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feel this is your meaning and 
mission in life. This is what you 
were placed on earth to do.
There are many such calls 
in Tanach. There was the call 
Abraham received, telling him 
to leave his land and family. 
There was the call to Moses 
at the Burning Bush (Ex. 3:4). 
There was the one experienced 
by Isaiah when he saw in a mys-
tical vision God enthroned and 
surrounded by angels: “Then 
I heard the voice of the Lord 
saying, ‘Whom shall I send? 
And who will go for us?’ And 
I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!’” 
Isaiah 6:8
One of the most touching is 
the story of the young Samuel, 
dedicated by his mother 
Hannah to serve in the sanctu-
ary at Shiloh where he acted as 
an assistant to Eli the priest. In 
bed at night, he heard a voice 
calling his name. He assumed it 
was Eli. He ran to see what he 
wanted, but Eli told him he had 
not called. This happened a sec-
ond time and then a third, and 
by then Eli realized that it was 
God calling the child. He told 
Samuel that the next time the 
voice called his name, he should 
reply, “Speak, Lord, for Your 
servant is listening.
” 
It did not occur to the child 
that it might be God summon-
ing him to a mission, but it 
was. Thus began his career as a 
prophet, judge and anointer of 
Israel’s first two kings, Saul and 
David (1 Samuel 3).
When we see a wrong to be 
righted, a sickness to be healed, 
a need to be met, and we feel 
it speaking to us, that is when 
we come as close as we can in 
a post-prophetic age to hear-
ing Vayikra, God’s call. And 
why does the word appear here, 
at the beginning of the third 
and central book of the Torah? 
Because the book of Vayikra is 
about sacrifices, and a vocation 
is about sacrifices. We are 

willing to make sacrifices when 
we feel they are part of the task 
we are called on to do.
From the perspective of 
eternity, we may sometimes be 
overwhelmed by a sense of our 
own insignificance. We are no 
more than a wave in the ocean, 
a grain of sand on the seashore, 
a speck of dust on the surface of 
infinity. Yet we are here because 
God wanted us to be, because 
there is a task He wants us to 
perform. The search for mean-
ing is the quest for this task.
Each of us is unique. Even 
genetically identical twins are 
different. There are things only 
we can do, we who are what we 
are, in this time, this place and 
these circumstances. For each of 
us God has a task: work to per-
form, a kindness to show, a gift 
to give, love to share, loneliness 
to ease, pain to heal or broken 
lives to help mend. Discerning 
that task, hearing Vayikra, God’s 
call, is one of the great spiritual 
challenges for each of us.
How do we know what it is? 
Some years ago, in To Heal a 
Fractured World, I offered this 
as a guide: Where what we want 
to do meets what needs to be 
done, that is where God wants 
us to be. 
This still seems to me to 
make sense. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks 

served as the chief rabbi of the 

United Hebrew Congregations of the 

Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings 

have been made available to all at 

rabbisacks.org. 

CONVERSATIONS
• What makes you happy?
• What makes your life 
meaningful?
• How do you plan to make it 
more meaningful?
• Do you have a sense of what 
your calling in life is?
• How do we find out what our 
calling is? Where did Moses find 
his calling from? Can we find our 
calling from the same source?

A Leader’s 
Attributes
T

his week’s portion 
talks about God 
commanding Moshe 
in the different sacrifices 
brought in the Temple. We 
are taught that the 
real sacrifice is when 
we are willing to look 
within ourselves and 
amend our character 
toward our self-
betterment. 
At the time of this 
portion, there are 
three active leaders 
of the Jewish nation, 
each in their own 
way. Moshe, who 
would look at each 
person for who they 
are and where they 
are and meet them 
there with encouragement 
and mentorship toward 
growth, like the theme of 
our parshah with sacrifices. 
One way we see this 
quality embodied is via the 
manna which is attributed 
to Moshe. The manna would 
come prepped for each 
person according to their 
individual spiritual standing 
and need, as well as the taste, 
matched by each person’s 
personal preferences.
Then we have Aharon, 
Moshe’s brother, the high 
priest. Aharon is famous for 
his love and unconditional 
acceptance for everyone. 
Aharon saw each person for 
the essence of their soul. 
This essence is the same in 
each of us. One example 
is the clouds of glory that 
surrounded our nation 
in the desert, which is 
attributed to Aharon. These 
clouds surrounded us all 

equally. 
The third leader of our 
nation while we journeyed 
through the desert is 
Miriam. Miriam, the sister 
of Aharon and Moshe, 
the one that watched 
and guarded Moshe 
when he was a baby 
floating in the Nile, 
the one that led the 
celebrations after kriyas 
yam suf (splitting of 
the sea) and the one 
that is attributed with 
the stream of water 
from the rock, while 
our nation resided in 
the desert. Miriam’s 
quality and approach 
in her leadership was 
to infuse people with 
hope and motivation. 
Each of these approaches 
are integral to leadership: 
creating a culture of inherent 
safety and belonging, 
driving people toward their 
unknown potential, and 
inspiring and connecting 
those that look toward us.
The Torah’s purpose is to 
teach us how we can and 
should express ourselves. 
One such lesson is how 
each of us is a leader in 
our different communities, 
and we have the ability and 
responsibility to utilize these 
three tools and approaches 
toward bettering the world 
around us. 
This world needs you to 
create a world that only you 
can envision; you were chosen 
just for that purpose. 

Rabbi Yarden Blumstein is the teen 

director at Friendship Circle in West 

Bloomfield.

TORAH PORTION

Rabbi Yarden 
Blumstein

Parshat 

Vayikra: 

Leviticus 

1:1-5:26; 

Deuteronomy 

25:17-19; 

I Samuel 

15:2-34.