This week’s I wrote about my fam from Ethiopia & Yemen, and the Korbanot (sacrifices), see how it all ties into the Parashah!  

- 𝕊𝕡𝕚𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕦𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕫𝕖 ℝ𝕖𝕒𝕝𝕚𝕥𝕪 - We read: “When one among you offers a sacrifice to G-d…”. Immediately, we ask, what sort of sacrifice? Why? and how? King David, whose son built the first Temple, writes in Psalms, “For You [G-d] do not desire sacrifices; else I would give it: You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifice of God is a broken spirit. A broken and contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”

Animal sacrifices were a way for ancient Jews to elevate themselves spiritually, but the sacrifices would have been meaningless if they weren’t done with true intention and a full heart to heal oneself and the harms one has done. King David writes that God will not despise a “broken spirit”, because true remorse makes a person feel broken, and true repentance comes from the desire to be connected to Hashem again, in order to be whole. In order to achieve this level of return, teshuva, we were commanded to bring a sacrifice in the time of the Temple, just as we are now commanded to pray, in the absence of the Temple.

The Hebrew word for sacrifice is korban which comes from the word karov or lekarev meaning “close” or “to bring closer”. It’s written in the pasuk, מִכֶּם, which means yourself, implying the one who is offering the korban, is sacrificing themself. I love how Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks puts it:  Vayikra is about why love needs law and law needs love. It is about the quotidian acts of devotion that bring two beings close, even when one of them is vaster than the universe and the other is a mortal of flesh and blood. It is about being human, sinning, falling short, always conscious of our fragile hold on life, yet seeking to come close to God and – what is sometimes harder – allowing Him to come close to us.

The sacrifices were a beautiful and spiritual ritual – picture the elements surrounding the sacrifice, with the presence of the kohanim accompanied by the chanting of the Lev’im. The Zohar teaches that the service of the kohanim was in silence, with the devotion of the heart, signifying drawing forth, from Above, while the service of the Levites was with music, signifying sublimation; elevating from below upwards. As it’s written, “The Kohanim in their silent service and their desire drew God’s presence downwards and the Levi’im in their songs and praises drew man’s soul and his sacrifice upwards.”

The second part of the pasuk and sacrifice pertains to an animal and one’s animal soul. As it’s written, “…from animals – from cattle or from the flock shall you bring your offering.”

This relates to the physical body, physical desires, the natural world, so it is the physical sacrifice– actually giving up the animal (or its modern equivalent)– with the purpose to sanctify and redirect the “animal” in man. The Lubavitcher Rebbe explains that when the animal in man is harnessed in the service of God it has the power to take him closer to God than his Godly soul alone could reach. The greater the sacrifice, the greater the reward. Reb Natan of Breslov teaches that a peron’s sin is due to their lack of da’at as it’s written, “A person sins only because a spirit of foolishness overcame him.” To rectify this lack of da’at the person must bring an animal sacrifice which reflects that animals lack da’at and in this way the person demonstrates their readiness to sacrifice their animalistic tendencies.

We learn that the animal sacrifices in particular have the power to rectify the lowest worlds and that the korbanot in general correspond to the Act of Creation, when Hashem separated good from “bad”. In the same way the korbanot separate good from evil.

This is mirrored in how we tend to the sanctuaries within our own souls, the inner acts of sacrifice we practice each day, the desire we have to bring holiness down from above, and the artfulness we use to draw our spirits and surroundings upward. 
** THIS IS JUST A SNIPPET, READ THIS DVAR IN FULL @ https://lightofinfinite.com/spiritualize-reality/

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Thanks for listening/reading.
Much love, Erez Safar

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