Torah Posting: צו
We’re going right back into the ritual laws. In fact, I just realized I need to clean my own altar before I continue. Be right back.
Right, so, this parashah gives us a look at what Mishkan operations look like, the ongoing ritual service that literally and figuratively keeps the people’s fire going. Some of these passages are profound meditations on what it means to pray and make offerings as a Jewish person.
The first instruction is that the primary priestly burnt offering shall remain on the fire of the altar all night until morning, and the fire shall be kept going perpetually. The priest, dressed in his linen priestly dress, shall scoop the ashes off next to the altar, then change into plain clothes and carry the ashes out of the camp to a pure place. The fire, though, must always be kept burning. The priest shall feed wood do it every morning and lay out the offering on top. Then it is reiterated:
אֵ֗שׁ תָּמִ֛יד תּוּקַ֥ד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ לֹ֥א תִכְבֶּֽה׃
“A perpetual fire shall be kindled on the altar, not to go out.”
This line is important to me. I take it to heart pretty literally, but I also consider it to be the definitive symbol of the prayerful attitude to be cultivated in practice.
Then the meal offering is described, and the text takes care to point out that this is no less holy of a thing than the animal offerings, so much so that only the male hereditary priests are to eat of these unleavened cakes, and that anything that even touches them shall become holy.
God then describes to Mosheh an offering of pancakes that sound pretty yummy, which the priests are to give on the occasion of their anointment. Unfortunately, God makes very clear that these are to be offered entirely to God as smoke, not eaten.
Then the sin offering procedure is described. It is to be slaughtered at the same spot where the daily burnt offering is slaughtered. The text also emphasizes that this offering is most holy, not subordinate to the others. The priest who makes the sin offering shall eat it inside the sacred precinct of the Tent of Meeting, and anything that comes in contact with it or its blood is now holy and must be treated accordingly. Clothes spattered by it must be washed; earthen vessels in which it was prepared must be broken, but copper ones can be washed.
A key principle of the laws of kashrut still obeyed to this day in the Jewish diet is illustrated here: Porous vessels, such as earthen ones, can absorb the energy of food, and thus their kashrut status is permanent. Metal and glass are seen as impermeable in this way, and thus their kashrut state can be changed.
Again, only the male priests can eat the sin offering, but not if any of its blood is brought into the sacred precinct. In that case, it must be consumed entirely by fire.
Next a second offering in the case of wrongdoing is described, called the אשם (guilt) offering. As near as I can tell, a חטאת (sin) offering is the exchange for the actual act committed by the person making the offering, whereas the guilt offering is what covers for the person’s recognition of wrongdoing. In any case, the procedure is different; the guilt offering involves a complex and comprehensive offering up of the fat on various parts of the animal’s body, which is described here. The same rules of eating and contact apply.
Then, for a nice change of pace, the שלמים (usually “well-being,” but I prefer “completion”) offering is described, an offering for giving thanks when something good happens. For this one, the animal offering and the cakes are offered together. If it’s an offering in response to a specific event, it must all be eaten the day it is offered. If it is a votive or freewill offering, one can eat the leftovers on the second day but must burn them on the third. Eating it on the third day is definitively wrong and bad.
This leads us into a bit more detail about the way the transmission of impurity (טמא) works. This is an important concept in Vayikra and in Jewish law in general, and it’s one that often turns off moderns, especially those of an all-is-one edgy woo-woo tantrika spiritual bent. I would ask anyone reading this to allow the culture you are encountering here to have its own teachings about purity and impurity, and not to feel offended as though these are being imposed on you. Internal to this text, there are clear and strict delineations between pure and impure, and those states can be transmitted energetically like a substance with serious consequences.
I’d argue this also has implications for something I have pretty much just breezed past so far, namely the clear-cut gender roles laid out in these rituals. The priests are the male descendants of Aharon, period. These rituals are performed by men. They have the bodies which are deemed to be energetically correct to perform these duties, and as we have begun to see, energetic incorrectness is not taken lightly.
Is this unequal or unfair? I would argue that it’s unfair of us to make that assessment. To me, it’s clear the importance of these elaborate ritual laws is that they demonstrate that proper spiritual functioning using heavy magic like this requires extremely particular procedure and care, backed by deep wisdom. I insist that we do not have the deep wisdom backing necessary to assess whether these rituals are problematic or not because they are from outside of our context. For that very same reason, it seems obvious to me that we are not to perform these rituals. Rather, we are to apply the commensurate level of particularity and care when applying our own energy to our own ritual in our own context, and the Torah teaches us not to be lax or careless in the design or execution of that practice.
