The Elevation of the Human Soul

This week’s Torah portion is Tzav, which means, command. God continues to issue instructions for the priest concerning the presentation of sacrifices. The fire on the altar was never to go out. In the mornings, the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, cleared the ashes. Fat and blood were not to be eaten. At the end of this portion, the priests were sanctified for seven days and consecrated to begin their service for God and the people.
The first sacrifice mentioned in this portion is the elevation offering, the only one burned in its entirety. What follows are instructions about three other types of sacrifices: the grain or mincha offering, the sin, and the guilt offering. Each of these three offerings were partially consumed by the priests. God tells them that part of each sacrifice will be burned. Then the Torah says, “Aaron and his sons shall eat what is left of it, it shall be eaten unleavened in a holy place, in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting shall they eat it…I have presented it as their share from my fire offerings. It is Kadosh Kadoshim, holy of holies, like the sin offering and like the guilt offering.” Right after that it says, “Whatever touches them shall become holy.”

This phrase, most holy, or holiest of the holies, is said five times in this portion. Whatever touches them shall become holy, is said twice. God is attempting to tell the priests something important, but what is it? The meal offering was the least a person could offer. It was often brought by a person who was poor. Significantly, its holiness is described first among the edible sacrifices. The Midrash quotes Psalm 22:24 (Midrash Rabba III:2) “You that fear God, offer praise; All you the seed of Jacob, glorify The Eternal; And stand in awe of God, you seed of Israel, for God has not despised nor abhorred the lowliness of the poor; Neither hath God Hid the Divine face from him. But when he cried unto God, The Eternal heard.” This tells us that the offerings of the poor are special and precious to God. Next the sin and guilt offerings are listed. The priests must eat them in a holy place, for they are kadosh kadoshim, the holy of the holies. Whatever touches them becomes holy.

If we think about these three offerings, of the poor, concerning sin, and guilt, we might think that God might regard them with some disdain, or perhaps just tacit acceptance, because they represent wrongdoing. But this disdain is just what the priests are cautioned to avoid. Perhaps they needed to be told about the great holiness of these offerings. What is holy is not the sacrifice itself, but the confession of the person over the sacrifice, the intention to seek forgiveness, and the desire to change. A well-known precept of the Talmud is that. “In the place where penitents stand even the wholly righteous cannot stand.” (Berachot 34b)

The priests were overseeing the most important mechanism that exists for the full fruition of humanity: the elevation of the human soul. We know that the world can only improve if we change. The priests were not to treat these sacrifices lightly, disdainfully, or even in a “business as usual” manner. They were to approach these sacrifices with a deep reverence for the person offering them, and for the spiritual elevation they represented, knowing that they were the midwives to the birth a better world. Through confession, atonement, repentance, and the intention to do better each of us urges the world forward, in tiny increments. The priests observed people and hence the world, slowly improving. By their encouragement and respect for each sacrifice, they were able to promote the highest in the person offering the gift to God.

The meaning for us, who serve as our own priests, is to develop a reverence for our own capacity to grow and intention to change, for “it is most holy.” And we should know that whatever facets of our lives are touched by these changes become holy as well. The human way is to fall down and rise up. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov said, “Whenever a person rises from one level to the next, it necessitates that they first have a descent before the ascent. Because the purpose of any descent is always in order to ascend.” (LM 22) If we wish it, our mistakes can be the rungs of the ladder of ascent, that we grasp that rung to pull ourselves up, and then stand upon it. Let us be in awe of our own capacity to grow, which will never end, and experience the holiness of God’s mechanism, the human way, of rising through our mistakes, because we, they too, are holy.