3.1 Parshas Vayikra Review: The Offerings

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You are listening to Rabbi Arya, will be of torch in Houston, Texas.

This is the Parshah Review Podcast.

Welcome back everybody to the weekly Parshah Review.

This week's Parshah, it's a new book of the Torah, the third book of the Torah Leviticus,

the Chumish of Vayikra and it's the Parshah of Vayikra.

It is the first portion in the book of Leviticus in the book of Vayikra and the 24th portion

since the beginning of the Torah.

There are 111 verses in this week's Parshah, 1,673 words and 6,222 letters.

There are 16 commandments in this week's Parshah, 11 performative mitzvahs and 5 prohibitions.

Okay, so the book of Shmos, that we just concluded, we talked about the construction and completion

of the Mishkan, the physical dwelling place for Hashem Niras and their job of donating

and construction is complete.

But Mosh's job now just begins.

Mosh is going to teach the Jewish people the Kohanim, the priests, how to bring the offerings.

The book of Vayikra, also known as Leviticus, is also known as Torah's Kohanim, the Torah

of the priests, because it details the laws of the priests.

Vayikra begins with Hashem speaking to Mosh in the Mishkan in the tent of meeting and telling

of the carbonate of the sacrifices and offerings.

And these were a very important part of the service in the Mishkan.

We learn about various types of carbonate of offerings.

We learn about the Ola, which is a burnt offering, which is burnt entirely on the altar,

five different types of minchamel offerings, which are sacrifices made from flour and

olive oil.

Part was burnt on the altar and part was given to the Kohanim.

Mixing 11 and honey into the offerings is completely prohibited.

The offering is for those who cannot afford the normal guilt offering.

So this was the cheaper form of offering, it was just some flour and some olive oil.

And then you had the Shalomim offering, the peace offering, part of which was burnt

on the altar and part of which was eaten by the person who brought the sacrifice, as

well as parts given by the owner to the Kohanim.

The Shalomim could be brought from cattle, sheep or goats.

The Khatas offering, the Sin offering, sacrifices brought as atonement for someone, the Kohan

God, the Al-Dal, the Prince, the average citizen or the entire community, who accidentally

sinned.

And the Asham, the guilt offering sacrifice, was brought to atone for certain specific

sins.

And these sins are Mi'ila, Mi'ila is someone who accidentally used something that's

supposed to be dedicated for the Mishkan.

So you imagine if someone was supposed to have a chair that was supposed to be donated,

he committed it and donated it to the temple, and then he ended up using it for his own

personal use and didn't bring it to the temple.

So that's, he's Moel Behegda, he's taking something that was designated for the Mishkan,

and that was warranting a guilt offering, there's another is a questionable guilt.

If someone thinks he may have sinned, but he's not sure, if someone who swears falsely while

trying to cheat somebody.

So for example, if in the Talmud we learned in the past, if someone is accused of doing

something, you stole my watch and they say, no, I didn't, okay, so we take them to court,

and they go to the front of the Jewish court and they say, I swear that I did not steal

the watch and then they open up your pocketbook and you see the watch there.

And we have witnesses that confirm that they saw this theft.

So what does a person do?

They swore in vain, they used God's name in vain.

So they'd bring this asham, this guilt offering.

And then certain verbal transgressions and for transgressing, transgressing laws of

ritual purity.

So these are guilt offering sacrifices.

And now the Torah prohibits eating blood or Kheilev, certain fats of animals.

So we have to understand like this, when you buy kosher chicken, it isn't more expensive

because there's a rabbi tax on it.

It's more expensive because there's a lot more that needs to happen to make that chicken

or meat, kosher.

For example, the meat needs to be rinsed with warm water, then they sprinkle salt, which

is otherwise known as kosher salt now, because that's the type of its coarse salt which

was used to extract all of the blood and then it have to be rinsed again.

