Up until two weeks ago, I thought that Vayikra, Leviticus, was the least relevant – and the most alienating – of the Books of Moses. After all, why would I want to read about animal sacrifices and types of impurity? What do the endless litanies of priestly rituals have to do with my actual life? Every year, I daydreamed my way through its pages, and wondered if the reader in shul get through it faster.
But then, with COVID-19, our world turned upside down and contracted into narrow, isolated spaces. And in our newly shaped world, Vayikra’s words strike chords I didn’t have the ears to hear before.
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