Vayikra

Behar (Bechukotai) for TAA

(Delivered May 9, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

We find ourselves today at the end of Sefer Vayikra, the Book of Leviticus, which I must admit is almost nobody’s favorite book. The text of Leviticus בְּגָדול—overall—is full of rules and regulations, blood and guts, sacrifices, rituals, restrictions. 

My teacher, Rabbi Nehemia Polen, on the other hand, loves Leviticus. Loves it, loves it, loves it.

In Nehemia’s world, Leviticus becomes almost romantic: he reads it as a tender description of acts of profound devotion: of the gifts that God asks of humanity and that humanity lovingly offers. Where the rest of us see the mind-numbing details of alienating ritual, Nehemia sees care and softness, a desire for deeper connection and partnership.

The emotional drama underneath those boring details is of God and humanity reaching toward each other, repairing the sense of abandonment arising from centuries of enslavement, moving past the savagery of the Golden Calf, dwelling in sacred companionship in a holy place, that God designs and the Israelites construct. To put it another way, the Mishkan and the many elaborate religious practices that take place within it are the embodied expression of the covenant that defines the Jewish people. 

Although I passed Nehemia’s class and wrote a pretty good final essay, I have some lingering skepticism for this reading.

But Parshat Behar-Bechukotai, particularly what we encounter in the first shlish—the first triennial reading—offers a wink here and there of the passion and adoration that my teacher sees in the book overall. 

Consider the loving care that God commands us to have for one another and for the land. The system of שְׁמִיטָה and יוֹבֵל—of letting the land rest every seven years, and of rebalancing wealth inequities every fifty—speaks to a strong theme of generosity and good will toward one another. It also demands a level of faith in the unseen, to be able to accept the enforced no-harvest period. Between us and God, and amongst ourselves, these principles teach and demand a kind of tenderness.

The parsha’s many lessons about economic justice likewise point to an ethic of love and חֶסֶד, commanding us to uphold the dignity of the migrant or the servant with as much energy as we would do for our own kin. It would be enough that the parsha forbids taking economic advantage of someone who is struggling. But our Torah goes further, to command that if we see someone beginning to struggle, we must intervene to support and strengthen them (וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ). Rashi compares this to a heavy load on an animal. If the load begins to wobble, it’s better to catch it quickly before it falls to the ground. Once it has fallen all the way, it’s that much harder to lift it up. With this teaching, the Torah is demanding that we not look away from suffering, that we see the struggles of the world as our own and labor to help. That these teachings are couched in the refrain: אֲנִי ה’ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם—I am Adonai your God—completes the circuit of love and compassion. The more empathic the human-to-human interaction, the more it aligns with God’s primary principle of עָרֵֵבוּת—of taking responsibility for one another.

But let me tell you about one particular pasuk that encapsulates the divine-human connection and love that Nehemia believes permeates Vayikra. In chapter 25, verse 23, God says: 

וְהָאָרֶץ לֹא תִמָּכֵר לִצְמִתֻת כִּי־לִי הָאָרֶץ כִּי־גֵרִים וְתוֹשָׁבִים אַתֶּם עִמָּדִי׃
But the land will not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is Mine.
You are strangers and sojourners with Me.

The final word of that pasuk עִמָּדִי—with Me—opens a world of theological questions and possibilities. When the verse says we are with God, what is the quality of that with-ness? Are we wanderers being accompanied by God, our footsteps monitored from the middle distance by an all-knowing presence? Or is God also a stranger and sojourner, wandering alongside us as we go about our lives? 

Surely the ambiguity is not an accident. 

It is comforting enough to imagine the former: that God is watching peacefully over us, guiding our every choice. The strangeness and the sojourn never get out of hand because God is with us. Yet if God is also a stranger and sojourner, if we are walking beside God in wonder and sometimes bewilderment, how does that obligate us, to God and to one another?

This, I believe, is the sense of depth and companionship that makes Nehemia Polen so devoted to Sefer Vayikra. Ultimately, it’s the idea that God and we are sojourners together, learning from one another and holding one another steady in the whirlwind of life. As the spiritual teacher Ram Dass—born Richard Alpert—said, “We are all just walking each other home.”

We are all just walking each other home.

May our footsteps be guided by kindness.

Vayikra for TAA

(Delivered April 5, 2025)

I don’t mean to alarm you, but I make a lot of mistakes. Most of them, thank God, are small mistakes: a thoughtless comment or a silly oversight, running out of time to call someone who deserves my attention or tripping over the Hebrew in my davening. Some of my mistakes are bigger, though. And I’m sorry to say that some of my mistakes are yet to be made. I may even make one with this dvar Torah. Living up to a standard of perfection is both extremely difficult and impossible. Difficult because of the toll the attempt can take on us, and impossible because, much to the chagrin of perfectionists everywhere, a life without mistakes is an unattainable standard. 

Our parsha this week gives us a way to think and talk about the inherent tension between the state of being human and impossible standards.

As you probably remember from previous years, Sefer Vayikra, also known as the Book of Leviticus, mainly focuses on the practice of ritual sacrifice: who should bring sacrificial offerings; how, when, and where the offerings should be made; and the whole taxonomy of what goes into each type of offering and why. The triennial portion of Vayikra that we chanted today deals with mistake-offerings. The parsha details what to do when one unintentionally—or even unknowingly—transgresses the commandments of the Torah.

