David Ritter is a 7th grader at the Salk School of Science, where his favorite subjects are Math, Science and Humanities. In his spare time, David enjoys playing football with his friends in Bennett Park, reading, watching South Park, listening to his iPod, juggling, and sleeping in. He plays basketball and soccer with leagues on the upper Westside, is a member of the Pied Piper Actors’ Society, and participates in theatrical productions at Pied Piper and at Salk. David has attended Hebrew School since Kindergarten, when the program was still at Beth Am on Bennett Avenue. He is no stranger to synagogue life, attending services regularly and helping out with a variety of tasks: helping with the bulletin, delivering things, and helping his Mom shlepp stuff from Costco for the Hebrew School. For his mitzvah project, David, who likes to cook, made and delivered Shabbat dinners to several elderly Tabernacle members, and is now getting to know some of our members who no longer are able to attend services.

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This week’s parasha, Tzav, talks about different sacrifices that the Israelites were responsible for as part of worshiping God. In the parasha, we learn about five different kinds of sacrifices: olah (burnt offering); minchah (meal offering); chatat (sin offering for unintentional wrongs); asham (guilt offering); and zevach shelamim (sacrifice of well-being, or a gift of thanksgiving).

In the first part of parashat tzav, God commands Moses to take out the ashes after the burnt offering has been completed. Here Torah talks about the fire on the altar that is never supposed to go out. The duty of watching the fire is given to every single person in the camp. You don’t have to be special to be on patrol. Well, you have to be part of b’nei Israel; that makes them special, and it is what unites us.

Then the parashah explains the meal offering. The meal offering has flour, oil, frankincense and sacrificial meat which are turned into smoke on the altar as a pleasing smell to the Lord. The food is eaten in the sacred precinct in the Tent of Meeting by the priests – and only by the priests.

Next, the parashah gives the laws about eating in a state of ritual contamination. Basically, it says that if you are unclean and you eat from the Lord’s sacrifice, or if you eat any blood, or if you eat any fat from an ox or a goat, you’ll be cut off from your kin. This is very serious.

Continuing, there are more laws about fat and blood, and what to do if any blood gets on your clothes, or what to do if you eat or drink blood. There are more details, but all result in getting cut off from your kin.

Then the parashah talks about the parts of the animal and the order in which they are used. For example, it tells us to take some of the fat and the entrails, the protuberance of the liver and the fatty layer around the kidney – the suet – tie it all together and burn it. It’s a whole different way of turning something into smoke as a “pleasing odor unto the Lord,” because, apparently, God likes a good Bar-B-Que.

Next is the consecration of the Kohanim, or priests. This time, Moses instead of listening he actually carries out some of the commandments. First he dresses Aaron and his sons in fancy clothes with turbans and breastplates and headdresses. Then Moses sprinkles sacred oils on them, and they bring forward the “burnt-offering” ram and they all put their hands on its head to use it as a scapegoat. Now let me tell you what a scapegoat really is: a long time ago villages would put their hands on a goat to pass on their sins to the goat. Then by smacking it in the butt the goat would run off in to the forest taking the villages sins with it. However Moses, Aaron and his sons don’t send it off; instead they slaughter the ram and dash its blood on the altar. Then they take the organs and turn them into smoke on the altar by burning them until there’s nothing left, as opposed to just charring them. Since it’s supposed to be a pleasing odor to the Lord, it has to be all smoke, with nothing left.

Then Moses brings forward a second ram, the “ram of ordination.” They all put their hands on that ram’s head, and Moses slaughters it. Then he takes the ram’s blood and rubs it on the right earlobe, right thumb and right big toe of Aaron and of his sons. Then they cook the meat on the altar, put some of the meat on a cracker-like bread, and they put these little sandwiches – sort of like Israelite tapas – on Aaron’s and his sons’ palms. They raise up their palms to God, put the sandwiches on the altar, and turn them into smoke.

It seems God likes a good sandwich, too.

This accomplishes the same goal sending the goat out of the village. By ridding themselves of the goat and sacrificing it, they are also rid of their sins. Then they sit in the tent of meeting and have a big feast for seven days as a time of inauguration. Tzav doesn’t say where they get that food from; it just says that they eat.

It’s confession on a whole new level!   <pause.>

I bet you’re all riveted by the explanation of this week’s parasha but not as riveted as you will be after I tell you what I think about it.

