We have all heard the phrases, “Do your best!” and “Put your best foot forward,“and, “The best things in life are free.” We’ve heard about the best man, the best in show, best friends. There are all kinds of “bests,” and in this week’s Torah portion, if you read along, you noticed that the theme was “bring your best.” It seems as if the book of Leviticus has an obsession with the best. Not only were our ancestors required to bring sacrifices, but those animals that were sacrificed could not have any imperfections. Later on in the Torah we read that the same held true with respect to people - men only, of course - who did sacred work in the holy temple in Jerusalem. They too were not permitted to have any imperfections. They could not have droopy eyes, they had to have perfect hearing, their legs had to be even… they were to be as pure as possible; and their personal behavior had to be impeccable. In two words, everything connected to the sacrificial cult, had to be “the best.” Why was this so? Maybe some of you remember a very old commercial whose bottom line was, “It’s not nice to mess with Mother Nature.” Now since some of you might equate mother nature with God… I have been known to do that… we could also say with regard to these chapters, “it’s not nice to mess with God.“ Our biblical ancestors had a very rudimentary understanding of God. One example will suffice… When making those sacrifices, they had to produce a “pleasing odor to God.” You see. They thought that the deity took the smoke from the burning sacrifice and turned it back to its original animal form. If the burning sacrifice stunk then obviously the one who brought the sacrifice didn’t care much about God otherwise the smoke would have been as pleasant to God as a good brisket! You see, it had to be the best! The closest common phrase we have related to a Jewish concept of perfection is, “The best is yet to come..“ On Yom Kippur, our day of atonement, we reach the climax of a confession that we could have done better in the year that has passed. Nowhere will we find that we had to be perfect. Perfection in that regard does not exist in Judaism. Not even the most righteous person is perfect. But what we do strive for is doing better tomorrow than we did yesterday, even that we did today. That is to say, “the best is yet to come.” I always use the image of the target in archery. Many people think that dead center is a bull’s-eye, as it is in riflery. There is a big difference between archery and rivalry in that regard. If you picture the target in archery the gold in the middle is not as small as the bull’s-eye on a riflery target; as a matter of fact, it’s pretty large. That’s because no matter what part of the gold you strike with the arrow the points are the same. Oh sure, you might want to hit dead center, but the general idea is to come as close as possible. And that fits our theology to a T.