The third book of the Torah, Vayikra, Leviticus, Torah Kohanim, the Torah of the Kohen, is all about sacrifice. Most western thinking minds (mine included) can't really wrap our heads around the notion of animal sacrifice or even meal offerings, wine libations and so on.

We like a good meal of steak, bread, and wine as well as the good smells of incense burning. But to bring it on an altar and offer it up to G-d really doesn't compute.

And I'm not going to try to compute it. I want to share with you how I am internalizing the daily readings and their application in my life.

These days my identity as a Jew is as strong as it has ever been. It's showing up in my irritation at those countries who are ignorantly and with hate turning against Israel. It's showing up in my push to identify more publicly with Jewish pride. It's pushing me to do more activities that demonstrate that Am Yisrael Chai - we are ALIVE!

All of this is a sacrifice! A very real one. However, perhaps this is a sacrifice that is happening to me and forcing me to recognize my Jewishness and connection to all Jews and the Land of Israel like never before.

Then there is the more internal sacrifice; the one that goes on inside of me in the relationships that are close to me, in the workspace in my interactions with others and perhaps in the deepest recesses of my soul and heart where I struggle in showing up the way Hashem wants me to.

Those sacrifices in many ways are much more difficult. It's taking the very fuel that drives me; passion and pleasure and choosing to do what is right, to do what is in the interest of others, to push past my own self interests. This is the internalization of the sacrifice of blood and fats of the sacrifices; ie. to direct the passion and pleasures in my life to the service of Hashem.

Sacrifice is difficult because the rational mind, the feeling human, wants to stay focused on what makes us human.

On Purim we are instructed to become "intoxicated until we don't know the difference between cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordechai". The state of intoxication is the state of surrender, the state of sacrifice. It's the power to achieve a state of not knowing, beyond knowing.

I'm trying to tap into the energy of the month of Purim, and the energy of the not knowing, to leap into the space of sacrifice. Perhaps with the energy of the new book of the Torah of sacrifice, and the energy of Purim, there are some leaps that have been waiting to be leaped that I will now leap.

Best wishes for a Happy Purim and a good Shabbos. I hope to see you at one of our Purim celebrations. www.chabadintown.org/purim.

Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman