[First posted in 2012. This is from Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People and Its History, by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin. What is strange to us gentiles who stand to gain from an informative book like this, is the fact that the book was actually intended for Jews who are— what Telushkin calls —“Jewishly illiterate,” meaning “the most basic terms in Judaism, the most significant facts in Jewish history and contemporary Jewish life, are either vaguely familiar or unknown to most modern Jews.” At this time of the year when Yom Kippur or Day of Atonement is upon us, we are featuring the chapters of this book that are relevant to the celebration of the fall feasts. Reformatting and highlights ours.]
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SACRIFICES – Priests and Levites/Kohanim and Levi’im
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ANIMAL SACRIFICES WERE TO ANCIENT JEWS WHAT PRAYER SERVICE are to their modern descendants: the most popular expression of divine worship. About 150 of the Torah’s 613 laws deal with sacrifices.
Maimonides, the greatest medieval Jewish philosopher, believed that animal sacrifices were instituted to wean people from the ancient and horrific practice of human sacrifice. In fact when God stopped Abraham from sacrificing Isaac (Genesis 22;11-13), the Patriarch immediately sacrificed a ram instead (see The Binding of Isaac).
The most famous sacrifice was the one offered on Passover, and known as the Paschal lamb. It commemorated God’s deliverance of the Jews from Egyptian slavery. A Jew would bring a lamb to the “Temple/Beit ha-Mikdash in Jerusalem, and give it to a priest, who would slaughter the animal, sprinkle its blood upon the altar, and burn its entrails and fat. The remainder would be returned to the person who had donated the lamb. The animal was then taken back to the donor’s family, which would eat the lamb, along with matzah, bitter herbs, and other foods. The festive meal was interspersed with lengthy discussions of the Exodus from Egypt. The roasted shankbone that Jews still place on the Seder plate on Passover commemorates this Paschal lamb.
From the time King Solomon built the First Temple in Jerusalem about 950 B.C.E., Jewish law stated that sacrifices were to be offered there only. A subgroup within the tribe of Levi, known as Kohanim (Priests) were responsible for offering the sacrifices. The tribe of Levi was the only tribe not allocated territory when the Jews entered Canaan. They were assigned 48 cities in Israel (Numbers 35:1-8), and were supported through an annual tithe assessed from other tribes. It was from the tribe of Levi that the country’s spiritual leaders and teachers were appointed. The Levites also assisted the Kohanim at the Temple.
Some sacrifices were brought every morning and afternoon. To this day, the morning and afternoon services (shakharit and minkha) commemorate these daily Temple offerings. Because the afternoon service was offered at about 12:30 P.M., Jewish law forbids minkha to be prayed before then. Other sacrifices were offered by those wishing to atone for violations of Torah laws through negligence. Still others were gift-offerings to God.
In general, some parts of the sacrificed animal were reserved for the priests to eat; others were given to the person who brought the sacrifice. One kind of sacrifice, however, involved the animal being wholly burned, and came to be known in English as a holocaust.
Only kosher, domesticated animals—cattle, sheep, goats, and birds–could be used for sacrifices. The rabbis explained: “The bull flees from the lion, the sheep from the wolf, the goat from the tiger. Said the Holy One, blessed be He, ‘You shall not bring before Me such as pursue, but only such as are pursued'” (Vayikra Rabbah 27). By law, the sacrificed animals had to be without blemish (Leviticus 3:6, and 22: 17-25).
Besides animals, people brought offerings of their first fruits, wheat, and barley to the Temple.
When the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E., many Jews despaired of ever gaining forgiveness for their sins; there was now no place, after all, where they could offer sacrifices. The great first-century rabbi “Yochanan ben Zakkai revolutionized Jewish thinking with his pronouncement that acts of “loving-kindness now superseded sacrifices as the preferred way of attaining God’s forgiveness. In addition to deeds of loving-kindness, the Talmud later taught that “studying of Torah is a greater act than bringing daily sacrifices” (Megillah 3b).
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Indeed, from the Jewish perspective, the Christian emphasis on the atoning sacrifice and atoning blood of Jesus is regarded as a throwback to human sacrifice.
Reform, Orthodox, and Conservative Judaism each has distinctive ways of relating to the Temple’s sacrifices in their services.
- Reform Judaism simply has dropped reference to the entire subject from its prayerbook: It views sacrifices as a primitive stage in Jewish religious development, one in which there is no reason to take pride.
- The Orthodox prayerbook, on the other hand, repeatedly reiterates the hope that the Temple will be rebuilt, and sacrifices offered there again.
- The Conservative prayerbook has changed all future references to sacrifices to the past tense: It speaks proudly of the sacrifices that once were brought before God at the Temple, but expresses no desire to have them reinstituted.
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Today, of course, sacrifices cannot be offered by religious Jews because there is no temple in Jerusalem. The reason the Temple cannot be built is that centuries ago Muslims built two mosques on the site of the Beit haMikdash. Various extremist Jewish groups periodically have plotted to blow up the mosques of Al-Aksa and the Dome of the Rock, thereby supposedly enabling the Temple to be rebuilt. Instead, such an act might lead to Israel’s destruction by provoking an international Muslim jihad (holy war) against the Jewish state.
Although few religious Jews would say so publicly, many of them are not heartbroken that these mosques prevent the Temple from being rebuilt. While traditional Jewish theology commits Orthodox Jews to pray for the reinstitution of sacrifices, many are ambivalent about the prospect of again publicly slaughtering and sacrificing animals. In the aftermath of the Six-Day War, other religious Jews established the Ateret Kohanim Yeshiva in the Old City of Jerusalem. One of the school’s primary curricular concerns is the laws of sacrifices, and preparing the Kohanim among its students to resume someday their functions at a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem.
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