17 Mar VAYIKRA: THE DIGNITY OF SACRIFICE TO GO BEYOND THE SELF

Self-Centeredness
A very successful
businessman had a
meeting with his
new son-in-law. “I
love my daughter
dearly, and now I
welcome you into the family,” said the
man. “To show you how much we care for
you, I’m making you a 50-50 partner in my
business. All you have to do is go to the
factory every day and manage the
operations.”
The son-in-law interrupted, “I hate
factories. I can’t stand the noise.”
“I see,” replied the father-in-law. “Well,
then you’ll work in the office and take
charge of those responsibilities.”
“I hate office work,” said the son-on-law. “I
can’t stand being stuck behind a desk all
day.”
“Wait a minute,” said the father-in-law. “I
just made you half-owner of a moneymaking
organization, but you don’t like factories
and won’t work in an office. What am I
going to do with you?”
“Easy,” said the young man. “Buy me out.”
“From Among You”
In the Jewish tradition, we read each week
one section from the 53 sections of the
Chamisha Chumshei Torah. This week’s
parsha, Vayikra, legislates the laws of
sacrifices which constituted an essential
part of the service in the Mishkan and
subsequently in the Beit HaMikdash in
Yerushalayim. It’s been almost 2000 years
since the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed
and the sacrificial system came to an end;
yet their message remains timeless and
relevant.
And as is often the case in biblical study, an
apparent grammatical flaw captures the
psychological and existential dimensions
of the issue being discussed.
“Speak to the children of Israel,” G-d tells
Moshe in the beginning of Vayikra, “And
tell them: ‘A man who will sacrifice from
among you a sacrifice to G-d; from a cow,
from a bull, and from sheep shall you offer
your offering (Vayikra 1:2).’”
The construction of the sentence seems
incorrect. It should have said, “A man from
among you who will sacrifice a sacrifice to
G-d.” Not: “A man who will sacrifice from
among you a sacrifice to G-d.”
Rabbi Schnuer Zalman of Liadi (1745-
1812), the first Rebbe of Chabad and one of
the great giants of Jewish scholarship and
spirituality, offered the following moving

interpretation. What the Torah is attempting
to teach us via this grammatically “flawed”
sentence is that the primary sacrifice G-d
cherished was not the one that came of
animals or grain, but rather the one
stemming from the person himself: “From
among you.” We must sacrifice something
of ourselves to truth. The verse, then, must
be understood thus: “A man who will
sacrifice,” when an individual seeks to
make a sacrifice, “from among you a
sacrifice to G-d,” he or she must remember
that the primary sacrifice must be brought
from their very selves. They must offer a
piece of their heart, of their soul, to G-d.
A Forgotten Art
Sacrifice — the courage for one to give up
something truly valuable for an ideal or a
person outside of oneself — has become in
our day an “endangered species.” In the
minds of many it is a dirty word, conjuring
up images of repression, dogma and abuse.
Sacrifice is often seen as the arch enemy of
the virtues that have become emblematic of
our times—self expression, self assertion
and emotional independence. Sacrifice, we
are often told, is a crutch for insecure and
co-dependent victims who eclipse their
emotional dysfunction by employing the
heroic myth of sacrifice.
It is obviously crucial to challenge forms of
sacrifice that erode rather than affirm the
quality of one’s life. Sacrifice that is
feeding into abuse and tyranny is not a
virtue. A beaten spouse or a crushed
employee should not tolerate the immoral
behavior of their spouse or employer in the
name of sacrifice. Yet is it not possible that
in our hypersensitivity toward the pursuit
of individual liberty and the importance of
self-affirmation, we have deprived
ourselves and our children of the vital
awareness that to live means to sacrifice
something of ourselves for truth, for G-d,
for another human being, for your marriage,
for your nation, for your values, for making
the world a good place?
Nothing in the contemporary secular
conversation calls on us to sacrifice
anything truly valuable for someone or
anything else. We have been taught to be
nice and cordial, tolerant and respectful, to
give five dollars to a homeless man in the
street and to be sensitive to other people’s
feelings; but not to make real sacrifices that
challenge our pleasures, force us out of our
comfort zones and require profound and
unwavering commitments. Yet when you
do not need to fight for something, for
anything, how do you learn who you really
are? When you do not need to give up
anything of yourself, how you do acquire
the depth, dignity and maturity that comes

