Vayikra Chapter 8 – Transcript

Vayikra Chapter 8: The Structure and Chronology of the Mishkan Narrative

Introduction to the Parsha

We’re doing Vayikra chapter 8. This chapter and this part of the whole book is the longest, or maybe the only—besides for one little narrative in Parshat Emor—the most important narrative, at least, in Sefer Vayikra.

As we’ve discussed, Sefer Vayikra is a book of laws of Torah. More specifically, maybe we should translate “teaching” or “instruction”—probably that’s the best translation. But it’s a book of Torah’s instructions, most specifically instructions framed around the Mishkan, framed around the Avodah of Korbanot, and framed around the concepts of Tahara (purity) and Kedusha, as we’ll see when we get to those parts.

The Tzivuy and Asiyah Structure

What we have here is a narrative in the framework, in the structure of the narratives that we’ve seen all along the Parshiot of the Mishkan—of how you have one part of the Tzivuy, of the command, the instruction to do something, and then a part of the Asiyah, of the actual doing something. The implementation, the carrying out of the command, gets a specific, its own parsha. It’s the second half of that parsha.

We have that length in the whole parsha of the Mishkan:

– The parsha of creating the Mishkan

– The parsha of building the Mishkan

– The parsha of setting up the Mishkan

That was the whole second half of Sefer Shemot.

And now we have something similar for this very specific part of the construction of the Mishkan—or the sanctification of the Mishkan, we should say—the Chanukat HaMishkan.

The Chronological Problem

There’s a question here. Let’s ask the question. It’s a question about the order of the Parshiot, but it’s also a question which should reveal to us what this parsha is for or what it’s about.

Because if you follow the timing, if you follow the chronology of these Parshiot:

We had the long story of the creation of the Mishkan at the end of Sefer Shemot. And Shemot finished with the actual setting up, the actual building of the Mishkan. And it even finished in the very last pesukim of Sefer Shemot—we had Kavod Hashem, the glory of Hashem, the cloud, coming into the Mishkan and Moshe not being able to enter it.

So it seems like the whole story—this was the goal, this is like the ultimate goal of the entire building of the Mishkan: V’shachanti b’tocham—seems to have been accomplished by the end of Sefer Shemot.

The Beginning of Vayikra

And then, as many Mefarshim have noticed, the beginning of Vayikra seems very clearly to be a continuation directly of that, in a very similar way as we had in Parshat Mishpatim.

There was a cloud on the mountain, on Har Sinai, and so you can’t enter, nobody can go to the cloud. But then Moshe is called—he gets a call—and Moshe goes up to the cloud in Har Sinai.

And very similarly, we have a cloud in the Mishkan at the end of Sefer Shemot, and then “Vayikra el Moshe”—Moshe is called into the cloud, into the Ohel Moed, and he gets told these laws of the Korbanot.

So it would seem like now everything is finished, now the Mishkan is set up already. All that’s left is to tell us some laws of how to act. And that seems to be the case with Parshat Vayikra and Parshat Tzav, which as I understand is really a continuation of that.

The Problem with Parshat Tzav

There’s other people that think that when it says in Parshat Tzav “Har Sinai,” it means explicitly not in the Mishkan, but before that. In other words, in the story that I just mentioned, when Moshe went to the cloud in Har Sinai and received commands and received Torah. I’m not so sure about that, but that’s what many modern commentators seem to assume.

In any case, when we get to the end of Parshat Tzav, this second half of Parshat Tzav, which is this chapter where we’re starting today, you see suddenly that it seems like the Mishkan was not yet set up—or at least the Avodah in the Mishkan, the Kohanim who do the Avodah in the Mishkan, did not yet get sanctified, did not yet get their chinuch, their—I don’t know how to call it—their entry into the Avodah, their receiving the holiness, receiving the ability to do the Avodah. It seems to have happened only now.

So there’s a problem for the order.

Rashi’s Solution

Rashi just says the order is not in order. This parsha should be seen as having happened before Vayikra, because he understands that Vayikra must be after the whole thing was set up—or in any case, maybe even before the end of Sefer Shemot, which talks about the Kavod Hashem coming to the Mishkan, which according to the story which we’ll read here happened only on the eighth day of the Miluim, which is the beginning of Parshat Shemini. It didn’t yet happen at all in the end of Sefer Shemot.

So that’s Rashi’s understanding.

