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Please include Israel's captive soldiers in
your tefillot: Zecharia Shlomo ben Miriam Baumel, Tzvi ben Penina
Feldman, Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman ben Sarah Katz, Ron ben Batya Arad, Guy ben
Rina Chever, Gilad ben Aviva Shalit. Thursday, 3 Nissan 5770 – March 18, 2009 Parashat Vayikra begins with a discussion of the korbenot nedava, personal voluntary sacrifices which people had the option of
bringing to the Mishkan (the ola, mincha and shelamim).
God introduces these laws by telling Moshe, “Adam ki yakriv mikem korban le-Hashem…” (“A person among you who offers a
sacrifice to the Lord…” – 1:3). Rashi,
citing the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 2:7), notes the Torah’s use of the
word adam (“person”) in this context.
According to the Midrash, the Torah here alludes to Adam, who offered
a sacrifice to God – a sacrifice which, in a certain sense, serves as a
paradigm that all future sacrifices should follow. Meaning, as the Midrash comments, Adam
offered his sacrifice before any other person was created, such that the
entire world was indisputably in his possession. It was not possible for Adam to offer a
stolen animal as a sacrifice, because, quite simply, there was nobody from
whom he could have stolen. By using
the word “adam” in the context of the korbanot, the Torah
indicates that all sacrifices must resemble Adam’s sacrifice, and a stolen
sacrifice is disqualified. This halakha, of course, is
readily understandable, and warns against the hypocrisy of trying to serve
God while mistreating other people. We
might wonder, however, why specifically the situation of Adam was invoked as
the paradigm through which this halakha conveyed. Adam’s case was
clearly extreme. Even if he had been
corrupt, he did not have the possibility of offering a stolen animal. In fact, one could argue that Adam does not
serve as an accurate example in this regard, since he was unable to offer a
stolen animal, and thus his sacrifice does not necessarily attest to his
integrity and the sincerity of his offering.
How might we explain the paradigm of Adam’s sacrifice? Possibly,
the Midrash seeks to teach us not only that we may not offer a stolen
sacrifice, but that we should not offer voluntary sacrifices at all until we
are incapable of stealing. Chazal pointed
to Adam’s offering as the paradigmatic example of a voluntary sacrifice
specifically because it was impossible for him to steal – and this is
precisely the kind of person one must be before he decides to bring a
voluntary sacrifice. Before we
undertake voluntary religious measures such as sacrificial offerings, we must
first do something which Chazal deemed
far more basic – work on our characters to ensure that we are honest and
upright. We have no business spending
large sums of money on voluntary animal sacrifices if we are able to seriously
consider stealing from other people.
God welcomes voluntary sacrifices only from “Adam,” from people who
have achieved a basic level of moral and ethical conduct. Honesty and integrity must come before
voluntary sacrifices, and the Torah therefore speaks of sacrifices being
offered only by “Adam” – by those who would not even contemplate the
possibility of cheating other people. David Silverberg |
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