- You have to bring offerings from your flock? Why, because you create Kedusha through the conversion of your creative effort into spiritual value, not from some random animals. Your flock is all that will do.
- In this reading, almost nothing is ‘most holy.’ Only grain offerings are put into this category. Why? These offerings are from the perspective of the people, not the Kohanim. Death and holiness seem exclusive. They know their animals and killing them has death, not timeless life. It doesn’t fit. And so the offering that is ‘most holy’ from their perspective is the one without death.
- Not leavened. And there’s salt. Why? Because leavening is a fungus. It is a breakdown. It is not preservation. Salt preserves. Kedusha involves preservation.
- Internal fats are forbidden. They are fire bread for Hashem. What is fire bread? Fire can represent energy and spirituality. This fat is literally converted into spirituality. Fire bread for Hashem. This is a clue to how we have Kedusha in following readings being attached to animal sacrifice.
- Why do we sprinkle the blood towards the altar for these sin offerings? Perhaps because the blood is a reminder of the cost of distance from Hashem. Perhaps the sprinkling is a warning for us.
- Even the inadvertent sins for the men of the land are remarkably expensive. A goat or a lamb for a private person. We do dozens of such violations a week. This is bankrupting for the man of the land. I’m left with a continual question of how this could be afforded. I don’t have answers.
- When you violate the holy, you bring a ram as a sacrifice. Why? Perhaps as a reminder of Yitzchak. Hashem substituted a ram when Yitzchak – designated as holy because he had been selected as a sacrifice – was being offered up. Perhaps here, as well, a ram can substitute for violations of the holy.