Vayikra, the third book of the Torah, is markedly different from the others. It contains no journey. It is set entirely at Sinai. It occupies only a brief section of time: a single month. There is almost no narrative. Yet, set at the centre of the Mosaic books, it is the key to understanding Israel’s vocation as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation,” the first collective mission statement in history.

This parsha, with which the book opens, details the various kinds of sacrifice the Israelites brought to the Tabernacle. There were five: the burnt offering (ola), the grain offering (minchah), the peace offering (shelamim), the sin offering (chatat), and the guilt offering (asham).

The Dimensions of Sin
Our parsha, which deals with a variety of sacrifices, devotes an extended section to the chattat, the sin offering, as brought by different individuals: first…
The Pursuit of Meaning
The American Declaration of Independence speaks of the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Recently, following the pioneering work of Martin…
Why Do We Sacrifice?
The laws of sacrifices that dominate the early chapters of the Book of Leviticus are among the hardest in the Torah to relate to in…
The Sins of a Leader
As we have discussed so many times already this year, leaders make mistakes. That is inevitable. So, strikingly, our parsha of Vayikra implies. The real…
The Prophetic View of Sacrifice
Sacrifices, the subject of this week’s parsha, were central to the religious life of biblical Israel. We see this not only by the sheer space…
Where God wants us to be
Happiness is largely a matter of satisfying needs and wants. Meaning, by contrast, is about a sense of purpose in life...
The Call
It was never my ambition or aspiration to be a rabbi. I went to university to study economics. I then switched to philosophy. I also…
The Sin Offering
Vayikra is about sacrifices, and though these laws have been inoperative for almost 2000 years since the destruction of the Temple, the moral principles they…
Covenant and Conversation
Between Destiny and Chance
  The third book of the Torah is known in English as "Leviticus", a word deriving from Greek and Latin, meaning, "pertaining to the Levites".…