Longing for More
Words of Wisdom with Rabbi Efrat Zarren-Zohar
Photo by Geraud pfeiffer on Pexels.com
This week is Parashat Tetzaveh, which details the dress of the Kohanim / the priests and the aspects of the altar, on which the priests performed sacrifices.
This past week, I also taught an evening adult bat mitzvah class at Beth Torah Benny Rok Campus about Shabbat.
What to teach that wouldn’t be... routine, obvious, maybe boring, G!D forbid?
So I started by putting onto the classroom table my own challah board, knife, challah cover and some salt.
And I figured I would begin the whole lesson with a question that they might not know the answer to in order to capture their attention after a long day:
Why the salt? Why do we traditionally dip our bread into a bit of salt or sprinkle salt on the bread on Friday night?
Total quiet— I now had their attention, success!
To prompt their thinking, I asked another question:
What was the most holy meal one could eat in Biblical times?
The answer: A sacrificial meal, where the animal (or bird or grain) was brought to the Kohanim/ the priests in the Temple and offered to G!D as a form of worship, penitence or celebration.
Some of the offering might be burned on the altar, given to the Kohanim (since that was their food), and/or eaten by the individual making the sacrifice depending on the purpose of the offering.
But one thing all sacrifices and offerings had in common was: They were salted!
Even today, all kosher meat must be salted after slaughter in order to drain the blood, which was forbidden for the Israelites and later, Jews, to eat (Bereisheet/ Genesis 9:4) to teach respect for the sacredness of life, which was associated with the lifeblood flowing in all mammals.
So when we dip the bread into salt, we are effectively symbolically signaling that the bread is like a sacrifice of old.
And if that is so, then what is the table a symbol of?
The altar in the ancient Mishkan/ Tabernacle or the Jerusalem Temple where sacrifices were offered.
And if that is so, then who is the person holding the knife a symbol of?
The Kohein/ Priest whose job it was to properly conduct the sacrifices in ancient times.
And this also explains why we wash our hands ritually (i.e., with just water, no soap) before eating bread— because the ancient priests made sure to always wash their hands ritually before eating to ensure that they were pure, a custom which was then adopted later by non-priests.
Altogether what this indicates is that our own Shabbat table is akin to the Temple altar.
In fact, in the Book of Ezekial (41:22, 43:13, in this week’s haftarah) the altar is called both a “table” and an “altar.”
And that the one saying the blessing over the bread is akin to a Kohein/ priest.
And that we, those seated at the table, are akin to the worshippers in the ancient Temple seeking communion and connection with G!D.
And that makes our meal much more than a meal— it’s a sacred ritual, an act of Divine service!
Through symbol and sign, the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary.
That is what the rituals in religion seek to impart; that is the purpose of religion writ large.
Let me conclude this Dvar Torah by quoting Professor Huston Smith (z”l), author of the great work Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief, which was transformative to me when I read it:
“…the finitude of mundane existence cannot satisfy the human heart completely. Built into the human makeup is a longing for a ‘more’ that the world of everyday experience cannot requite. The outreach strongly suggests the existence of the something that life reaches for in the way that the wings of birds point to the reality of air… the reality that excites and fulfills the soul’s longing is God by whatsoever name… we do well to follow Rainer Maria Rilke’s suggestion that we think of God as a direction rather than an object.”
With this perspective, my hope is that your Shabbat this week be simply… more.
