Tzav - The Offerings of a Broken Heart

One particular text that I have wanted to spend more time with is Vayiqra Rabbah. It is, for the student of midrash, a fascinating work. Like all classical rabbinic midrashim of the amoraic (talmudic) period, it is a product of the sages of Eretz Yisrael. As a literary work, it tends to follow structures, and its contents are largely homiletical: one can imagine that its contents were originally sermons in ancient synagogues (unlike exegetical midrashim, which tend to interpret a specific verse or phrase ad seriatim.) It also takes the contents of a book that was no longer applicable to the day to day life of Jews in the post Temple era and derived lessons that were relevant to ongoing Jewish life.

(N.B. One often sees references to the Midrash Rabbah. There is no such thing as the Midrash Rabbah, and even though you may see books with that title, it does not really exist. It is the invention of publishers who thought that the diverse works with the name Rabbah were part of a unified whole, but they are distinct works that were compiled at different times by different editors following different rules of composition.)

זבחי אלקים רוח נשברה... תהילים נא19

אמר ר’ אבא בר יודן

כל מה שהפסיל בבהמה הכשיר באדם

מה פסל בבהמה? עורת או שבור... ויקרא כב:22

הכשיר באדם: לב שבור ונדכה אלקים לא תבזה תהילים נא: 19

אמר ר’ אלכסנדרי

ההדיוט הזה, אם משתמש בכלי שבור, גניי הוא לו

אבל הקב”ה, כל כלי תשמישיו שבורין הן

דכתיב: קרוב ה’ לנשברי לב שם, לד:19

הרופא לשבורי לב שם, קמז: 3

ואת דכא ושפל רוח להחיות רוח שפלים ולהחיות לב נדכאים. ישעי’נז:15

A broken spirit is a sacrifice to Hashem... (Ps 51:19)
Rabbi Abba bar Yudan said:
Whatever was disqualified from the animals (for the purpose of sacrifices) was permitted from man (in his service of Hashem).
What is disqualified among the animals? Anything blind or injured... (Lv 22:22) –
But is permissible among man: Hashem will not despise the broken and crushed heart. (Ps 51:19)
Rabbi Alexandrai said:
If the simple servant used a broken utensil, it would cause him insult,
But to Hashem, all the utensils who serve Him are imperfect,
As it says, Hashem is close to the broken hearted, (Ps 34:19)
It is He who heals the broken hearted, (Ps 147:3)
[He is] with the crushed and dispirited, to revive those of fallen spirit and to revitalize crushed hearts. (Is 57:15)

What are we to make of this statement? Here are a few thoughts.

As I mentioned, Vayiqra Rabbah takes a book that largely relates to the sacrificial service of the Beit Hamiqdash and deals with the reality of a time where such service is no longer tenable. This was a harsh reality in the first centuries following the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE; after all, the sacrifices were ordained by the Torah, Hashem’s word and expectations. For many, this reality was too hard to take, and this lead to a spiritual crisis. The brilliance of the sages of the centuries that followed is that they successfully enabled and empowered Jews to rebuild a spiritually meaningful existence based on personal and communal practice, and on the powerful element of hope. Jews may have despaired because they could not fulfill the mitzvot connected to sacrifice, depressed by their ritual imperfection. Rather than dwell on this imperfection, the sages pointed to verses like Hosea 14:3,  ונשלמה פרים שפתינו, our lips will compensate for bullocks, making prayer, the service of the heart, a powerful replacement for the sacrificial service.

But this homily goes a step further. In looking at the sacrifices, we see that they tended to be animals without blemish, examples of physical perfection. Yet, those of us who would offer sacrifices were anything but perfect. Despite our best efforts, imperfection is endemic to the human condition. In the end, the perfect gets offered as a sacrifice on the altar, burned to ashes, but we live on.

It matters not just in the way we look at ourselves, but also in the way we perceive those around us. Hashem accepts us as broken utensils, doing our best to fulfill His will in the best way that we can, as long as we make that effort and reach for the bar. We are often too willing to judge the actions or motivations of others, expecting them to live up to a standard that may work for ourselves, but the Ultimate Judge will make the final determination.

The lemma for this homily is from Psalm 51, a psalm attributed to David after he was confronted by Nathan after he acted on his lust for Batsheva (v. 2; see 2 Sam 11-12 for the story.) It is a powerful example, how the great king, progenitor of the dynasty from which the messiah will come, could despair his own failings and seek the compassion of a merciful God. This verse, זבחי אלקים רוח נשברה, לב שבור ונדכה אלקים לא תבזה, A broken spirit is a sacrifice to Hashem; Hashem will not despise the broken and crushed heart, has come to my attention several times in connection with Jewish prayer. Tanakh does not hide the failings of its heroes, and we can learn from them. But when we take an example like that of David, we can learn how we can turn those failings around, looking at our actions as offerings to Hashem in our efforts to make better of our imperfect selves. In our efforts to reach up to that bar that is always just above us, we bring ourselves that much closer to Hashem, and achieving that closeness is the ultimate meaning of קרבן - offering, approaching, coming nearer.