Parashat Vayikra – 5785

Receiving the Call

A D’var Torah for Parashat Vayikra

By Rabbi Rena Kieval (AJR ’06)

It begins with a call. We are at the center of the Torah, the Book of Leviticus, and Moshe has just overseen the elaborate construction of the mishkan. Now that the sanctuary is complete, God will relay to Moshe and to the kohanim, in painstaking detail, the rituals and rules to be practiced in that sacred space. But first, there is a call to Moshe, a call which gives this book of the Torah and this parashah their name, Vayikra. Why the call? What does it mean to us to be called? Many of us have felt called to serve, to carry out a specific role, or called more generally to be our best selves. Who, or what, calls us, and how do we receive that call? Two curious features in the opening verse of our parashah help us explore these questions.

The first verse of our parashah contains two verbs of speech – vayikra and vayedaber – he called and he spoke. It is assumed that the subject of both verbs is God, but in the text the “caller” is anonymous. A precise translation would read, “And ‘he’ called to Moshe, and God spoke to him from within the Tent of Meeting.” (Lev. 1:1) The structure is odd; a clearer wording would have been, “And God called to Moshe, and spoke to him from within the Tent of Meeting.” Why the awkward wording?

A second unusual feature of our verse is the scribal custom of minimizing the letter aleph in the first word, vayikra. These two curiosities in the opening verse have invited multiple interpretations and teachings about Moshe’s call, and more generally about what it means to be called. Many commentators note that the diminished ‘aleph’ leaves the word ‘yakar,’ dear or precious, suggesting that God’s call to Moshe from the mishkan, and all of God’s subsequent calls to him, are expressions of love. Others note that the diminished ‘aleph’ mirrors Moshe’s humility, and perhaps comes to teach that in order to hear and receive our true callings, we must minimize ourselves, our own ‘alephs,’ which might stand for the words “ani” or “anokhi,” our “I’s” or our egos, and see the bigger picture.

The Hasidic author of Me’or Einayim draws alternative spiritual teaching from this verse. God is present, he notes, in a “small” form (metzumtzam) within each one of us, represented by the small “aleph” in the text. The ‘small’ inner God calls to us and invites us to turn towards God in whatever ways are needed by each of us. When we hear that call, at first we may not identify its source; we may not recognize that it is the Divine calling to us. That is why, he says, the “call” in our Torah verse is anonymous. Our first experience of a call may be anonymous. However, once a person understands that it is God calling, and when that person then turns towards God, then God can speak (vayedaber) and be identified as the caller, as happens in our verse.

Receiving a call and knowing that God is the caller are steps in a process that happens over time, not instantly. The Israelites, says the Me’or Einayim, needed to endure Egypt, experience Sinai, reside in the wilderness and finally construct the mishkan in order to reach the spiritual point to receive God’s promise, “Let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” (Ex. 25:8) Now that they have completed the mishkan, God can call to Moshe from the newly constructed Tent of Meeting, and Moshe can hear that call. Now he and the Israelites are ready to incorporate a life with God into their everyday rituals and routines.

In the same way, every one of us is invited by the little divine aleph within us to take steps in our spiritual journeys. Each of us is called to build a sanctuary within ourselves, within our own hearts, to prepare ourselves to receive the calls that define us and guide our actions. As with the Israelites, building that inner sanctuary takes time, and the process will inevitably include highs and lows, crises and gifts.

May we have the strength and the wisdom to prepare sanctuaries both in our communities and within our hearts. May we receive the divine calls made to us in love, and respond as we are called to do.

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Rabbi Rena Kieval was ordained as a rabbi by AJR in 2006. She retired in June 2022 as full-time rabbi at Congregation Ohav Shalom in Albany, NY, and continues to teach, write and study.