There might not actually be atonement. There might not actually be forgiveness. But the actual purpose is not the sacrifice itself but what it represents. That's what Nakman says. Let me share with you Rashi's perspective because again among actually before we get to Rashi I want to share with you the cabalistic perspective first. Rashi is very interesting. We're going to get there in a second. The cabalists explain and for those of you who are familiar with chapter 34 of Tanya, this is referenced in chapter 34 of Tanya where he quotes a teaching from the Arizel that when you bring, let's say, a ram on the altar, you're elevating all rams that exist by that ram on the altar. When you bring an ox on the altar, you're you're elevating all oxen. When you bring a bird offering, when you bring a meal offering, right, there are certain kala or bread or matzah or wafers, different things, right? The li the wine liabations. You're elevating all wine that exists. In other words, we have a a the way the Cabala sees it is we have a job in this world to take what seems like physical matter and reveal how it's really a creation of God. It's really a piece of God. And just like every human being has a piece of God within them, the soul, every human being is created in the image of God. And we're supposed to look at another human being and see that and extract that and pull that out and find the beauty within people. We have to find the beauty within existence. And within the altar itself, when it comes to a sacrifice, you have all four species of existence on this altar. There's four species of existence. There is inanimate existence. That's the salt that's on the altar. And special one of the mitzvah in this week's portion is every alt every offering must be accompanied by salt. Salt is inanimate. You have vegetation that goes on the altar. The wine liabations, the meal offerings that came from wheat. You have animal life on the altar. Controversial, but nonetheless, you're elevating animal life. And to an extent you have human life on the altar though we don't believe in human sacrifices. There is the human offering the animal. There is the human investing his heart blood sweat and tears. Right? Especially when it comes to all the kavana that we had spoken about based on these teachings. So there is a deep significance to this um to to the idea of sacrifice. And when you are able to do that sacrifice, you can now go to any other animal and freely elevate it just just like like doing. Um when you do in the morning, you become more aware more aware of God, more aware of purpose, more aware of the why behind our existence. Because of that, we're more connected to our souls. Because of that, eating is a very different experience. doing mundane what seems like mundane activity can actually be very sacred and now I have the ability to eat for the right reasons and that that's why cababala explains you're not supposed to eat before davening technically speaking whether you should or shouldn't is a is a different discussion but technically speaking strictly speaking we don't eat before davening because we need to first connect to our souls before we elevate things similarly we need to before elevating the world sample it on the altar and that's the cabalistic explanation behind the idea of corbanos of sacrifices. Um the cabalists also explain by the way that the word corban sacrifice shares you know what the word really means we translate it as sacrifice. It actually means closeness to make something closer to God because that's what a sacrifice really is. A sacrifice isn't about destroying something or martyring something for the sake of God. Um it it it's bringing something close to God. And when we do it when we offer to God, we become closer The physical anim animalistic or vegetative material that we had offered to God now becomes closer to God. That's what a Corban is. Let me share with you Rashi's interpretation though. We've gone through my monities. We explained the Arizal's perspective according to Cabala and now Rashi. And the reason why I'm ending with Rashi over here is because Rashi is considered to be the most literal basic interpretation on Torah. He's not trying to be homalytic. Although there are lessons we derive from Rashi, he's not trying to be he's just trying to say it like it is. Rashi writes that his interpretation is meant so adults and even children as young as the age of five alike can understand the basic and meaning of the Torah. That's what Rashi says, which is a very bold statement because Rashi is not always an easy commentary to understand. But here's what Rashi says. Again, the question that we're asking, why are corbano sacrifices so pleasing to God? Why does God enjoy that? Why does God like that? It's a a pleasant smell to God. And it doesn't say that by any other mitzvah. Pay attention when you start reading the Torah. If you're going to see that statement again out of context of sacrifices, you won't. Rashi says, "Well, why?" Rashi answers the question, "Why does this please God?" I'll read it in the Hebrew and then I'll translate it. God is effectively saying that this is causing meas right is pleasure. This is causing pleasure to me because I said and you did what I wanted. I said it and you did it. That is the greatest pleasure to God. I said it and you did it. When it comes to many other mitzvah, we try to find meaning behind it. And you know what happens when a mitzvah is meaningful? It becomes about God and it becomes about us. And there's value there. But we do get in the way sometimes because sometimes it can become too much about us and it becomes so much about us that it starts evolving and you see various facets within Judaism that have evolved so much it doesn't even look like Judaism anymore. And I'm not using any names. I'm being nice. But the reason why it doesn't look like Judaism anymore is because it became so self-centered and less God- centered. And I'm not saying we need to ignore or neglect ourselves. We should feel personally invested. But where you see the greatest personal sacrifice and perhaps an ideological sacrifice is when it comes to sacrifices corbon because it's hard to extract personal meaning out of sacrifices harder than any other mitzvah. You can extract personal meaning from fillin from shabas candles from matzah even from shhates not mixing linen and wool you can you can you know god wants us to abstain from certain things discipline whatever you can you can extract and draw lessons from there when it comes to carbon it is triggering to some people and we're not here to trigger people but what we are saying is hey this is how rashi's perspective Hey, this is what God wants. And when you're able to do what God wants, even though you can't fully wrap your head around it, that causes God pleasure. That is a great relationship tip. By the way, if you can honor your spouse's dreams, even if you don't get it, and if you do get it, that's great. But even if you don't get it and specifically when you don't get it, uh that that's a very good thing that causes pleasure that causes, you know, that that's a pleasing thing to do. A very pleasing thing to do. There's a relationship expert named John Gottman. John Gottman's an interesting guy. You guys heard of John Gottman? John Gottman is a Jewish He's not a therapist. He's a researcher. He would um analyze couples interacting with one another and then follow them for 30 years to track