So they say, I've never tasted non kosher meat, but they say that kosher meat is a little

saltier than non kosher meat because of the salting process.

Now it's interesting that we also see that all offerings, every single one of the offerings

was required to have salt in it.

Okay, we'll see that soon.

But when bringing an offering, the animal was brought to the entrance of the tent of

meeting to the Mishkan, for cattle, the person bringing the offering sets his hands on

the animal.

He gives us what we call smigha, in which he would put his hand on it.

And basically what he would say is this should be an atonement for my sin.

Instead of me being put to death, this animal should be put to death instead.

Afterwards it is slaughtered by the Kohin and the Kohin sprinkles its blood on the altar.

The animal is skinned and cut into pieces.

The pieces are arranged, washed and burned on the altar.

There are many laws and intricate details regarding the carbonate, but one rule applied to

all is that every sacrifice was brought with salt.

Okay, so now some important lessons from this week's parasha.

So if you look at the first word of this week's parasha, you'll notice that the alif of

Vayikra, the last letter of the word Vayikra, which means Hashem called Moshe, is small.

So we need to know a very fundamental principle about the Torah.

Moshe was not allowed to add or subtract a single letter from the Torah.

And here was one case where Moshe wanted to remove a letter from the Torah.

He wanted to remove the alif from the Torah because Vayikra means God called him.

And here, don't forget, this is after they built the tabernacle.

They are ready to go, everything is assembled, everything is ready to go.

And now God says, Moses, please step forward, Moses was the humble of all men, most humble

person ever.

He didn't want to be in the Torah, pronounced, God calls him.

So he wanted to change that word instead of Vayikra, Vayikra, and he happened upon the

Almighty.

Not that God called him, but rather that he happened upon a meeting with the Almighty.

And that's why he wanted to take the letter alif out, but God says, you can't do that.

It's not your Torah, it's my Torah.

And I wanted to be with an alif that I called you.

So the compromise was that it will be a small alif.

And if you look in the Torah, you will see that the alif in the word Vayikra is a small

alif for this reason because Moshe was a humble man.

And he didn't want to be pronouncing, here we go, now they're starting the service in

temple and who's called up to the plate?

Moshe.

There are other small and large letters in the Torah and each one has a reason for it.

We will try through the process of our studying through the parches, we will try to bring light

to each one of them.

That's Moshe's humility, but I want you to understand something very amazing.

And that is that all of these offerings, every single one of these offerings, is really

the greatest gift in the world.

The gift of repentance.

The gift that a person has the ability, the opportunity to clear away something that

they've done wrong.

Are we perfect?

My wife is perfect.

But really, humanity, we're not really perfect, we make mistakes.

So what do we do with those mistakes?

God gives us the opportunity to repent.

How do we repent?

We bring an offering.

Instead of us, imagine this, imagine what an offering was, okay?

Today, it would be not a bowl, not an ox, not a cow, not a sheep or a lamb.

You know what the offering would be today?

Your car.

A car is very valuable.

Imagine someone does a sin against the Almighty, says, God, I made a mistake, I'm bringing

an offering, I'm giving something which is very valuable and very precious.

By the way, animals are expensive, animals are very expensive.

It's giving something which is an income producer.

This is schlepping my goods to the marketplace, whatever it was, produces milk, it's meat,

it's very valuable.

Imagine you bring your car now as an offering and they bring it to the temple.

So they bring the wrecking ball, the cocaine says, okay, release the wrecking ball and boom,

it smashes your car.

And now imagine that.

Imagine there goes your car and you're like, oh, that's my Lexus, oh, my goodness, right?

Imagine that pain and you pick your hands, you do smear, you put your hands before they

drop the wrecking ball on it.

You put your hands on the hood of the car and you say, shem, this should be a sacrifice

instead of me being hit with that wrecking ball.

This car should be taken as an atonement for me.

Now put that into your mind.

Shem gave us the opportunity and the privilege to repent.