Ramban’s Alternative

The Ramban disagrees with him. This is a consistent, systematic [disagreement] that Rashi and Ramban have. Also Ibn Ezra is on the side of Rashi more, although there might be some difference.

The Ramban wants the order of the story to make sense. He very much sees the greater narrative always, and he thinks that this is in order. And Ramban thinks that the whole Parshat Vayikra, and seemingly also the Parshat Tzav, was all said in that first day. So it’s not like Rashi understands—this has to have happened afterwards. No, it was all said in the first moment, and then he actually did the Miluim. So it’s not—it’s one long story. And he seems to read all these parshiot as having happened at once.

But for us, for our purposes, it’s more important to try to understand why this would happen. So even according to the Ramban, Ramban admits that the last pasuk in Shemot is out of place, because there was no cloud yet before all of this happened. But he says, okay, that’s okay, because the style of the Torah is to finish stories.

The Narrative Arc Principle

We’ve mentioned this a couple of times already. The Torah, when there’s like one subject in a narrative—this is a problem whenever you write a narrative that has different parts, different aspects going on. But in order for one part to be complete, sometimes you need to finish that arc, finish that part, before you go back really to the next part.

And that’s how the Ramban sees the pesukim at the end of Shemot which talk about the cloud already coming to the Mishkan. It’s just the finishing of that story, although it’s not clear why it’s necessary to be in the end of Shemot. Of course, it makes the end of Sefer Shemot—it makes Shemot some kind of complete book, so there’s a story that begins and ends. It’s not really clear that it’s necessary, but that’s Ramban’s understanding.

A Broader Structural Framework

I think that we need to understand why any of this would be, and I’ll give a more broader explanation of the structure here.

The way I understand is neither that there’s a complete chronological narrative structure to these stories, or that it’s just totally random like Rashi seems to think.

It seems to me that there are subjects of books or of parts of the Torah, and these subjects get put together in a way that we can understand them. And then there are like these narrative points or points of the story which get thrown in every time when they help us understand.

In other words, there’s always a story and a law, a teaching, an instruction that goes together one with the other. And sometimes we organize these instructions by the order of the story, and sometimes the opposite, depending on how it would make more sense.

The Example of Sefer Shemot

So for example, the entire stuff of Shemot, which is both a narrative and a law and an instruction of how to create the Mishkan—although there’s a question if this is a mitzvah of the dorot, in which sense do we mekayem that—all the instructions of the Mishkan, okay, that’s a question. But in any case, there’s laws and they’re created in the narrative, and Shemot is all about the construction of the Mishkan, the creating of the Mishkan.

Two Framings of Torah

But then there are two more books: Vayikra and Bamidbar. And Vayikra and Bamidbar are explicitly very much mixed up between laws and narratives. But Vayikra, as we see here, there’s a little bit of narrative in it. And these second two books both take their framing, their main narrative framing, from the Mishkan.

The Har Sinai Framing

So unlike the beginning of Sefer Shemot—really the first half of Sefer Shemot—and also Sefer Devarim, which mostly takes its framing from the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim and Matan Torah.

In other words, every time we learn Torah, every time we learn—our general way of learning Torah is really, which really comes from Sefer Devarim and Sefer Yehoshua, is that we have the law. The law was given the day, right? There’s the narrative, there’s the story. What’s the thing, the story that gives power, that gives meaning to these laws? It’s the story of Har Sinai, the story of Maamad Har Sinai. That’s when we get these laws, as we say whenever we learn Torah: it’s “kulam nit’nu b’Maamad Har Sinai.”

So it makes sense to mention it every time we make a bracha maybe, to mention it. Or in some sense, Parshat Mishpatim, for example, is all framed in that way. The Torah was given at Har Sinai, and at Har Sinai we’re given all these laws. And then a little bit, the story of the Mishkan is also framed because that was the law given by Har Sinai, part of it.

The Mishkan Framing

Then, but Sefer Vayikra and Bamidbar are framed differently. Their story, although Har Sinai is mentioned, as we see here—it’s also going to be mentioned in the end of Sefer Vayikra in Parshat Behar, famously—so there is a connection between Har Sinai and Ohel Moed.

But their main framing is a different framing. Even the framing of Parshat Behar Kasha is a different framing. Their main framing is that there was a Mishkan. Of course, this Mishkan was set up by the command of Har Sinai, so that’s the connecting thread that connects these two stories of Torah.

