The Meaning of Leviticus for Jewish Moderns

By Rabbi Alan Yuter
Posted Sunday, April 9, 2006 • Modified Friday, April 28, 2006

When Leviticus is read in the synagogue, the first reactions are to the boredom of repetition and the bloodiness of the sacrificial cult. It is a reading that we feel obliged by tradition to complete and which we feel compelled or impelled to discharge. In order to find meaning in our reading of Leviticus, we must ask [a] how is Leviticus written in order to understand [b] what Leviticus is actually teaching.

Since Leviticus appears after Exodus, we must undertand the purpose of the placement. Exodus begins with God's absence. Pharaoh, the god/king, looks at the Hebrews, like all Asiatics, as foreigners, aliens, and a potential fifth column. In the Pharonic system, there are no formal codes, the will of the Pharaoh is maat, justice, because he so declared. He declares that the firstborn of Israel are to be cast into the sea, and with the exception of the midwives, Shifra and Pu'ah, who carry Semitic [Aramaic and Ugaritic] names, the Egyptians willingly comply. Thus all the firstborn are destroyed in the concluding plague, revealing God's moral and military presence.

After God shows that He can deliver deliverance, The Sinai Compact is offered and accepted. We are to become a "holy people and a kingdom of priests." We recall the Pharaonic/pagan notion that religion is for the elite, which invents religion to be the opiate of the masses, the placation of the plebes, and the myth that legitimates the elite's right to rule. Just as the gods created humans to work for them, the elite, the chosen of the gods, rule over the huddled masses whose life task it is to do the grunt work of existence. By asking for vacation to serve the Lord, the Israelites were acting as free people with the right to their own time. No pluralist in a religion that offers an alternative construction of reality, Pharaoh ignores Moses' theological claim and calls the people "lazy." When the lower rungs who are society's dregs ask for religion, it means that have the time and desire to [a] relax, [b] think, [c] ask why, and in so doing, [d] rebel.

While every paganism is a vertical society, with [a] a hierarchy, which is legitimated by [b] myth, which teaches the message of [c] humility, of knowing one's place in the cosmic order and [d] views as both heresy and treason the challenge of that cosmic order. Take for example Hammurapi's code, given to him by Shammash, the son god. God's Torah was given to all Israel, and in public. Any secret law is no law and anyone who claims to possess a secret, hidden legal tradition is a liar.

Rabbi Yohanan Muffs taught that one loves the gods or the one God of Israel by obeying them. In paganism, rituals are loyalty gestures. By choreographing acts, deeds, speech patterns and uniforms of dress, one presents oneself in public in everyday life, negotiating with society how one claims to see and how one wishes to be seen. In Torah, the commandments are given to define and refine the individual being. Rabbi Menahem Mendl Morgenstern of Kotsk understood this well by observing that those who do what they do to please God serve God, but those who do so to manage the impressions of others serve human beings and are idolators. The pagan king is called "your [hierarchial] highness." Moses the lawgiver/teacher is the most modest of men. The function of religion and ritual in Torah is not to feed God good cult, but to make ourselves welcome in God's presence.

In the ark, there was no icon the meaning of which could be manipulated by misleaders, but words written in stone. Likely trained in the scribal arts as a young man in Egypt, Moses was certainly aware of the Hammurapi code, which was copied as an exercise in the learning of the Akkadian language. In Hammurapi, the Biblical Amraphel, the law is written in stone, not to be changed or effaced. Moses applied this metaphor to the Torah, which is not to be changed, neither augmented nor diminished. Any change in the Divinely ordained balance of structure and freedom misstates God's message. Midpoint between autonomy and heteronomy, jungle and jail, the Torah provides scaffolding rules that make civilization possible, but when the Torah is silent, free choice and autonomy is sanctified. Adding to the law is as sinful as subtracting from it. Subtractions from the law undo the law's social scaffold; adding to the law shifts the locus of authority and control from the neutrality of God to the oppressive willfulness of humans, who arrogate Divine power for themselves.

