This week, we begin the third book of the Pentateuch, Vayikra. In English this book was named Leviticus, following the name given to it by the rabbis, the “Torah of the Priests” (יםִנֲהֹת כַּרֹוּת). As such, much of Vayikra covers the work of the priests and Levites in the Tabernacle, focusing in detail on the different types of sacrifices and offerings. The Hebrew word for “sacrifice” (ןָּבְרָק) stems from the three-letter root קרב, whose different meanings we will explore in this week’s partzuf. But before we begin, we would like to explain the connection between the contents of the Torah’s third book—the rituals of the priests—and its name, Vayikra, meaning “He called out,” taken from its first word.
THE FOUNDATION OF JEWISH EDUCATION
According to Jewish custom, children begin learning the Torah in cheider from "Vayikra," when they start learning to read. The verb “to read” (אֹרְקִל) in Hebrew means both to call out and to read from a book. The connection between reading and calling out is learnt from the verse, “they are life to those who find them.”
We learn that it is possible to study Torah (to find) without speaking or reading out loud, but according to the interpretation of the sages, the verse means to say that, "they are life to those who recite them with their mouth.” In other words, to truly find Torah, one must read it out loud, uttering that which the eyes see while reading.
There is a connection between these two meanings, as the Alter Rebbe writes in Tanya that one who reads from the book is actually calling upon the Almighty to come to him. Hence the verse: “God is near to all who call out to Him, to all who sincerely calls out to Him” can be understood as referring to “calling out the truth,” i.e., reading the Torah out loud. By reading the Torah out loud, one calls upon God’s essence and being to come to us. This is the essential lesson to take from the first word of this week’s parashah and hence of the entire Book of Vayikra: God is near to all who call out to Him through their Torah learning.
TWO-LETTER ROOTS
The connection between calling out (אָרְקִּיַּו) and God being near (בֹרוָק) has some grammatical weight. The root of “calling out” is קרא; the root of “near” is קרב. In addition to the better known 3-letter roots, Hebrew grammar is based on two-letter roots as well. These are known as “gates” (יםִרָעְׁש), as we envision walking through a gate that has two doorposts and, on each doorpost, a Hebrew letter is engraved. Say, the letter on the right is a kuf (ק) and the letter on the left is a reish (ר). If we go through the doorpost in one direction we will read the gate, קר. Walking through it in the opposite direction, we will read the gate, רק. By adding non-consonant letters to the gate, we form the different roots.
The two roots, קרא and קרב share the common gate קר. Although the letter bet (ב) is a consonant and normally, would not be added to the gate קר to form “near” (קרב), but as we saw from the verse in Psalms, “God is near [בֹרוָק] to all who call out [ּהוֻאָרְקִי] to Him,” one who calls out to God (by reading the Torah), brings Him near.
GOD CALLS TO US TO DRAW NEAR
We see this connection between קרא and קרב even more pronounced here at the beginning of Vayikra. The first word stems from the root קרא, the second verse reads, “When a man among you brings an offering to God, from the livestock, from the cattle, and from the sheep, you shall bring your offering” (םָדָאןֹּצַן הִמּר וָקָּבַן הִה מָמֵהְּבַן הִי־הוה מַ לןָּבְרׇם קֶכִּ מיבִרְקַייִכּםֶכְנַּבְרׇת קֶ אּיבוִרְקַּת) and contains the root קרב four times! From one instance of calling out (קרא) come four instances of drawing near (קרב). This is a ratio of one to four which is significant since it is the ratio found in God’s essential Name Havayah, which is 1 word to 4 letters.
Chasidic writings, based on the holy Zohar, explain that making a sacrifice (or offering) to God draws all the powers and senses of the soul nearer or closer to the Divine.
The full process described by the first two verses is thus that drawing near from below begins with a call from above. First, God calls upon Moses—upon the aspect of Moses in every soul. This is known as an awakening from above (אָתּרוָעְתִא אָילֵעְלִּד) whose purpose is to make the soul seek to draw near to God from below, an awakening from below (אָּתַתְלִא דָתּרוָעְתִא).
This is the classic relationship between the masculine and feminine in the Torah’s inner dimension. In the Torah’s revealed dimension, the sages use a beautiful image to depict this same relationship: “for every drop that falls from above, two drops rise from below.” However, the ratio in this image is 2:1, whereas here, the ratio is doubled to 4:1—one call from above results in four measures of drawing near from below. The reason is that here, the Torah is referring to, "When a man brings from yourselves,” and “yourselves” (םֶכִּמ) is in the plural form, referring to both the Divine soul, which yearns to return to the Creator, and the animal soul, which has no such natural inclination. Both souls are captured in the verse’s wording, “a man,” refers to the Divine soul, and later in the verse, “from the cattle,” referring to the animal soul. It is very clear here that the Torah wants us to pay close attention to the connection between these two roots: “calling out” (קרא) and “drawing near” (קרב).
THE MEANINGS OF THE ROOT
The primary source for working with the meanings of a root is the Radak’s Sefer HaShorashim. There we find that he divides the root קרב into four “matters” (יםִנָיְנִע ), or meanings. We may add that the four instances of this root that appear in the second verse of our parashah, as noted earlier, allude to these four meanings.
