From Human Sacrifice to a Life of Service

The Levite as a Gift

Thus you shall set the Levites apart from the Israelites, and the Levites shall be Mine. (Numbers 8:14)

For they are formally assigned (n’tunim n’tunim) to Me from among the Israelites: I have taken them for Myself in place of all the first issue of the womb, of all the male first-born of the Israelites. (8:16)

Your sons and daughters shall be delivered (n’tunim) to another people, while you look on; and your eyes shall strain for them constantly, but you shall be helpless. (Deuteronomy 28:32)

The Levites are called n’tunim on at least four occasions, all in Numbers, and twice in this week’s parasaha, Beha’alotecha. The word form of the basic verb noten (to give) appears in only one other context in the Chumash (Five Books of Moses). In Deuteronomy, the people are told that they will be n’tunim to another nation if they do not uphold the covenant. The passive form, “to be given over,” connotes a kind of sacrifice. The priests are given to God, reserved for God, offered to God. Israel, if it does not live up to its mission, will be given over or assigned to the nations of the world, sacrificed, as it were, to the nations.

The priests are custodians of sacrifices, but in a deeper sense they are themselves a sacrifice. They do not literally die during the Temple service, but their separate way of being puts them in a different category of life, cut off from normalcy. The Talmud describes a deep bench of high priests ready to serve on Yom Kippur in the event of the death of the active high priest, suggesting a high degree of risk in the role. One woman, Kimchit, had seven sons who all served as high priest (implying that six died in active duty). Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, also meet a fatal end. They evince the heavier meaning of n’tunim. Insofar as the entire people must become a nation of priests, we find in the example of the Levites a hint about the nature of being Jewish. At times, we are God’s sacrifice to the world. The Deuteronomic text also singles out children as n’tunim, in keeping with the Biblical motif of child sacrifice.

In contrast to the literal human sacrifices conducted in some pagan civilizations, the Torah turns human sacrifice into a metaphor. We must live and preserve life, but that life always comes with an asterisk. God doesn’t want the priests to die during the Yom Kippur service. Nadav and Avihu are not intended as sacrifices to placate an angry. But these catastrophes only show the extreme outcome endemic to a life of service. Every day thousands of priests choose life, but their lives of service contain mini-deaths, suppressions of egotism and self-centeredness in favor of a higher cause. They represent to the rest of society what it means to see one’s life not as a right but as a gift. The priests do not have the right to liberty or pursuit of happiness, either. They have the obligation to serve and to pursue meaningfulness.

In the case of the Israelites given to the nations it appears to be a curse or punishment. The implication is that the nations will squander the gift or mistreat the gift in their midst. But it’s also a “measure for measure” punishment in that God reveals to the people a basic truth about their own behavior. In failing to see their lives as gifts for God, they behave in ways that degrade themselves. They are not given over to the nations as a result of their treachery. Rather, their treachery reveals that they have already devoted themselves to the nations and not to God. Full-blown assimilation is not the punishment for waywardness; waywardness is assimilation, a failure to uphold the special task of being distinct.

You cannot be distinct and not feel lonely. Thus the call to be a Levite and to be a gift is also a summons to embrace that you are not for everyone—you are a gift without needing the approval of world opinion. By contrast, the turn from gift of God to gift of the nations reflects a desire to feel less lonely, an intolerance towards the agony of being set apart. To put it in psychological terms, the core failure of the Israelites in Deuteronomy is low self esteem. They know God exists, but they turn to idols nonetheless, because they are lonely. Recall that the worship of the golden calf is triggered by Moses’s tardy return. To dedicate yourself to God requires that you can hold the space. You don’t get instant gratification or immediate validation. Instead you believe in the importance of your task, regardless. Because the Levite serves God he cannot afford to serve his image in the eyes of the nations.

The Israelites are not the Levites, but they are Levite-lite. If Levites are surrogate sacrifices, the Israelites are surrogate surrogate sacrifices. Their apartness is a matter of degree. Israelites do own property, do serve in battle, and do engage in mundane affairs from which the Levites are exempt. But all must see their lives as gifts, and even offerings.

The story of Cain and Abel is paradigmatic of sacrifice. Commentators focus on the detail that Cain gives the first sacrifice, but Abel gives the choicest. One way to understand this contrast is that Cain’s sacrifice was generic. It was fine as far as sacrifices go, but it lacked personality. There was no signature in it that suggested Cain’s unique relationship to it. In other words, Abel gives something that has sentimental value, whereas Cain offers a commodity, treating sacrifice merely as an economic transaction. I give up something now, as a gambit, and hope to make a return on the investment in the future. The value of the sacrifice, in this paradigm, is a function of the interest rate the sacrificer can hope to collect on it. Perhaps this approach to sacrifice continues in the idolatrous sacrifices of the nations, thus matching their selfsame anthropological view: I am not unique, but generic. The Levites are a sacrifice, by contrast, only by asserting their non-fungibility. Likewise, the purpose of the Jewish people is to affirm the non-fungibility of the human being by practicing and celebrating distinctiveness and apartness.

God gifts us a bespoke being, and we gift it back, when we double down on it. The failure to uphold the covenant and the turn towards the gods of other nations both turn on a discomfort with separateness. But in seeking to be less lonely through social approval and social conformity we only become more alienated. That path to deeper connection and a stronger sense of self is the recognition that we can make our life a gift the more singular we become.

Shabbat Shalom,

Zohar Atkins

Etz Hasadeh