This year, Purim is literally on the heals of shabbat.  As shabbat goes out, we find ourselves reading and listening to the Scroll of Esther being read.  An interesting point about the Scroll of Esther is that you can also translate the Hebrew, Megilat Esther, to mean:  revealing the hidden.

Tzav is the command form of the verb to command, and our parsha (weekly Torah portion) begins with god telling Moshe (Moses) to command Aharon and his sons in regards to the Olah (commonly translated as burnt offering, but really means to go up.  The whole sacrifice is burnt and hence goes up to haShem (god) ).  The first thing they need to know is how to keep the fire that burns all night on the altar.  Next, we read the instructions given to the priests regarding a meal offering.  Moshe then tells Aaron and his sons how to handle a sin offering, and then they are told how to deal with a guilt offering.  After the instructions regarding a guilt offering, Aharon and his sons are instructed regarding a Shlamim (peace/wholeness) offering.  At the end of these instructions, we are given a list of things that will cause a person’s soul to be cut off from its people.  After this interlude, the Torah provides some more information regarding the Shlamim offering.

Now that we have covered the sacrifices in all their glory and detail, the Torah tells us about the actual initiation ritual that Aharon and his sons go thru in order to become cohanim or priests.  It is a fascinating read as it includes everything we have been reading the past few weeks, and shows how all the seemingly abstract rules regarding things like sacrifices, and how things get sanctified, are applied in a real world situation.  I am not including a summary of it here because that will put it back in the abstract which kind of defeats the feeling of application.

Instead, I think I will share with you my thoughts on a couple of words that show up in this parsha.  The words are:  mokdah/tukad (which are just different conjugations of the same verb), neechoach, and kofer.

The first word shows up in reference to the eternal flame that burns on the altar.  Indeed, I have seen mokdah translated as flame and tukad translated as burn.

However, when I looked up the verb in the dictionary, I found that it means to focus or center.  Using this meaning, the fire on the altar now becomes the main focus of the priests.

When you make something your main focus, then you are always aware of it.  So, if the fire is the main focus of the priests, they will never let it go out.  The question that now comes up is why should the fire on the altar be the main focus of the priests?  To answer this question, we need to look at our second word: neechoach.

Neechoach means pleasant and the first time we see it in our parsha is in reference to putting a portion of a meal offering on the fire which creates a pleasant aroma.

I seem to recall seeing this word neechoach used somewhere else.  If I recall correctly, it was used by haShem when he told Moshe that the people had made a golden calf.  I am back in the book of Shmot (Exodus) in parsha Key Tisa, verse 32:10.  In this verse god says to Moshe, “Now calm me and my anger in them…”  The Hebrew word for the verb to calm is hanichah.

Now, I hear you starting to say that this word, hanichah, and the word from our parsha, neechoach, are two totally different words.  So, before I continue, let me explain how I am bringing these two words together.

In Hebrew, most verbs are based on three letters.  Some verbs, however have only two letters.  Hanichah, for example, has as its root the letters nun and chet.

Now, it is not unusual in Hebrew, when you have a verb with only two letters in its root, for the second letter to be doubled to give the verb three letters.  If we do this with hanichah, we would have as its root letters are nun, chet, and chet.  And this is precisely the same root as our word neechoach.  Putting this back into our parsha, we can see we are not talking about just a pleasant aroma, but an aroma that also has the ability to calm.

The next question is who are we trying to calm?  The answer to this is haShem.  The question is why does haShem need to be calmed?

If we go back to the previous week’s parsha, we see that an Olah offering provides a pleasant aroma and is also used to provide atonement.  In our parsha, we also find a sacrifice that leads to atonement:  a sin offering (verse 6:23).  A few verses later, we also are told that the same law applies to a guilt offering as well as a sin offering and that a priest atones with it.

The word for atone is kofer, which is the third word I wanted to talk about, btw.  🙂

This last bit seems a little strange.  Why would a priest need the help of a sacrifice to atone for somebody?  Even more fundamental, why would a person need a priest to be atoned?  Shouldn’t this be strictly a matter between god and the person?  Why do we need a middle man like a priest?

To answer this I need to give you one more definition.  The word kofer, while it means to atone, also means deny or disbelief.  So, to answer the last couple of questions we need to see how atonement equates to disbelief or to deny something.  Well, here we go.

What is the process of atonement?  First, a person does something contrary to what haShem desires.  The biggest example we have of this is the golden calf.  When a person goes against haShem, she gets angry.  We see haShem tell Moshe as much.

God then asked Moshe to calm him down.  Now, most of our sins are not as big as the golden calf, and we don’t have Moshe to intercede for us face to face.  Instead, what we have is our sacrifice which is put onto the fire of the altar… the same fire that the priests are constantly focusing on.

Now the sacrifice can provide a pleasant aroma for haShem, if the person is sincere in bringing that sacrifice.  However, to calm down haShem’s anger requires a concentrated focus on the fire to turn that pleasant aroma into a calming one.

This is why we need the priests, and the priests need to constantly be focused on the fire.

The average person has too many other things going on to always be focused on a fire.  The priests, on the other hand, well, that is their job.

As haShem becomes calm, the priests use the sacrifice to deny, to help haShem to disbelieve that the person acted against haShem’s wishes.  If the priests are successful, haShem will deny that any sin has been done and we have atonement.

Is there a way to apply these concepts today?  There must be, but I don’t have any idea on how to do it.  If one of you comes up with something, don’t hesitate to let me, and/or the rest of the group know.  You can do this by writing a comment below.

Before I go, I want to wish you-all the most amazing Purim, one that really allows you to catch a glimpse of how everything is for the good.  Until next time.

If you care to read what I wrote about this parsha last year, click here.

About the Author

Shmuel Shalom Cohen spent 10 years studying Torah in Jerusalem. Six years ago, he started Conscious Torah to help Jews connect to their tradition in ways they didn’t think possible. Shmuel also started, and is the executive directory of Jewish Events Willamette-valley, a non-profit whose mission is to build Jewish community, pride, and learning. In his free time, Shmuel likes walks in nature, playing music, writing poetry, and time with good friends.