Judaism encompasses the communal act of transforming Torah, the Five Books of Moses, from literature into lives well-lived.

As Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik has explained, the Torah is a covenant of being, not of doing.** The goal is the completion of being, the full realization of humanness. It is not a utilitarian contract designed for useful ends so that if the advantage is lost, the agreement is dropped. The covenant is a commitment on the part of each partner to be

the point of it all – the sacrifices, the purity laws, the holiness codes, all of it – is to come close to God. We are being trained, throughout Leviticus, to see the ultimate Oneness that underlies the dizzyingly manifold nature of our existence.