Hi friends, here is my dvar Torah (sermon) from last week.
“be softer with you.
you are a breathing thing.
a memory to someone.
a home to a life.”
―Nayyirah Waheed
In this week’s parsha, Vayikra, which is the first parsha of the book of Leviticus, (and coincidentally was my Bat Mitzvah parsha), we learn about the different types of sacrifices that could take place now that the Tabernacle had been assembled: sacrifices of wellbeing, burnt offerings, grain offerings, sin offerings, and guilt offerings.
When it came to guilt and sin offerings, in the days of the Temple, these mostly had to do with ritual impurity, and pertaining to spiritual leaders and community leaders whose transgressions could have an effect on the entire community. Once the person had realized their wrong-doing, they would bring something, usually an animal, to the Temple for the priests to perform the sacrifice, which was quite a gory business and something that 13-year-old Emily was not excited to have to deal with in her Bat Mitzvah parsha.
But, and, as we are no longer in the days of the Temple sacrifices, I’m inclined to think about how this process translates to our lives now. Why should we read about guilt and sin offerings if we are no longer engaging in them?
In reading this parsha 23 years later, I’m not feeling so averse, I’m actually feeling a huge sense of relief. It’s much the way I feel about the inherent grace of Yom Kippur , which basically presents the idea that we are imperfect and are going to make mistakes and sin and miss the mark and God knows that, so instead of being surprised every year by the fact that we mess up, let’s put a system in place in which we can make space for that. But while Yom Kippur happens just once a year, the Temple offerings for sins and guilt were ongoing. And truly accessible, no matter what kind of offering you could afford. If you can’t afford a ram, bring two birds. If you can’t afford two birds, bring grain. No socioeconomic class was cut off. Whoever you are, whatever your resources, forgiveness was available to you.
And upon closer reading, the process necessary for the guilt and sin offerings is actually very close to what an effective apology consists of. First, the person acknowledges their mistake, it becomes known to them somehow, either by it being brought to their attention by the community, or perhaps they came to understand by themselves. Without this first step, nothing else can happen. Then, the person has to give away something of value to them–an animal or grain. When we apologize or attempt to right a wrong we’ve done, we have to let go of something that’s hard to let go of–it could be our ego, our need to be right, an idea of ourselves as someone who doesn’t screw up. Then, in the ritual sacrifice of the animal, the unpleasant insides must be faced. The priest literally turns the guts and fat of the animal into smoke on the altar. The blood, representing the life-force, is sprinkled on the altar as well, bringing an awareness of the fragility of life into the moment. When we face our sins, we have to face the unpleasant emotions they bring up, but in doing so, we can be restored to life. Then the offering is burned on the altar and rises towards YHVH who experiences it as a pleasing odor–the connection that was frayed/broken by sin is restored. The Torah states and repeats several times in this parsha, וְנִסְלַ֣ח ל֑וֹ, he shall be forgiven. The message here is that forgiveness should be and is meant to be attainable, accessible, possible.
He shall be forgiven. I’m struck by how far off this feels from our daily lived experience of forgiveness, both on a personal internal level, an interpersonal level, and a societal criminal justice level. They shall be forgiven. Not, the person has to go through this process a thousand more times and beat themselves up and replay it in their head and maybe one day they can let this situation go; or they should carry around resentment for that thing someone said to them twenty years ago and the other person has no idea they’re even thinking about them anymore, or they can serve time in prison but have a record that follows them everywhere for all eternity and they can never be allowed to flourish. No. This is not what God wants.
As it is written in Mishneh Torah, “One must not show himself cruel by not accepting an apology.” The Rambam was referring to the apologies others give to us, but what about the ones we give to ourselves? Can we accept our own apologies for the ways we feel we fall short? Why is that so hard for us?
During the early stages of the pandemic, I noticed in myself and in many others a surge of self compassion. Forgiveness of myself and others seemed so much more accessible. It was easy to forgive myself and others in light of the stress we were all under. We could understand how triggered and traumatized we all were, and how that affected our ability to be present, to be skillful, to be kind, to be productive, to feel well at all, really.
But I’ve noticed in recent months, whenever a sense of safety starts to return, that that abundant and generous attitude of forgiveness fades, and reverts back to the more well-worn judgmental, harsh critic of self and others.
I do not want that renewed sense of self compassion and forgiveness to have been a temporary trauma response. I want that to stay. If we had to go through this awful experience, can that at least be something that sticks? Regardless of the fact that we are still IN this pandemic, and now add to that watching a war unfold, we are still living through trauma with no space to process that trauma. But even if that weren’t the case, even if things were just difficult, why would we not want to extend that kind of grace to ourselves and others? Isn’t it hard enough to be a human being with a human heart and body, isn’t that enough for forgiveness to be easier? Dayenu? Isn’t it, as Mary Oliver writes, a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world?
So what can we do, when we are at our lowest point in our feelings towards ourselves and are convinced there is no good in us? Perhaps we can remember the inherent grace and possibility of the process of forgiveness in our parsha.
Or, we can practice as Rabbi Nachman suggests: he must search until he finds in himself some little bit of good. For how is it possible that throughout his life he never once did some mitzvah or good deed? We can try to reconnect with a wider view of our lives and restore balance to our view of self.
Our baby is due close to Passover and I’ve been struck more this year than ever by how much there is in the Seder about what we teach to our children. We read in the Haggadah about the 4 children and their varying degrees of understanding:
"And you will speak to your child on that day saying, for the sake of this, did YHVH do [this] for me in my going out of Egypt."
בַּעֲבוּר זֶה עָשָׂה ה' לִי בְּצֵאתִי מִמִּצְרָיִם.
For the sake of this…what is the this? Often we talk about THIS as the mitzvah of telling the story of our coming out of Egypt. But perhaps THIS, why we were brought of Egypt, is also this moment of being together, of being alive, of having survived to reach this moment. Coming out of the mitzrayim, the narrow place, of yet another pandemic wave, did we make it through that to be thrust back into another form of narrowness of mind and heart? Or to be liberated and be free from the smallness of self judgment and judgment of others?
I want our child to grow up with a God who wants him to know that he is loved, that he is of the nature to make mistakes, and is of the nature has the ability to repair them, and he is deserving of forgiveness. On this Shabbat, this is my prayer for him and for all of us. Especially in this year of Shmitta and forgiving debts of all kinds and allowing the Earth to rest and let go, may we stay connected with a loving and forgiving awareness, may it be easily accessible and attainable, and may we be a little softer with ourselves and each other. Shabbat Shalom.