vayikra: the three-fold cord
sholem aleichem friends,
my apologies for the lengthy absence -- i caught covid shortly after my last newsletter, and it has been a long slog to recover both from covid and the ancillary flares it caused.
i'm still not quite at a place to be doing much longform writing outside of work. so while i promise i will, gd willing!, finish yehoshua, it won't happen for a little while.
in the meantime, we're starting vayikra/leviticus this week.
so welcome to the new short(er)form etz hi format: exactly one word from each parsha.
this week's word has to be ויקרא/vayikra, the hebrew name of leviticus.
vayikra means "he called" -- in context, hashem is calling to moshe. but the root קרא also means "to recite", and comes to refer to the tanakh. for example, in mishnah kiddushin we read:
כָּל שֶׁיֶּשְׁנוֹ בַמִּקְרָא וּבַמִּשְׁנָה וּבְדֶרֶךְ אֶרֶץ, לֹא בִמְהֵרָה הוּא חוֹטֵא
anyone who exists within mikra (tanakh), and mishnah (the mishnah/oral torah), and derekh eretz ("path of the earth") will not quickly/easily miss the mark [sin]
but i think there's some value in living inside these words a little more (can you tell i studied this text at svara?), because this gives us three "levels":
mikra, as we've seen, comes from the root "to recite"
mishnah comes from the root שני: to repeat. but not repeat exactly! it also means "to change, to be different" -- שני is the root of nishtana from "ma nishtana halailah hazeh - what makes this night different from all other nights". what makes our repetition of the tradition different from those that came before?
derekh eretz, the path of the earth, we can understand as simply the way we act in the world. jastrow claims -- somewhat controversially -- that the root of ארץ is רץץ, to press down. if we accept this, we can also think of derekh eretz as the path we create by walking -- not the path ready-made before us, but one we have to press down ourselves.
so to summarize, our three levels are: - receiving/reciting our tradition - repeating it and altering it for our times - acting in the world, in a way that is mindful of the paths we create through our walking, the ways we press down or impact the world around us
and the mishnah is saying that these three things combined are what help us avoid missing the mark -- or at least make us slower to miss the mark (given that missing the mark is inevitable).
and the mishnah cites koheles to support this claim: "a three-fold cord is not quickly/easily broken".
so we need all three of these, braided together. it isn't enough to receive/recite the tradition, only. it isn't enough to only alter the tradition. and it isn't enough to just act in the world, separate from active engagement with the teaching of our ancestors.
this teaching is hidden within the word ויקרא itself. b'gematria, vayikra is equivalent to החדש: "the new". the secret of our tradition is that it is both old and new, repeated and different, a path for us and a path we create.
החדש, of course, also means "the month", and tonight is erev rosh chodesh nisan.
may it be a month of
life and peace,
gladness and joy,
salvation and consolation
for us, for all Yisrael, and for all the world.
git khoydesh,
ada