In a world where each of us has the ability to pursue religious paths that fit our unique desires and personalities, Judaism, or any religion, can seem like it never takes the needs of the individual into account. However, Parashat Tzav, provides us a window into how Jewish tradition creates universal standards tailored to the needs of individual Jews.
Biblical scholars devote considerable energy towards understanding the symbolic meaning of God commanding the Israelites to create a portable shrine, in particular asking how it is possible that God, whose presence fills the universe, somehow can have his presence “limited” to a single shrine such as the mishkan. Rejecting the premise of the question, Baruch Levine writes that the miskhan provides an opportunity for a person to feel an imminent connection to a God who is everywhere:
“In the biblical conception of God, His presence filled the entire universe and could not be contained in any earthly temple. Yet God’s presence in the Tabernacle and, later, in the Temple in Jerusalem was not thought to contradict the fact of his omnipresence. Rather, His nearness to the human community was regarded as evidence of His concern for those who called upon Him” (Baruch A. Levine, The JPS Torah Commentary: Leviticus, 48).
In this passage, Levine argues that the mishkan is more important for the Israelites than for God, because the mishkan provides an opportunity for the Israelites to experience God’s presence in a personal way through the act of sacrifice, an idea we we still reflected in three different commentaries on a verse from Parashat Tzav.
Our parasha openings with God instruct Moses about how he should tell Aaron and his sons to perform the Torat Ha-Olah, or the law of the burnt-offering. Each of commentaries attempts to understand what we can learn from this verse about the relationship between the individual and the community. First, Rashi argues that the opening our parasha reminds us that sacrifices are eternal mitzvot, ones whose meanings do not change even in a time when the sacrifices themselves are not performed. He writes:
“The expression צַו always denotes urging [to promptly and meticulously fulfill a particular commandment] for the present and also for future generations. Rabbi Simeon taught: Scripture especially needs to urge [people to fulfill commandments,] where monetary loss is involved” (Rashi on Vayikra 6:2).
Rashi’s commentary reveals two things about our parasha. First, as previously stated, Rashi wants to know why a particular word is used for “command,” with Rashi arguing that this word is only used to show that sacrifices are eternal obligations. However, this commentary also reveals that because sacrifices involve a person giving up a material possession, a person must receive a command that acknowledges the significance of giving up something for God in this context.
Second, taking a practical approach, Rabbi Obadiah Seforno argues that our parasha proceeds from the general to the specific, first outlining what kind of sacrifices must be offered, and only then describing the specific kind of offerings that would be made by specific kinds of people. He writes:
“...after the Torah had informed us about most of the sacrifices and how they were to be offered, the Torah now refers to the specific “Torah” pertaining to each of these voluntary burnt offerings. We pointed out already that different people who feel the need to offer this sacrifice are motivated by quite different considerations. The variety of sacrificial offerings provided for by the Torah corresponds to the variety of human personalities and the considerations motivating their actions” (Seforno, Vayikra 6:2-4).
In this commentary, Seforno asserts that just as specific sacrifices are described in the Torah, a book of teaching, each sacrifice contains it’s own “Torah,” it’s own specific way of performing the ritual. Furthermore, since different individuals will make sacrifices for different reasons, the Torah must tailor it’s instructions to why a person might make a particular offering at a particular moment.
Finally, the Teshu’ot Hen, the commentary of Rabbi Gedaliah of Linitz, writes that teaching the “Torah” of this offering attempts to remind the Israelites of the inevitable spiritual ups and downs they will experience in their lives, and how making the offering reminds the Israelites that they can always make a spiritual comeback. He writes:
“So we come to the meaning of “Command Aaron and his sons. God is telling Moses to remind them that sometime “command,” or alien worship, will happen to them, meaning that they will forget God. They need to realize that this is only the teaching of the rising-offering; it is there for the purpose of raising up people, to arouse thoughts of return in their hearts concerning the deeds of their hands. When this course of events becomes known to them, their hearts will boil with great wonder, leading them to mend their ways. “This is the teaching of the rising-offering” means that the descent was for the sake of ascent. “The priests lips must guard the awareness” (Mal. 2:7) that this is a way of stretching out one’s arm to awaken people to return” (Teshu’ot Hen on Vayikra 6:1-2).
In this final commentary, we see the Torah's approach to how and when we should make certain offerings. Just as a our spiritual life will go up and down based on the attention we pay to it, so too must the offering in the mishkan reflect the spiritual journeys taken by each of us over time.
On the one hand, each of us wants to believe that we are unique, that our children are unique, and that few religious standards are a one-size fits all proposition. While this undoubtedly true, the reality is that Judaism seeks to teach us how our needs and obligations can be same, yet not at all the same, at the same time and that the strength of Judaism is the way in which we are allowed to be unique while pursuing similar goals using similar rituals, a series of rituals meant for all of us. May we embrace this tension between universalism and particularism, and a find an individual approach to embracing the communal obligations of our tradition.
Shabbat Shalom!
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