Scarcity of what’s Sacred and Loving the Work: A Drash on Parshat Vayikra
This week, as we begin reading the book of Leviticus, we approach the very heart of the Torah. We encounter the laws that structure society, guide our daily lives, and offer us a pathway to approach the divine. These instructions lay out the framework for offerings to God, rituals that bring us closer to the sacred. But when we read these laws, it's crucial that we don’t just observe the rules at face value. We must ask ourselves: What kind of life must we lead to be able to offer such gifts? Who must we be, and what must we do in order to bring offerings to God at these specific times?
As readers and participants in this tradition, our job is not merely to observe these laws as an ancient relic of the past. Instead, we are tasked with extracting meaning and relevance from these texts—seeing them not as historical curiosities but as living resources for our own time. It would be easy to say that the world of the Israelites is so far removed from our own that these laws no longer apply. We no longer practice polygamy, we don’t stone children for disrespect, and we have abolished slavery. It might be tempting to dismiss the entire text as irrelevant to our modern lives.
But that would be a mistake. If we dismiss this precious resource simply because the conditions of ancient society no longer match our own, we lose all the potential, relevance, and meaning that the Torah can offer. We waste a treasure of wisdom. Our modern values and understanding of scarcity should propel us to never dismiss this sacred text. After all, we live in a world that often confuses abundance with excess, and our role as inheritors of this tradition is to find the precious lessons buried within even the most seemingly archaic details.
It’s a difficult task. We are not the same people who received these laws. We do not live in a society structured like that of ancient Israel. The distance between us and the world of Leviticus can feel vast, and the details of those laws can seem like an overwhelming barrier. But perhaps the solution lies not in ignoring those details but in seeking the deeper, timeless truth that they contain.
In the Torah, we see that the Israelites, having just created the Golden Calf, are now instructed to direct their energies toward something sacred: work. They are commanded to devote one day of leisure to God and to keep busy with meaningful work. This is not just a blueprint for the Israelites but for us as well. In our own time, we too must organize our lives so that our work and leisure are directed toward God’s purposes. We must find ways to produce and then dedicate, to make offerings not only in the rituals of the temple but in the very structure of our lives.
But here’s where the details matter. We can’t simply say we love work; we must define what work truly means. The details of Leviticus guide us in understanding how to lead lives that reflect a deep, authentic connection to the sacred, and how to structure our days in a way that honors the divine in all that we do. This is where we find the relevance—by going deeper, by engaging with the text on its own terms, and by finding the heart of the Torah in the lives we live today.