You make a mistake, Shem says, you can correct that mistake.

Don't worry about it.

I got you covered and this is a really, really special thing.

It's not something should be taken lightly that we have the opportunity, we have the privilege

of correcting our ways.

There was a process to it.

Shem gives us the process to it, but recognize that it's a tremendous gift.

You make a mistake that's fine.

Get depressed about it, figure out how you're going to fix it.

How do you fix it?

You say, shem, please forgive me and we bring an offering and an offering is something

that's a value to us.

All right, now what happens if someone was about to bring an offering and he says, this

should be an offering such and such or this should be an offering of such and such.

Once it's dedicated as an offering, once it's committed verbally, that is it.

You can't change it.

You can't say, well, I meant to say, no, no, no, once it was verbally committed, it's

verbally committed.

I say, just tell us, acidic masters teach us.

That's the power of words.

The power of words is so great that it can commit an offering, a sacrifice, but it can

also ruin someone's life.

King Solomon says, your words have such awesome power, such incredible power.

They can give life and they can take life.

This is something we need to be very, very careful about.

We need to be very careful with our words.

In fact, the Torah gives an explicit prohibition not to inflict pain on another Jew with words.

Losonu ish es amitaha.

You shall not cause pain to another Jew with your words.

That also means not teasing someone.

It also means that insulting someone that's obvious, you call someone a name, you have

a derogatory statement towards someone, gotta be very careful.

Losonu ish es amitaha.

Not to inflict pain on another person with your words.

Your words are very powerful and that's one of the things that we learn in this week's

parasha.

Now we mentioned previously that every offering needed to have salt brought with it.

What is salt?

We know every shabbos when we cut our chala, we dip it in salt three times.

Why do we dip it in salt?

Why is it so significant and important?

Every time you eat bread, you're supposed to dip it in salt.

Why?

Because salt is a preservative.

And what salt represents in our relationship with God, our satis tell us, is that we are

committing our relationship with God and preserving it forever.

We're saying our food that we eat is not just food to sustain our body, it's food to

nourish our soul, it's food to elevate us, it's food to make us holy.

It is not just sustenance for the body and this is such an important fundamental principle

to ensure that when we eat, we're bringing God in.

And it's interesting, some people pour salt on top, but the halacha says they should

actually dip the chala into the salt three times, three locks it in, it reaffirms it.

I believe this is the first time in the Torah that it mentions bringing salt in our offerings.

Now it's interesting that we also say that when we eat our bread, we should dip it in salt

because our satis tell us that when we eat a meal, it's like bringing in offering.

It's like bringing in offering.

Therefore, we have that comparison of the salt.

It doesn't say in the Torah that we have to dip our bread in salt.

It says our offerings should be brought with salt.

But the sages derive in halacha that we should also do so for our bread because it's

compared to the offering that was brought in the temple.

So there is a link there.

Now the offerings that were brought, there were three different types of animals that were

brought.

Now it's very, very important.

I add this later in the bottom of our important lessons.

But there's something called a mum, a mum is a blemish and there were about 40 different

types of blemishes that an animal could have that would render it invalid from being brought

as an offering.

So an example, if it had a broken leg, that had a broken limb, if the animal after slaughtering

it, one of the things that we do is we check its lungs, they did have a puncture in the

lungs, which surprisingly is pretty common for animals.

It is interesting.

It would have, and they take out the lungs, it's like a balloon, and the, the, the show

hit, or the person checking after the show hit, who's certified, who knows the laws, would

blow into the lungs, and if the, didn't blow up like a balloon, it means it had a hole

in it.

And they would find that hole and that would identify this animal as being a blemished

animal retroactively, when it was slaughtered, it wasn't a valid offering, and they'd have

to bring another one.

So what they do is an animal would be put into a, into like a little pen for about four

days, I believe it is.

And in that pen, they would be observed by the show hit, by the slaughter, and ensure

that it walks properly.

