There are biblical stories that resonate with clarity and urgency, that guide and inspire us, that lay in the sod of our souls the foundations of morality and lovingkindness. This week’s parasha is not one of them.
Reading the Torah this week, we get little but the rules of ritual. God commands Moses to install Aaron and his sons as priests, and he then embarks on a long and exacting speech concerning the various sorts of offerings, the veins of fat and the feeding times, all the other strictures of sacrifice. We, a millennium removed from ritualistic slaughter, are left to wonder what might be relevant about this cornucopia of commandments and prohibitions; the closest most of us come to animal sacrifice, after all, is playing Angry Birds.