Vayikra sermon

Rabbi Miriam's sermon - delivered Shabbat morning on 21st March 2026.

My son was sent home with an intriguing homework assignment a few weeks ago as part of the Ancient Egyptian curriculum. Mummify a tomato. We had to scoop out the tomato’s innards, then stuff it with a mixture of salt and bicarbonate of soda. Then record what happens. 

Well, I can report that weeks later, the tomato is not mouldy. But it is still kind of gross. The salt and bicarb dehydrated the tomato while also preserving it. So a shiny, organ-like ball now sits in a pool of yellowish water in a ziplock bag in our kitchen. I’m not sure how long this experiment is supposed to last… 

You might be thinking that the key word from this opening, as we begin the book of Vayikra - Leviticus in English (actually Latin) was the word “organ”. The book indeed is full of innards, and blood, and the dissecting of animals. 

But actually my inspiration this week is not there: 

וְכל־קרְבַּן מִנְחָתְךָ בַּמֶּלַח תִּמְלָח… עַל כּל־קרְבָּנְךָ תַּקְרִיב מֶלַח׃    

You shall season your every offering of meal with salt… with all your offerings you must offer salt.

This passuk begins by saying that the Mincha offering should be salted, and ends by saying that every offering needs salt. 

At our Shabbat table last week someone asked why we have salt with challah, and I somewhat feebly answered “because offerings in the Temple were salted and our table is a replacement for the altar”. Which was accurate, but today I offer a deeper answer. I’m grateful to Rabbanit Susan Hornstein for many of these ideas and for the learning we did together this week. 

Salt. It makes things taste better. It also makes things taste worse. In Salt Fat Acid Heat, the American chef Samin Nosrat says that done right, salt makes food taste more like itself. Gen Z use the word “salty” to describe being bitter, annoyed or upset, maybe referring to when something is too salty. 

Salt preserves food, and therefore was a staple for much of history. The word salary is derived from salt because the money given to a soldier to buy salt was essential to preserve food and treat wounds - a proto saline wash.

But for all its uses, the ground salt is found in, is ruined - useless for farming. Some of the key references to salt in the Tanakh - in Yehezkel & Zecharia - have visions of a future messianic time when the dead sea, or in Hebrew Yam haMelach (the Salt Sea) becomes miraculously fertile.

Yet when we talk of someone being “salt of the earth”, we mean decent, honest, hardworking, like gems from the earth, only useful. 

So why are all korbanot, offerings, in the Temple to be salted? To understand this, we need to understand a few more Biblical associations with salt. 

The first reference to salt in the Torah?

“Lot’s wife looked back, and she thereupon turned into a pillar of salt.” 

Why salt? Later in Devarim we are told that the whole area of Sedom and Gomorrah had:

“all its soil devastated by sulfur and salt, beyond sowing and producing, no grass growing in it, just like the upheaval of Sodom and Gomorrah… which GOD overthrew in fierce anger”. 

So the useless salt land is a punishment, a reflection on the evil of Sodom and Gomorrah, from which no good thing could emerge. 

But midrash explores a different, more human angle. Of Lot’s wife it says:

“by salt she sinned and by salt she was punished”.

In this midrash, Lot and his wife got into an argument over salt. He, in the school of Avraham’s hospitality, wanted salt for their guests’ food. Lot’s wife, in the school of Sedom’s inhospitality, couldn’t stand the idea of pampering the guests with salt. 

So once again, we’re seeing that salt is both good and bad. It’s a sign of hospitality, and treating guests. But it’s also a reminder of Lot’s wife’s meanness. She eventually meets a salty end, her unkind traits quite literally crystalised. And it remains as a symbol in the salty Dead Sea region. There’s even a salt pillar that looks a bit like a woman to this day that local’s call “Lot’s wife”. 

Throughout rabbinic writing, the phrase melach Sdomit - “salt of Sedom” is used. One reason for mayyim achronim - the washing of fingers that some people do at the end of a meal, is because of the dangerous melach Sdomit which could get into your eyes. But melach Sdomit is, fascinatingly, an ingredient in ketoret, the sacred incense burned twice daily in the temple. So even the mark of punishment in the land, something seen as dangerous, can become holy again. 

Let’s return to the verse in our parasha, about offerings needing salt. Some commentators suggest that just as salt enhances food for humans, we want to enhance it for God too. 

But a more convincing argument comes from the Medieval commentators Daat Zkenim who say:

“Because [salt] is a substance that preserves, this indicates that the sacrifices are an everlasting covenant for atonement, and not for God’s needs, since God has no need to eat or drink.”

That word everlasting is key and connects us to later in Bemidbar, when we hear of a Brit Melach, a “salt covenant”. At the end of parashat Korach we are told 

כֹּל תְּרוּמֹת הַקֳּדָשִׁים 

“All of these offerings of holy things, I have given to you and to your sons and your daughters with you, by a statute forever: 

בְּרִית מֶלַח עוֹלָם הִוא

it is a covenant of salt forever.” Bemidbar 18:19

Salt is preservation, longevity, even eternity. And this connection in the context of sacrifices surely gives us our answer - we have salt on korbanot and therefore also on our challah every Shabbat as a symbol of the staying power of these rituals. Jews are committed to God, and God to us, forever. It is a covenant of salt. 

But I think there’s a deeper answer too. 

Over and over again we’ve seen a dichotomy with salt - it ruins the land, like the plains of Sedom… but salt from Sedom is used in the sacred Ketoret. It preserves food, it makes food taste good, it’s a symbol of hospitality… but too much is unpleasant in food.

This is summed up in a curious observation in the Talmud, Jerusalem Talmud Berakhot 5:3

“Rabbi Yehoshua the Southerner said: There are three things of which too little or too much is bad and average is good: sour dough, salt, and refusal.” 

The first two make sense - salt, as we’ve described, needs the right quantity. The quantity of sourdough, or yeast, as any breadmaker will know, also makes the difference between bread not rising enough, or rising too much and collapsing. 

But refusal, סֵּרוּב? This comes in the context of a conversation on when one should refuse or turn down the offer of leading shul prayer. It’s about humility - we should, says the Gemara - have just the right amount of humility, knowing when to step back, but not excessively. Sometimes we should step forwards, accept a bit of limelight and have the dignity of knowing our self worth. 

Yes, salt on sacrifices and salt on challah teaches us about the eternity of our covenant with Hashem. But salt gives us a hint into a much bigger quarry (no pun intended) of Biblical meaning, all of which essentially comes back to balance. 

And in a world of extremes, of silos not speaking to one another, of polarised narratives so different that they could easily not be speaking about the same subject - all with hugely dangerous consequences - balance feels an important message. 

Yeats put it so well in his poem the Second Coming:

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst, Are full of passionate intensity.”

Maybe Gen Z would say “the best are meh, while the worst are salty”. 

I hope when we have salt on our challah, or any food really, it’s a reminder to get the balance right, to listen to different perspectives, to hold the center. Because salt does such good in the world, but too much of it turns things ugly.

Like the mummified tomato in our kitchen. I think it’s time to end that experiment. 

Shabbat shalom