Every so often, a Torah portion comes along that makes you wonder, “How in the world am I supposed to connect the messages here to my everyday life?!” For me, this week’s portion of Vayikra is one of those parshiyot (with apologies to Rabbi Heaps, as I found out that this is her Bat Mitzvah portion)!
Overall, the first chapter of our third book has quite a lot to share with us about sacrifices with not much to share in any plot progression with the story of our people. As I’ve learned with most of the messages in the Torah, we should not judge this book by its cover. Everything is in the Torah for a reason and we can draw messages and relevance from everything.
For me, I look at Vayikra and think about the concept of sacrifices. In biblical times, we spent a lot of time stopping to give sacrifices. Before we ate, on certain days of the week, and many other reasons we were commanded to give sacrifices. Imagine if today we took time before everything we did to acknowledge life. I think we would find that there is so much that we take for granted that we should be thankful for.
When reading about the sacrifices, I thought about the sacrifices that all of us make in modern time. While it is not a literal sacrificial offering, take time this Shabbat to think about all of the sacrifices that you make. Whether for family, friends, or self, I guarantee there are times every day when you have to sacrifice something. While they may not look the same, each one of us make sacrifices and it’s important that we acknowledge just how hard all of us work!
Shabbat Shalom,
Matt Rissien