Parashat Tzav: Eating as Atonement - What is the Connection between Eating and Atonement?

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Parashat Tzav: Eating as Atonement 

What is the Connection between Eating and Atonement? 

Why do We Need All These Sacrifices? 

Oy! Another Torah portion about the sacrifices – what meaningful insights can I possibly glean from this topic? As a former vegetarian, with so many students who refrain from eating meat for idealistic reasons, how can I make sense of all this slaughtering that goes into the animal sacrifices? 

When I go back to what convinced my husband and me to leave our vegetarianism behind, I recall how we were taught that sacrifices are a way of elevating all matter and vitality in this world to a higher plane. In addition to elevating the various layers of the human soul, the sacrificial service in the Temple also elevates the actual animal being offered, thereby uplifting the entire animal kingdom (Tanya, Chapter 34). I clearly remember how our Rabbi taught that the animals would stretch out their necks in order to receive this elevation – serving as a sacrifice upon the mizbe’ach (altar). This understanding was deepened by how we were taught to relate to our own eating – even to declare – “our food is a sacrifice, and our table is a mizbeach!” Seen in this light, eating is revealed as an entirely new and intensely powerful form of spiritual service. We tend to imagine that the holiest spiritual acts are fasting, abstaining, or rising above the body. Yet here the Torah teaches the opposite – often holiness does not come through refraining from eating, on the contrary, it is achieved specifically through eating in the right place, in the right way, by the right people, and with the right consciousness. Sacred eating can become a means of repairing what is broken. The body itself can become an instrument of atonement.  

What a responsibility it is to compare our eating to that of the holy Kohanim officiating in the Temple. I’m afraid I may need a sin offering to atone for my unmindful eating! 

 

How Can We Make Our Eating Become an Act of Atonement? 

The sacrifices, with all their details, are hard to relate to in our time. Yet I noticed something striking about the sacrificial service of the Kohanim. I always assumed that the portion of the sacrifices that the Kohanim receive is simply their reward or payment for the demanding work of preparing the offering, handling all the intricate details, including sprinkling the blood in the prescribed manner. Although they would certainly deserve such compensation, our sages teach us otherwise: “For the kohanim eat [the sacrifice], and thereby its owners are granted atonement.” But as long as the kohanim do not eat the meat, the owners do not achieve atonement, for it was taught: “And they shall eat those through which atonement was achieved” – this teaches that the kohanim eat, and the owners are atoned (Babylonian Talmud, Pesachim 59b). 

This teaches us that eating is not merely a byproduct of the sacrifice, nor even a reward for it – rather, the eating itself is part of the sacrifice; it completes the atonement. The kohanim are not ‘benefiting’ from the offering. Their eating is itself an act of avodah that draws the atonement into reality. Thus, this act becomes a channel through which the offering reaches its completion. 

 

ספר ויקרא פרק ו פסוק יח דַּבֵּר אֶל אַהֲרֹן וְאֶל בָּנָיו לֵאמֹר זֹאת תּוֹרַת הַחַטָּאת בִּמְקוֹם אֲשֶׁר תִּשָּׁחֵט הָעֹלָה תִּשָּׁחֵט הַחַטָּאת לִפְנֵי הַשֵּׁם קֹדֶשׁ קָדָשִׁים הִוא: (יט) הַכֹּהֵן הַמְחַטֵּא אֹתָהּ יֹאכֲלֶנָּה בְּמָקוֹם קָדשׁ תֵּאָכֵל בַּחֲצַר אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד: 

“Speak to Aharon and to his sons, saying: This is the law of the sin offering: The sin offering shall be slaughtered before Hashem in the place where the burnt offering is slaughtered; it is a holy of holies. The kohen who performs the atonement shall eat it; it shall be eaten in a holy place, in the courtyard of the Tent of Meeting” (Vayikra 6:18-19). 

 

One of the most striking insights that emerges from these verses is that the kohanim’s eating of the korban is not secondary to the avodah, but part of the avodah itself. The very same kohen who performs the atonement is the one commanded to eat, revealing that the process of atonement does not end at the altar. The korban is not fully completed when it is slaughtered or when its blood is dashed upon the altar. Its final movement of rectification continues through holy eating. Our sages expand this idea and make it even more explicit: the kohen does not eat for personal pleasure, nor simply to receive his portion, but to bear the iniquity of the congregation and bring their process of atonement to completion. 

