"It's hard to do the laws of Leviticus in modern times"

Bailey Leonard-Fritzmeier made these good points on the Leviticus readings in her post of 9/15/05 here:
"This kind of sums up the whole idea that each law may seem really specific but its really telling us a general idea or moral. It seems that the detailed laws that the texts of Genesis and Leviticus share with us are meant to be interpreted by the readers and the general idea of them is meant to be expressed in some way. One can still express the emotions and connections these laws represent without following each one exactly, which would be hard to do in modern times."

Here's my take on what she said. It's as if the interplay between specific laws and general moral principles that you observed in the text sets up a "space" for interpretation. But there are two ways to take your point that these laws would be "hard to do in modern times."

(1) It could be that it's hard today because it's inconvenient or burdensome, or even not quite in keeping with our moral or aesthetic tastes. But even then, ancient Israelites might have found these laws hard to keep for the same reasons.

(2) It could be hard because we no longer have the institutions in which we're supposed to perform the sacrifices - no Temple, no hereditary priesthood that remembers exactly how to perform the sacrifices; these were pretty much destroyed and lost in the wars with the Romans in the 1st-2nd century CE. Yet the rabbis who survived the destruction of Jerusalem and and the exile from there still felt obligated to do the "commandments of God," so they were in quandary. But not all modern Jews feel obligated in that way.

Most modern Jews, confronted with the difficulty of doing these commandments would say (and have said), it's my choice; I don't really have to do them, so I just won't do the ones that seem hard, pointless, or impossible to do.

But others, like the rabbis after the destruction of the Temple, would say, I still have to do them, or God still wants me to do them, so I need to find a to do these commandments in a new, different way that still sticks to the word of God, but takes into account the new situation I'm in, and the fact that I don't have the Temple, priests, and other institutions needed to do them.

In this case, interpretation is not just an option; it's a necessity! That "space" for interpretation between the specific rules and their more general moral/ethical purposes starts to look really good; it becomes increasingly, crucially important.

This is what is later called "midrash" (what we'll be studying next ) - the quintessentially Jewish way of interpreting Torah - both its laws and its narratives. But it seems that this need, this place for midrash (a later historical innovation of the rabbis) was already "built in" to the Biblical text. That's the phenomenon I think you discovered in these Leviticus passages

Strangeness, archaicness of torah in Leviticus

I made this comment to Ivy Challis' post of 9/13 in her blog for the course here

Even though you didn't find the word "torah" in these passages, or maybe precisely because you didn't, I think you're raising the right questions. It was kind of a trick question, since the word "torah" appears only in the Hebrew of those selections from Leviticus, not in the English translation. It's translated in a variety of ways - "law," "ritual," "instruction", as I mention in the formal version of the assignment that I sent out later.

You're intuitively picking up on an important issue - how can these rules for performing bloody sacrifices be something meaningful and spiritually uplifting, not to mention authoritative, in the way we ordinarily understand "scriptures" to be - especially for us modern people? I mean in a sense, isn't it a bit weird that what are basically recipes for how to prepare meat are treated with awe and respect as scripture?! They're read as part of the weekly Shabbat ritual in synagogue, may be "performed" to mark a girl or boy's becoming an adult in the life cycle event of a bat/bar mitzvah rite of passage, are chanted according to special melodies, are painstakingly inscribed in Hebrew calligraphy by special scribes on scrolls made of specially prepared parchment, etc., etc. What's so special and relevant about these - at first sight - rather archaic sacrificial practices?

Are they laws that we're supposed to do, or instructions that have some kind of symbolic importance beyond what they literally say?

Biblical Law as Scripture in Back to the Sources and Leviticus

I posed this question to the members of my Scripture in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam course:

Is Torah law, ritual, instruction, or narrative?
What does the Hebrew word "torah" mean in the book of Leviticus? The Hebrew word torah is the word translated into English as "law" in Lev. 6:8, 6:14, 6:25, 7:1, 7:11, 7:37-38, and 11:46 in the Oxford Study Bible. In those same verses, the new Jewish Publication Society Bible translates torah as "ritual" in Lev. 6:8, 6:14, 6:25, 7:1, 7:11, 7:37-38, and as "instructions" in 11:46?

What hints in the context of these verses does the text of Leviticus itself provide for how to interpret the word "torah?" What kinds of things "count" as torah, and what is (are) their purposes? Who is to speak these examples of "torah" and to whom are they addressed? Is it the same in all of these verses, or not, and if not, does it matter?

Do the Biblical narratives in Genesis that we read, and the rules that we read in Leviticus have anything common – so that it would make sense to call both "torah?"


Here's what I'm trying to get at. The literal translation of the Hebrew word torah is "instruction" or "teaching." So why does the OSB translate it consistently as "law" in these passages in Leviticus, while the the NJSP version sometimes translate it as "ritual," sometimes as "instruction?" It seems to me that Leviticus' choice of the word "torah" to label the sacrificial and dietary laws or rituals suggests that they are first and foremost intended to teach something. In other words, they are not just commandments that one is supposed to do because God said so. After all, only a small minority of people, the priests, are directed to do the sacrificial rituals, though all the Israelites are required to follow the dietary laws forbidding some and permitting other animals as food to eat - yet both sets of ritual laws are called "torah." Why? they must have something essentially in common. It may be that both are supposed to set examples of important values for other people.

Greenstein argues in his chapter on Biblical law in Back to the Sources that the laws of the torah are a sort of "symbolic body language" expressing the deepest values of Jewish Biblical religion. So when Leviticus says "Tell the sons of Moses and Aaron [i.e., the priests]" or "tell all the Israelites" that this is the "torah of the whole burnt offering, the grain offering," (Lev 6-7) etc., or "this is the torah of the beast and fowl" (Lev 11:46) - is it a commandment to do the rules and rituals described, or is it a commandment to teach the rules and rituals of the sacrificies and kashrut - that is, "the instruction" about, rather than "the law" to do them? There is a further ambiguity in these expressions. Does "the torah of the whole burnt offering" or "the torah of beast and fowl" refer specifically to the instructions about how to perform the whole burnt offering and which specific beasts and birds can or cannot be eaten, or are the sacrifices and dietary rules practices designed to teach us something else, and does "torah" refer to that "something else," and if so what is that something else? Respect for life, a theory of reincarnation, the distinctiveness of the Jewish people, e.g.? Or is it in a sense saying all of these things together - that by doing, one teaches (and presumably learns) some important lesson? Or by teaching, once one knows how and why to do them, they will do them? Later Jewish tradition answers yes to both possibilities. And I think that is already the connotation the comes with the word torah that the Bible uses to name these laws, rules, or rituals - whatever we choose to call them.

So it seems that the Jewish word torah refers to a text, a type of scripture that is meant not just to be read or recited, but to be performed. and it is to be performed mindfully, knowing what one is doing and why one is doing it. It is far from blind obedience to mindless rituals! So much for Biblical law. But what about Biblical narrative? Is that supposed to be performed, too (in this same sense of torah), and if so, how?