When I first thought of what to say today I had a lot of trouble finding something interesting to talk about. I can always find some to talk abut but not anything interesting. Last month at my cousin’s bat mitzvah in Florida the rabbi was talking about how that week’s portion (parashat Terumah) was the start of “the boring stuff” – rules and such – and was the end of the “interesting” stories about people. But I disagree, because these so-called “boring rules” are the foundation of our religion and actually are more interesting than hearing about a brother stealing from his brother.

Rules, rules, rules: a teen’s worst enemy, and that’s what my parasha is about. Tzav is about how to sacrifice animals to the Lord. The parasha goes into great depth about how to sacrifice the animals, like it says that you should take the fatty protuberance of the liver and turn it into smoke on the altar for a pleasing odor to the Lord. Very specific! And sort of gruesome, too, if you ask me! But these rules are important to make sure that we are different from other people. This way we can do things the way God wants us to do them so they’re effective. 

Tzav also shows a real sense that you have to be clean, or you’ll be “cut off from your kin.”  Not to mention cut off from your friends. For example, if you are unclean when you eat the Lord’s sacrifice, touch the sacrifice, or perform a sacrifice, then you will cut off from your kin.  This doesn’t just mean you’re kicked out of the community, never to return; it also means that you can’t be buried with your family, so you won’t be with them in the afterlife, either. This seems like a harsh punishment for being unclean. My teacher would love it if she could give this punishment rather than buying more Airwicks. It just goes to show that cleanliness really is next to Godliness.

There are many things to talk about in this portion. Yes, you can learn about something from blood and gore. But since this isn’t a Hollywood action flick. I would like to talk about the holiness of blood, which I learned was very interesting. Nachmanides said that God allows people to eat animal flesh for nourishment, but that we can’t consume their blood because it belongs to God. The priests are allowed to use the blood of sacrificed animals for anointing, but even they cannot consume the blood, for that is God’s. This establishes a real sense of God flexing His muscles and saying, “this blood is for Me; it’s too holy for you.”

It wasn’t just the Jews who thought that blood was powerful and holy. Pagans collected blood, believing that spirits rose up from the blood. Drinking blood was also a common practice in early pagan cults. Ewwwww. They did it to absorb a dead creature’s soul and strength, whether animal or human. Some also thought that they could heal sickness by drinking blood. Whoever wrote the torah thought that this was barbaric and dangerous. Pagans thought that the way to get the power from blood was to drink it. Whoever wrote the Bible thought that the way to get the power from blood was to put it on the altar and give it back to God by burning it into smoke. ‘Cause God likes a good cigar every now and then.

Blood is mentioned many times in torah. 356 times throughout Bible, to be exact. The first plague in Egypt was/ blood. The Protection from the tenth plague was blood on top of the doorposts. Cain spills Abel’s blood. Reuven commands his brothers to not shed Joseph’s blood. Leviticus commands us to “not stand idly by the blood of [our] neighbor. Blood was viewed as the life and soul of a person. This theory was formed by people watching other people being brutally killed with their blood coming out, as if the soul wanted to get out. In Leviticus 17:11, it says, “for the soul of the flesh is in blood and I have assigned it for you upon the altar to provide atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that atones for the soul.” If you want to atone for your sins, you have to give God some blood to replace the sins.

The first plague in Exodus is when God turns the Nile – all the water – into blood. I think that’s because God thought that maybe, just maybe, blood is such a holy thing that it would stop Pharaoh. In the last plague, the death of the firstborn, supposedly the Angel of death would come around to each house and kill all the firstborn. But when the Angel saw the blood on doorposts and lintels, it said, “oops, God’s house; these people are protected.”

The fact that blood belongs to God shows up in the story of Cain and Abel. Cain kills his brother Abel, and when he talks to God, Cain lies and says that Abel is out picking berries or something, but God knows Cain is lying and says of Abel, “his bloods call out to me.” What does this mean? I think that this refers back to the rabbinic idea that blood is the soul that goes up to God. Likewise, Abel’s blood goes up to God, by crying out.

In the Joseph story, he is thrown into the pit by his brothers. Most of his brothers wanted to kill Joseph, but Reuven, the oldest, commanded in that older-sibling-way <throw a dirty look at Tina>, “Let’s not take his life. Shed no blood.” This tells us that Reuven thinks that blood is life, and even though he hates his brother and is jealous of his brother, he shouldn’t kill his brother.

