As modern people accustomed to worship through prayer, study and through the performance of loving deeds, we are repelled and shocked by the notion of serving God by killing animals. Yet, most people throughout the ancient world, and in many contemporary communities as well, worshipped by providing offerings of animal or human flesh, as though God would eat.
With the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70, the practice of animal sacrifice was indefinitely suspended. Kosher sacrifice could only occur on the Temple altar in Jerusalem and nowhere else, so synagogues -- houses of prayer, study and mitzvot -- replaced the Temple, a place of animal sacrifice and the chanting of Psalms. Early rabbinic literature reflects that transitional relationship toward sacrifice which has characterized traditional Judaism ever since.
Judaism recognizes the value that animal sacrifice possessed for our distant ancestors, and anticipates some future idyllic age in which the Temple will be rebuilt -- signifying a more intimate relationship between God and humanity than is possible at present. In the meantime, we struggle with an imperfect world, one in which people face grave disappointments and crushing tragedy, one in which we and our loved ones will grow old, infirm, and will ultimately die.
Rabbinic Judaism is a religion which helps us cope in the real and difficult world of the present, while also recalling a holistic past and affirming the messianic possibilities of a better future. Precisely because of that insistence on facing reality directly -- even the unpleasant aspects of reality -- rabbinic Judaism retains the notion of animal sacrifice as a practice to read about and to study. One striking lesson that emerges from a careful examination of today's Torah portion is that the animal victim strongly resembles the human slaughterer.
The Torah records God's instruction to Aaron that, "No man of your offspring throughout the ages who has a defect shall be qualified to offer the food of his God." The defects which follow -- blindness, scurvy, a broken limb, a boil or scar, a limb too long or too short, crushed testes, or an abnormal growth in the eye -- are precisely the same defects which render an animal impure for sacrifice. That the same defects disqualify both the person and the animal involved in the sacrifice caught the attention of ancient and medieval Jewish commentators as well.
Midrash Va-Yikra Rabbah asks, "How do we know concerning one who has repented that it is considered as if that person had gone up to Jerusalem, rebuilt the House of the Sanctuary, built the altar, and offered on it all the sacrifices that are specified in the Torah?" The midrash derives the answer from the Book of Psalms. "The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit."
In other words, it is the human heart itself which is the ultimate sacrifice. We humans are the ultimate version of what the sacrificial animal could only approximate. Similarly, Sefer Ha-Hinnukh (13th Century Spain) notes that, "There are disfigurements that disqualify a Kohen from serving, and if they are in an animal, they disqualify it from being brought as an offering."
The shocking parallel between the slaughtered and the slaughterer, between the animal and the Kohen, highlights a disturbing truth implicit in sacrifice. The sacrificial animal does resemble a suffering and terrified human being, as anyone who has witnessed the slaughter of a cow, sheep, goat or pig can attest. The terror in their eyes, and the panic in their throats is a visible reminder of our own frailty and our own mortality. Like the sacrificial animal, we too shall die someday. Like that powerless creature, we too lack ultimate control over our own lives.
By slaughtering an animal in the sacred confines of the Temple, our ancestors were able to look death in the face and respond to it through the rituals and context provided by Judaism. Where can we turn to cope with the reality of death? Here, too, the wisdom of the rabbis provides guidance. Our tradition teaches that reading about the sacrifices "counts" as the actual performance. By imagining the rituals of death and slaughter, we too engage in a controlled encounter with violence and dying. In the safety of the synagogue and its ritual, we too can explore and respond to the realities of life. And in that response, the insight of tradition and the company of community can provide a real bridge to the sacred and the eternal, a link to the God who assures eternal life.
Shabbat Shalom