This gives eating in the Torah an entirely different meaning. Eating can be an act of selfish taking, but in the Mishkan it becomes an act of sacred carrying. When the kohanim eat the sin offering, either Hashem bears the sin of the people through that act, or the kohanim themselves carry the sin on behalf of the people, so that through them atonement is effected (Ibn Ezra, Vayikra 10:17). In either case, the food is no longer just food. It becomes a vessel through which what is broken is lifted, absorbed into holiness, and transformed. 

The kohanim, in this sense, become living extensions of the altar. Fire consumes one part of the offering upward to Hashem, while the kohanim consume another part downward into embodied holiness. These two modes of Divine service complement one another. 

 

How Can We Guard the Sanctity of Our Eating? 

The laws of the korbanot in Parashat Tzav reveal how weighty this eating truly was. The portion designated for the kohanim was not given to be discarded or treated lightly, but rather to be eaten as part of the sacred process of atonement.  

When something designated as “holy of holies” is not used for its intended purpose, it is considered a great loss, as its mitzvah remains unfulfilled (Ha’amek Davar, Vayikra 10:17). 

This teaches that not all eating is equal. There is a world of difference between consumption that fulfills its Divine purpose and consumption that misses or distorts that purpose. In Parashat Tzav, the Torah emphasizes that the korban must be eaten in a designated holy place. As Ibn Ezra explains, this refers to a defined sacred boundary within the Mishkan. The holiness of the food demanded a holiness of setting. It could not be eaten anywhere. It required a consecrated framework and disciplined limits. 

The other day, my five-year-old granddaughter – who still has no preschool due to the war – came to visit. I brought her with me to the Midrasha while I was teaching. As we were about to return home, my granddaughter, Agam, spotted a fresh pitah in the Midrasha kitchen. Since she hadn’t eaten the breakfast I made for her before coming to the Midrasha, she was understandably hungry at 11:45 a.m. As I tried to coax her to leave it, reminding her that we had plenty of pitot at home, she insisted not only on having that pitah immediately, but on eating it on the way home. Unable to convince her, I felt a bit guilty that I wasn’t teaching her proper boundaries around eating. It struck me how naturally a child relates to food as something immediate and unbounded – yet the Torah teaches us to elevate even this most basic instinct through structure and intention. 

In the Torah’s vision, eating is never just about appetite. It is always shaped by place, by time, by purity, and by intention. 

This principle becomes even clearer when we later see how carefully every possibility was examined when a korban was not eaten, underscoring that any deviation from its proper boundary compromises its sanctity. The message is clear. Holy food demands holy containment. When eating loses its proper boundary, it loses its sanctity. But when it remains within its holy framework, it can become one of the highest forms of Divine service. 

 

What Does the Sin Offering Teach Us About True Atonement and Closeness to Hashem? 

What emerges from Parashat Tzav is that the kohen is not merely permitted to eat – the atonement itself is dependent on his eating. The Torah places the completion of atonement in a state of vulnerability – dependent on whether the kohen actually eats. Even when the entire sacrificial service was performed correctly, without this final act of eating, the atonement remains incomplete. The Torah, moreover, attributes the service of eating specifically to a kohen who is fit to serve. It is not enough that the korban exists, nor that it was offered properly. Its completion depends on a human being who is worthy of receiving it. 

This introduces a profound shift. Atonement is not sealed on the fire of the altar alone. It requires someone who can carry it forward – someone capable of internalizing what has been elevated and bringing it into lived reality. Even when only a small portion of the korban remains, that remaining piece is not marginal. It carries the entire weight of the korban’s purpose – the atonement – for without the kohen’s eating, the owners are not fully forgiven (Ha’amek Davar, Vayikra 6:19). The act of eating is not diminished by its smallness; rather, it reveals that the slightest physical act, when aligned with holiness, can hold within it the fullness of spiritual repair. 

This reframes eating entirely. It is no longer simply about elevating the physical, nor about completing a ritual process. It becomes a question of capacity: are we able to receive holiness into ourselves without losing it, distorting it, or reducing it to mere consumption? The kohen must be fit, pure, and within the proper boundaries, because what he is taking in is not just food, but the unresolved state of another human being seeking closeness to Hashem.  

Eating becomes one of the most intimate and demanding forms of avodah – a mysterious form of spiritual labor – not an escape from the physical, but a willingness to receive it, to internalize it, and to transform it. It requires not only action and discipline, but inner refinement, as atonement is not complete until holiness can dwell within a human being who can hold it. In Parashat Tzav, the body itself becomes the final vessel of atonement, revealing that true holiness is not only what rises to Heaven, but what we can receive, carry, and transform from within.