It Would Have Been Enough (and Still We Don’t Say ‘Thanks’)

As we make our way into the book of Leviticus, which we began last Shabbat, it can become more challenging for us to find meaning among the texts about ritual sacrifice and the priestly laws. But this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, is actually one of my favorites. Seriously, it is. This was the week, in the Jewish calendar, that I was accepted to rabbinical school. By chance, I taught a Torah study ten years ago in my home congregation on this week’s portion, Tzav, that’d I’d prepared a few weeks in advance, unaware of how relevant the text would be to my own life.

Parashat Tzav, not unlike many of the other Torah portions in Leviticus, outlines priestly laws regarding the central shrine – the mishkan in the wilderness or the Temple in Jerusalem – and the sacrifices that occurred in those places. Among them, this week’s portion outlines the laws regarding three offerings: the sin offering, the guilt offering, and the offering of well-being.

The first two, the sin offering and the guilt offering, are pretty similar to one another. An animal is sacrificed to atone for something an Israelite has done. Some of the offering may be burnt for God to enjoy and the rest nourishes the priests. The individual bringing the sacrifice eats none of it.

But the third sacrifice, the offering of well-being is different. The Torah tells us that it is to be offered for thanksgiving. Along with the animal for the sacrifice, the individual making this thanksgiving offering brought along ten loaves of four different types of bread, forty loaves in total. The animal for the sacrifice along with one of each type of bread were given to the priests. The remaining thirty-six loaves of bread remain in the possession of the one offering the sacrifice. But here’s the kicker – the thanksgiving offering must be eaten on the day that it is offered; none of it, our text tells us, may be set aside until morning. That means that if you make a thanksgiving offering, you end up with thirty-six loaves of bread and less than a day to eat them. That’s a lot of carbs!

Sforno teaches that the thanksgiving offering was necessary for someone whose life had been in danger, but was saved. Because of the number of loaves of bread that remained with the individual and the time limit placed upon him to consume them, there was only one way to understand this. The purpose was to ensure that the individual would share the bread with others. By sharing his bread, he would share his good news.

It should be noted that sharing what one has been through does not apply to the previous two offerings. “There was no particular place specifically designated for bringing the sacrifice of the sin offering [or the guilt offering] in the Mishkan (BT Sotah 32b). This is significant. The sin offering was offered by one who had sinned and now wished to repent. If there were a specified physical location for these sacrifices, the identity of the sinners would become readily known. And this might in itself discourage repentance. Because the sin offering was offered in the same place as was the burnt offering, no one could be certain that the bearer of the offering had actually sinned. In this way, the matter would remain a private one between the individual and God and the sinner would be spared public embarrassment” (Mordechai Katz).

But this is not the case for the thanksgiving offering, it had a designated spot for bringing the sacrifice to make it easier to publicize one’s good news. As Rabbi Zelig Pliskin teaches, “The only time that such publicity was a part of the offering was in the case of good news. A person felt deep gratitude to God for help and in this joyous state one shared the joy with others. When one brought an offering for a sin, this was not publicized. When things were going wrong in one’s life, one did not do this. Only when one had an event to be thankful for did one publicize it. While there is definitely a need to share problems and difficulties with a sympathetic and understanding listener, the main areas to publicize are the good that happens to you.”

The week that I was accepted to rabbinical school, I had the fortuity of being able to share my good news publicly because the Torah portion that week and the material I’d prepared around it were all about gratitude and publicizing our good news. The theme of gratitude in Parashat Tzav, however, extends beyond my own personal experience and its relationship with the portion. It also links us to the festival we’ll begin Monday at sundown, Passover.

Elie Wiesel teaches, “Dayeinu is the song of our gratitude. A Jew defines himself by his capacity for gratitude. A Jewish philosopher was once asked, ‘What is the opposite of nihilism?’ And he said, ‘Dayeinu,’ the ability to be thankful. We all know the song:
Had God brought us out of Egypt,
Only brought us out of Egypt,
Had God brought us out of Egypt,
Dayeinu!

One midrash (Sifre on Deuteronomy, Piska’ot 337 and 339) may be one of the sources that helped to frame the significance of Dayeinu. According to the midrash, the Israelites grew anxious wondering if Moses would return from the mountain, from his conversation with God. They began to ask, “Where is Moses, the man who brought us out of Egypt, who split the sea for us, who gave us manna, who performed miracles and wonders for us.” Dayeinu shifts the focus back to God. It was God who brought us out of Egypt, who split the sea, who gave us manna, and who performed miracles and wonders for us. It wasn’t all about Moses, it was about our relationship with God. As David Arnow writes, “By putting the focus on God rather than on Moses, and extending the narrative beyond the Exodus, Dayeinu reminds us that leaving Egypt was only a beginning, a prerequisite for building and enduring relationship with the ultimate One of Being” (My People’s Passover Haggadah, vol. 2, p. 49).

Dayeinu expresses the gratitude that we failed to express in the wilderness. If you remember, almost as quickly as we’d made it across the parted waters, we began to complain about the mud on our feet. We began to beg to return to Egypt, if only for the food that we had when we were slaves to Pharaoh. “In the Bible, the people express little satisfaction. They miss Egypt, with its cucumbers and melons; they lack water to drink and meat to eat; they abhor the idea of dying in the wilderness” (Wendy Zierler, My People’s Passover Haggadah, vol. 2, p. 70). But Dayeinu allows us to express that omitted gratitude as each of us recalls our personal redemption from Egypt.

One question remains: Would it really have been enough? Would it have been enough if God had only brought us out of Egypt and had not divided the sea? Wouldn’t we have been trapped between the water and the Egyptian army? Would it really have been enough if God had given us the Torah, but never brought us into the land of Israel? Wouldn’t we still be wandering in the desert? Would it really have been enough?

One commentator seeks to answer this question. Abudarham teaches it would not have literally been enough if God had only done any one of these steps along the way. Each favor was part of a Divine promise that God was obligated to keep. But God could have kept the promise without the spectacular means used at each juncture. It is not only because God brought us out of Egypt to safety, establishing a lasting relationship with us that we offer our gratitude, but also for the miraculous ways in which we encounter God in the world, something we continue to do on a daily basis (Alyssa Gray, My People’s Passover Haggadah, vol. 2, p. 60).

This is why the thanksgiving offering described in Parashat Tzav is substantial and why it must be eaten in such a short period of time. Each and every day we have the opportunity to offer our gratitude for what we have, appreciation we must share with others. And this is why the fifteen verses of Dayeinu recount so many different moments in our relationship with God, affirming that any one of them would have been enough. If God had left out even one step, we wouldn’t have made it to where we are today. If God had left out even one miraculous detail, it would not have been as powerful and awe-inspiring of a journey as it has been. And so, we offer our thanks. Shabbat Shalom… and Chag Sameach, Happy Passover.