Objectification: The Role of the Levites

Is it not strange to take another person and wave him in the air, as if he were a flag, a kite or a hat? Aharon and his sons, to consecrate the Levites and prepare them for their new role, waved them one by one! Literally, lifting them off the floor, shaking them up and down - perhaps just once, because there were over 22,000 of them - and then put them down on the floor, and then, they were able to serve. 

The closest analogy I can think of is Simba being lifted by the baboon in the Lion King; this cub is meant to serve - this Levite is meant for God, and for his people. 

But is there not something dehumanizing, debasing - some element of objectification - in lifting a person up, almost reminiscent of the akeida, or the molech. Service is meant to preserve one's dignity, or humanity, and not objectify the person, highlighting his strengths as a human, rather than stripping him of his unique individuality. Fascinatingly, and I think deploringly, whenever the Hareidi community is photographed, at events, or gatherings, it is always as a sea of black, uniformity being the modus operandi. 

It would seem, thus, that when the Levite was lifted, it was to signify that he was in lieu of the bechor, or the firstborn. The same way the bechor was supposed to be killed in Egypt, and only in God's infinite mercy was he saved, thus in a certain manner of speaking, the Levi is like a nazir, sanctified like Shmuel or Shimshon to serve God; in the Levites' case it was not from birth. After the firstborns sinned in the golden calf they lost their privileged status, but it would seem that this could be an ample explanation, in part, for the very odd practice of waving a human being in the air, the same way the first fruits were waved, or the breast of certain sacrificial animals were waved by the Cohanim before God. 


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