Parshat Vayikra
By: Moshe Goodman, Kollel Or Shlomo, Hebron בס"ד
לשכנו תדרשו
Calling for the Shechina Today in Our Holy Land
"ויקרא אל משה וידבר ה' אליו מאהל מועד לאמר"
"May it be Your will before You, HaShem our God and the God of our fathers, that You raise us with happiness to our Land, and plant us in our borders, and there we shall offer before You our obligatory offerings, Tamid offerings in their order and Musaf offerings according to their laws..." (Musaf Shabat)
These words are just a small example of our many prayers for the return of our People to the Land, for the rebuilding of the Bais Hamikdash and the offerings within it, and for the reviving of the Shechina's spirit within us.
In this week's parsha we learn about one of the offerings in the Bais Hamikdash strongly tied to the Land of Israel. This offering is no other than the Omer offering, so well-known in context of the counting of the Omer kept even today in absence of the Bais Hamikdash. The Omer offering also has other present-day ramifications such as the commandment regarding Hadash, the new produce, prohibited both in the Land and outside it. This new produce is produce of the five grains (wheat, barley, spelt, etc) that rooted before the 16th of Nisan, day of the Omer offering, that is prohibited to be eaten till the date of the 16th of Nisan; or produce which rooted after the 16th of Nisan (or 17th for Diaspora which keeps two days of Yom Tov for both cases) prohibited till the next year on the 16th of Nisan (including) (Yoreh Deah 293, 1-3).
ואם תקריב מנחת ביכורים לה' אביב קלוי באש גרש כרמל תקריב את מנת ביכורך
(ויקרא ב, יד) - Our sages teach that these words of our parsha talking about "bikurim" actually refer to the Omer offering, which is the first (bikurim) grain of the year. How do we know that this offering must come specifically from the Land of Israel? Rambam rules in Tmidin veMusafin 7, 5: "This meal offering may be brought only from Eretz Yisrael,as [Leviticus 23:10] states: "And you shall bring the omer, the first of your harvest, to the priest."
The explanation of this proof-text is in Rambam's source, the Sifra parshat Emor, which states that "your (in plural) harvest" excludes the Diaspora, which is not the People's (in plural) land as a group whole. Rambam continues in law 13 to explain that even reaping without eating is limited: "It is forbidden to reap any of the species of grain in Eretz Yisrael before the reaping of the omer, [becauseLeviticus 23:10] refers [to it as]: "the first of your harvest," [implying that] it should be the first [grain] that is reaped.
To what does the above apply? To a harvest from which the omer offering could be brought. [A field located] in parched land in a valley, by contrast, may be reaped before [the reaping of] the omer, because it is not fit to bring [the omer offering] from it. [Even such grain] should not, however, be collected in a grain heap." (There is controversy if this law applies today in absence of the Bais Hamikdash). The Omer offering reminds us to recognize that before we benefit from new produce we must remember that HaShem is Master of all nature and has caused the fields to grow this new produce.
The unique connection of the Omer to the Land also reminds us that this recognition is even greater in the Land of Israel, the Land of Special Providence. It is with this recognition and this inspiration that may we merit soon to raise the Omer offering to the Bait Hamikdash, pinnacle point of the Holy Shechina.
The book of Vayikra which we begin this week begins with the call of HaShem to Moshe. After thousands of years of inability of our People to come to the Land, it seems that the recent ability to come to the Land is like the call of HaShem, calling us to get closer to HaShem, to get closer to our Ancestral roots of Hebron, calling us to get closer ("yakriv") to the Shechina and revive its power - "אדם כי יקריב מכם קרבן לה'"
Real-life Hashgaha Story #9: A yeshiva student tells this recent story: "My son was born with an extremely rare condition in which his knee bends only in the opposite direction which it should. The doctors said it takes at least 3 months to cure this condition with casts etc. We used the casts, and miraculously my son was cured in two weeks. The doctors were astounded."
