Name

The word “Leviticus” comes from the Latin Leviticus, which is derived from the Greek Λευιτικόν (Leuitikon), referring to the priestly tribe of the Israelites, “Levi”. The Greek expression is a variant of the rabbinic Hebrew תורת כהנים (Torat Kohanim), “law of priests”, as many of its laws relate to priests.

Meaning

Leviticus is the third book of the Bible, containing laws relating to the priests and Levites and to the forms of Jewish ceremonial observance. It is often referred to as the “Book of Priestly Legislation” or the “Book of Sacrifices”.

Theology

Leviticus is one of the most intensely theological books of the Old Testament, containing the core of the priestly ritual material of the Pentateuch and the entire Old Testament. The regulations are often quite specific and detailed, being tied to the very fabric of personal and communal life in ancient Israel, but always from a markedly priestly point of view.

Q How many of these laws are relevant today?

Revelation at Sinai

#10commandments

The people were witnesses to the Revelation at Sinai, but it was brief. Even if the 10 commandments had been given as “one” word, that the people saw, it would need to be expanded upon by the Sages so that the simple man could also understand what it was saying. As the first “word” emerged, they were already afraid, and retreated, saying “Let Moses tell us what the Lord wishes from us” and “we will hear and we will obey”.{.note}

Besides that brief moment of revelation, the rest of the story is about certain people, especially Moshe Rabeinu, transmitting the Divine Message and Wisdom to the people. Thus, besides the brief moment in which the people witnessed (had a vision of) G-d (even after having witnessed His many previous miracles—from the plagues to the splitting of the sea, etc…) the story of the transmission from the Divine to the mundane is similar to most other faiths.{.note}

Neo-economics

#tol

Where else can the economic system move to but to greater control of all transactions? This was inevitable, but, as always, the control system (or controllers) is the issue that is in constant conflict. This is the dynamic between greater density with greater centralised control, and diverse, decentralised control mechanisms. The centrifugal and centripetal forces at odds, both just doing their thing.{.note}

If the centralised control system succeeds, it produces a density that will eventually choke the host. If it is too decentralised, and fluid, then it will eventually start breaking apart, each part pulling in a different and reach a state of zero forward movement.{.note}

Heart vs. Action By Karen Kaplan

Parasha in Depth

The second half of the book of Exodus—whose reading we concluded last week—was taken up primarily with the details of the Sanctuary’s construction; in Exodus’ concluding verses we read how the Sanctuary was erected and the Divine Presence came to dwell in it. Thus the Sanctuary commenced its function as the “Tent of Meeting” between G‑d and man: the place that is the focus of man’s endeavour to serve his Creator, and where G‑d communicated to man and made His presence felt within a humanly constructed abode. It is a grand narrative that starts with G-d’s Creation of man to interact with His Presence through the Creation itself, ultimately building a space, a structure, wherein man and G-d can communicate “face-to-face, like friends having a conversation.”

In the parasha of Vayikra, which opens the book of Leviticus, G‑d speaks to Moses from the Tent of Meeting and begins His communication of the laws governing the bringing of the korbanot, the animal and meal offerings that are the central feature of the service performed in the Sanctuary.

v1:2]

The verse does not say “a man of you who shall bring near an offering,” but “a man who shall bring from you (plural) an offering”—the offering must come from within the person. It is the animal within man that must be “brought near” and elevated by the Divine fire upon the altar.
—The Chassidic Masters

Why does G‑d use the word adam for “man” (instead of the more common synonym ish)? To teach us that a person cannot offer to G‑d what has not been honestly obtained by him. G‑d is saying: “When you bring an offering to Me, be like Adam the first man, who could not have stolen from anyone, since he was alone in the world.”
—Midrash Tanchuma; Rashi

When we speak of Adam as one who “was alone in the world,” we are speaking of the very first hours of his life. Thus we are speaking of Adam before he partook of the Tree of Knowledge—of man still unsullied by sin.

This is the deeper significance of the Torah’s reference to the bearer of a korban—which has the power to obtain atonement for a transgression—as an “Adam.” Every man, the Torah is saying, harbours in the pith of his soul a pristine “Adam,” a primordial man untouched by sin. Even at the very moment when his external self was transgressing the Divine will, his inner essence remained loyal to G‑d; it was only silenced and suppressed by his baser instincts. It is by accessing this core of purity, by unearthing that part of himself that did not sin in the first place and restoring it to its rightful place as the sovereign of his life, that man attains the state of teshuvah—return to his original state of perfection.
—The Lubavitcher Rebbe

The first korban to be described is the olah, the “ascending” offering (commonly referred to as the “burnt offering”), whose distinguishing feature is that it is raised to G‑d, in its entirety, by the fire atop the altar.

Menachot – Meal offerings

Meal offerings, called menachot (“gifts”), are prepared of fine flour, with olive oil and frankincense. The priest removes a kometz (“handful”—actually the amount grasped by his three middle fingers), to be burned on the altar; the remainder is eaten by the priests.

