Parashat Vayikra - what does it mean to sacrifice?

Words of Torah
Parashat Vayikra
Leviticus 1:1-5:26

"When a man among you bring an offering to Hashem..."

~~Leviticus 1:2

Welcome to the most challenging of Books of the Torah to understand...let alone teach! However, that being said, it is referred to by some as the easiest to interpret.  Because of the clear dictums, directions, authoritative statements, and commands, it is assumed that there is less interpretive room to personalize the texts...which also assumes that it provides us with more clarity for how the ancient Hebrews lived their ritual lives while wandering in the desert.

In my interpretive reading, this book is a little different.  Although there are clear statements of how to perform certain rituals, and how to specifically behave under certain circumstances, for me this book is a lot about the ethics and morals of living a Jewish life in the 21st Century.

For instance, I was told at a young age that Gd does not want Jews today to actually perform the sacrifices as described in these chapters of Vayikra (Leviticus).  In fact, according to the rabbis, Gd actually prohibits us from performing these sacrificial rituals while our people are living in a "post-Temple" Diaspora without a Beit Mikdash in Jerusalem. My rabbi taught me many years ago that we pray three times a day instead of performing the three described daily sacrifices.  Each service, the shacharit, mincha, and maariv services were designed to replace the formal morning, afternoon, and evening sacrificial rituals respectively.

Today, when I look back at this explanation, although it was "sensible" and rationale back when I was a pre-bar mitzvah teen trying to understand the why behind prayer, I am  pretty sure that either I didn't truly understood my rabbi, OR, maybe my rabbi only explained it with enough depth to simply appease me with my limited adolescent understanding.  Today, however, I reflect on the explanation that I received back then and am challenged with its simplicity.  Today, I need more than "we've simply switched sacrifices for prayer services" as my answer.

When I consider what sacrifice means, "to give up something that you want to keep in order to get or do something else or in order to help someone else," I am immediately struck by its similarity with my own definition of tfillah!  When I pray, I basically give up my time in order to be part of a community and to help be there for someone else who might need a community with whom to pray.  Is this true?  Am I actually performing a "sacrifice" when I pray?  OK, maybe it's not the year-old bull or first fruits that I'm bringing to the alter, but maybe it's my time, my energy, my commitment, and my support, that I am sacrificing in order to fulfill this priestly mitzvah?

So maybe Vayikra after all is not just about the disconnected and irrelevant sacrifices that were performed in biblical times, maybe these sacrifices are actually happening in different forms all over the world each day, multiple times a day?  At least, that's what I believe...

Shabbat shalom!