Elevation & Sacred Service — Kendell Pinkney

What does it mean to be dedicated to serve? What does it mean to be elevated and set aside for holy service? These are some of the questions that resonate for me upon re-reading this week’s portion, Beha’alotekha. In the early verses of the portion, we enter a scene where Hashem is giving a list of ritual commands for Moses to communicate to Aaron, the priests, and the Israelite people. In the course of relaying these commandments, we run into a peculiar set of verses:

Numbers 8

13 וְהַֽעֲמַדְתָּ֙ אֶת־הַלְוִיִּ֔ם לִפְנֵ֥י אַהֲרֹ֖ן וְלִפְנֵ֣י בָנָ֑יו וְהֵנַפְתָּ֥ אֹתָ֛ם תְּנוּפָ֖ה לַֽיהוָֽה׃

14 וְהִבְדַּלְתָּ֙ אֶת־הַלְוִיִּ֔ם מִתּ֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְהָ֥יוּ לִ֖י הַלְוִיִּֽם׃

13 You shall place the Levites in attendance upon Aaron and his sons, and designate them as an elevation offering to the Lord. 14 Thus you shall set the Levites apart from the Israelites, and the Levites shall be Mine.

I am immediately struck by the sacrificial language here. On its face, it seems as if Hashem is saying that the Levites, an ancient Israelite sub-group of priests, are to be a sacrificial offering. As we read on, we realize that this is not a literal offering, rather it is meant to convey that this group of priests are to be holy - set aside for the purpose of ritual service. For me, this raises a question: Why not just include the parts of the text that state that the Levites are to be consecrated for holy work? Why portray them as sacrificial offerings?

The ancient system of animal sacrifice was a complex process involving blood, guts, fire, smoke, incense, bile, excrement, and so much more. If I think too hard on the modern processes of animal slaughter for food consumption, I feel myself get queasy. If that is how I feel when thinking about animals-as-food, all the more so am I taken aback when I try to conjure up the method of operations for sacrificing an animal to Hashem. This is what makes the imagery of the Levites as elevation offering so striking.

An elevation offering (תְּנוּפָ֖ה) is literally the physical raising up of a consecrated gift in one’s hands to Hashem before actually burning the gift on the altar. Throughout the Torah, we see various (parts of) animals, olive oil, bread, and agricultural produce serve as elevation offerings. But the Levites are the first group of people that are designated as an elevation offering.

Thank goodness this is not a literal sacrificing of people. Nevertheless, it leads me to ask what does it mean for the Levites to be the first people consecrated as this specific kind of offering? The rest of our text indicates that “their offering” means that they will serve a dual role: 1) Instead of recruiting ritual servants from among the ranks of the Israelite people more broadly, this entire Levitical subgroup will take that role upon themselves. 2) In becoming the ritual servants from among the Israelite people, they will be assigned to serve Aaron and the higher priestly class that carries out the sacrificial act before Hashem. The fact that the Levites are framed as an elevation offering communicates that there is something essential to their service and their presence. 

Between our portion’s imagery of elevating that which will be sacrificed and consecrating the Levites for sacred service, my mind draws a meandering link to these past few weeks in which we have witnessed just how unsacred our world can be. We have experienced deep pain over the loss of life and rampant fear that has spread amongst citizens in Gaza, Palestine and Israel; we have seen the ongoing fracturing of Jewish communities that are caught up in rhetorical wars with each other and with other non-Jewish groups, communities, and individuals; and we have watched on our world as the persistent stain of antisemitism reared its head both in word and deed in places expected and unexpected. It all feels like so much. It can feel as if the world is spinning too quickly for us to catch our collective breath. How do we persist?

For me, looking to our portion’s themes of elevation and sacred service is what is getting me through. Much in the same way that the Levites were assigned a role to help make expiation on behalf of the people, I think that a case can be made that the monumental work that we have before us is to seek out what our sacred service will be. How will we elevate restoration, repair, understanding, connection, and justice as part of our sacred work that Hashem has called us to do? How might we do it in ways that heal our world versus fracture it and grind the shattered pieces into dust? Such work is hard. Just like the actual process of ancient sacrifice, it is an irreducibly messy process that can take a toll. I think of my own equilibrium over the past month and can certainly identify ways in which engaging in a hard conversation, or showing up for individual people, or holding space for different and opposing communities in the rawness of their experiences felt like a deep, madenning kind of self-sacrifice. Nevertheless, for me, this seems like the most essential work that the moment calls for.

As we head into Shabbat, I wish everyone in our community the space of mind to rest and reset, because the work before us is much and the days are few. And in spite of that, we have sacred work to do, and we are not free to desist from it.

Kendell Pinkney is the Rabbinic Fellow for Ammud: The Jews of Color Torah Academy.