Parshat Vayikra 5786 |
This week’s Parsha is Parshat Vayikra. It starts out with וַיִּקְרָ֖א אֶל־מֹשֶׁ֑ה-And He called to Moshe.
Its appearance in a Sefer Torah at the beginning of Vayikra (the “small aleph”) is almost invisible. Do not expect – the Torah is intimating – that the presence of G-d in history will always be as clear and unambiguous as it was during Yetziat Mitzrayim and the division of the Yam Suf. For much of the time it will depend on your own sensitivity. For those who look, it will be visible. For those who listen, it can be heard. But first you have to look and listen. If you choose not to see or hear, then Vayikra will become vayikar. The call will be inaudible. History will seem mere chance.
There is nothing incoherent about such an idea. Those who believe it will have much to justify. Indeed, says G-d in the tochachah: if you believe that history is chance, then it will become so. But in truth it is not so. The history of the Jewish people – as even non-Jews such as Pascal, Rousseau, and Tolstoy eloquently stated – testifies to the presence of G-d in their midst. Only thus could such a small, vulnerable, relatively powerless people survive, and still say today – after the Holocaust – Am Yisrael Chai, the Jewish people lives. And just as Jewish history is not mere chance, so it is no mere coincidence that the first word of the central book of the Torah is Vayikra, “And He called”.
To be a Jew is to believe that what happens to us as a people is G-d’s call to us – to become ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש-a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.
This Dvar Torah was based on a Dvar Torah by Rabbi Sacks Zt”l and it can be read in its entirety at https://rabbisacks.org/covenant-conversation/vayikra/between-destiny-and-chance/