|
| |
|
Sign up now!
|
|
|
|
Enter your e-mail address for updates, news, Parsha insights and more.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Parshas Vayikra 032010:
Rabbi Ian Bailey
Click here to download the full Parsha Insights
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Animal Sacrifices: A New Approach Have you ever felt strange when you read about animal sacrifices in the Torah? Each year we open Vayikra, a book that has dozens of chapters about the rituals of Kor-banot (sacrifices) that are very foreign to us in 2010. Slaughtering cows, sprinkling blood, and burning fats? To worship Hashem? Is this Judaism? What happened to loving my neighbor and resting on the Sabbath? But the truth is, animal sacrifice touches upon a very deep and profound part of human psychology. The Rambam in his Guide for the Perplexed wonders how G-d could have command us to worship through such a despised and archaic way as Korbanot? He answers that animal sacrifice is indeed not the ideal way to wor-ship. Meditative prayer is. Korbanot were only prescribed as a concession to human nature. G-d does not meddle with human nature, and human nature pushes man to sacrifice ani-mals and do idolatrous behaviors, so G-d „had to‟, so to speak, allow man to certain do actions and He direct them towards Him. So many questions can be asked on this approach. Didn‟t G-d make humans with this nature? And if this nature developed in hu-mans over time and G-d doesn‟t want to meddle with it, do Korbanot have to be so elaborate? We have hundreds of rituals to fulfill! And why is the Beit HaMikdash so beautiful if it is just a sanitized Temple of slaughter? There‟s no lofty, spiritual side to Korbanot? I think we need to take a step back here for one second. The Rambam‟s Guide is a quite a curious book. In its introduction, Rambam writes that the secrets of the Torah are hidden and cannot be revealed openly to everyone at every time. When someone goes through the proper training of his intellect and imagina-tion, he sees little glimpses of the secrets like little flashes of lightening illuminating a dark night. The Rambam says that he is going to conceal ideas in his book, put ideas in ran-dom places and, in the style of our Sages, contradict himself. This means that he‟s not doing what you think he‟s doing when you read his words. He‟s not simply writing an elaborate rational-based commentary on the Torah to reveal the reasons of Mitzvot to you. My question to you is: why should we take anything he says in the book itself at face value? The answer is that we shouldn‟t. Do I know the secrets of the Torah that the Rambam is concealing? I‟m not sure. But when I read this Rambam, it made me think of something. I think that human beings even in our gen-erations can become entangled in Korbanot and idolatry, as silly as it sounds. Think about it: how did idol worship and Korbanot to for-eign gods start? It all began with moving away from Hashem. Once people started to forget G-d they began to use their imagina-tion to ascribe godliness to physical objects and tangible concepts (i.e. fertility, power). After a while, it‟s only human nature that the Evil Inclination tries to get his demonic talons on things to cause death and destruction in the world. Imagination + death – Hashem = idols and sacrifice! Wow that wasn‟t so hard to go from one G-d to idols and sacrifice! Just think about it: all around the world people do Korbanot. Korbanot really are part of our nature, it‟s just how we deal with that nature. Do we use our imagination to plan the future and invent new useful? Or do we use it to plan bad and do things that hurt us? Korbanot are a mechanism to keep the inner imagination of Man at bay. Korbanot keep our Evil Inclination away from our im-agination so we don‟t develop infantile and destructive thoughts. That is the thought that popped into my head when I read this passage from the Guide. Is it what he meant? I‟m not sure. Is it what I thought of after seeing his words? Yes. But perhaps that‟s Rambam‟s goal with the Guide. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
