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| Torah and Tigger: Creative Reading |
There is meaning in everything - and there is most definitely a connection for me between the imagination that leads to a story like Winnie the Pooh, and the creative reading that makes Torah a personal experience.
When we come to Leviticus, as we do this week with Parashat Vayikra, and we jump straight into the old, earthy, sacrificial system, the blood and guts - it might be time for a little creative reading.
(Maybe that's why we go back and read the Exodus stories again, now, in preparation for Passover - so we have something else to occupy our minds with through the sacrificial readings.)
But perhaps Tigger can teach us something about how to approach Leviticus. Tigger is a hopeful creature - and a very social one at that. In The Tigger Movie (2000), Tigger searches desperately for other tiggers, looking through the woods for his family tree. He loses sight of the circle of friends around him, his community-family - who try lovingly to help him find (and even understand) family, even as it means he is looking away from them.
The book of Leviticus is a biblical, priestly attempt at understanding and creating a cohesive family unit out of a dozen tribes and reportedly a couple of million people (600,000 able-bodied men, plus women, elders, and children). We may not feel a particular connection to the sacrificial system - it may, indeed, rub against our contemporary sensibilities (against killing animals unnecessarily, in favor of cleanliness and community conversation). But we can nonetheless learn something - both from Leviticus itself, and from the evolution of the system presented there to our present day Jewish practice. Because we Jews don't make burnt offerings anymore, but we do still have community!
The book of Leviticus starts right in with אדם כי יקריב מכם קורבן "When a person brings a sacrifice..." (Lev. 1:2). When, not if - and the general term of אדם, a man, but easily read as "a person." Skip the details of how to bring that sacrifice, for the moment - and come to the list of "unwitting" trespass - of the law designed to sustain community.
The unwitting part is, I think, important here. If we do not intend to neglect or cause harm, are we liable? The reminder here is that our actions, witting or unwitting, impact community. Like the proverbial pillow whose feathers cannot be retrieved, or the ripples flowing out from the impact of the stone in the pond - our actions fly or ripple out into the community, irretrievably. We must do something to change the impact, to heal it or sooth it, regardless of intent in the action itself.
Tigger does not realize the impact on his friends until he sees that they have costumed themselves as (spoiler alert) tiggers, in order to help him feel loved. He is fortunate not to have lost his friends in his moment of neglect of them.
When the Temple was destroyed, the sages wisely transitioned the sacrificial system into a prayer system. Each person remains responsible for prayer, but while some prayers can be recited in solitary, a handful require a minyan of ten adults, thus encouraging community connection. As Rabbi Maurice Harris puts it, in his book, Leviticus: You Have No Idea, "The newly designed religion [of the post-Temple period] valued literacy and excelled at maintaining communication between diaspora communities."
In the contemporary Jewish world it seems that the current community model of synagogues and JCCs as community gathering places is, at minimum, not reaching a great many of our Jewish population. I will not tackle this extensively here, but I will say that I was reminded this week in a conversation that Leviticus indeed points us to an evolving community model, and that we are responsible for maintaining communication even (especially?) with those looking outward, as Tigger was looking away from his Hundred Acre Woods community, and for active contemporary reconstruction.
When we come to Leviticus, as we do this week with Parashat Vayikra, and we jump straight into the old, earthy, sacrificial system, the blood and guts - it might be time for a little creative reading.
(Maybe that's why we go back and read the Exodus stories again, now, in preparation for Passover - so we have something else to occupy our minds with through the sacrificial readings.)
But perhaps Tigger can teach us something about how to approach Leviticus. Tigger is a hopeful creature - and a very social one at that. In The Tigger Movie (2000), Tigger searches desperately for other tiggers, looking through the woods for his family tree. He loses sight of the circle of friends around him, his community-family - who try lovingly to help him find (and even understand) family, even as it means he is looking away from them.
The book of Leviticus is a biblical, priestly attempt at understanding and creating a cohesive family unit out of a dozen tribes and reportedly a couple of million people (600,000 able-bodied men, plus women, elders, and children). We may not feel a particular connection to the sacrificial system - it may, indeed, rub against our contemporary sensibilities (against killing animals unnecessarily, in favor of cleanliness and community conversation). But we can nonetheless learn something - both from Leviticus itself, and from the evolution of the system presented there to our present day Jewish practice. Because we Jews don't make burnt offerings anymore, but we do still have community!
The book of Leviticus starts right in with אדם כי יקריב מכם קורבן "When a person brings a sacrifice..." (Lev. 1:2). When, not if - and the general term of אדם, a man, but easily read as "a person." Skip the details of how to bring that sacrifice, for the moment - and come to the list of "unwitting" trespass - of the law designed to sustain community.
The unwitting part is, I think, important here. If we do not intend to neglect or cause harm, are we liable? The reminder here is that our actions, witting or unwitting, impact community. Like the proverbial pillow whose feathers cannot be retrieved, or the ripples flowing out from the impact of the stone in the pond - our actions fly or ripple out into the community, irretrievably. We must do something to change the impact, to heal it or sooth it, regardless of intent in the action itself.
Tigger does not realize the impact on his friends until he sees that they have costumed themselves as (spoiler alert) tiggers, in order to help him feel loved. He is fortunate not to have lost his friends in his moment of neglect of them.
When the Temple was destroyed, the sages wisely transitioned the sacrificial system into a prayer system. Each person remains responsible for prayer, but while some prayers can be recited in solitary, a handful require a minyan of ten adults, thus encouraging community connection. As Rabbi Maurice Harris puts it, in his book, Leviticus: You Have No Idea, "The newly designed religion [of the post-Temple period] valued literacy and excelled at maintaining communication between diaspora communities."
In the contemporary Jewish world it seems that the current community model of synagogues and JCCs as community gathering places is, at minimum, not reaching a great many of our Jewish population. I will not tackle this extensively here, but I will say that I was reminded this week in a conversation that Leviticus indeed points us to an evolving community model, and that we are responsible for maintaining communication even (especially?) with those looking outward, as Tigger was looking away from his Hundred Acre Woods community, and for active contemporary reconstruction.
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