In Lev 19:16 it says “lo ta’amod al dam re-echa.” This literally means “don’t stand  over the blood of your neighbor” but is translated in many different ways: “Don’t stand when your neighbor’s life is in danger” by Aryeh Kaplan in The Living Torah;  “Do not stand by blood of neighbor” by Everett Fox; “Don’t stand outside while mischief falls on your neighbor” in the Jerusalem Bible; “You shall not stand over blood” by Robert Alter; and “Do not profit by the blood of your neighbor” by Gunther Plaut. If you got confused by all those translations to sum it all up it means to not profit from your neighbor being killed (that’s for all mobsters), don’t let bad things happen to your neighbor while you’re nearby: do something if your neighbor is bleeding or in some other kind of trouble.

Neighbor isn’t only who you live right next to; it’s all the people around you.  But you’re also not exempt if you move to the middle of the Sahara desert! I think that this is to make people save each other. Now that is smart. Whoever wrote the Bible didn’t have to put in the specific word “blood”. I think they did because blood is important, and I think that people pay more attention to this law if it uses something so serious as blood. Blood is what connects us; we are responsible for watching the fire, and for watching each others’ lives. To not stand by while a neighbor is in trouble.

But blood and sacrifices and tapas is not what I came here to talk about. Making an effort to protect and preserve life is what I came to talk about. You all know what peace is, so I guess I don’t have to tell you about it. Now at this point you might be thinking, “what does a blood-and-killing parasha have to do with world peace?” Well there are two ways. One is the shalshelet. The shalshelet is a special trop that only appears four times in the whole torah.

It is in Tzav, in verse 8:23. It sounds like this: va-yish-cha-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-at. It also appears in the story of Lot, when he hesitated to leave Sodom; when Eliezar asks God for success in finding a wife for Isaac; and when Joseph refuses to have sex with his boss’s wife. (I guess she’s kinda hot, but he thinks he’d better not.) The point of the shalshelet is a sort of second-guessing, a way of asking “do-I-really-want-to-do-this?” Now the shalshelet goes over (and is chanted on) the word “slaughtered”. So it appears that even to get rid of sin, which is the worst thing, Moses still doesn’t want to kill. Moses wants to protect life. Remember that now.

People in biblical times would give sacrifices. If they did something bad they could say like, “Oh, I’ll just give another sacrifice tomorrow; whatever; I don’t care.” Even though blood is God’s, God doesn’t really want it. God wants peace. This is mentioned in Isaiah, Chapter One. God would rather you keep your blood and keep your sacrifice and not do bad things in the first place. Isaiah’s suggestion that we behave ties into Deuteronomy 30:19, which says to “choose life!”

Alright now you – and you’re not alone – think, “OK, he’s just talking about animals, not humans, and humans are more important.” But when torah says to “choose life” it tells us to protect life. These are words to live by, but do people actually actively look out and watch out for each others lives (like the eternal flame).

Soon you will hear the names of the men and women who have died. We read these names as a way of watching after and preserving people’s lives. Some of these people are U.S. soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq, but I think many of us don’t think about what this means. If everyone “chose life” like we’re commanded, we to wouldn’t have to hear about 18- or 19-year-olds dying because people would protect one another rather than kill one anther. There is no peace. It’s not that they didn’t “choose life;” it’s that death chose them. I think some people very high up, like our President, aren’t choosing life. And what about the Afghanis and Iraqis who choose life but are dying in this war, too?

Who really does live in peace? I think that too many people don’t chose to preserve life. Too much blood is spilled, taken from family and friends.

So peace is something we should try harder to achieve. We should stop spilling blood, and start choosing life, as we are commanded in the torah, and how God wants us to be.

Shabbat Shalom.

I would like to thank everyone who has helped me today:

§The Rabbi, for helping me write my drash.

§The Cantor, for making sure I was ready to sing today.

§A special thanks to Connie Heymann, who helped me a lot in the past weeks.

§My parents for helping me with whatever I needed.

§My tutor, Margot Fein, for teaching me everything about my torah portion and haftarah.

§George Robinson; Vanessa Rodriguez (the great); and Jen, my student teacher, who also helped me write and edit my speech.

§I would also like to thank all the “little people:” Katherine, Emily, Jeremy, Nicholas, Danny for helping me get through the stress of the weeks leading to my big day.

§And I would like to thank the bigger little people – namely my sister, Tina – for helping me with whatever I needed.