In fact, I want to share with you something really amazing.

They would have to do this with every animal.

And by the way, we do this today.

We do this today.

A kosher animal that you eat its meat was checked and verified that it was kosher.

They walk with it to make sure that it can walk without limping.

They make sure that it's able to walk, they make sure that it's, it's a healthy animal.

But what do we do about foul?

What do we do about foul?

How do you know if a duck, duck is delicious, duck is kosher?

How do you know if a duck has a, an organ or a blemish that would render it on kosher?

So what they would do is they would take the foul, and they would put it upstream, and

they would see that it would go against the current.

If it's able to go against the current, it is a kosher animal.

We see that it has no blemishes in its legs, in any of its organs, because otherwise

it wouldn't have the strength, it would just flow down with the current.

Or say, just tell us that we are like the foul, and that we need to learn to go against

the current as well.

Don't go with the flow, because everyone does this, everyone does it, so I have to do it

as well.

If you know that something that everyone does is incorrect, don't do it.

Stand up and go against the current.

That's one of the identifiers of a kosher animal.

We want to be that kosher person, it's representing us.

We need to learn to stand against the current.

Now the ox that was brought as an offering, we know that Abraham ran to get an ox to serve

his guests.

We can bring a sheep.

The sheep was Yitzhak, Isaac is compared to the lamb when he was brought as a sacrifice.

And the goat, Yako was instructed by his mother Rifga to bring two kid goats from the flock

and bring them to his father Yitzhak.

So we see here the representation of the animals that were brought as offerings.

We're all already what Abraham, Isaac and Jacob already set as foundations.

We know that the two birds, the mature turtle doves and the young doves pigeons were also

able to be brought as offerings.

Okay.

Now, mixing leaven or honey into the sacrifices prohibited, why?

Because they're inflated self image may have caused them to sin to begin with.

You know, it's very interesting.

We're about to enter into the holiday of Pesach in a week and a half.

We'll be sitting at our Pesach saders respectively.

And we're going to ensure that our homes are clean and that we don't have any leavened

items in our homes, no cakes and no cookies and no breads and opitas.

And we're going to ensure that it's all clean.

What is this leavening agent?

It fluffs up what's there.

I say just tell us that arrogance that we have as human beings, that little yeast makes

us what a simple human being.

Oh, we get inflated and we feel like we're and that's why we sin.

Say just tell us that's why in the offering,

no leavening was allowed to be mixed with it.

Why?

Precisely because the sin may have become only due to the arrogance that we represent

that we had within us.

So therefore we remove it completely.

And then the asham talawi, one of the guilt offerings, if you see on the next on the

other side of your notes and to those of you who are online, you welcome to download

them.

I'll have the link in the podcast description.

You can download the partial review sheets every week.

But we have the all of the different offerings and what they represented.

But one of the offerings that were brought was the asham talawi for a questionable guilt.

We're not sure if I committed a sin.

Why do you bring an offering for that?

Say just tell us this teaches us that one needs to be paying attention, pay more attention

to what you're doing.

It's a wake up sign.

If you needed to bring that offering, perhaps you're not paying close enough attention to

what's going on around you.

Perhaps you're not playing close enough attention to the requirements that you have.

So on the reverse, we have the five different types of offerings, the all of the minkh, the

shlama, the khatas and the asham and all of the different types of animals or ingredients

that were brought.

Who can eat it and where can it be eaten?

Is it an obligatory or a free will offering that they have to or was it just out of their

free will?

Was it the most holy of offerings or the less holy and what sin does it atone for?

So my dear friends, this concludes the partial review for Parshas Vayikra.

I wish you all a magnificent, beautiful shabbas, a shabbas of holiness, a shabbas of

repentance and a shabbas that we're able to remove that arrogance and connect on the

highest level possible with our creator of heaven and earth.

Thank you and have a great shabbas.

Thank you Rabbi.

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