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See the Akedat Yitzhak's polemic with the Rambam's Moreh Nevukhim and Rabbi
Yehudah HaLevi's Kuzari regarding the reason for the
Temple sacrifices. These scholars tend to envision sacrifices as a
means of coping with the age-old problems of man slipping into mind
numbing habit and his need for something tangible – something he can
touch, both these problems when not addressed leading to his
enslavement to the forces of the brute-force world
. In my opinion, these greatest of thinkers should not be
understood so literally.
The sacrifices were
not designed to oppose a certain tendency towards brute-force;
rather they were intended to provide fertile soil for the growth of
a new approach, the movement toward the supernal dimension
.
Shabbat and
the Sacrifices.
"It is a sign between me and the children of Israel for ever"
(Ex 31:13). The secret of an intimate bond between the Holy One, blessed be He, and the
people of Israel. A gentile who observes the Shabbat is liable to receive the death penalty.
The Shabbat is not simply a rest from physical exertions, a cessation of all activities;
rather, activities hidden from the eyes of the superficial observer, activities in the depth
and height (supernal) dimensions take place. Activities that awaken internal foundational
elements long asleep, elements that cannot be translated into the brute-force language of
the exterior world. Quality, an expression of the quality of the soul, which does not
belong to the exterior, brute-force world, manifests itself.
"A brutish man cannot
know, and a fool cannot comprehend this"(Psalms 92:7). The gentile
perceives the Shabbat to be a void, a time empty of activity, a time
in which the World of Productivity
is diminished. The Torah commands "day and night they shall not
rest"(Gen 8:22), and from this our Sages deduced that a gentile who observes a day of
rest is liable to receive the death penalty (Sanhedrin 58b).
The Jew realizes that
in the Shabbat the World of Creativity
is revealed. A world which
expresses itself through the World of Productivity, and which the World of Productivity
must adopt as its own foundation, its own roots and its very own guiding light. A new
dimension freeing the Jew from the tendency to become enslaved to the brute-force world
takes center stage, for the Jew experiences a new sense of existence, a new way of
relating.
The Shabbat, on the one hand, and the sacrifices, on the other.
Sacrifices were not ordained to grant
expression to man's enslavement to the material world. A sacrifice
offered with this intent is idolatrous. The sacrifices were intended
to offer not only an alternative form of worship, but also to create
fertile ground for the creativity tendency which expresses itself in
a practical, innovative fashion. This tendency pulls the
predilection toward spirituality out of its matter-induced coma and
dresses it up in the garments of tangible matter. The sacrifice
endows tangibility with meaning; not that tangible stuff necessary
for survival, but, rather, that new stuff from the World of
Creativity. Offering a sacrifice provides a mode for expressing the
internal quality of the sacrificer, enabling him to strengthen and
re-create the sense of exaltedness
, the supernal dimension.
For
this reason, as the author of the Akedah has noted,
sacrifice will not atone for the intentional transgressor who
received proper notification of the nature of his intended crime and
its punishment by witnesses (hatra'ah
). This ruling seems to provide
incontrovertible support for my approach. The intentional transgressor failed to connect
in an appropriate fashion with the world outside himself, thus causing injury both to
himself and others. The sacrifice, which belongs to the supernal dimension, has nothing
to do with this outer world and, therefore, it has no power to repair the transgressor's
heinous actions. Only another deed accomplished in the world outside the transgressor
can atone for his misdeed. Prayer, the blessing of a righteous man, or sacrifice all
addressing the supernal realm cannot repair the damage done by an act in the world
outside man.
There are only two cases where offering a sacrifice can be the appropriate and acceptable
course of action to take, when atoning for unintentional errors and when saying thank-
you to Hashem. Since an unintentional error results from a lack in the interior quality of
the soul, having nothing to do with the relationship between man's inner and outer
worlds, by offering a sacrifice the individual who made a mistake can deepen and
strengthen his interior quality as it interacts with the supernal. Likewise, one who says
thank-you to Hashem creates a supernal existential dimension having nothing to do with
the outer world surrounding him.
This dimension, however, was an existential reality during the Temple Period since the
Temple's existence enabled a unifying contact between the spiritual and physical to the
degree that every member of the nation of Israel experienced the tangible sensation of the
unification and merger between them.
This unification or merger had two aspects to it: a positive one, and a less positive one.
The positive side manifested itself through a daring revelation of the divine presence that
even the laws of nature did not have the power to hide. The less positive, and, indeed,
positively dangerous side was the tangible power which evil achieved as it attained
greater material substance. The evil urge at that time did not appear gigantic in the eyes
of the wicked and miniscule in the eyes of the righteous in this world; rather, it appeared
gigantic by any conceivable standards. The evil inclination was equipped with the tools
of the spiritual and physical worlds at one and the same time.
Had there not been
a supernal dimension, the power of evil would have been great enough
to crush any attempt by man to come to grips with it. The sacrifices
were instituted to enable man, by exercising the divine power of
creativity hidden within him, to view the world from the perspective
of supernal height, so that he could govern the world and guide it
toward the supernal. The Shabbat provided man with similar strength.
Like two arms, the Shabbat and the sacrifices encompassed the
tangible world in a bear hug which both allowed the world's material
needs to be met in a natural fashion and kept the tangible in check.
The Moreh Nevukhim and the Kuzari
seem to have been
making a similar argument.
Notwithstanding the crucial importance of
animal sacrifice, we must still ask the question: How can the Torah
command us to cause these animals pain? Indeed, this is not only a
humanitarian question but also a religious one, for the sacrificer
may transgress the halakhic interdiction against causing animals
pain! Aside from the traditional argument that shechitah
(halakhic slaughter) is a painless process, from the mystical perspective we
may add that when the Temple stood and the daring revelation of the divine presence
endowed the divine presence, itself, with substance, the animals sensed with superior
clarity and profundity their roles. For being sacrificed offered them the chance to
transcend this world and, finally, fulfill the purpose for which they were created.
Translated by
Rabbi Meshulam Gotlieb
www.MGtransEd.com
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