There is something I find unequal and unfair in the Torah’s treatment of gender and ritual, though, which is that the male ritual functions are given drastically more attention in the text. We know full well, both from our maternal oral lineages as well as archaeology and more peripheral texts, that the magic of Israelite women was powerful and in widespread demand. The fact that the Torah contains drastically less of it is, in my opinion, as I have pointed to in prior entries, a problem of biased editing and redaction.
But my approach is not to then throw out what these male rituals have to teach all of us about ritual; it is to seek out the teachings of Jewish magic from other gendered and ungendered energy configurations in the places where they are transmitted — and, to be sure, to understand that Jewish culture transmits a great deal of community care and responsibility that is incumbent upon men.
Now, purity and impurity.
We learn here that meat that touches anything impure can no longer be eaten, and that a person who is in a state of impurity cannot eat the flesh of sacrifices of completeness. A person who touches any impurity, which can come from human or animal or their byproducts, becomes impure, in addition to the other ways a human can enter a state of impurity that will be described later. An impure person who eats of these offerings shall be cut off from their kin if they do; that’s how serious of a thing impurity is.
Now some dietary laws upon all people are given. The people cannot eat the fat of animals from which the holy offerings can be made. If an animal dies, the people may use their fat for various purposes, but it cannot be eaten. A person who eats the fat of an animal that can be offered on the altar, or eats any blood at all, shall be cut off from kin.
Now that we’re getting clear on the risks to the regular people who participate in these priestly rituals, we can talk more about how that happens. The person making a completion offering must present that offering themself. The priest must take it from their own hands to offer it up. The fat and the breast shall be offered up, and the right thigh shall be given to the priest as a gift. This right thigh portion is declared very solemnly here (as though the priestly authors feel the need to defend their right to this juicy part of the animal). It’s one of many examples of God taking a moment to set things aside for the priests who don’t have holdings of their own the way the tribal laypeople do.
Following this declaration, this section on offerings is wrapped up with a historical contextual reminder, that these are the offerings with which God charged Mosheh on Mount Sinai, and that they are to be presented by the people while here in the wilderness.
Now we get to see how well Mosheh studied for his test. God tells Mosheh to assemble the priests, their vestments, anointing oil, and animal and meal offerings along with the leaders of the community at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. When everyone is assembled, Mosheh declares aloud that this is what יהוה commanded to be done. Then he brings forward Aharon and his sons, washes them with water, and dresses Aharon in the high priest’s vestments complete with the divination breastplate, and sets the headdress and frontlet on Aharon’s head. Then Mosheh anoints the Mishkan and all its altars and implements with the oil. Then he anoints Aharon’s head. Then he dresses Aharon’s sons, the attending priests.
And then Mosheh leads the bull of sin offering to the priests, they place their hands on the bull’s head, and they slaughter it. Mosheh adorns the horns of the altar with its blood and pours some out at its base to consecrate it. Then he offers up the fats on the various organs as smoke. He takes the rest of the animal — its hide, its flesh, and its dung — to burn outside the camp as God commanded him.
Then Mosheh brings the ram for the burnt offering, and they offer it according to the instructions.
Then he brings the second ram, the ram of ordination, and they offer it. Mosheh smears blood on the ridges of the priests’ right ears, their right thumbs, and on the big toes of their right feet. Then he dashes the rest of the blood against every side of the altar. He offers up the fat. He places one of each kind of cake from the meal offering on top of the fat parts and the right thigh. Then he places these offerings on the palms of the priests who elevate them as the elevation offering. Mosheh takes the elevation offerings from them and turns them into smoke on the altar. Mosheh elevates the breast as his own portion of the ram of ordination. Then he sprinkles the priests and their vestments again with a mixture of anointing oil and some of the blood on the altar, consecrating them again.
Mosheh tells Aharon and his sons to boil the meat at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and eat it there with the bread in the basket of ordination, and what is left over shall be consumed in fire. This will begin the seven-day period of ordination. The priests are not to leave the Tent of Meeting for seven days, staying at the entrance day and night, that they may not die.
And they do as Mosheh told them.
🔥
