The Torah seems to have an obsession with salt.

Among the various laws and details of the sacrifices in our Parshah, we find the following commandment:

And you shall salt every one of your meal offering sacrifices with salt, and you shall not omit the salt of your God's covenant from [being placed] upon your meal offerings. You shall offer salt on all your sacrifices.12

The commandment to place salt on every sacrifice is repeated three times. Why so much emphasis?

Furthermore, why is it called "the salt of your G‑d's covenant"? Since when did salt enter into a covenant with G‑d?

First, a Talmudic teaching:

Raba said, when man is led in for Judgment he is asked: Did you deal in business with integrity? Did you fix times for Torah study? Did you engage in procreation? Did you hope for salvation? Did you engage in the dialectics of Torah? Have [you delved deeply enough into your studies to the degree that] you deduced one principle from another?

[He may have answered in the affirmative to all of the above.] Nonetheless, only if the fear of the Lord is his treasure is it well. If not, it is not well for him.

This may be compared to a man who instructed his agent, "Take up a kor (a large measurement) of wheat into the loft." The agent went and did so.

When he returned, the master asked him, "Did you mix in a kab (small measurement) of chumtin (a preservative)"?

When the agent replied in the negative, the master said, “Then it would've been better had you not carried it up in the first place."3

A person may have done many wonderful things in his life; he may have been honest in business, learned a great deal of Torah, created a family, hoped for the Messiah etc., but this still does not guarantee him passage into the next world. There is one more criterion that is of absolute importance: fear of heaven. If one does not possess fear of heaven, “all is not well.”

The wheat in this analogy is a reference to Torah and good deeds. This may be seen in its very name. The Hebrew word for wheat is chittah (חטה), which has the numerical value of 22. This is the number of letters in the Hebrew alphabet, from which the Torah is composed.

The chumtin represents the fear of heaven, without which all our Torah and good deeds are useless.

But what exactly is this preservative? Rashi translates it as "salty soil."

We now have the key to the mystery of salt. In addition to being a commandment to literally place salt on the offerings, our verse carries a profound lesson in the service of G‑d.

Salt adds flavor to a dish that might otherwise be tasteless or bland. Our fear of heaven is the salt and flavoring for G‑d’s "food": the Torah and mitzvahs we serve Him on a daily basis. They can be tasteless and bland, and that’s not the way G‑d wants it. He wants us to add salt.

The salt is kavanah, the intense mental concentration with which we study Torah and perform mitzvahs, and the excitement and passion that it generates.

G‑d repeats the instruction to place salt on every sacrifice three times because it is of utmost importance. Every bit of Torah we study and every mitzvah we perform must be infused with the passion and excitement we feel when we recognize that we are doing the will of G‑d.

That is why salt is called “the covenant of G‑d.”

It is important to do good, to learn Torah, to pray and to perform mitzvahs. But quality counts. Our divine service must be done with passion and a sense of G‑dly awareness, otherwise our offerings will be bland and tasteless.

That’s why G‑d reminds us, “Do not omit the salt.”