VaYikra
Leviticus 1:1 – 5:26
The opening of the Book of Leviticus showcases a momentous event in Western history, yet it goes mostly unremarked. In it, we witness a major step forward in the evolution of Western consciousness brought about by the Hebrews’ still-nascent religion sometime between the 7th and 5th Centuries BCE. The modality of worship and relation to God displayed in Leviticus allows us to perceive this critical shift in consciousness.
To place this evolution in historical context, most pagan nations in the land of Canaan and in greater Mesopotamia believed that the idols they worshipped needed to be sustained, influenced, and mollified by sacrificial offerings, both human and animal. Their religious rituals were intended not to “draw near” to their gods, but to appease the gods’ anger when needed or to bribe them so as to gain favor and continued protection.
Judaism’s newly awakened-to monotheistic views, as expressed in Leviticus, clashed with such concepts. Not only was there only one God to be worshipped, but the evolving understanding of the nature of what that God was, necessitated the creation of a radically different kind of relationship between this God and humanity. From the stories recounted in Exodus, we know that probably only a few leaders already had this newfound perspective. The worship of a singular God that remains forever unseen and can never be represented by idol or art was so foreign to their contemporaries that those in the spiritual vanguard had to find a way to transmit their understanding without alienating their people. Something needed to be put in place that would induce the Hebrews to break free from their long-long-held pagan-like beliefs without depriving them of a sense of familiarity and continuity. In shaping the evolving form of Judaism, the priestly authors of Leviticus resorted to reframing what their people had practiced for generations while transforming it into a new spiritual practice.
These early Hebrew leaders endeavored to end polytheistic idol worship—a struggle that continued over several generations—while keeping the familiar rituals of food offerings and animal sacrifice. What changed was the purpose of those rituals. Now they were performed in the true spirit of korban, drawing closer to God. As a means of personal and communal atonement and healing, sacrificial offerings were now intended to remove obstacles in one’s relationship with the One God in order to draw nearer to Source. Additionally, the ritual supported the reintegration of an individual or a group into the community. Spiritual and/or communal offenders could find healing and atonement through ritual offerings and offer restitution to the injured parties. Premeditated and intentional offenses fell under different categories of punishment and compensation outside of sacrificial rites. This process transformed a ritual originally mean to “feed” the gods, to one in which human beings could “feed” their longing for a spiritual relationship with God.
This was not the last time Judaism’s modality of worship would evolve. Post-Temple Talmudic Judaism kept the purpose behind the now-defunct sacrificial cult and transformed its physical expression into a schedule of ordered prayer services. In parallel, and over the last two thousand years, our mystics have created their own practices meant to encourage “drawing near” to God. Kabbalistic practices such as ecstatic devotion and many different types of meditation have sought to provoke a direct awakening of the practitioner as to the True Nature of Reality and Self, to push consciousness to evolve once again, this time beyond Leviticus’s dualistic understanding of God and into non-dual awareness and its correlate worldview. May we all be blessed to see a broader dawning of such consciousness in our lifetime.