Parshat Vayikra, along with many of the parshiot that follow, poses a tremendous set of problems for the modern student of Torah. Not only do we moderns live in a world without the Temple, altar and sacrifices that are at the heart of these parshiot, quite a lot of us are rather glad that we live at a time where such modes of religious worship are regarded as antiquated at best and primitive at worst.
This disconnect between our present reality and the sacrificial cult that was so central to our ancestors’ worship has led to a rejection of the importance of korbanot among many liberal Jewish thinkers, and to a great deal of apologetics among those traditionalists who both study the institution and pray for its restoration.
I would like to take a different approach to understanding this ancient mode of worship. Rather than reject its relevance for modern man, I wish to seek a model that will help us appreciate the import of the sacrificial service. However, instead of attempting to understand what we would like the korbanot to mean to us, I wish to discover what korbanot meant to the ancients who once brought them. Through gaining such an understanding, I believe that we moderns can grow to appreciate the sacrificial cult as an idea that can still be meaningful for us today.
To fully understand the significance of korbanot for the ancient Israelite, we turn to the scholarship of the academy. The late biblical scholar, Rabbi Jacob Milgrom[1], taught that “The quintessential act of sacrifice is the transference of property from the common to the sacred realm, thus making it a gift for God.”[2] The idea of korban as a gift can be seen, as Professor Baruch Levine[3] explains, in the term “mincha,” which referred to the grain sacrifices brought in the Temple. The word mincha derives from the political and administrative vocabulary of the ancient Near East, and means “tribute” or “gift.” Milgrom further notes that the gift of a korban would often be given to secure some sort of Divine aid to either secure a victory or achieve pardon for an offense. (The korban chatat, sin offering, typifies a sacrifice brought to achieve expiation.)
Milgrom also explains that sacrifices in the ancient world were often viewed as being food for the gods to whom they were offered. This belief seems to have carried into the sacrificial system of the Israelites in a variety of ways. The outer sanctum of the Temple, the Kodesh, was God’s personal dining room, replete with candelabra, incense, and bread on a “dining table.” The Kodesh HaKodashim, the Holy of Holies, represented God’s resting place, and the ark inside, God’s footstool. Additionally, in Chumash, God describes the korbanot as, “my bread, my food-gift, my sweet odor,”[4] and in Ezekiel (a book closely related to biblical Priestly writings), the altar is even described as God’s “table.”[5]
Such beliefs about the nature of God and sacrifice may seem foreign and antiquated; however, they were very real for our ancestors. The system of sacrificial service fulfilled deep psychological needs for the ancient person attempting to relate to God as he or she would have understood Him. As Professor Levine notes, whatever the ancient Israelites may have believed about God’s omnipresence, “we [humans] expect that God, the power who sustains the universe and grants the petitions of his worshippers, responds to our needs more readily if he is near and present.” Through “feeding” and “appeasing” God, the ancient Israelites felt as if they could bring God into their midst and relate to Him on a personal level. They reinforced the idea that God is a personal God, who cares about both individuals and His Chosen People, Israel.
This view of the underlying purpose of the sacrificial cult is also expressed by the 19th-century scholar, Samuel David Luzzatto,[6] who writes, “If the Torah stated that God does not want sacrifices and offerings, the people would soon say: It is of no concern to the Lord whether we act righteously or strive for self-perfection.” For Luzzatto, the sacrificial system represents an affirmation that God cares about us, and is responsive to our religious overtures.
With this understanding of how our ancestors perceived the act of bringing korbanot, we can attempt to understand what we modern Jews can gain from this understanding.
I would propose using the anthropological concept of “myth” in order to frame the issue of korbanot. When social scientists use the term “myth,” they do not simply mean a fictional tale. Rather, as the physicist-theologian Ian Barbour said, “A myth is a story which is taken to manifest some aspect of the cosmic order.” [7] In other words, myths are not simply made up. They are crafted so as to reflect reality as any given community perceives it to be. Mythic structures reflect the structure of reality as interpreted by a given group of people.
