Rabbi Yair Robinson
Vayikra 2026
3/20/26
Chodesh Tov! We have entered the month of Nisan and are counting down the days to Pesach, our z’man cheiruteinu, our season of freedom. For many of us, that means the anticipation of spending time with family and friends and loved ones, cleaning out the house, preparing to lead or host the seder itself, and of course, preparing all of the various foods we use for the celebration of Pesach. There is something primordially Jewish about using a dinner party to tell arguably the most central story of our people: our leaving the avodah, the slavery of Egypt, and find redemption by God, ‘with a mighty hand and outstretched arm,’ to enter the avodah, service, of the Eternal One.
And so much of our preparation involves salt. Salt helps to kasher the meat we may be serving, enhances the flavor of our food, and of course is one of the symbolic foods, as the saltwater that we will dip the karpas, the greens, to remind us of the tears of our ancestors and their afflictions. So, it really shouldn’t surprise us that salt appears in Torah as a part of the sacred rituals at the altar. But as stated before, we might be surprised by the weight it is given, not just as a condiment but as part of an eternal covenant, a covenant of Salt.
Yes, a covenant of salt. Here, and repeated in the book of Numbers, we are taught of the importance of salt for the covenant, and that it must be kept forever. But why? We may assume that this is a purely practical matter: making the eaten part of the offering palatable, and perhaps it is as simple and prosaic as that. But the rabbis, in their own rabbinical way, can’t seem to leave it well enough alone, and search for a deeper meaning. One interpretation says that the covenant of salt extends to creation, when the lower waters (that is, the ocean) was separated from the upper waters, the sky. The Talmud relates this verse to an aphorism: “The Torah is like salt to me,” perhaps meaning that Torah enhances life as salt enhances food, or that Torah is as necessary to life as salt.
But there is another passage from the midrash that we might find troubling, but also deeply meaningful. In an extended back-and-forth in the Talmud, the rabbis compare salt to suffering, not in the way that we discuss the symbolic tear-water at the seder. Rather, we read that affliction, like salt, serves a purpose. Salt purifies the offering, sweetens’ the food we eat, and likewise, suffering, affliction, purifies and elevates the individual.
I want to pause here for a moment as I suspect we find that imagery challenging, or perhaps downright offensive. Today, we are likely to say that there is nothing pure or noble or redeeming in pain and suffering, in grief and misery. There is nothing heroic or romantic about affliction, and I’m not interested in the kind of fetishization that takes place in classical moral and ethical literature around suffering, especially around Jewish suffering. Nor do I want to succumb to the all-too prevalent despair that hangs over everything in this moment in history, as we watch vulnerable people at home and around the world suffer terribly. I know that, in this moment, our hearts are permanently broken as we see innocent people get rounded up by masked men in this country, see scared families running to bomb shelters beyond our borders, see synagogues turned into crime scenes, see people created in God’s image denied their humanity, and have watched every safety net, every program to help the poor, the sick, and destitute around the world be hollowed out. If our hearts aren’t broken, then it is because we are growing numb to the pain and misery flooding our news feeds every day, and to accept such suffering as necessary or even essential feels like a betrayal of everything we believe, as Jews and human beings. I feel all of that is true down to the marrow of my bones. And Maimonides reminds us that, if we do not raise our voices when suffering occurs, if we are so numb to pain, then we may become the person who causes pain ourselves.
And…suffering is. We cannot escape it. All of us have suffered, or will suffer, pain and anguish, physical and spiritual infirmity. As Maimonides says, the affliction we experience can make us smaller, more fragile, more self-centered; more suspicious of the world, inured to others’ realities. But it can also lead us to empathy, to wanting to lift others up rather than have them suffer as we suffered, to refuse to accept that this is how the world has to be. We see this reflected in our seder as well; we don’t just remind ourselves of our ancestors’ tears. We pour out our wine, our sweetness of the holiday, to remind ourselves of the makkot, of the plagues the Egyptians suffered. That is, we reduce our joy to remember the pain and suffering of those who were ultimately responsible for our ancestor’s afflictions, an act of radical empathy, if we’re willing to expand it beyond ancient stories and to those we encounter today. Again, there is nothing precious about suffering, and we yearn for a day when people will no longer hurt. But so long as pain is part of human experience, we have the choice to let it lead to understanding and love for others, to use our experience to purify and elevate others.
As we approach Pesach and the seder, we are acutely aware of how distant we feel from our goal of full redemption for our world. But we have made a covenant of salt for all time, to make sure that the offering of our hearts, purified by our own experiences, further purifies our own actions and our response to those who suffer among us. May this be so, as we say, Amen.