Norman’s D’var Torah:

Shabbat Shalom. It's an honor to speak this morning about Vayikra, or "He called"; He meaning God called. Vayikra is the opening parashah of Leviticus, which is not an easy book to appreciate these days because its main focus concerns animal sacrifice, dietary practices, ritual impurity, and the Holiness code. And yet, almost half the 613 commandments in Torah are found in this book and which is also the shortest of the five books. But interest in Leviticus should be more than just history. Indeed, a reader should try to understand the religious practices from ancient times that we are still aware of today, and also to understand the religious ideas that were expressed and followed in those days.

What we are left with is why is this text important and why particularly is it important in these times?

A way to think about Leviticus generally is that it contains two fundamental concepts: first, the Israelites were perceived as one community following a holy way of life, and, second, the Israelites were to be granted access to the Holy Land provided that they followed the laws of God and remained faithful to God's covenant. Accordingly, its central message is a search for holiness: to read Torah and to live as guided by its teachings.

About 2,500 years ago the destruction of the holy Temple resulted in an end to the sacrificial system that had been the customary way of reaching out to God. And after the destruction of the first Temple in the sixth Century BCE and the second Temple early in the first century CE and the exile of the Israelites to Babylonia, places of meeting increasingly evolved into synagogues and other spaces for worshipping God through prayer and study. Good deeds, piety, and obedience to the covenant took the place of animal sacrifice in the Temple.

Thus, over the centuries Jews learned to achieve through prayer and righteous deeds the same sense of nearness to God that the Temple altar had previously provided.

As mentioned earlier, the first words that Ann (Rollins), Elaine (Clein), Peter (Birnbaum) and I read from Torah this morning deal initially with animal sacrifice, piety, expiation, moral practices, and then with other major types of sacrifice and thus, the biblical sacrificial system. This included a variety of offerings to be burned and for different purposes: animal, grain, sin, well-being, peace, and others. It is in this broad context I want to speak about first, the issue of prayer and its intentionality, and second, the plain words and notion of God calling.

A few years ago Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote about the idea of "God calling" where in the text we read, "And He called to Moses, and God spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting, saying . . .". Curiously, the first phrase might seem to be redundant. If we are told that God spoke to Moses, why then is it necessary to say again, "And He called. . .?" Rashi explains, "Every time God communicated with Moses, whether by the words, "And He spoke", or "and He said", or "and He commanded," it was always preceded by (God) calling, as to Moses, by name. In this context "calling" is an expression of emphasis and endearment. It is also the expression employed by the angels in Isaiah, where it says, "And one would call to the other". Actually and interestingly, we read this text, precisely the words, kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, in the k'dushah in our readings this morning.

Rabbi Sacks observes that there are many such calls in Torah. There was the call Abraham heard to leave his land and family. There was the call to Moses at the burning bush where God invited Moses to take on the task that would define his life; that is, leading the people out of exile and slavery, to freedom in the Promised Land. Then there was the call experienced by Isaiah when he saw a mystical vision of God enthroned and surrounded by angels. And there are others.

So in our times we may feel God is speaking to us when we see a wrong to be righted, a sickness to be healed, or a need to be met. That is when we may come as close as we can in these times to hearing Vayikra: God's call. But why does this word appear here, at the beginning of the third and central book of the Torah? Rabbi Sacks suggests Vayikra is not only about sacrifices, but also about one's vocation. We are called to make sacrifices when we feel they are part of a task that we are called upon to undertake. Also and in a sense, prayer helps us to hear ourselves better internally.

Rabbi Sacks says that Rashi is telling us that Vayikra means to be called to a task and that the concept of a vocation is a calling as a way of life or choice of career. It is not just because we want to do it, or because it offers certain benefits, but rather, because we feel summoned to it. Rashi suggests we feel that becomes our mission in life and thus helps give our lives meaning.

I suggest that some in this chapel today may have experienced some sort of call to have devoted our life's work, or to our profession or occupation. We did it because we felt summoned, or drawn, or called to it in some perhaps inexplicable way. Viktor Frankl, who died in 1997, was a Holocaust survivor, a psychiatrist, and author who wrote "Man's Search for Meaning." He said that life is a task in that "the religious man differs from the irreligious man only by experiencing his existence not simply as a task, but as a mission." A man or a woman is aware of being summoned, called, by a source. To Frankl, "for thousands of years that source has been called God."

I see a parallel in this evolution from Vayrikra's text about a call and the transition from animal sacrifice to prayer. What are we to make of sacrifice in the sense of how it was such a dramatic expression to the current practice of worship? Some suggest it was a God-inspired, phenomenal solution of dealing with the destruction of the Temple with finality in 70 CE. Without the existence of the ancient Temple that had been rebuilt on the same site some six centuries earlier, Jews were nonetheless motivated to do something where one could acknowledge, pay tribute, and worship God in some worthy and meaningful way.

The evolutions from the-then no-longer existing Temple to one's home and synagogue, and from animal sacrifice to prayer and righteous deeds were inspired solutions. And in this context an astonishing shift had to have occurred in the mind of someone or a group of sages from the practice of animal sacrifice to service of the heart and prayer.

As I said a bit ago, as a result of the expulsion or for purposes of sheer preservation, the Israelites had been carried off or had fled to Babylonia, and while there, the simplicity and power of home and prayer was realized and became profoundly significant. It was the growing importance of those two components that enabled Judaism to continue and to be perpetuated.

Over time we have come to realize and appreciate that a component of mission calls us to sacrifice. Further, prayer has taken on still further dimensions and a deeper commitment to intentionality and the directing of one's heart. We call this kavvana, and it deals with purposeful intentionality which is a major element of kavvana.

So how does the serious Jew incorporate prayer with greater spontaneity, sincerity and emotion? I suggest that one's life and its varied missions can be enhanced with the help of intentional prayer. And I also suggest that the study of kavvana which has its own set of implications, principles, and practices could be a future course of study in and of itself. So perhaps our fellow congregants would be interested in such a study topic just as Rabbi Rachael this year has brought insight and practical applications to musar, Rabbi Max has comparably done with his classes about Talmud, and Rabbi Spike is doing with his current deep dive into Passover. And, of course, Cantor Lauren had her program last month about "Listening to the Song that My Heart Sings" and in her upcoming program, "Walking with the Spirit" and the notion of God's presence in your life.

But studies, such as kavvana, as well as others are for another time and other Shabbaton.

I wish you well in your callings and profound peace and intentionality in your prayers.

Before I close I want to mention the recognition at services last night (March 15) of our fellow congregants who generously and selflessly volunteer to provide a variety of service and support to others. As I sat there I thought: it was as though God had called. And our fellow congregants responded. Hineini: here I am.

Kein Yehi Ratzon. May this be God's will.