But the main framing that they have is that there was an Ohel Moed set up, precisely for this. Set up, as it says here in the beginning of Vayikra, set up—

The Framing of Sefer Vayikra and Bamidbar: Torah of Ohel Moed

The writer was Har Sinai, and at Har Sinai were given all these laws. And then, in a little bit, the story of the Mishkan is also framed, because that was the law given by Har Sinai, part of it.

Then, Sefer Vayikra and Bamidbar are framed differently. Their story, although Har Sinai is mentioned, as we see here, it’s also going to be mentioned in the end of Sefer Vayikra in Parshat Behar, famously. So there is a connection between Har Sinai and Ohel Moed. But their main framing is a different framing. Even the framing of Parshat Bechukotai is a different framing.

Their main framing is that there was a Mishkan. Of course this Mishkan was set up by the command of Har Sinai, so that’s the connecting thread that connects these two stories of Torah. But the main framing that they have is that there was an Ohel Moed set up precisely for this, set up as it says in Parshat Bechukotai, as it says here in the beginning of Vayikra. And from that space, Hashem gives them all the laws.

And this doesn’t only mean that this is like where the laws came from—this happens to be their office where they met. It also means that the laws themselves get framed as being the laws surrounding the Mishkan.

Laws Framed Around the Mishkan

And this is very obvious if we talk about the laws of Korbanot, right? Korbanot are precisely the laws that are to be enacted in this Mishkan.

But it’s also true more broadly for the halachot of Tumah v’Tahara, which are Parshat Tazria, Shemini, and Metzora, which are very explicitly framed as the purity necessary to touch the Mishkan. As we all see there, there’s explicit pesukim that connect the laws of purity to the narrative of Parshat Shemini.

And in a broader sense, even Parshat Kedoshim, which is framed around the sanctity, the kedushah of the Jewish people, is again framed as: this is what allows the holiness of God, like we call it, to be within us, in the same way in a broader sense, which is again there is another part of the narrative there, another part of the act of the story of the construction of the Mishkan.

And there we have a lot of other laws, some other laws. We could talk about each one, but at least the first half of the laws that are there seem to be framed around—there’s the Mishkan and then there’s the Machaneh, there’s the camp around it, and there’s laws for that camp. And those laws are also framed as coming from the Mishkan, as being around the Mishkan.

So this is the new framing of Sefer Vayikra and Bamidbar, where their Torah is the Torah of Ohel Moed, not the Torah of Har Sinai so much.

Three Parts of Chanukat HaMishkan

Now, if we’ll think of the story of the construction of the Mishkan itself, we can see that it’s divided into several parts. And each part belongs to a different book, to a different sefer.

Part One: Building the Mishkan (Sefer Shemot)

So the part of just the building, right? We have to build the Mishkan, there’s a shiur and a midah for each thing. That’s the part of Sefer Shemot. And Sefer Shemot finishes with that being finished, and the anan that was coming came because of that, because the Mishkan was complete.

Part Two: The Avodah and Kohanim (Sefer Vayikra)

Now there’s another part which Sefer Vayikra is about. Sefer Vayikra is not about the building or even the maintenance of the Mishkan, right? All of that was taken care of in Sefer Shemot.

What it’s about is the Korbanot, the Avodah—the daily Avodah, daily, weekly, monthly, or Avodah that happens when someone needs it in the Mishkan, the Avodat HaKorbanot.

Now this Avodah, more than, for example, Sefer Shemot, which belongs to Betzalel and Ohaliav, which built the Mishkan—this Avodah belongs to the Kohanim, it belongs to Aharon and his children, who are the people who officiate day-to-day in the Mishkan.

Which means that within the setting up the Mishkan itself, there’s the aspect of setting up the building, so to speak, and that’s maybe even enough to get it to the level that we can have the next level. But then there’s the setting up of the Avodah, or the setting up of the Kohanim. And that’s a different setup.

Part Three: The Leviyim (Sefer Bamidbar)

So if we can think about the Chanukat HaMishkan, which is like the act of establishing the Mishkan, as having at least these two parts—there’s also the third part, which is mentioned in the Sefer Bamidbar, where it talks about the Leviyim. We’ll get to that, we’ll discuss it. But you can see also there, there’s a third level, a third part of the story of the aspect of the Mishkan. We learn about Chanukat HaNesiim. So in other words, also all about how the Mishkan spreads out to the camp all around.

