VAYIKRA 5781

Question: what is the letter that appears most often in the Torah? That’s easy enough. Just look on any column in the Torah and you will see the letter vav in almost every verse. In fact, hundreds of verses in the Torah begin with a vav. We read in our shul from a “Vav Torah,” so called because each column begins with a vav.

What does vav mean? As a letter at the beginning of a word it means “and.” Sometimes can mean “but” or “although.” As a word vav means “hook.” But most the time, vav means “and.” It’s the letter of connection. And so, it’s the 1^st letter in today’s Torah reading, which renders it the 1^st letter in the book of Vayikra/Leviticus that we began today connecting what happened at the end of the book of Shemot/Exodus when the Mishkan/Tabernacle was completed and the Presence of Gd filled it. And today we read, Vayikra el Moshe (And He [Gd] called to Moses) from inside the Mishkan to where His Presence had come to rest. Vav is the clearly the letter of connection.

Let me share with you 2 ancient legends about the vav. The 1^st is the legend of the “Mark of Cain.” Remember, Adam and Eve have 2 children—Cain who kills Abel. What was Cain’s punishment? This was the very 1^st murder in history and perhaps Cain didn’t realize his blow would kill his brother. Gd was then merciful and didn’t give him a death sentence but sentenced him to wander the earth from place to place. Gd also put a mark upon Cain’s forehead, so that everyone who sees him will know what he did.

Rabbi Meir Shapiro—the originator of Daf Yomi, the daily study of Talmud program—comments that what really upset Gd was not so much the murder. The murder can be explained: he didn’t know what he was doing, he was emotionally upset, whatever. What really offended Gd was Cain’s answer when Gd confronted him asking, “Where is Abel, your brother?” And Cain answers with terrible chutzpa, “How should I know? [and that famous phrase] Hashomeyr achi anochi, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And for this, Gd sentenced him to be a wanderer in exile. Cain then feared for his life so Gd put a sign upon his forehead, indicating in the words of the Torah (Gen. 4:15), that “whoever kills Cain…will be punished.” And what was that sign? Some of the commentators note that the word for “sign,” ot, also means “letter.” This led them to say that the sign was a letter. Which letter was it? One opinion (Eliyahu Ki Tov) was that it was the letter hey, the 1^st letter of his brother’s name—Hevel or Able.

Another opinion says it was the letter vav—the letter of connection. It’s as though Gd said, “You had the nerve to ask, ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ that you are only concerned about yourself? You will be sentenced to wear the letter vav on your forehead for the rest of your days so that you will know that you are connected to others. You are your brother’s keeper. And so is every other human being.”

Here’s the 2^nd legend: In last week’s Torah reading, Moses gives his people a financial accounting of the expenses that were involved in the building of the Mishkan—the portable Temple used by the Jewish people in their travels from Egypt till the Temple could be built. The Midrash tells us that much to his shock, Moses comes up 1,775 shekels short! Then someone shouts out: “Thief!”

The crowd gets restless. They’re ready to lynch Moses for embezzlement. Moses feverishly goes over the entire Mishkan—frantically looking for something that he has forgotten to include in the total. And just then, says the Midrash, the vavim—which were the hooks that connect the curtains of the Mishkan to each other—seemed to light up and he realized that he had forgotten to include them. So he pointed to them, and the crisis was averted!

What does this Midrash teach us? It teaches that when you deal with public funds, you have to be so careful to account for every penny. If even Moses, who gave his life for the people…if even Moses, who gave up a life of luxury in the palace of Pharaoh for their sake…could be accused of theft, then surely none of us are safe from accusation. 

But a deeper lesson is the importance of being connected. The vavim were the hooks that joined the curtains of the Mishkan to each other. The Mishkan was portable. It had no walls. Without the curtains, it could not stand. The lesson for us is that there can be no Jewish people, there can be no Jewish life, without vavim, unless we Jews are connected. You cannot be a Jew by yourself. In joy and in sorrow, you need the presence and the support of others. And they need you.

Perhaps this can explain why Jews are so involved in helping others that have little or no connection to them, creating new connections. Israeli rescue workers have sent crews to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, to Indonesia and to Sri Lanka in the wake of a tsunami, after earthquakes in Turkey, where Israelis are not much liked…and Haiti, where they were asked again and again, “Why are you in here? There are no Jews in Haiti?”

Israel showed an entire world the essence of her faith: connecting to its fellow human beings, showing mercy and kindness to all—especially when you feel the pain and see the suffering of others.

When there was starvation in Africa, the rest of the world didn’t get involved—not even other African states felt an obligation to help. But Israel reached out to the Ethiopian Jews and brought them home. There had been no connection with Ethiopian Jews for thousands of years, and yet, every Jew in the world somehow felt, instinctively, connected.

Were these people really even Jews? Their customs and traditions were so different. But there was no time to think about it. We felt a vav, a link, a hook to them, and went into action to save them. Think about this: this was the only time in the history of the world when blacks were taken out of Africa to freedom and not to slavery! It was the same for the Jews of Bosnia/Herzegovina in the 1990’s and the 34 remaining Jews of Iraq.

My friends, to be a Jew means to be connected horizontally to every Jew and to every human being and vertically to Gd—to realize that we are all an image of Gd. To be a Jew means to live with vavim—with hooks that connect us.

It’s been harder to connect with each other this past year with the Covid pandemic. And so I pray, may Hashem help us strengthen and restore—as we come out of the pandemic—any connections that may have weakened or that we may have lost. May He help us to create new connections to strengthen and fortify us. Amen!