patterns in relationships. And he would follow them deeply. He wanted to see like what their heart rates are like when they're fighting and what their pulses are like and and he wanted to really understand in detail what makes marriage work, what makes marriage fail. And for he's he's an old man now, but for 30 years he would follow couples around and figure out like what works, what doesn't. He claims that he has the ability to predict with a 96% or 94% accuracy rate which couples will get divorced and when. And he said somebody came into his office once. He says, "I don't have a lot of time. I need you to tell me in like 10 seconds or less how I can fix my marriage. And most people would say um you know it was like hill like hill and shamai you know most people would take the shamai approach which is you know chase him out with a stick but he took the hill approach you know tell me the whole Torah on one foot and he he effectively said what hill said but in different words he says honor your wife's dreams the guy leaves and he reported back to John Gottman that his marriage was saved because he walks into his house and he says to his wife, "What are your dreams?" Very like, and she goes, "Huh? I want to know what your dreams are." She says, "I thought you'd never ask." Being sensitive to what somebody else wants, even if it doesn't make sense to us, and sometimes specifically when it doesn't make sense to us, is pleasing to that person. and in this case is pleasing to God without all the philosophy of how it's meaningful to us. Rashi is taking the approach that maybe it's not meaningful to us. He's not saying it's not meaningful to us have legitimate explanations but Rash is saying it's deeper than that. It's not about us. It's about some it's about God. And when we make that flip, that switch, it's a lot more uh first of all, it's a lot more pleasant to God, but it's a lot more easy to to stomach. But in order to have this perspective, what does it take to have this perspective? You know what the answer is? Humility, right? To be able to do something for somebody else when it's not meaningful to you and you don't get it requires an immense amount of humility. In the beginning of the portion, the name of the portion, the name of the book is called Vayikra. And if you have a you could see it says and he called and he called to Moshe. God called out to Mosha and conveyed to Mosher Rabenu these laws. And if you look at the word vayikra, you'll notice that the olive of vayikra is a smaller font than all the other letters. The font in the Torah, the words in the Torah are very particular, but the font in the Torah is very particular. And occasionally you'll have certain letters that are of larger font, certain letters that have of smaller font. And there's reasons and meaning behind this. The olive is a smaller font. What would what were to happen if you were to remove that olive? How would it what would you read? It wouldn't say vikra. It would say vayar. Vikar means God happened to bump into Moses and say, "Oh, hey, by the way, I got some news for you." And he called to Moses. Is very intentional. So from God's perspective, I'm reaching out to Moses. I'm calling him. I'm talking to him. From Moses perspective, me, who am I? Who am I that God would want to reach out to me? Moses was humble. That small olive is emblematic of humility. Moses was effectively saying, you see, by the way, when God appeared, Rashi says this, when God appeared to I think Rashi says this, when God appeared to Bum, the anti anti-semitic villain who wanted to annihilate the Jewish people, but he was a prophet, and God appeared to him, and it says vayar without the olive. So Mosha is saying, maybe God's appearing to me as if he would to Bam. God talks to people, okay? He didn't let it get to his head. So there's that small olive emblematic of humility which by the way later in the toward the end of the book of numbers the Torah says that God Moshe is the humblest of people to grace the earth to face the earth. He was humble. He was the humblest of all people on the face of the earth. And the commentaries ask, you could tell us that Moshe was humble, but why do you have to tell me he's humble in contrast to other people? The answer is that was his humility. True humility. I I I read this yesterday or two days ago in a teaching from the and I loved this. I'm going to use it and abuse it and repeat it because it's incredible. Real humility is not about searching for your deficiencies. This is a loose quote. Real humility is not about searching for your deficiencies. It's looking for other people's greatness. As they say, humility is not focusing. It's not seeing thinking less of yourself. It's thinking less about yourself. But the Reba took it a step further. Mosha's humility was in contrast to other people because he was looking at other people and seeing their value, seeing their greatness, seeing their beauty. We start off the book of Levitic Leviticus, the book of sacrifices, the book that tells us how to get close to God and sometimes in the most uncomfortable or unpleasant or or uh ideologically difficult of ways. And it takes humility to do that. And the way we practice humility like Moenu, we look at other people and we find their greatness. There's an old tradition dating back all the way um to from the midrash. I mean, it probably predates the midrash, but the earliest place it's cited is in the midrash. And it says that when teaching children Torah, kids are going to come to school, 5year-olds, six-year-olds, they're going to learnish for the first time. Okay, we need a curriculum. Where do we start? So I I would think and there's obviously there's a reason why my opinion is not counted here right but I would think start from the beginning the very best place to start start with the story of creation children need to know besim God created the world right or start from I don't know start from the exodus from Egypt or for our entrance to Egypt. That's that start from the stories. Stories pull people in. But that's not what the major says. You know what the mid says? Teach children the portion of that we're reading now. The in-depth intricacies of corban of sacrifices because to appreciate sacrifices you you need humility. You need purity and children are pure like those sacrifices. Children understand um not always by by the way but no I'm kidding [Laughter] children understand though that um there's someone else whom they need to rely on other than their own intelligence which is what Rashi is saying this is pleasing to God let's not get caught up in the philosophy of why it's meaningful to us although that is important But let's not get stumped by that. Let's not get stunted by that. Children get that. It it there's a discussion in practically. Does that mean children should actually start from Vayikra and literally learn the entire book of Vayikra or is it symbolic? Can they just learn the first few verses to be, you know, to symbolize this idea? But the point is it's the humility, the sincerity that enables us to truly come close to somebody else. If we want to come close to God and if we want to come close to other people because it's the same principle, there's a certain level of humility and sincerity that we need to have. And although we don't have Corbanis yet, because we don't have a third temple yet, we could still have the humility and that could pave the way. That's my story and I'm sticking to