There is one time in the year when rabbis break out in sweats. No, it’s not hte High Holidays, believe it or not. It is the beginning of the Book of Leviticus. Every year we ask ourselves, ‘how are we to make sense out of a book of sacrifices that have very little impact or relevance to us in the 21st Century?’ And, then there are the bar and bat mitzvah families whose ceremonies are right in the middle of animal sacrifices, laws about leprosy and menstruation, blood taboo and, everyone’s favorite, ritual contamination. It is a strange book, for sure. But the truth is that among the strange and even alien ideas in Leviticus, there are lessons and gems that we can carry with us.
So what are we to learn? Well, first a Hebrew lesson and an English lesson. IF you look at Leviticus you are bound to say it is about sacrifices. Yes, it is, of course. But sacrifices is not the word the Torah uses and, therein lies a truth. The Hebrew word for these offerings is korban or korbanote. This is a deliberate word that comes from the root which means to ‘bring near.’ The korban, the sacrifice, was not necessarily created to appease God. They were created to bring the person offering the korban closer to God. The priest was there to facilitate. The person was there surrounded by the majesty of the Tabernacle or the Temple to immerse himself or herself in the sheer grandeur and evoked spirituality of the task.
Now you would think that each person offered their korban with a pure heart and that it was all unicorns and rainbows in the sacred space. But humans are strange creatures. There is often some deviation. Priests were sometimes corrupted and those who offered the korban sometimes thought that it was a get out of jail free card.
The prophet Isaiah had this in mind, I think, when he wrote his first chapter:
“What need have I of all your sacrifices?”
Says the Lord.
“I am sated with burnt offerings of rams,
And suet of fatlings,
And blood of bulls;
And I have no delight
In lambs and he-goats.
12That you come to appear before Me—
Who asked that of you?
Trample My courts no more;
Why would he say this? It is pretty clear that he saw the hypocrisy of a korban offering without a korban spirit. The sacrifice without the kavannah, the conscious intent, negates the purpose of the sacrifice. It becomes rote and, too often, meaningless.
But the Temple endured until 70 CE when the Romans destroyed it. But, by then, something astonishing had happened. When the Babylonians exiled the Jews from Israel in 586 BCE, they settled in the ancient Near East and created what are known as synagogues, literally a Greek word meaning ‘get togethers’ or ‘congregations.’ The sacrificial system did not need to be the centerpiece anymore for the Jewish people nor was it the only way to worship. Pharasaic and Rabbinic creativity created the new idea of the words themselves being the korban and the words became holy when said with intent and meaning. Thus was prayer created.
But when something is created, something is often lost. So what was lost with the dissolution of the Temple and its sacrifices? The physicality and emotional investment in a sacrifice. Prayers lack physicality. As a colleague once suggested, we’ve traded the burden of our hands for the duty of the heart that now conveys prayer within and beyond us.’
Prayer with kavannah is hard. There is no physical thing to focus on. We utter our prayers and sometimes struggle to find their meaning in our hearts and our lives. Prayer is often hard and we may leave wondering if God really heard us or we heard God.
The rabbis had this problem too and they recognized that not every moment of prayer is meaningful. And so they did what they do best: they created a midrash with Moses as the main character. Here is what they said:
When he approached God with special courtesy, God treated him with special courtesy; when he came to God with frankness, God answered him with frankness; when he approached God with lack of directness, God countered him with lack of directness; when he sought a clear statement regarding his affairs, God made clear his affairs for him.
The rabbis are teaching us how to pray. Sometimes there is special courtesy and praise, sometimes frankness, sometimes anger, sometimes thanksgiving, sometimes heartache. The rabbis gave us all a blueprint for worship. That is why there is no such thing as a single, immutable prayer. The prayer from the heart is really the only authentic prayer. The words on the page help us get there but the words in the siddur are only the mile markers. The way we choose to react to the words is how we make the prayer mean something that is a humble korban to God.
And lest you think our prayers are rejected, keep in mind the heart of the Psalmist who said, all mankind comes to You, You who hear prayer. And this phrase was turned into a blessing and we know it as, “Praised are You, Eternal our God, Who hears prayer, shomei-a t’filah.” God hears us and, perhaps, we can hear the bat kol – the voice of God in those moments of meaningful prayer.
But the words of Isaiah and all the prophets should still ring true in our hearts. They warned against prayer without heart and kavannah, direction toward the Most High. What is true is sacrifices is also true in prayer. Like the Israelite who brought an offering without blemish, we should strive to bring our prayers without blemish, too. Shabbat, in particular, is our day for worship to thank God through rest and prayer. Prayer in our house of worship, Sabbath rituals at home, and bodily and emotional rest are ways to bring our best to God. Today, in song, poetry, or prose, there is nothing more perfect than bringing what we bear in our hearts to share before God, alone.
I wish you all a prayerful Shabbat.