The Narrative of the Miluim

And in any case, here we’re up to this second part, and therefore the whole narrative of the—what’s called, we call Miluim—which is not the narrative of getting the Mishkan to work. We’ve done that already, it’s the end of Parshat Pekudei. It’s the narrative of getting the Kohanim to work.

And the laws that we’re learning here are all the laws that come from that. The laws of Korbanot is how the Kohanim should act regarding the Korbanot, how the Kohanim should act regarding their purity, and how the people should act regarding the purity that’s demanded from this.

So all of that is based really on this story of the Miluim. So this story can be seen as the origin story of all the halachot. It’s very explicit in the story, which teaches us something very important, as we’ll get to tomorrow or the next day when we learn that story. But that’s the general framing of the story and what it’s doing there.

The Structure of Command and Action

Here, now we’ll just run through the details of the story quickly. The first narrative part, important narrative part, is number one: there’s a command. We’ve seen on all these stories, I said that in general there’s like two parts—there’s the command part and then the action part, the carrying out of the command.

But as we’ll see so many times, there’s really three or four parts. So there’s another part, because very often we have the command, the mitzvah like the idea, the Torah, and then there’s a specific command from Hashem to Moshe: now do it.

This “now do it” is a second level command. It’s not like “this is how it should be done.” We have this—this was in Parshat Tetzaveh. We had this: this is how it should be done when you will create the Mishkan, you will initiate—that’s the word I was looking for—the initiation. This is how you will initiate the Kohanim into their roles.

And then there’s a new command: now do it. Now do it as a new command. And it’s interesting to notice if the “kakaasher tzivah Hashem” is for this or for the first command. Well there are two levels. You can think about what they mean, they have a meaning.

The Command to Gather the People

So anyway, there’s a command that says: take Aharon and his children, take the clothes that were prepared, take the oil, take the Korbanot that we discussed, the animals and the bread, the matzot that were prepared for the Korbanot, and take all the people. Get together the Eidah—it might not be all the people, it might be the important people, the leaders, the Zekeinim—get them together to the Petach, to the door of the Ohel Moed.

It’s important that this be public. Since Aharon and his children are being initiated into the Avodah, which they do, at least in some sense, in the name of all the people, all the people sort of have to be there. They’re becoming—and we’ll see in the story, part of it is that they act, function—the bodies of Aharon and his children function slightly like a korban itself, or like the Mishkan itself.

So just like people have to bring their korban, they have to bring the Mishkan, the people are bringing Aharon also. And Moshe has to show them, as we’ll see later, that Hashem is coming down, the Kavod Hashem is coming down in front of them, before their eyes.

Moshe’s Declaration

And that’s what they do. They come together, and Moshe tells them—and this is another, like we could add a fourth thing—and Moshe tells the people: this is what Hashem commanded. And this is important. They should know I didn’t make this up. But also it gives it power, it gives it authority.

I think this is like a bracha, right? Like we say “asher kideshanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu la’asot et kach v’kach” when we do a mitzvah. Moshe gives a yin gebracha: “zeh hadavar asher tzivah Hashem.” This is Moshe giving a bracha, and this establishes what he’s really going to do.

The Steps of the Miluim Ceremony

And now we have the long narrative.

Washing and Dressing

The first step is he washes Aharon and his children.

The second step is he dresses them, and we have a length, every part that he dresses. I’m not going to go through every one of it, but the story is written, so you should savor every one of it. I just don’t have time right now to go through the whole thing.

Anointing with Oil

We have the next—then there’s the oil. He anoints both the Mishkan and Aharon with oil. The Mishkan, the Mizbeach—this is part of the art of initiation of the Mishkan. So until now it was sort of chol, it’s like just a thing as preparation for that, but it’s not ready yet. And this is how it makes it ready.

He dresses Aharon’s children, so there are other Kohanim.

The Three Korbanot of Miluim

And then we have the part of the Korbanot. And as we’ve seen in Parshat Tzav, there are really three important Korbanot here.

The Par Chatat

There’s a Par Chatat, a Chatat, an Israfet, a Par Chatat that we—this is the kind of Chatat that we do for Yom Kippur or for Chet of the Kahal or the Nassi. So it’s a kind of Kapparah.

