Parashat Vayyiqra

Parashat Vayyiqra opens with a quiet but powerful moment: “And IT called to Mosheh.” That call was more than just a Divine summons, It was an expression of Divine love. It was a call meant specifically for Moses.

Nobody else heard it.

And that matters.

Because each of us knows what it feels like to hear something others don’t fully catch.

To wit, the midrash says we start children learning Torah with Vayiqqra, with

qorbanot—sacrifices—because children are tahor—pure—and these offerings are also called pure. Thus children can grasp things in their purity about these commandments that we as adults have long since been dulled to. They retain a sense of wonder and innocence to absorb and accept aspects of the world that “must make sense” to us as adults. But qorbanot don’t “make sense.”

They’re not about logic or efficiency. They’re about relationship. Like bringing flowers when someone you love asks, not because it’s practical, but because it means something to them. That’s real devotion. To sacrifice our sense “logic” or needing to know the “why.” Chassidut pushes the thought even further: the offering isn’t really the animal “out there”—it’s the animal “in here.”

“When a person from you brings an offering”—from you. Not just from your possessions, but from your inner life, your inner self. The part of us that wants comfort, status, control, recognition. Some of us carry a quiet, sheep-like drive—just to be at ease. Others carry that bull energy—pushing, striving, needing to win. The work is to take that energy—our passions, our pleasures—and place them on the altar. Not to erase them, but to redirect them.

To say, this too belongs to something higher.

Look at the word Vayiqqra. It is an expression of love—G’D calling Moses with closeness. But the final letter in that word, the alef, is written small. Alef is the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, yet it also represents the number one. A beginning, but also something that can feel… small. But it still counts. And if we read that through an African American lens, that small alef can speak to what it feels like to be few in number. To be present in a space where your voice, your story, your

experience isn’t the majority. But the Torah doesn’t erase that smallness—it keeps the alef. It matters that it’s there.

G’d insists the Moses writes the alef in the Torah despite his humility, refusing to allow him to negate himself. Because that small alef is what turns vayyiqar—a random encounter—into vayyiqra—a calling with love. Without it, the whole meaning changes.

So maybe the message is this:

Being few doesn’t make the call weaker. It might make it more precise.

Moses hears something no one else hears. And in every generation, there are people who carry that same kind of listening—who know what it is to be addressed directly, even if others don’t quite hear it the same way.

To be an Eidot CHeMDaT”A Jew is, in some sense, to live inside that small alef. Not absent, but distinctly present, carrying a voice, a history, and a sensitivity that shapes how the call is heard and answered. And the response? It’s the qorban.

It’s taking the fire inside—the ambition, the hunger, the emotion—and saying: I’m not letting this run wild. I’m offering it. I’m aligning it. Not because it’s easy. Not because it always makes sense. But because THE ONE THAT called is asking.

So the question Vayiqqra leaves us with is simple:

What part of your inner life are you willing to place on the altar—and what does your unique call sound like, if you really listen?

The call has been sent.

How will you answer?