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123  twenty-four Bodily Perfection in the Sanctuary Parashat Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1–5:26) Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert The concluding chapters of the book of Exodus focus on the construction of the Tent of Meeting, also known as the Tabernacle, or mishkan. Parashat Vayikra opens the book of Leviticus with a survey of the sacrifices to be conducted in that sanctuary. With the exception of Leviticus 2, which deals with the grain offering—the minhah, consisting of fine flour, oil, and frankincense—the sacrifices listed and expounded on in this parasha consist of animal sacrifices: the burnt offering of either bull, ram, male goat, or birds (Lev. 1:3–17); the sacrifice of the “well-being” offering (often translated as “peace” offering, shelamim),1 constituted by cattle, sheep, or goats (Lev. 3:1– 16); the sin offering of a bull or, depending on who the offending party is, a goat or sheep and, depending on the economic ability of the person who brings the offering, birds or meal offering (Lev. 4:1–5:13); and finally the guilt offering (Lev. 5:14–26). The parasha therefore details the sacrificial service as a means to maintain and nurture the relationship of the community with the divinity.2 Framed as a speech of instructions given by God to Moses from the Tent of Meeting , the parasha presents a carefully structured choreography of ritual practice, involving priests and laypeople of various social standings and economic abilities. The envisioned stage is the Tent of Meeting, and the parasha devotes detailed attention to this spatial framing. That is, the sacrificial script instructs people to move from wherever they bring their offerings to the proscenium of the stage—the door of the Tent of the Meeting (Lev. 1:3; 4:4) or “before the Tent of Meeting” (Lev. 3:8.13), where the priests, the sons of Aaron, take over. The priests move between the altar in the courtyard in front of the Tent and the door, where the person bringing the offering remains. Again and again, the laypeople, members of the people of Israel, are instructed to bring the animal to the door where the actual slaughter of the animal is to take place. The priests then continue with the processing of the carcass in order to turn it into a proper offering on the altar. In the midst of all this, the foregrounding and therefore emphasis of gender in the parasha is palpable,3 as in almost every case the gender of the animals to be sacrificed is not only implied (as in bull, ram) but emphasized: “If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish [zakhar tamim]” (Lev. 1:3; compare 1:11, 4:3, 4:22, 5:18, and 5:25). In other cases, the parasha specifically mentions that the animal can be either male or female, as is the case with the peace offering (Lev. 124 Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert 3:1 and 3:6). Finally, in some cases the animal should be “a female without blemish [neqevah temimah]” (Lev. 4:28 and 4:32). Clearly, the gender of the animal matters to the priestly writers, and it seems to play an important role in the symbolic work that sacrifices are to play in the design of the relationship between God and the people of Israel. Insofar as a queer reading entails being suspicious of any insistence on unequivocal markers of gendered identities, I focus attention on this priestly insistence on gendered “unblemishedness.” Let us therefore briefly examine the phrases zakhar tamim and neqevah temimah. There are perhaps two ways of reading them, either as “male/female, unblemished”— that is, the animal should be male/female and unblemished—or alternatively as “unblemished as a male/female animal.” The first reading is perhaps somewhat less interesting , since the gender of the animal is merely one additional required characteristic , whereas in the second reading the animal to be sacrificed is not just a generic animal without blemish but is to be without blemish as a gendered animal. These two readings do not necessarily contradict each other, and they are ultimately not that different from each other, but they provide different emphases. As to the first reading of male/female and unblemished, an early and quite interesting , albeit problematic, Jewish reading of the gender symbolism involved in the sacrificial script of this parasha is provided by Philo, the prolific 1st-century Alexandrian interpreter of Biblical literature for...

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