The contemporary Jewish philosopher Rabbi Dr. Neil Gillman has written that much of Jewish observance is designed to express the message of Jewish religious myth. I believe the sacrificial service outlined in Parshat Vayikra is very much based upon a set of myths: that God desires the sweet scent of sacrifice, that God is nourished by our offerings, that God can be appeased and His mind changed. These specific mythic beliefs were not simply invented on a whim. They reflected what the ancient Israelites perceived to be very real: the possibility of closeness and relationship with the Divine.
Modern Jews may find sacrificial rites problematic because, at least for many of us, the specific mythic formulations that stand behind the cult are no longer viewed to be empirically true. If God does not smell or eat, then why should He have ever needed sacrifice? However, simply because a group of people may no longer subscribe to a particular mythic expression, it does not follow that the myth is useless.
Rabbi Dr. Gillman proposes that there are some myths that are “broken.” They are no longer thought to be objectively or literally true, but they are not to simply be discarded on those grounds. However, these myths, though exposed as being myths, can still remain “living” so long as they work effectively in any given community.
If one chooses to relate to the myths surrounding the sacrificial service as “broken,” yet still “living” myths, then one can relate to and appreciate the function of the korbanot without engaging in anachronistic explanation or apologetics. The mythic formulations of our ancestors, which formed the basis for the institute of korbanot, expressed a reality that many of us still perceive to be true today: the reality of a personal, caring God. Although the myths have been “broken,” we can still use and appreciate them insofar as they explain and express a reality that we perceive to be true.[8]
I will end with one final thought. I believe that the approach I have outlined is not an entirely modern one. The notion that a myth can be “broken” and “living” at the same time is one found in the Torah itself, specifically in the laws of the korbanot.
We have already outlined how the Torah speaks of sacrifice using the mythic language of being a “sweet scent” for God and of how the layout of the Mishkan resembles a home in which a god would eat.
However, just as the Torah is reinforcing these mythic concepts, it is simultaneously undermining them. Jacob Milgrom notes that all animal and grain sacrifices were to be offered to God on the outer altar in the courtyard of the Tabernacle, rather than in the Kodesh. Ironically, all offerings to God were offered outside of His domicile. This prescription, Milgrom argues, was designed to “[erase] any suspicion that Israel’s God consumed the sacrifices.”[9] Furthermore, as the late Israeli Bible scholar Yehezkel Kauffmann once noted, the Mishkan is a “sanctuary of silence.” No incantations or prayers were recited during the sacrificial service, thus combating the notion that one could magically manipulate the gods or nature through Temple service.
Ironically, we see that the Torah, through many of its sacrificial laws, attempts to combat the basic mythic notions underlying the sacrificial cult. The Torah tries to break its own myth!
I believe that this astonishing fact provides those modern Jews who feel disturbed by or distant from the Temple worship that was once so vital to our people a remarkable precedent. By adapting the Torah’s own approach Jews may relate to the sacrificial myths as “broken” myths which still help us express our unshakable belief in a very real, approachable, and caring God.
[1] All quotes from Professor Jacob Milgrom are taken from Leviticus: A Book of Ritual and Ethics. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2004.
[2] ibid., 17.
[3] All quotes from Professor Baruch Levine are taken from Leviticus: The Traditional Hebrew Text with the New JPS Translation. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989.
[4] Numbers 28:2. All translations are my own unless otherwise specified.
[5] Ezekiel 41:22, see also 44:16.
[6] As quoted in Nehama Leibowitz’s New Studies in Vayikra. Jerusalem: Publishing Division of the Torah Education Department of the World Zionist Organization, 1993.
[7] As quoted in Neil Gillman’s The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought. Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1997. All quotes from Professor Gillman are taken from this source.
[8] The particulars of how I employ the concept of myth may not reflect how Professor Gillman or any other scholars use the term or apply it to Jewish rituals. This D’var Torah is my own personal understanding and my own usage of the term for its applicability to understanding the Israelite sacrificial cult.
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