Dvar Torah on Parshat Tzav

This week's parsha deals with sacrifices offered in the Tabernacle and subsequently in the Temple. The Rabbis take notice of the out-of the-ordinary opening verse of the parsha - "And God spoke to Moshe, saying: command Aharon and his sons, saying: this is the instruction for the burnt-offering". It is rare for the Torah to tell us that God told Moshe to "command" his brother Aharon about the ritual in the Temple. Usually the Torah simply says that God told Moshe to tell Aharon what to do. Why, the Rabbis ask, is this particular instruction, pertaining to the ritual of the burnt offering, couched in the language of a commandment, rather than, as is more often the case, simply in the language of a communication?

The Sifra, a Talmudic-period Midrash on the book of Leviticus, offers the following explanation: "The word 'command' is an expression of exhortation, for now and for later generations. Rabbi Shimon says that it is all the more necessary when a monetary loss is involved." The Midrash seems to say that the unusual use of the word 'command' here indicates a number of things. First, that this is an exhortation, a communication with more than the usual urgency, which is meant to express that the ritual under discussion must be done both now, in the desert, as well as in the future, by later generations. In addition, Rabbi Shimon explains, this extra level of persuasion is necessary because the Mitzvah under discussion is one which entails monetary loss. Apparently, he is referring to the fact that a burnt offering, unlike other sacrifices, contains no meat which is given to the officiating priests, or to anyone else, to eat; as its name indicates, it is completely burned on the altar. Apparently, this fact would make a priest reluctant to offer such a sacrifice and thereby 'waste' a perfectly good animal, while also wasting his time doing the ritual. The Torah therefore feels the need to stress that this is a commandment which he must obey, in spite of the 'waste' entailed.

How are these issues connected? If the language of commandment is needed here in order to inject a sense of urgency, how does that urgency relate to the need to practice these rituals both in the time of the Tabernacle and in the future, while also relating to the loss which is incurred when a burnt-offering is sacrificed? Would Aharon have thought, had he not been commanded to sacrifice a burnt offering, that burnt offerings are only relevant to his generation, and not in the future? And, furthermore, what is the connection between these two issues, that of the need to bring burnt offerings both in the present and the future, and that of the monetary loss, the waste, involved in this type of sacrifice?

First, let's think about why such an offering might only be relevant for Aharon and his generation, but not for later generations. It would seem that the generation that experienced God in all of His power and glory, who lived through the exodus form Egypt, the parting of the sea, and the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, has a highly attuned sense of God's presence in the world. These people traveled on a spiritual journey of unparalleled power and depth; their relationship with the divine, their real sense of His power and presence, is such that giving something up completely in sacrifice to Him, as an expression of our faith in Him and our recognition of His might, makes sense, has emotional resonance, and real religious meaning. Later generations, on the other hand, with a more attenuated relationship with God, lacking the direct experience of His presence in the world which their fathers and mothers had, would have trouble with the notion of 'wasting' an animal in sacrifice to this much more abstract, absent deity. Other sacrifices, large parts of which are eaten by Priest and Israelite alike, make sense as a celebration, a festive experience of eating together in the nation's religious center. But taking a perfectly good animal and burning it to a God they have never actually seen, and whom they have not directly experienced, makes much less sense.

The urgency in the commandment which God asks Moshe to express to Aharon is rooted in the difficulty parents have in transmitting the lessons of their religious journeys to their children. Everyone goes through primal experiences, some of a religious nature. As parents, we feel that we want to transmit those experiences, share them, with our children. However, they are on a different journey, one with it's own primal experiences. They are not always willing or able to be impressed by ours. This gap is a difficult one to bridge. In our parsha, with its opening commandment, God demands of Aharon that he try to somehow bridge it, and bequeath to his children, and through them to later generations, the lessons learned on the religious road that he and his generation have traveled.

As we wave a shaky goodbye to Purim and begin the month-long period of preparation for Passover, when we all, as children and parents, will try to experience together what our forebears saw and felt millennia ago during the Exodus, I wish us all success in our attempts to connect to the primal experiences of those who came before us, as well as to share our own primal experiences with those who will come after.

Shabbat Shalom

Rabbi Shimon Felix