One verse, five voices. Edited by Nina Litvak and Salvador Litvak, the Accidental Talmudist
“It is an eternal rule
for all your generations,
in all your habitations:
you must consume neither any fat nor any blood.”
– Lev. 3:17
Batsheva Frankel
Educational Consultant, Educator, Author, Podcaster
I have three reasons why I find parsha Vayikra challenging to read and not personally relevant. First, as an extremely squeamish person, there are loads of gory details about slaughtering and offering sacrifices. Second, while it’s easy to appreciate a good Peace Offering, I don’t feel that the Sin Offerings really apply to me since I ”never” do anything wrong. Okay, maybe “never” is an overstatement. Lastly, we don’t have the Holy Temple now. So how can we even perform these ancient rituals? What in this parsha is relatable?
Actually, G-d gives us the answer. Chizkuni, a 13th-century commentator, says that the Torah added “throughout your generations” to let us know that we can still connect to the Divine even if the Temple isn’t currently functioning. He states that “in all your habitations” means that even here in Los Angeles (although he doesn’t specifically mention LA), I can grow more in my spirituality. All this just for remembering to “consume neither any fat nor any blood”!
The Torah tells us that blood represents the life/soul of an animal, so various commentators give us deeply spiritual reasons why it forbids its consumption. And fat? Specifically the forbidden kind known as cheilev? Well, Maimonides tells us it’s unhealthy, therefore, we don’t consume it. Ultimately, we don’t know the reasons why refraining from these two things connects us to G-d. It’s considered a chok, a rule that transcends rational explanation. And for me, that’s what makes it special.
Rabbi Aryeh Markman
Executive Director: Aish LA and the Jerusalem American Summit
The party is over. For the first two books of the Torah, Genesis and Exodus, it has been an exciting narrative and when we did hit some rules, they were ideas we could relate to. Now we begin Leviticus (Vayikra in Hebrew) and we are introduced to esoteric laws instructing us how to be holy. This is a realm we are completely unfamiliar with in our distracted routine of making a living and pursuing our happiness, and we have no choice but to take the Torah’s word for it. If you believe in Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and leaving Egypt, then this is part of the package.
The verse seems incongruent. For the first three chapters of Leviticus, we have been learning about sacrifices in the Temple. Suddenly the Torah diverges and we are told that wherever we find ourselves in life, not to eat blood or animal fat from a kosher animal. We must drain the blood from slaughtered animals by salting the meat or roasting the liver, and we can’t use lard to grease our baking pans. But what if I like juicy steaks and my muffins to not stick? Yes, but these products have us ingesting the animal’s nature. We are what we eat. The Torah must stop in the middle of its ritual instructions that are relegated to the eventual Jerusalem Temple to warn us to stay away from these items or we will not achieve our potential. And that is holiness.
Rabbi Elliot Dorff, Ph.D.
Professor of Philosophy, American Jewish University
The Torah’s ban against consuming blood is asserted not only here, but in many other places (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 17:11-14; 19:26; Deut. 12:16, 23). In several of those the rationale for the prohibition is that “the blood is the life” of the animal. So even if we are permitted to eat meat, we must remove its blood to honor the life of the animal that we have taken and, in turn, make ourselves as little like cannibals as possible. That blood is the sign of animal and human life makes sense, for it is the part of the body that moves most within the body, and animal life is distinguished from plant life and inanimate objects by the power to move.
That said, this prohibition does not prohibit the use of blood for transfusions. Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that it does, but transfusing blood into a person is not the same process as eating it. Furthermore, transfusions save lives, and so every adult who can do so should donate blood four or five times a year (or platelets for cancer patients). I am not telling you to do what I do not: I just donated my 78th pint of blood to Cedars-Sinai. The snacks and theater tickets they give you are fine, but even for queasy people like me, helping another person live is really meaningful.
Rabbi Janet Madden
Malibu Jewish Center & Synagogue
It is not difficult to understand why the sefer that calls us to cultivate holiness in our lives proscribes consuming blood “in all your moshavs” and “in all your generations.” Blood is the physical reminder of the soul, symbol of the life force — Torah teaches “the life of the flesh is in the blood.” Blood, inherently sacred, is employed in rituals of atonement. Therefore, eating blood is both a violation of the sacredness of life and a taking of that which belongs to the Divine. It may be more challenging to understand the prohibition against consuming cheilev — fat, specifically, suet — throughout time and space. A protective hard fat surrounding the kidneys and loins of beef and mutton, suet, like blood, sustains and protects life. Flavorful and high-energy-giving, fat is also designated for holy purpose, a way of effecting korban through offering something essential to life.
In the aftermath of animal sacrifice, “blood and fat” continues to serve as the dual symbol of offering the best to the Divine and image of korban in Jewish literature and liturgy. Judah Abravanel uses the phrase “blood and fat in suffering” in his anguished 1503 “Poem to His Son.” Lecha Eli Teshukati, Ibn Ezra’s piyyut that initiates the Sephardic Yom Kippur liturgy, expresses the human longing for Divine connection in a long series of statements that serve as heartfelt verbal korbanot. Among its deeply personal expressions of gratitude and penitence we find its reference to our parsha: “my heart, blood, and fat are Yours.”
David Porush
Writer, teacher, student at davidporush.com
Trader Joe’s carries some really juicy kosher ribeye. After barbecuing it, I drain the red juice and leave the fat on my plate. Not out of observance of the injunctions in this verse, but because I never liked this part of meat. Yet, it called my attention to how unnecessarily insistent this verse is.
Look at the redundancies that give this verse mysterious force. It’s completely overdetermined. First: “It’s a statute forever. Then: “in all your generations.” And: “Wherever you live.” Finally: It’s a chok, something that cannot be completely parsed by reason.
So what’s going on?
There are layers of Kabalistic and halachic explanations. But beyond these, the verse has foresight, a prophecy repeated throughout the Torah anticipating when Jews will be scattered and exiled from the Holy Land.
What will bind them together? This verse formulates the phenomenon that’s coming into play today. First it binds us to observe entailments of a ritual sacrifice performed in the Temple even after it was destroyed. We are held in suspense between nostalgia for and continuous aspiration for the Temple. And it binds us as a people in the Diaspora wherever we live to each other and to Israel.
Trace the ligatures back to this ineffable commandment and you find the source, the supernal source, of the shared fretful pain, resilience and support that is ensuring our survival after Oct. 7, 2023.
