What are we doing here?  It is Sunday afternoon.  We all have a lot of things going on today, and yet, we are here.  But what are we doing here?  Is it for prayer, for worship, to support a colleague, to check in with God before the day continues?  What is the reason we are here?

This week, in Parshat Va’yikra, we learn about why we could be here, we learn about the Korban –the sacrifice, and after all the Mincha Service is a direct relation to the afternoon sacrifice in Temple times.  We learn how to slaughter an animal, and what percentage is to be eaten and what percentage is “for God”.  We are taught about sin offerings, guilt offerings, priestly offerings, each one explained in great detail of why it needs to be performed, and what type of animal is needed.  We are to take ritually slaughtered animals, place them on hot coals, add some incense – some frankincense, some other aromatics – allow for smoke to billow upwards…let it simmer and then eat.  This according to the torah is worship.  This sounds a lot more like a barbeque.  Based on these instructions, rather than sitting here in the Murstein Synagogue, we should be in the Gan with some burgers and dogs – letting smoke rise to heaven, roasting our ritually slaughtered kosher meat and eating what is not “going up to God”. 

So, again, what are we doing here?  There are no burgers, there are no hot dogs, there is no smoke billowing up to heaven.  If this is how we are told to pray in the Torah, is it possible that somewhere along the way, we forgot how to pray?  Is it possible that over time, Judaism evolved so far away from the Korban we are told about in this Parsha, that in order to worship, we sit in a stuffy sanctuary, and in order to get tender, ritually slaughtered meat we go to Norman’s?  Perhaps, though, there is something more here.

            Korban does not exactly mean sacrifice.  It comes from the root  R – C –E , meaning “to draw near”.  God sets forth these rules for us on how to perform the KORBAN, to “draw near”, while explicitly telling us how to perform a sacrifice.  The essence of the message seems to be for us to draw closer to God through worship.  The Korban is our way of showing devotion to God by L’KAREV (drawing near), and the actual lesson of the Parsha is how to do this – by performing a sacrifice.

However, Maimonides says that the lesson of the Korban is drawing near, and that the instructions of how to perform the sacrifice are only early means of worship so that the Jewish people would learn how to better serve God.  Simply because the Israelites in the wilderness would not have been able to comprehend non-sacrificial worship, and Torah was given at their level.  Maimonides goes even further saying that “the Sacrificial Service is not the primary objective of the commandments, rather Prayer is the better means of obtaining nearness to God.” 

            Mainstream Rabbinic Tradition did not really accept this view.  To them, the sacrifice is the way we are told to pray in the Torah, and since we do not have a temple to perform it in, something needed to be created to accommodate this.  As a result, the Rabbis created the Seder Korbanot.  It functions as an amalgamation of the idea of prayer being important, and their idea that the study of the Korban is equal to the performance of the Korban itself.  The Seder Korbanot functions as a means of metaphorically realizing the Korban, but also draws the people who recite it closer to the rebuilding of the Temple and the “original” way of worship.  Seder Korbanot functions on both levels of the meaning of the word KORBAN; it remembers the actual sacrifice, and draws people who recite it, nearer to the time of “restoration” of the sacrifice. 

            Maimonides does not agree with this.  The Reform liturgists do not agree with this either.  But, KORBAN does means both sacrifice and drawing near.  This is not an etymological coincidence either.  The traditional Seder Korbanot accounts for both of these meanings and some of the laws that we are commanded to perform in this week’s Parsha, but if we, as Reform Jews, do not accept this tradition, what do we do instead?  According to Torah, this is the way we worship.  Unless, our setting aside a time for prayer is our sacrifice, which in turn allows us to draw near to God? 

            Let’s take a journey back to Genesis for a minute; to one of the first times we encounter the Korban in Torah.  In Genesis 15, God makes two promises to Abraham.  First, God tells Abraham that he will have a son, and Abraham believes what God says.  But second, God tells Abraham that his descendents will inherit the land that has been promised to him, and Abraham questions the promise.  This questioning, immediately after he says he fully believes, has nothing to do with Abraham’s lack of belief in God, rather he wants to know, “how will my descendents know of this promise?”  So Abraham asks God for a sign, a very fair request.  And God agrees and tells Abraham to take birds and oxen and other animals and offer them up as a Korban.  By performing this Korban, Abraham is showing his belief in God and God will in turn keep the promise and make sure the Israelites will know what land is theirs and know about the covenant of their ancestors realized through the Korban of Abraham.  

            Now let us go back to Parshat Va’yikra.  The Parsha commences with the verse,

Vayikra el Moshe V’daber hashem ay’lav mo’el mo’ade La’more”.  (:r«œnt‡k s¼‡gIn k¤v«Ët¥n uhºŠk¥t ¿v²Iv±h rʇC©s±h³u v·¤J«n›k¤t t¼¨r§e°H³u)“ Vayikra el Moshe, not “Vayomer Adonai el Moshe La’more”, a break in the pattern.  God called to Moses and THEN told him to do something.  Wait a minute…Why did God need to call to Moses, wasn’t Moses right there the whole time?  Wasn’t Moses paying attention to God’s instructions?  Some commentators say that Moses was too humble to enter into the Tent of Meeting, and in order to get Moses to enter the tent, God had to call to him.  But there has to be something deeper to this simple word.  This is only the second time God called to Moses.  And the first time was right before we received the Ten Commandments.  So right now, God must have had something really important to tell us, otherwise he would have just “said to Moses”.          

Prior to this God was angry about the whole Golden Calf incident, but if you remember, God’s mind then changed about unleashing destruction.  Maybe God’s mind changed when he remembered the covenant with Abraham and the Korban Abraham performed?  Maybe God’s mind changed when he realized that he had not “shown them the land that was promised to Abraham”.  Maybe God now remembers the deal.   In Exodus 32:13, Moses says to God “Remember your Servants, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  You swore to them…and declared that You would make their descendents as numerous as the stars in the sky, giving their descendents the land You promised.”  It is only after Moses reminds God of this, that God relents.  God remembers the deal.

God called Moses to perform the Korban as a sign of our inheritance, just as Abraham performed the Korban to create a sign that would ensure we would know of our inheritance.  This Korban is our direct link to the covenant forged by Abraham and continued through our Matriarchs and Patriarchs.  God did have something really important to tell us.  It was about the covenant.  When God first called Moses, we were revealed the Ten Commandments, our new contract.  When God next (and, incidentally last) called Moses, we were revealed the Korban, the link to the covenant of our ancestors.

While the literal Korban is described in great detail as a sacrifice, it functioned as the first way for the Israelites to worship and serve God.  These instructions serve as the most basic way we can worship, but the essential nature of KORBAN, is its root, to Draw Near.  Time has evolved our tradition from a sacrificial offering to the countless ways we access prayer, while the essence remains the same.  God called Moses to teach us Korban.  To teach us to serve God.  To teach us to draw near to God and to each other.

God called to Abraham to perform Korban as a sign of the covenant, and Abraham did.  God called to Moses to teach the Israelites to perform the Korban to remember the covenant, and Moses did.  What if God called Moses to perform the Korban so we would each have our own way of renewing the covenant of our ancestors each day?

Now ask yourself why we are here?  We are setting time aside for prayer.  We are sacrificing the precious time in our day in order to draw near to God.  We are here to perform our own Korban.  We are here to draw near.  That is why God called to Moses, to teach us how to renew our own covenant with the divine.  And the beauty is, we can do it anytime we want…and we should.  That is why we are here.