The opening word of Sefer Vayikra—“Vayikra el Moshe”—is deceptively gentle. God calls out to Moses. But what follows is not gentle at all. It is a world of blood, fire, skin, sinew. A world in which holiness is not abstract, but visceral. A world in which closeness—to God, to responsibility, to consequence—demands something real.

The Hebrew word for sacrifice, korban, comes from the root ק.ר.ב.—to draw near. Sacrifice is not about loss; it is about proximity.

And that is the uncomfortable truth that Vayikra insists upon: what is closest to us is what demands the greatest response.

The Geography of War: Far Away vs. Close to Home

We are living in a moment where war exists on two planes.

There is the distant war—strategic, aerial, technological. The kind of war waged against Iran: long-range strikes, intelligence operations, drones, missiles. It is war that happens over there. It is discussed in terms of supply chains, oil prices, geopolitical balance.

And then there is the war that is close.

Israel’s confrontation with Hezbollah is not fought at a distance. It is fought in proximity—house to house, tunnel to tunnel, hill to hill. It is guerrilla warfare. It requires soldiers on foot. It requires risk that cannot be outsourced to machines or mediated through screens.

There is no promise of “no boots on the ground” when the ground itself is your home.

And here in America, we are beginning—however faintly, however tragically—to taste what it means for violence to feel closer. The horrors at a university like Old Dominion, the attack at Temple Sinai in Michigan—these are not battlefields, but they shatter the illusion that danger is always somewhere else.

Vayikra asks: what changes when the violence is no longer abstract, but near?

Korban: The Theology of Closeness

The Sforno (Ovadia Sforno) teaches that a korban is not meant to appease God, but to awaken the human being. The offering is a mirror. What is done to the animal should, in truth, be felt by the person bringing it.

But here lies a troubling insight: the one who brings the offering does not perform the slaughter themselves. The........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)