This week we are beginning what the Shikker Dovid calls the “The Superbowl of Brikser learning” . We begin learning Vayikra which deals with sacrifices (Brisker loves Zevachim) and Eruvin, an abstruse and yeshivish tractate. It will be easy to get wrapped up in the esoterica of eruvin and the detail of sacrifices. We can lose sight of what all this is about: Yiddishkeit and “Menchlichkit”. The Shikker Dovid thinks that even Rashi realizes this and comments on the word “Adam” in the second phrase of the parsh. When an “Adam” brings a sacrifice. Here Rashi comments that just as Adam brought from his own, so too must man bring sacrifices from his own.

Implicit in this idea is that we can get lost in the detail and minutia and lose sight of the central values, ideals and ethics of the Torah.