21 Mar PARSHAS VAYIKRA: CONFRONTING YOUR ANIMAL
The Biblical Four-
Step Program to Refine Your Inner
Beast
Mom’s Perspective
Two Jewish mothers met for coffee.
“Well, Mildred,” asked one. “How are
your son and daughter doing?”
“To tell you the truth,” answered the
second, “my Daniel has married a real
good-for-nothing. She doesn’t get out of
bed until eleven. She’s out all day
spending his money on Heaven knows
what and when he gets home exhausted,
does she have a nice hot dinner for him?
Psha!
“She makes him take her out to dinner
at an expensive restaurant.”
“And Layla?”
“Ah! Layla has married a saint. He
brings her breakfast in bed, he gives her
enough money to buy all she needs, and
in the evening he takes her out to dinner
at a beautiful restaurant.”
Shakespeare Embellished
One of the enigmatic things about the
Torah is, no doubt, its focus on animal
sacrifices, which are described at length
in this week’s Torah portion Vayikra, and
in many others to follow in the book of
Leviticus.
While not getting into the widely
debated issue of the morality behind
animal slaughtering, the question
remains: Why does the divine blueprint
for living, find it necessary to devote
hundreds of its verses to the laws of
animal sacrifices?
At one time, a group of Jews suggested
deleting major parts of the book of
Leviticus from a newly edited Bible. The
plan never materialized, and but it
reminds me of the anecdote about the
Polish Jew who published Julius Caesar
in a Yiddish translation. On the title page
he wrote: “Julius Caesar by William
Shakespeare; Translated and improved
by Sender Krakovitz.”
The moment we attempt to “embellish”
the Torah by deleting the parts we find
distasteful, we can’t be surprised if our
children or grandchildren delete the
entire book from their lives. If I can
dismiss the book of Leviticus because I
find it gruesome, why should my child
not reject the other four books of the
Bible since he finds them irrelevant or
uncomfortable?
But the question persists — how do the
many laws of animal sacrifices described
in the Torah serve as a road map for our
personal journeys in life?
Know Thy Animal
In truth, every law and episode recorded
in the Torah may be appreciated not only
from a physical and concrete point of
view but also from a metaphysical
perspective.
The detailed laws of animal sacrifices
are no exception. Physically, they don’t
relate to us in our present age, but on a
psychological and spiritual level, these
laws relate to us a timeless message for
human challenge and growth.
Every human being possesses an
animal-consciousness within him or her.
This dimension of our identity,
constituting our regularly experienced
sense of self, is self-oriented and self-
absorbed. Its exclusive quest in life is
self-preservation and gratification. It’s
one question, repeated before every
encounter and before every endeavor, is
“What is in this for me?”
In stark contrast to this conspicuous
layer of self lays a deeper dimension of
identity, a G-dly consciousness, a
yearning to transcend the self and to
connect with ultimate truth and reality. It
is a layer of self that allows us to love
altruistically and to seek higher, idealistic
goals in life.
This inherent dichotomy in the human
structure gives rise to the perpetual
struggle existing in the human psyche:
the conflict between self-centeredness
and self-transcendence, the tussle
between frivolousness and immorality
and genuine meaning and spirituality.
The Mission of Life
According to the Kabbalah, the G-dly
consciousness was born into this world
and tucked into an animal consciousness
and body with the sole purpose of
refining this inner animal identity and
elevating it to the plane of the spirit.
Each soul was given a “custom-made”
animal consciousness as its special pupil
for the years they will be
spending together on earth. The
Divine soul is charged with the
mission of educating and
sublimating the animal self, of
actualizing its deepest, yet latent,
potentials. It is called upon to
take a rock and turn it into a
diamond.
When the G-dly soul fails to
perform its task of cultivating
and educating its animal-student, the
animal self can become a dangerous
force. To be sure, the animal self is not
inherently evil, merely selfish. Yet in its
never-ending quest for self-preservation
and self-enhancement, it can turn into a
monster, demolishing itself and other
people in its beastly urge for self-
assertion and gratification. What was a
little once-upon-a-time cute animal
existing in our heart may turn into an
undomesticated wild beast that is coarse,
profane and destructive.
This is why the Bible is so obsessed
with animal offerings. After all, our chief
task in life is to challenge our own inner
animal, every day anew, bringing it one
step closer to our higher, deeper self, and
to the G-dly space within us.
The Four-Step Program
But how does one achieve this difficult
goal?
That’s the reason for the many nuanced
laws concerning animal offerings
throughout the Bible. It is no easy task to
refine your animal, and different people
struggle with different types of animals.
Therefore, the Torah devotes hundreds
of verses to the subject, guiding human
beings on their path to confront and deal
with the various forms of animals
existing in their psyche.
Generally, the Torah states that all
animal offerings required the following
four steps. First, you had to verbally
declare that you are dedicating this
animal to become an offering. Second,
the animal was slaughtered by cutting
both its esophagus and trachea (food
pipe and windpipe). Third, its blood was
sprinkled on the walls of the altar situated
in the Holy Temple. Finally, parts of the
animal fat were removed and burned in a
flame on top of the altar.
What do these rituals represent in man’s
psychological work on his animal self?
The first step in dealing with the animal
in you is the determination and
commitment to change the status quo of
your life and to challenge your animal
identity.
In the next stage, you must take the bull
by its horns and exert full control over its
very life and identity. To really refine
your animal, you have to show it who’s
boss. No ifs, ands or buts. If you let your
animal continue living its own life, there
is no hope for genuine refinement and
reorientation.
Particularly, you must challenge the
way your animal eats and drinks,
symbolized by the cutting of the food
pipe, and the type of oxygen it inhales,
symbolized by the windpipe; you have to
change both the atmosphere which
surrounds it and the type of information
being fed to it.
In the third step, you take the blood of
your animal and sprinkle it on an altar.
This signifies the fact that you ought
never to destroy the fervor and passion
of your animal self. Rather, you must
take it and sanctify it to G-d, reorienting
it toward lofty and spiritual goals.
Finally, you take its fat and burn-in on
top of the altar. Fat represents indulgence
and pleasure-seeking. As you begin the
process of animal sublimation, you will
discover how the same “fatty” enjoyment
you experienced previously in your
animalistic patterns can now be
experienced in living a life of meaning.
So for those of us who struggle with
such animal-like aspects as laziness,
anger, self-centeredness, addiction,
depression, apathy, and dishonesty, the
laws of animal offerings provide a
written plan for corralling those
impulses, breaking their wildness and
converting them to a G-dly use. By doing
so, we take our animal personality and
bring it closer to the higher truth.