Hey there, it's Liel. Coming to you from my shelter at home here in the epicenter of all this in plagued Manhattan.

So as we transition into Shabbat and try to find, as we always do, some comfort and meaning in this week's

Parshah, I opened the book and started reading Parshat Vaikra.

And I gotta be honest with you. At first, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way.

Because this week's parcha is all about animal sacrifices, which bothered me for three reasons.

First of all, you know, I'm an animal-loving kind of guy.

I love my dog.

I try to be very mindful of what I eat and all these descriptions of all these animals who must be sacrificed upon the altar kind of made

me, you know, a little bit uneasy. Second of all, and completely in contradiction to the first principle, I'm hungry and it hasn't been very easy getting kosher

meat here in New York these last couple of weeks. It's been at least a month now since I sunk my teeth

into some good burnt offerings. But the third reason that made me kind of

uncomfortable when I read this parcha about the sacrifices

was because I asked myself the question of how exactly does this pertain to our lives right now.

I mean the temple of course was supremely important.

It was how most Jews lived throughout seminal periods in Jewish history, but a temple has now been

gone for thousands of years. And here is the Torah instructing us on how to perform very intricate

sacrificial duties in a temple that hasn't stood on the ground

since the year 70-80.

So what do we make of it?

What do we make of this logic of sacrifice? Is there anything that we could do right now in our lives that would actually kind of mimic that logic or is it all just arcane historical references?

I found myself thinking about this question a lot this week, as I spent long days trying to balance

work and homeschooling my children in a cramped two bedroom Manhattan apartment.

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