There are five types of donated meal offerings: 1) the standard “meal offering,” brought as raw flour; 2) the “baked meal offering,” which came in two forms: loaves or 3) flat matzot; 4) the “pan-fried” meal offering; 5) the minchat marcheshet, deep-fried in a pot.

The following rule applies to all the meal offerings (including the “loaves”):

No meal offering which you shall bring to G‑d shall be made leavened; for you shall burn no leaven, nor any honey, in any offering of G‑d made by fire . . .

Another rule is that

Your every meal offering you shall season with salt; never shall you suspend the salt covenant of your G‑d.

This latter rule applies to all korbanot: “With all your offerings you shall offer salt.”

Another meal offering mentioned here is the minchat bikkurim (also called the “Omer”) brought on the second day of Passover from the year’s very first barley harvest. In this minchah, the kernels are roasted by fire before they are ground into flour.

(In addition, a meal offering accompanied all animal offerings.)

…it is the same whether a person offers much or little, so long as he directs his heart to heaven.
—Talmud, Menachot 110a

No leaven . . . [shall be present] in any offering of G‑d (2:11)

Leaven, which is dough that has fermented and risen, represents self-inflation and pride, and there is nothing more abhorrent to G‑d. In the words of the Talmud, “G‑d says of the prideful one, ‘He and I cannot dwell together in the world.’”
—The Chassidic Masters

5 Grains+

Balashon (a great blog on the Hebrew word origins) notes:

[In] Jewish law, there are five species of grain in the Land of Israel that have special laws relating to them – what blessing is made on them, whether they can they be used to make matza (or do they constitute chametz), must one “separate challah” with bread made from them, and more. As described in the Mishna (Hallah 1:1), the five grains are:

החיטים, והשעורים, והכוסמין, ושיבולת שועל והשיפון

chitim, seorim, kusmin, shibolet shual, shifon

The first two, chitim and seorim, are wheat and barley. Shibolet shual is generally understood to be oats, even if the more common term in modern Hebrew is kvaker (a transliteration of Quaker!).

It is likely that shibolet shual is actually another type of barley–some authorities say it is two-row barley, as opposed to the 4 or 6-row type meant by seorim (as explained at the same Balashon post). There is also a controversy over what shifon is. Usually it is said to be rye, others say spelt. Neither is likely, as these grains were apparently not grown in the ancient Land of Israel, Egypt, or the other lands in which these traditions originate. Emmer wheat is one good possibility, notes Balashon. The word in modern Hebrew means buckwheat, but “Unlike shibolet shual and shifon, there’s no halachic opinion that buckwheat is one of the five grains.” So if we can agree that buckwheat is too distinctive from wheat and barley to be subject to the matzah laws of Pesach, despite the etymological confusion, why not oats? They are also a very different plant.

Rye -
Barley -
Wheat -
Spelt (dinkel wheat) - species of wheat, Iraq?
the English word spelt has sometimes been used for grains that were not T. spelta, but other species of hulled wheat such as T. dicoccum (emmer wheat) or T. monococcum (einkorn wheat, also known as “little spelt”, in French “petit épeautre”).
Oats - Evidence places the oat genus Avena in the Pooideae subfamily. That subfamily includes the cereals wheat, barley, and rye; they are in the Triticeae tribe, while Avena is in the Poeae, along with grasses such as Briza and Agrostis.

Shelamim – The Peace Offering

The shelamim, or “peace offering,” could be either male or female, and from either “the herd” (i.e., an ox or a cow) or “the flock” (a sheep or a goat).

Like the olah, its blood was sprinkled upon the altar; but unlike the olah, which “ascended” in its entirety upon the altar, the meat of the shelamim was eaten by the “owner”—the one who brought the offering (two portions of the animal, the breast and the right thigh, were eaten by the priests). Only certain parts of the animal were burned on the fire atop the altar:

The fat that covers the innards; all the fat that is upon the innards; the two kidneys and the fat that is on them, which is by the flanks; and the appendage of the liver, which he shall remove with the kidneys.

If the peace offering is a sheep, “the whole fat tail, up to the backbone” was added to these.

Because they are offered to G‑d on the altar, these specified veins of fat, which the Torah calls cheilev, are forbidden for consumption in all domestic animals: “It shall be a perpetual statute for your generations throughout all your habitations: all cheilev and all blood you shall not eat.” [Reference?]

Never shall you suspend the salt covenant of your G‑d . . . with all your offerings you shall offer salt (2:13)

When G‑d separated the supernal waters from the lower waters (see Genesis 1:6–8), He made a covenant with the lower waters that their salt will be offered on the altar.
—Rashi

The korban, which was the vehicle of the elevation of the world to G‑d, had to include “representatives” of all four sectors of creation: the inanimate world, the vegetable world, the animal world and the human world. Thus the korban was offered by a human being, and consisted of an animal, grain and salt.
— Rabbi Isaac Luria

Q But why do we have to kill or consume them to enable them to be vehicles of the elevation to G-d?

