By Marco Del Monte
“This is the law for the burnt offering, for the meal offering, and for the sin offering, and for the trespass offering, and for the consecrations, and for the sacrifice of the peace offerings” (Lev 7:37). The Parashah describes the procedures for presenting sacrifices.
Since the Torah is an eternal text, one might wonder what the use could be today of studying this ritual, apart, of course, from liturgy and historical knowledge. Surely it could be useful in the future, when the Bet Hamikdash is rebuilt, but today, right now, what can we learn from this? It is written in Taanit 27b that Abraham addressed Hashem asking what to do in the event that the Bnei Israel sin. G-d replied: "It will be enough to present sacrifices." Abraham continued by asking: "Will this only be possible if there is the Bet Hamikdash, but when there is not, how will it be possible?" G-d answered Abraham: "I have given them the order of the offerings. When they read it, it will be as if they had sacrificed them before Me and I will forgive them for all their transgressions." It is written in Menachot 110a that anyone who engages in the study of sacrifices is as if, at that moment, they were bringing them upon the altar. This teaches us that it is enough to read a text to immediately become a protagonist of it: the verb קרא indeed means to read, to call, to evoke. Every sacred text is an endless story: as soon as one begins to read, one is immediately projected into the Bet Hamikdash, right next to the altar, sitting beside all the characters and the chachamim of history, to converse and study with them.
Shabbat Shalom Umevorach
Translated from the Italian with Google Gemini. The Italian text is the original.