Rabbi Sara led our discussion last time. She explained to us what she finds compelling about Leviticus that leads her to consider it her favorite book of Torah. The practices in Leviticus, she proffered, are a way of making the emotional physical. They take emotions we have about something we have done that is wrong, or our spiritual reactions to such a wrong, and make them into a physical practice.

For example, I imagine she means, when a bull is sacrificed due to a sin, whether intentional or not, the sacrifice is a physical action on a physical, real animal, with all the blood that purifies the altar, and the physicality of the big bull that is given up, either by being burned up or by being parceled out to the priests. I’m sure R. Sara has a lot more to say about this in what follows. This is a contrasting idea than Marx’s idea, that Chris brought up, that religion is the opiate of the masses.

Shay reminded us of the idea that Judaism is about what you do, not just what you think or feel—as in the phrase, we will do and we will hear. If you sin a certain way, you do something, namely, you bring an asham sacrifice.

In 5:15, R. Sara pointed out that the verse could mean, if you sin through error of the things set apart for God, rather than, if you sin through error regarding the holy things of God. Kadosh can mean set apart as well as holy.

Following the idea of physical rituals, we had a long discussion of rituals that work. The rituals are a smorgasbord, R. Sara said. We pick from them the ones that work. She asked us if we do tachanun. No one even knew what it was. (Tachanun is a confession of sins, followed by recitation of God’s 13 attributes of mercy and a lowering of the head, and, finally, a short version of Avinu Malkeinu.) We haven’t been picking it recently. I mentioned Daniel Matt saying that, when he prays, he selects out a few phrases in the service to focus on each time (rather than trying to focus on all of it).

We discussed a lot more than this but I was super jetlagged and missed a lot of it.