When the Torah refers to the korbanot as “G‑d’s bread,” this is obviously a metaphor; but what is its significance? In what sense are we “feeding” G‑d when we offer up to Him ourselves and our material resources in the quest to serve Him?
Our sages have said that “G‑d fills the world as a soul fills a body.” On the human level, food is what sustains “life,” which is the assertion of the soul’s powers via its physical vessel, the body. And so it is with the Divine life-force that suffuses the created existence: “G‑d’s food” is what we would call whatever it is that asserts the Divine reality as a manifest presence in our physical world.
With our every act in service to G‑d, we fulfil the divine purpose of creation—that “there be for Him a dwelling in the physical realms.” We thus breathe life into the world-body, asserting and manifesting its quintessence and soul.
— The Chassidic Masters

Chapter 4

The Sin Offerings

The korbanot discussed up to this point are “donations”—offerings pledged out of a desire to give to G‑d. Now the Torah moves on to discuss obligatory offerings, such as the chatat, the “sin offering” brought to atone for an inadvertent transgression of the Divine will.

Guilt Offerings

For certain transgressions, the offering brought in atonement is not a “sin offering” but an asham (“guilt offering”). An asham is distinguished from the standard sin offering in that it was a male sheep, and that it had to be worth at least “two shekels of silver of the shekel of the Sanctuary.”

Three types of asham are described in our Parshah. The first is brought by one who unintentionally made unauthorised use of property belonging to the Sanctuary—a crime called me’ilah (“betrayal”). He must pay back what he had expropriated, adding to that an additional one-fifth of its value, and also bring an asham to obtain atonement for his unintentional trespass.

A second type of “guilt offering” is the asham talui, brought by one who thinks he may have unwittingly committed a transgression, but is not sure. (For example, he had two pieces of meat before him and ate one of them; later, he discovers that one of them was cheilev—forbidden fat—a trespass which would obligate him to bring a sin offering if he would know with certainty that he committed it.)

The third and last asham of our parasha is the one brought in atonement by one who swears falsely in the process of defrauding his fellow man.

The guilt offering first deal with a priest who sins, then the congregation, then a chieftan who sins, then an individual.

When a person unwittingly incurs guilt in regard to any of GOD’s commandments about things not to be done, and does one of them— (4:2)

Priest sins (4:3)

If the anointed [high] priest sins to the guilt of the people (4:3)

• bull, blood into the Tent of Meeting, dip finger, sprinkle 7 times.
• blood on horns of aromatic incense
• rest of the blood poured at base of alter (of burnt offering at entrance)
• remove fat, burn completely
• all the rest, hide, head, legs, entrails & dung taken outside camp, burned.

When a leader sins, this becomes the excuse for everyone else’s wrongdoings.
— The Gaon of Lissa

Fortunate (ashrei) is the generation whose leader applies himself to atone for his errors.
— Talmud; Rashi

Congregation sins (4:14)

*If it is the whole community of Israel that has erred and the matter escapes the notice of the congregation, so that they do any of the things that by GOD’s commandments ought not to be done, and they realize their guilt… (4:13)

• elders lay their hands on the bull
• else same ritual as above

*Thus the priest shall make expiation on behalf of the offerers—who shall then be forgiven. (4:21)

Chieftan sins (4:23)

• male goat, slaughtered on the spot (sin offering)
• blood on horns of the alter
• rest of the blood pour at the base of altar
• fat burnt

the priest shall make expiation on behalf of the offerer—who shall then be forgiven. (4:27)

Individual sins: (4:28)

If anyone from among the populace unwittingly incurs guilt by doing any of the things that by GOD’s commandments ought not to be done, and realizes it— (4:28) or the sin of which they are guilty is made known (4:29)

• female goat without blemish, lay hands on goat, slaughtered
• blood on horns of altar
• blood poured out at base
• fat burnt.

the priest shall make expiation on behalf of the offerer—who shall then be forgiven. (4:32)

• female sheep without blemish (same as above)

Chapter 5

This whole chapter focuses on the individual and details various sins which would require this offering. This is in contrast to all the others who sinned, there sins were not specifically mentioned. Only in the case of the individual - which lays the guilt on the individual, not the leaders and not the community.

Sins

• Someone who knows of a sin and witholds testimony
• Touches an impure beast
• Touch human impurity
• Utters oath

upon realizing their guilt in any of these matters, that person shall confess having sinned in that way. (5:5, et. al.)

• female - sheep or goat

• or 2 turtledoves or 2 pigeons

• Trespasses

  • Bring ram without blemish or silver
  • restitution: add ⅕ which goes to the priest [Note: Must be talking money here]
    etc.