These lofty ideas were lost on Israel's first misleaders. When Moses seemed to delay on the mountain when the Torah was being given, the mob [am] assembled themselves on Aaron and told him, the custodian of cult, to make a golden calf. This religion is hierarchial, vertical, oppressive, and pagan. The leaders picked themselves, just like Korah in Numbers, and rose over God's appointed Aaron, to tell Aaron to invent religion. The calf was the manifestation of Baal, the Canaanite/Ugaritic fertility god. The rabbis of antiquity understood the motivation for idolatry, to justify the animal in man. The idolatry ideology always justifies the ruling elite, tells the people to enjoy themselves with moral license, but to be obedient to the human powers that be who were supposedly appointed by the gods whom, in fact, they invented.

After descending the mountain and seeing the mob out of control with abandon, Moses smashes the tablets, thereby disconnecting Israel from the Sinai Compact that it just violated. Moses then renegotiates the contract and writes the second tablet set, this time with human rather than divine writing. A tabernacle, or monarchical apartment is to be erected for the Divine king. We have to take God seriously and make God physically, as it were, comfortable. But this choreography is designed not only to convince God to reside among Israel, but to remind Israel to obey God's essential commands, to hear the Call and act accordingly

Leviticus begins where Exodus ends. Exodus ends with God residing in the Tabernacle, and is represented not be an icon but by words of moral weight, just like the words by which the world was created. When we sin, we act badly, when we miss the Divine target, we are given a way of returning, of offering a gift to God, Whom we have offended. Human mistakes happen, and we must be ready to repair our wrongs. But the ability to do wrong is not, like ancient Egypt, restricted to the lower classes and castes. The cupbearer and baker of the Joseph narrative sinned against Pharaoh not by violating a code law, which did not exist in ancient Egypt. Falling into disfavor is a crime in Pharonic Egypt. Israel's crime was that it was foreign and therefore hated. The Hebrew nakar and the Akkadian nakarum mean both "foreign" and "hated." God response to Egyptian oppression and idolatry is to destroy its culture. The plagues assault the gods of Egypt and God "makes heavy" the heart of Pharaoh. While this metaphor might be lost on later Israelites and Jews, the ancient Egyptian mythology viewed the heavy heart as a guilty heart, and God is judging Pharaoh to be laden with guilt. In Israel, the king is God's servant and the people's servant and certainly not a god. The king is subject to the law and ought to be the teacher of the law, and not its creator. The priest, God's servant, also serves Israel by sanctifying the nation. The possessors of religion are not right by definition, but are subject to the laws of religion. Even the Supreme Court can, in principle, be in error. Torah opinion resides not in the imperfect Torah person but in the object of the perfect Torah text.

In pagan culture, the priest is religious and the people are not. The priest is "your holiness" and the king is "your highness." The Hebrew priest does not wear vestments in public, and Moses the man is "the most modest of men." Paganism preaches humility to the masses, who must know their subservient place. Torah's leaders are humble and act religion by word and deed, and do not wear religion on their sleeves. For paganism, ritual are culture markers of good standing, loyalty, obedience, belonging, and are identity markers. In Torah, what we wear reveals even as it conceals. While concealing our animal nature, we reveal our aspirations to holiness. Rituals are really moral exercises than refine our being. We observe the Commandments of the Ultimate Auditor, while ignoring the petty conventions of a controlling society.

The Canaanites engaged in ancestor worship. Israel respects its ancestors but obeys God. We look first to our holy books and only secondarily to holy people. After all, Rav taught that "at first our ancestors were pagans." Jeremiah taught that "our ancestors sinned and are no more." The commandments were given in order to refine the human heart. The "teaching of the priests," which is how the Midrash understood Leviticus, refers to God's teaching to the priests and to the priests teaching to Israel. This teaching [a] shapes our behavior, [b] purifying our attitudes, [c] sanctifying our souls, [d] turning material beasts into spiritual, walking blessings and ultimately mortals into angels.

B'nai Israel Congregation  • 27 Lloyd Street • Baltimore, MD 21202 • 410-732-5454 • Fax 410-732-4850