Tzav

Tzav We all do bad things. We offend by accident and on purpose. We don’t mean to, but we hurt people close to us like our children and our parents, and sometimes we offend complete strangers. We frequently sin in big ways and small against our living planet. We try our best but none of us are perfect. What’s needed is a mechanism for repairing the fracture we have caused and will continue to cause. Otherwise, we will be paralysed by a need for impossible perfection. I believe if you aren’t making mistakes, you just aren’t trying hard enough. Or living in the real world.

When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, people would offer korbanot (sacrifices) for their misdeeds. Today in the parasha, we read about the different sacrifices, like korban hattat (the sin offering) and also Korban Asham (the guilt offering). Although administered by the priests, they were made for the benefit of everyone, rich or poor, powerful or unconnected. The sin offering in particular, allowed for a range of sacrifices, from a whole bull offered by the people at the top to just a handful of fine flour offered by the poorest.

Maimonides has something very interesting to say about the altar where these diverse sacrifices happened . He takes considerable historic licence to say that the altar in the Temple has always been in the same place. Going back in time, he says, the altar in both Temples was in exactly the same spot and it was in exactly the same place where Abraham built the altar for the sacrifice of Isaac all the way back to where Adam was created on that very same spot. He says: ‘Thus, the sages have said: Man was formed from the place of his atonement.’ אָמְרוּ חֲכָמִים אָדָם מִמְּקוֹם כַּפָּרָתוֹ נִבְרָא Quite a flight of fancy for the Great Eagle. But he does it, because he wants to say the potential for atonement is built into all people since the very first person was created. We are all created on that fault line. It is the crack through which the light gets in, some might say.

It’s true today, without a Temple, that people still need a way to repair their mistakes. They still need capara, teshuva, atonement. They still need another chance to do better.

The rabbis that created Rabbinic Judaism after the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 ACE needed to replace those essential processes that used to happen in the Temple. They stopped killing the animals in one large, centralised place and they went smaller, taking the processes into the synagogues, into the study halls and into the courts. The rabbis understood the value of us taking our court ordered punishment.

Take your pick from punishments available. It’s all going to a good cause. Judaism allows capital punishment, lashes or being cut off from your community. The best punishment in terms of getting a second chance is definitely lashes or flogging. Makot in Hebrew.

This brings me to what I really wanted to share with you today. I learned this bit of Talmud with R. Chaim Weiner three weeks ago and it’s a good one. We were learning Shevuot 20b. In it, the rabbis are trying to figure out the correct punishment for taking God’s name in vain when making a false oath. The ten commandments in Exodus are quoted where it says you should not take God’s name in vain because the Lord will not absolve him of his guilt.

Rav Pappa says maybe this means there’s no absolution for this crime at all. But Abaye can’t be having that. He says yes in the Torah it says that God will not absolve him. But there’s another way out. There has to be. God may not absolve him, but the earthly court flogs him and in so doing absolves him of guilt.

That’s why we don’t kill people who take God’s name in vain. Don’t tell anyone but blasphemy is not a big thing in Judaism. I don’t know for sure, but the God I stand before doesn’t need that from me or want me to kill people in his name. Who knows what happens in heavenly courts. We need creative law makers and just courts down here. We need social mechanisms to get people up and to try again, this next time a little better.