This week in our ongoing Jewish journey of time and text, we open the third book of Torah, Vayikra, the Book of Leviticus. If Genesis represents our ancient stories of creation, and Exodus the narrative of our emerging into freedom and self-awareness, then Leviticus represents something very different.
It contains no stories, or barely any. Instead, it is a how-to; an operating manual for the Levites – hence the Latin name Leviticus. The Levites are the tribe of Israel charged with carrying out the religious and cultural rituals of the people as a whole. Within the Tribe of Levi we find a special caste known as the Kohanim – the priests, who are placed at the center of our ancient society.
Leviticus is their instruction book which is, at its best (and yes, we also know about its worst. But at its best) is about how to maintain the health, the soundness of the spiritual ecosystem.
This priestly code that we call Leviticus describes how to perform all the requisite sacrifices to God. It addresses public health – including quarantine, immersion and other purification practices. It identifies what compassionate behavior looks like. And it tries to establish a social – and spiritual – fabric for which everyone shares responsibility.
Leviticus cares about how the people, individually and collectively, process our guilt for our less-than-honorable deeds, and how we process our gratitude for the grace we have been shown. Leviticus understands that owning our mistakes and expressing our gratitude are necessary elements in maintaining a healthy spiritual ecosystem.
For a lot of us, the content of Leviticus is, at first glance, dry and even uncomfortable material. Pity the b'nei mitzvah whose Torah portions land in Leviticus and who, at age 13, have to stand in front of their peers and share wise words about bodily discharges.
And yet here we are, in this moment, where these things, these very Levitical things, matter. A moment where contagion and separation are not just medical issues but have once again become holy questions. A time when we fulfill our responsibility to the social fabric through isolation, purification, and compassion. Now is a time when we are responsible for staying outside the gates of the camp, of the commons, for the sake of the whole tribe. An era in which we are once again instructed on and charged with when and how to wash. These are holy matters (again).
So what does this mean, if anything, to us.
Torah tells us back in the Book of Exodus (Exodus 19:6) that we are meant to be a nation of priests. God sees us that way; it is our calling and our destiny. And now the call is even broader. Because right now we are being called to be a Planet of Priests. Each of us tending the altar of our relationships with God and Earth and each other. Offering up our guilt over the profit-driven, Earth-consuming culture we have allowed to take root. And offering up like fragrant incense our gratitude for the simple and intimate gifts of connection and food and shelter.
How timely for us to open the Book of Leviticus this week! We will likely dwell in this book for the duration of our isolation. For the duration of this time during which we will all relearn how to be priests, interceding between Heaven and Earth, seen and unseen, cosmic and microscopic. Charged with the cause of wholeness and holiness. Overseeing holy separations of public and private. Presiding over acts of purification. Holding our communities together through times of fear and illness and death and much, much healing of, hopefully, both physical and civilizational sorts.
May our priestly prayers radiate out from our living rooms and our Zoom Rooms and bond with the determination and grit of all the priests like you and me now populating the planet. May our actions and our restraint be for the good of all life. May our new understandings of how to be in this Life, on this Earth, become scripture. We are a Planet of Priests, stepping into those sandals and tending, with new-found care, the eternal flame of life.
We are garbed. We are tooled. We stand at the altar, ready to receive instruction and get to work.