And of course, you could ask, like, what they need a Kapparah here. But I don’t think necessarily we have to understand it. It could be understood about Chet HaEgel, but it could be understood not necessarily as atonement for a sin, but something like Yom Kippur.

The Avodah of Yom Kippur and the Avodah of Miluim and the Avodah of Chatat Kahal and so on are very similar in that there’s this idea that for God to come and rest in this place, it needs to be purified, and this is what accomplishes the purification.

So there’s the Par Chatat. The Chatat gets burned outside, so that’s where we see the Chatat is very similar to an Olah. It can’t be eaten, because the Kohanim themselves here need a Kapparah, they’re not yet purified in order to eat it, so it’s not eaten, it’s burned outside. But it’s not for the Mizbeach either, so it’s burned.

The Olah

Then there’s an Olah, okay. An Olah almost always comes along with these kind of things. And that’s just like, I think it’s just to prepare the situation.

The Eil HaMiluim

And then there’s the second, the most important Eil called the Eil HaMiluim. That’s the Eil, their second korban, which will be used to sanctify Aharon and his children themselves.

And what happens is he takes the blood and he puts it on these three parts of Aharon—his three right parts, three right limbs of Aharon, three extremities, we could say, of the body. In some sense the corresponding to the three levels of the body. Everyone knows there’s the head, the hands, and the feet.

So on his right ear, on his right hand—and in this left—on his right foot, on the pinky, on this extremity of the finger. And that

The Blood Application Ritual for Aharon

And what happens is he takes the blood and he puts it on these three parts of Aharon, his three right parts, three right limbs of Aharon, three extremities, we could say, of the body. In some sense, corresponding to the three levels of the body. Everyone knows there’s the head, the hands, and the feet. So on his right ear, on his right hand, and on his right foot, on the pinky, on the extremity of the finger. And it’s similar to putting blood on the Mizbeach, like on the karnot of the Mizbeach, on the extremity of the Mizbeach. And this is what gives Aharon the power. This is part of his kedushah, the initiation of Aharon and his children.

The Shlamim Portion of the Ayil HaMiluim

Then there is the part of this Ayil Miluim, the Shlamim. So there’s the parts that get given to the Mizbeach, along with parts of the bread, as we do by a common Todah. A similar idea—we take one bread of each kind and we did something called Tenufa. We raise it up in front of them and this is like a symbolic gesture of giving it, and then it gets burned.

Moshe’s Role as Kohen

And Moshe got one part. It’s interesting that Moshe has a part here. Let’s talk about that also at length. There’s like in every general Shlamim, there’s all of these parts, right? There’s the part that the Mizbeach gets, and then the Baalim, the owner, gets most of it, but then there’s the Chazeh that goes to the Kohen, Chazeh V’Shok. And the same way, Moshe here functions as the Kohen for Aharon. So we understand that here, the Kohanim themselves can’t really do everything yet. This is their initiation. So there’s like a question of how it starts. And Moshe here gets the Chazeh of the Ayil Miluim, as if he is the one doing the Avodah, he is the one initiating Aharon.

How is Moshe initiated? So Moshe is Moshe. Okay.

Additional Sanctification

Okay, then we have more Shemen HaMishchah, so Aharon and his clothing need to get some blood and Shemen HaMishchah, so this sanctifies the clothing, the Bigdei Kehunah also. So that’s basically the whole process of initiation.

The Seven Days of Miluim

Now we finish the final part. As we’ve learned, a Shlamim, which Ayil Miluim is, a kind of Shlamim, is also a party, something that you have to eat. And here, unlike a regular Shlamim, which is eaten B’chol Ha’ir, it’s not really Lifnim, this Shlamim has to be eaten Pesach Ohel Moed. And not only that, they have to stay there for seven days, not leave. And this is part of their initiation. They’re going to be the kind of people who belong to the Ohel Moed, who work there. So in order to get into it, they have to, for this first seven days, they sort of like move out of their house and live there and they eat there the Ayil Miluim.

Connection to Later Halacha

And the Parsha concludes with “Vaya’asu”—they did everything that Hashem commanded Moshe. This is similar—the seven days of Miluim are similar, as Chazal understood, that this is the source like the Kohen Gadol before Yom Kippur, which we’ve just said. The Kohen Gadol is similar—similar structure to the Miluim also for seven days. Shivah, he would move into the Lishkat Palhedrin, so to speak. And that’s, we can understand, for the same idea.