NEARNESS AND SACRIFICE: THE SAME OR DISTINCT?
The first meaning is “nearness” (בּרוֵק). A related meaning is “a sacrifice” (ןָּבְרָק), as in our second verse. It is important to mention that according to the Torah’s inner dimension—Zohar and Chasidic teachings—“sacrifice” is also analyzed to stem from nearness. However, according to the plain analysis, the peshat of the Torah’s text, nearness and sacrifice are two different matters. Accordingly, there is an even greater stress on the understanding that, ""When a man brings from yourselves” (םֶכִּ מיבִרְקַייִם כָּדָא) involves self-sacrifice. Connecting the two meanings together, as stated earlier: to draw near to God, one must be willing to sacrifice.
Another word about קרב as sacrifice: We begin a child’s education in the cheider with Vayikra. The Hebrew word for “cheider” (רֶדֶח), which means schoolhouse, stems from the root meaning to ingrain (ירִּדְחַהְל) because the first thing that needs to be ingrained in a child is sacrifice. A Jew must be willing to sacrifice his comfort and his possessions for the sake of God and for the sake of the Jewish people.
This brings us to how these first two meanings of קרב—sacrifice and nearness—are related. Sacrifice (ןָּבְרָק ) is a spiritual movement of “run” (ratzo) while “nearness” (הָבְרִק) is its complementary movement of “return” (shov). It is the highest sense of pleasure to feel close to God. Yet, the need to offer myself to God is the direct opposite from tending to myself. It requires me to completely leave myself, to sacrifice and nullify my own sense of self. When I “run” in this way towards God, God responds in kind (“As water reflects the face to face”) and He too draws near to me and illuminates me, in a movement of “return.” Given that nearness is usually understood as gratifying, it is quite an innovation that it is attained through self-sacrifice. We have said this just to emphasize that closeness and offering are not the same thing according to the Radak and the Torah’s plain meaning.
CONFLICT AND INTERIOR
What are the two other matters, or meanings included in the root קרב? The one is conflict or battle (בָרְק) and the other is interior (בֶרֶק). As “interior,” we find this root used in the verse “And his interior and his legs, he shall wash in water” (םִיָּמַּץ בַחְרִיו יָעָרְכּ וֹוּבְרִקְו). This is the last of the 9 instances of this root’s appearance in the first parshiyah (paragraph) of our parashah.
There can be a great war, and a private confrontation within it is krav – this is how it's understood in Hebrew. This is unlike the Targum language, where the translation for war is krava. This means that krav is not only a private battle, but the entirety of the war itself is krav.
THE PARTZUF OF MEANINGS
Now that we have the four meanings of the root קרב, we need to organize them into a partzuf.
We might think that since we have four elements, we should correspond them to the four letters of Havayah. However, as we will now see, these four meanings create a sort of circular pattern starting with the crown. From the crown they continue to wisdom, to knowledge (da’at), and finally to understanding. Like in many other instances, knowledge here encompasses all six emotions of the heart.
Sacrifice we will place in the crown. Thus, "a person who brings from yourselves a sacrifice to God" corresponds to the crown.
Nearness in Kabbalah is associated with the way in which God’s infinite revelation (ףֹין סוֵר אֹאו) is enclothed in the sefirah of wisdom. There is an aspect of this in the crown as well (recall that the Torah’s inner dimension views sacrifice and nearness as belonging to the same meaning), but with relative to the rest of the sefirot, beginning with understanding, it is wisdom that is singled out for this description of being near. Regarding the crown, another description—“very near”—is generally used. In any case, we correspond nearness with wisdom.
The meaning of the root קרב as battle or conflict refers to the struggle, we all have against the yetzer—the evil inclination. All the conflicts in our lives as individuals and all the wars conducted in the world are because of the 7 kings of Edom, the Kings of Tohu, who ruled and died. As we saw in a previous issue (Wonders, issue 144) the root of all the kings and hence all types of conflict is in the sefirah of knowledge (da’at). The types of conflicts themselves can be corresponded to the emotional realm—the six sefirot that are ruled by knowledge. The value of “knowledge” (תַעָּד) is 6 times the value of “opinion” (הָעֵּד), and hence we can view all wars as wars between differing opinions.
Finally, קרב as interior corresponds to the sefirah of understanding, which is also known as the mother principle (אּמִא). Indeed, many times, when the “innards” (קרב) are referred to, the reference is to the womb. It even says that our matriarch Rebbecah’s name (הָקְבִר) derives from a combination of the letters for “her innards” (הָבְרִק). An important principle in the Arizal’s Kabbalah and in Chasidut is that “inner” dimensions, refers to the mother principle. For example, in Psalms a person praying deeply is described as having reached “the innards of man and a deep heart” (קֹמָב עֵלְ וׁישִב אֶרֶק), since the heart is associated with understanding, “understanding is the heart” (אּבִה לָינִּב).
To summarize:
- crown-keter רֶתֶּכ sacrifice ןָּבְרָק
- wisdom-chochmah הָמְכָח nearness בּרוֵק
- understanding-binah הָינִּב interior בֶרֶק
- knowledge-da’at תַעָּד battle/conflict בָרְק
(based on a class given on the 25th of Adar, 5772)