along with sacrifice?
When you look around college campuses,
educational institutions and even many
yeshivos today, you wonder who is reaching
out to the idealistic cords inherent in the
souls of the youth? Who is giving them
something they can fight for? Who is
eliciting their inner depths, rather than their
most superficial qualities?
When we live a life that lacks any sacrifice,
our humaneness is diminished. We become
more superficial, more timid, and more
external. The entire Sefer Vayikra, dealing
with sacrifices, is Judaism’s way of stating
that to live means to live for something.
An Altar In Tears
No area of society has been so profoundly
affected by this void as the family unit.
While in the not-so-distant past the
family bond was considered something
worthy to sacrifice for, today it is easily
discarded when in conflict with one’s
personal comforts. Couples do not feel that
the marital union is so great an ideal and so
sacred an institution that they ought to
make real sacrifices for it to work and
blossom. If the love does not come easy, it
is not worth the effort.
1700 years ago, the ninety-page Masechta
of Talmud legislating the Jewish laws for
divorce, was transcribed. The sages of
antiquity chose to culminate the book with
these words:
“Whenever anyone divorces his first wife,
even the Temple Altar sheds tears. As the
Tanach states, ‘You cause the altar of G-d
to be covered with tears, with weeping and
with sighing; so that G-d no longer turns to
the offerings to retrieve it with good will
from your hands. And you might ask:
Why?—Because G-d has borne witness
between you and the wife of your youth,
that you have betrayed her, though she is
your companion and the wife of your
covenant.”
Why does a divorce arouse tears in the
Mizbe’ach? The Beit HaMikdash in
Yerushalayim had many pieces of furniture
and vessels, like the Menorah, the Shulchan,
and of course the Aron on top of which
were carved the faces of a boy and girl
gazing at each other, symbolizing
the relationship between G-d and man.
Why would they not shed a tear upon
witnessing a divorce? Why was this unique
to the Mizbe’ach?
The explanation might be this:
The Mizbe’ach was the place in the Beit
HaMikdash where all the daily sacrifices of
grain, wine and animals were offered. The

Mizbe’ach represented the profound but
often forgotten axiom that a relationship
with G-d demanded sacrifice and the giving
of oneself and ones wealth. For centuries,
the Mizbe’ach has stood as a silent witness
observing the depth and dignity
characterizing a life of commitment and
sacrifice. Day after day, the Mizbe’ach

internalized the truth that the path to self-
realization leads through self-sacrifice.

When the Mizbe’ach observes the
consequences of a marriage in which the
man and the woman did not muster the
courage to make sacrifices for each other, it
weeps for the greatest of opportunities
forever lost. Who more than the Mizbe’ach
appreciates the truth that to find your own
soul you must embrace another soul?
There are, of course, exceptions. Sometimes
divorce is a tragic necessity. When abuse
and dysfunction pervade a marriage, and no
remedy can be found, the right answer
might be divorce. But in today’s age, many
divorces occur not because of an impossible
situation, but rather because of our
unwillingness to transcend our egos,
challenge our fears and transcend our
selfish natures. For this, the Mizbe’ach
weeps.
This simple truth so well known to the
Mizbe’ach has been forgotten by many. We
are scared of making sacrifices, lest they
deprive us of our personal happiness. Our
self-esteem is so fragile that we desperately
feel the need to protect it against any
outside or foreign intrusion, lest it fade
away into oblivion. But happiness is an
altar. The more you give, the more you
receive. The soul is most at peace with
itself when it shares itself with another
soul. When we give up on all forms of
sacrifice, we deprive ourselves from
reaching our deepest potentials.
This week’s parsha invites us to ask this
question: When was the last time I made a
real sacrifice?