Slaughtering, Sprinkling, Fats, Burning

15 Adar II 5782

“And Moshe took them from their hands and made them [go up in] smoke on the altar along with the burnt offering. They were investiture offerings, as a pleasing fragrance, a fire offering to the L‑rd.” (Vayikra 8:28)

“The procedures for the sacrifices all allude to inner, psychological processes that we must undergo in order to draw close to G‑d. (The Hebrew word for ‘sacrifice’ [korban] means ‘drawing close.’)

Slaughtering the animal alludes to how we slaughter – i.e., renounce – our animalistic orientation toward life. Sprinkling the blood on the Altar alludes to how we then re-orient our enthusiasm (signified by our warm blood) toward G‑dliness. Placing the fat of the slaughtered animal on the Altar alludes to how we re-orient our sense of delight (signified by fat, which results from indulging in eating foods that trigger feelings of delight in our brain) toward G‑dliness. Burning the animal by fire on the Altar alludes to the consumption of our animal nature by Divinity, meaning that our formerly animalistic drives become drives for goodness, as we transform the world into G‑d’s home.”

“They angered Him with their high altars, and provoked Him with their idols.” (Tehillim 78:58)

In order to have Hashem dwell among us, we must first banish the falseness and idolatry from our lives. This, as Chassidus explains, is not only idol worship on literal altars, but making anything other than Hashem the primary focus of one’s life. When we re-orient our life-force towards G‑dliness we prepare ourselves to experience more and more delight in the spiritual, rather than the physical. Even our physical pleasures become connected to spirituality, and only serve to enhance and connect our physical being to the spiritual reality above us.

“When, furthermore, every individual soul will fulfill also the 248 positive commandments, thereby drawing down the blessed Ein Sof-light below, to elevate to Him and to bind and unite with Him the entire vital soul, which is in the 248 limbs of the body, in perfect unity so that they become actually one [with Him], in accordance with His will that there be an abode for Him in the lower realms, and become a ‘chariot’ for G-d, as were the Patriarchs…” (Lessons in Tanya, Likutei Amarim, middle of Chapter 37)

The last step of this process, “the consumption of our animal nature by Divinity,” is described perfectly in today’s Tanya portion. Through the 365 prohibitive commandments and their Rabbinical offshoots, as well as the 248 positive commandments, we elevate and bind to Him our formerly animalistic drives, for unadulterated goodness and unveiled light, in this world and the World to Come.