Given that it is human to make mistakes, the Torah offers us a hierarchy. Ideally, a person who sins בִּשְׁגָגָה—by mistake—would approach the Mishkan to bring the Priest a large animal from the herd, such as a sheep or a goat. But the Torah expansively notes that not everyone can afford to give up an animal from the herd. Even though it’s called sacrifice, scripture understands that not all sacrifices are sustainable. Giving something up should be consequential but not devastating. 

Thus, if the person’s means don’t allow for a large animal, they could instead bring two birds. And if even the two birds were beyond their capacity, our tradition offers an alternative to the alternative by allowing them to bring a grain offering. The Torah seems to be going out of its way to acknowledge that our resources for making it right when we have gone astray are not all equal. Some of us, at some times, are able to do everything just so. But the Torah, knowing human nature as it does, allows for this to be one among a range of possible outcomes. There are times when we can do it all and do it well; there are times when we barely tread water.

A similar principle is at play in a Mishnah I encountered this week having to do with Bedikat Chametz, the search for chametz. One traditional practice around Pesach is to search out and burn all remaining traces of chametz on the day before the seder—or two days before if the day before is Shabbat. The evening of the appointed day, we search all around using a candle, or nowadays a flashlight. The following morning we burn all we have gathered and declare that any bits of chametz that we failed to find and burn in the process of Bedikat Chametz become ownerless as the dust of the earth.

Mishnah Pesachim (1:3) says: 

רַבִּי יְהוּדָה אוֹמֵר
בּוֹדְקִין אוֹר אַרְבָּעָה עָשָׂר
וּבְאַרְבָּעָה עָשָׂר שַׁחֲרִית
וּבִשְׁעַת הַבִּעוּר

Rabbi Yehudah says: one checks at night on the 14th [of Nisan] and at dawn on the 14th, and at the time of burning. The Mishnah continues: If you don’t search in the evening of the 14th, search in the daytime on the 14th. And if you don’t search on the 14th at all, search during the festival. And if you don’t search during the festival, search after the festival.

Now, on the one hand, the Zohar teaches that anyone who eats chametz during Pesach, it’s as if they worship idols. High stakes indeed! And yet, on the other hand, we have such leniency built into the practice of rooting out chametz that even if we fail to do it for the entirety of the chag, we can still do it afterwards. Even after it becomes irrelevant, we are permitted to try again. Likewise, our tradition offers Pesach Sheni, a second chance to make the Passover sacrifice if one happens to be traveling or ritually impure at the time of the actual chag and therefore unable to make the sacrifice.

And then there’s the familiar Mishnah from Pirkei Avot (2:16), which coincidentally I also studied this week, which says, 

לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְלַאכָה לִגְמוֹר וְלֹא אָתָה בֵּן חוֹרִין לִיבָּטֵל מִמֻנָה
It is not up to you to complete the work,
but neither are you free to ignore it.

When three different texts you encounter in the same week are all pointing in the same direction, it’s worthwhile to look in that direction to see what they might be pointing at.

The overall message appears to be—not that we shouldn’t always try our best in matters of importance—but that sometimes our best is going to be truly excellent, and sometimes it will barely be passable. Sometimes we’ll be able to give it the full unblemished sheep treatment, and sometimes we’ll simply have to accept—and know that God will accept—a simple grain offering, the finest flour we can find. 

In a week in which we seem to find ourselves in the crosshairs of history, this is a worthwhile principle to keep at the forefront of our minds. We are living in a time of multiple unfolding crises: of a volatile political situation at home, ever-increasing antisemitism, a grinding war and widening chaos in Israel, and looming economic troubles. Many of us, across a range of political orientations, are wanting to take action, whether to march in the streets, or call our senators, or sign onto petitions and letters condemning what we see as injustice being perpetrated in our names. Each of us will find ourselves navigating an individual calculus of what feels most urgent, weighed against our own inner resources. 

In times of turmoil, it is impossible for any one of us to meet all the needs we perceive. Those who feel called to action will speak out, take a stand, make good trouble. Those who feel reticent or confused will watch and learn, and double down on the individual pursuits that strengthen them. Our TAA community is capacious enough to support all manner of engagement, and to care for one another with kindness and integrity, regardless of how the unfolding muddle strikes us. As our sacred texts teach us, we will bring the offerings that we can manage, and accept that others will bring what they can manage. 

In the parsha, the Hebrew word for offering, קָרְבָּן, carries in it the root letters ק ר ב, meaning to come near. The practice of bringing offerings is a way of drawing closer to the divine and to one another. In this time of high anxiety—even many generations after the sacrificial cult ended and the Temple went up in flames—we can focus on the core principles taught in our parsha and in the Rabbinic literature that develops the idea. These principles invite us to locate ourselves along the continuum that stretches between the ambitious unblemished offering from the herd and the humble offering of a simple handful of flour. Accepting the world as it is and working within the parameters of our own gifts, we set our sights on seeking the nearness of God and the nearness of one another.

Shabbat shalom!