Leviticus (Vayikra) is a God-infused book. The kohanim (priests) direct the cultic service of God, who resides at the center of the camp. The divine sanctuary is the focal point of the Israelite society, whose sacred status must be safeguarded from regular human contact with life and death. And yet, God is largely absent — in an immediate sense — from the book. God is impersonal and removed, in whose presence the only proper response is silence. No one, not even Moses, speaks to God in Leviticus, although God speaks to humans. The high priest, who gains access to the holiest depths of the sanctuary on the holiest day of the year, does not even confront God directly. In Leviticus, the average person achieves forgiveness just by performing the required ritual acts. Atonement does not depend on the will of God.
Contrast this divine detachment with the intimate portrait of God which emerges in the Midrash on Leviticus, chapter 12, Parshat Tazria. In response to the opening verse, “When a woman conceives and bears a male child,” Vayikra Rabbah highlights the missing character in that verse: God. Throughout the Bible, God is explicitly present and involved in human beings’ birth. How many stories in Genesis alone revolve around God’s hand in bringing children into the world? In its plain sense, God does not belong in Tazria, for the verse introduces purity legislation for a postpartum woman — the sole subject of the verse! And yet, the rabbis of Vayikra Rabbah respond to God’s absence in Leviticus 12:1 by rewriting the verse, in a manner of speaking, and bringing God into a front and center position.
