Parashat Vayikra

Leviticus 1-5

The third book of the Torah begins with an invitation to Moshe to listen to what God tells him. going to count Commentators have debated and pondered the meaning of this called [ראָ֖קְ ִיַּו [to Moshe. Why call him to tell him something? It's not true that All dialogues between Moshe and God are direct, without the need to call or invite you to listen? What God is going to tell you are the specifications to carry out offerings in the Temple. The word that we translate as "offering" and all its verbal derivatives to expressing the fact of “making an offering” derive from the root [רבַקָ [ which in Hebrew means "near". That is to say, that God "calls" Moshe to explain how to "get closer" bye bye. Today we no longer bring offerings to the Temple, in fact, in the Talmud Babylonian, in the Masechet Berachot 26b we read that our Tefillah is a substitute for the offerings in the Temple. That is to say, that in order to "get closer" to God today, and for hundreds of years ago, we used the tefillah as a means to reach the sacred space where God dwells It is not the only medium, but it is one of the oldest and most tradition. The tefillah is an invitation to get to know and enter into the most sacred, what we find there or not will depend on ourselves.