A pleasing fragrance to HaShem

(Leviticus 6:8)

Nisan 7, 5778/March 23, 2018

This week's Torah reading, Tzav, like last week's opening chapters of the book of Leviticus, and like much of the book of Leviticus that will follow, is an intensely detailed description, instruction book, actually, for the preparation and performance of the diverse Temple offerings, as well as the related topics of ritual purity and dietary laws, as we shall see. Torah should be applauded for its transparency. After all, only a small number of kohanim, (Temple priests), truly need to know most of this information, in any given generation. Nevertheless, the Torah shares all of these details with the entire people of Israel. The spiritual transformation that all these vividly detailed offerings and issues of ritual purity are intended to effect, can only be achieved in the light of day, and with the full knowledge and cognizance of the participant.

The manifold technical facets involved in the preparation for and performance of each of the offerings, nevertheless, can be intimidating and even off-putting, especially to our "modern" sensibilities. So we have a tendency to "turn off" when we read the book of Leviticus. But there is one phrase, one expression, repeated with great frequency throughout the book of Leviticus, which should grab our attention and make us think twice before we write off the entire book as no more than an ancient and no longer relevant set of instructions concerning a practice that died two thousand years ago. That expression is, in Hebrew, re'ach nicho'ach, translated variously as "sweet savor" or "pleasant fragrance." The full expression is "a pleasing fragrance to HaShem." It is used many times in referring to the burning of the offerings on the altar. It is neither a technical nor pragmatic description of what is transpiring on the altar, and for this reason alone it calls out and demands our attention: what is the nature of this re'ach nicho'ach, and why is it pleasing to G-d? The answer to this question is the key to Torah's eternal commitment to the bringing of offerings in the Holy Temple.

The expression re'ach nicho'ach is used more than forty times throughout the Five Books of Moses, the majority of those times throughout the book of Leviticus. It is used exclusively in describing, not the process of an offering, but its end result. It refers to the most elusive, the most undefinable of the five senses, and it attributes its effect on G-d's "state of mind" as it were. What is the source of the re'ach nicho'ach, the sweet savor? Is it the smell of burning flesh? Perhaps our modern, dismissive attitude toward the ancient service of offerings would suggest this crude, "primitive" anthropomorphic rendering of G-d's infinite being, as if G-d, like us, is effected by the smell of meat cooking on the flame. Shame on our arrogance!

The first time the expression re'ach nicho'ach is used in Torah is in the book of Genesis, and it describes the offering made by Noach, following the end of the flood and the reemergence of land and life in the world:

And Noach built an altar to HaShem, and he took of all the clean animals and of all the clean fowl and brought up burnt offerings on the altar. And HaShem smelled the pleasant aroma, (re'ach nicho'ach), and HaShem said to Himself, "I will no longer curse the earth because of man, for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth, and I will no longer smite all living things as I have done." (Genesis 8:20-21) The change that this offering effected in G-d's approach to man, the crown of His creation, certainly was not the result of the aroma of burning animal flesh on the altar, no matter how compelling its effects may be upon our earthly senses. The great sage Rashi understands the expression re'ach nicho'ach as being akin to the similar expression, nachat ru'ach, which can be translated as "soul satisfaction" or "spiritual contentment." Ru'ach, the word for soul, or spirit, shares its source with the word re'ach, which means scent or smell. And ru'ach also refers to the breath of life which G-d breathed into Adam, the first man, transforming him from a dead lump of clay into a living, yearning, searching human being. The re'ach nicho'ach that so profoundly effects G-d in the fulfillment of the process of man drawing close to G-d by engaging in a korban (drawing close) offering, is G-d's gratification, His indescribable pleasure, in seeing man raising up his own G-d given breath of life in an act of reaching our and drawing nearer to G-d.

We must remember that the offering made by Noach and recorded by Torah, just like the offering made by Adam, (following his denying G-d's will and subsequently losing Eden), and not recorded by Torah, but emblazoned on the memory of we the children of Adam, and recorded by our sages in Midrash, was man's initiative, man's unsolicited gesture toward G-d, born out of man's longing to realign and return to the intimacy of his first life-receiving encounter with G-d.

Nachat ru'ach, or simply nachat, is an expression recognized by Israelis and Jews the world over. It is the sublimely overwhelming sense of pride and pleasure and wholeness and perfection that a parent feels when witnessing the fulfillment of their child's attainment of the values and goals with which they were raised. Every parent experiences it with their child's first step, and with every great and good achievement they attain throughout their lives. G-d experiences it each time man reaches back into the most ancient recesses of his own being and his most primordial and intuitive expression of longing and gratitude, and brings that essence forward and shares it with G-d in the form of an offering on the Temple altar, inspiring in G-d a re'ach nicho'ach, an expression of G-d's love for man.

Today we say that prayer has superseded offerings as the supreme expression of our love for G-d. Prayer is, indeed, an incredibly powerful form of dialogue and drawing near to G-d, but let us remember that the Temple offerings did not end because man had outgrown them or grew weary of them. Offerings, man's original and most profound and powerful expression of longing for closeness to G-d was violently torn from our being when the Holy Temple was destroyed by desperate enemies who sought to severe Israel's closeness to G-d. Today we suffice with prayer, itself once an essential component of the process of the offerings, as we learn in Leviticus, and today its only surviving component. But as powerful and essential as prayer is, it is not the whole man, it is not the expression of the entirety of our being, that the offerings are. Don't let the dry details of Leviticus fool you, and don't let our modern arrogance, born out of the deprivation of our two thousand year disconnect deceive you: an offering upon the altar, our oldest and most primary expression of reaching out to G-d, is still most pleasing to Him, a re'ach nicho'ach, a source of Divine content.

-The Temple Institute