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Shabbat starts on Friday at 7:14pm and ends on Saturday at 8:09pm. The weekly Torah portion is Vayikra.

Mincha is now in summer recess until the end of DST in early April. See the WhatsApp group for further info.

Weekly sushi & shiur continues on Wed at 1.30pm at A-P GF/459 Collins – and via zoom. Current topic: dividing common property. Details here and on the WhatsApp group.

Thought of the Week with thanks to Ya’akov Waller.

The weekly Torah reading of Vayikra introduces the korban chatat, which was the sin offering for inadvertent transgressions. There are four categories of people who may need to bring a chatat offering: the anointed priest (4:3), the entire congregation (4:13), a nasi (i.e. a tribal leader) (4:22), and the ordinary individual (4:27).

It is notable that for the priest, the congregation, and the individual, the Torah uses the conditional “im” — if he shall sin. For the nasi, however, the Torah substitutes “asher” — when he shall sin. The grammatical shift suggests that for political leaders invested with power, there is a certain inevitability about sinning. Recognition of this reality is one example of many where the Torah addresses itself, not to an artificial utopia that could never exist, but to the real world as it is.

The other notable distinguishing feature is that the nasi is the only category of sinner whose offering must be a male goat. By mandating that the nasi’s offering must be different to the offerings of all other categories, there is no possibility for the nasi to remain anonymous. One can imagine how news of such an offering would attract public attention and become widely known. In this way, the Torah can be seen to strongly endorse the value of public accountability.

Rashi deepens the point. He connects the word “asher” to “ashrei”, and says “fortunate is the generation whose rulers bring sin offerings”. Of course, sinning itself cannot be cause for praise. But once it is recognised that the sinning is inevitable, Rashi’s comment is readily understood: leaders who bring the sin offering, thereby submitting themselves to public accountability, demonstrate the very qualities of leadership that are both valuable and rare — humility and the capacity for introspection.