Vayikra. The calling is the answer

We are opening a new book. The book of Vayikra "and he called.”

Yes Vayikra is the book of the calling

And we may think at first sight that this is not for us.

After all, on the pshat (literal level of reading) of it, the calling is addressed to Moshe, and to the Cohanim.

But we know that on a deeper level, by making us, the readers, witnessing this calling, Torah is really calling us.

If it weren’t, it wouldn’t make sense to read about Moshe and the Cohanim’s calling, three millennia after the destruction of the Temple.

Yes the calling is addressed to each of us.

And what does it say?

This week I just want to start by quoting in extenso the commentary of Mei Ha Shiloach on this “calling”

ויקרא אל משה. 

כתיב (ישעיה ס"ה,כ"ד) והיה טרם יקראו ואני אענה עוד הם מדברים ואני אשמע. ומאחר שהש"י עונה מה ענין עוד לדבר ולבקש, אך כי קריאה היינו תשוקה וציפוי, והוא אמרו טרם יקראו ואני אענה היינו טרם שיבא בלב המיחל לה' שום חשק לדבר, אז עונה אותו הש"י והוא שמבער מלבו כל חמדות וכל מיני חשקות לשום דבר שבעולם, ועי"ז יעשה מקום בלב האדם שיוכל לצפה ולקוה לרצון הש"י, ואח"כ יוכל לקבל בלבו תשוקה וקווי בלתי לה' לבדו. ואז עוד הם מדברים ואני אשמע

“And He called to Moshe.” (Vayikra, 1:1)

It is written (Yesahya, 65:24), “And it will be, that before they shall call, and I will answer, they have not yet spoken, and I will hear.” 

Since God answers, what is the need of speaking and asking? Calling implies desire and expectation, and He said, “before they call I will answer.” 

Thus before even the desire to speak comes to the heart of one who longs for God, God answers him and burns out of his heart all lusts and all desires for worldly things, thereby making room in his heart to expect and long for God’s will. After this preparation, he can then receive in his heart the desire and expectation for things other than God. And then, “they have not yet spoken and I will hear.” 

I just want to repeat Yeshaya’s words again:

“Before they shall call, I will answer, 

they have not yet spoken, and I will hear.”

This reminds me of a beautiful sufi story, in which a man had spent his life calling out to God, and felt that God never answered him.

When he dies, he finds himself before god, and he asks: 

But I kept calling you! Why didnt you answer? And Life Source replies quietly, with love:

Didn’t you hear?I was in each of your callings. In the calling, from the very place of yearning, lies our connection to the Divine.

The connection is in the calling .

But for the Mei Ha shiloach, it goes even deeper.

The Divine answers speaks to us, in our heart, before we even start to know we need to call out.

Writing these lines I can’t help but see the emaciated face of Eli Sharabi again.

Eli, one of the israeli hostages who was freed a few weeks ago, and who got back to his life only to meet a great void: his wife and two daughters had been killed the day he was taken in captivity, and he was coming back to an empty home.

But back then in the tunnels of Hamas, Eli, who was not a religious Jew, started saying Shema Israel, each morning, he didn’t even know why.When the journalist asked him why he would call God in such extreme circumstances, where God felt, if anything, particularly absent, Eli simply responded quietly:

“There is something that watches over you there.”

“There”, in the very pitt of distress, he felt the answer. And he expressed it through his own calling: the prayer Shma Israel, which spontaneously came to his lips.

Could it be the reason why Shma isn’t a calling to God, but to us?

Think about it: the prayer doesn’t say: “Oh, God, listen!”

It says Listen, Israel, Life Source, Is One!

This is what Eli was saying each morning, not as something that would protect him, but as something that expressed the fact that he felt, already, the kind hand of Life Source upon him.

His calling was a reminder to self.

And perhaps we, reopen Vayikra each year because we need such reminders, to ourselves.

We need to remember that the callings we receive in life are first and foremost answers: like a hand gently extending on our heart, and saying with a smile.

I am there. See the oneness of all. Now let’s go do some good in this world.

Are you up for it?