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What was the purpose of sacrificial offerings
in the Ancient Hebrew Temple?
by
Tzvi Freeman |
Question: Please explain all this business
about animal sacrifices in the Temple. Are you really planning to
re-initiate this at some point?
Answer: Cain and Abel
made vegetable and animal sacrifices. Noah made animal sacrifices.
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob -- all highly enlightened people -- made
animal sacrifices. And the Torah prescribes a whole slew of sacrifices
to be made in the Tabernacle in the desert, and then later in the
Holy Temple in Jerusalem. And guess what? In our prayers, for the
past 2,000 years, we've been asking for G-d to let us rebuild that
Temple so that we can start doing those sacrifices, just like He asked
us to. So there's got to be something deep going on here, more than
meets the eye.
Q: But the whole thing doesn't
make sense! Charity, prayer, study.all those I can understand. But
why on earth would G-d want us to burn animals on an altar?
A: Now, don't get the idea that
you're the first one to have difficulty with this. It puzzled the
students of Maimonides in the 12th century. It puzzled the students
of the rabbis of the Talmud. In the Zohar it's written that "the
secret of the sacrifices reaches to the secret of the infinite."
It's one of those things that if it doesn't puzzle you, you just
haven't gotten the facts straight. I think we need to look at this
from a very different perspective to make sense of it.
Q: It all looks like just a holdover
from pagan rites.
A: It's clear there are some major
distinctions between the sacrificial order of the Torah and your
typical ancient-world pagan rites. For one thing, the rules and
regulations were spelled out right there for all to read. In fact,
every Jew has an obligation to study the details of the Temple rites.
Even little children are supposed to learn everything those priests
are to be doing. That's a far cry from the cult of secrecy that
empowered the priestly class of other nations.
There were some other major distinctions:
The Temple was considered the property of the people, and daily
communal sacrifices reinforced that fact. There were no male or
female prostitutes wandering around the courtyards, no orgies or
drunken revelry -- or self-mutilation. The priests wore modest,
standardized clothes and were held accountable by a people's court
that sat right there at the edge of the Temple complex. Most of
the meat was eaten -- a lot less waste than what goes on at Safeway
or Stop N' Shop. And animals were slaughtered in a humane fashion.
Definitely a sublime relief to ancient standards. All in all, it
must have seemed a very strange place for the average Joe Ancient.
Q: But not to our standards today. If
the whole point was to wean the people off sacrificial cultism,
then it was good for then. But why should we be praying for it to
return? Sure it's cool to have a central place for prayer and meditation,
with the Menorah, the incense, the tablets that Moses brought.but
why the butcher shop?
A: The main act of a sacrifice was
not the physical act of slaughtering an animal. You understand that
the sacrificial service was principally a spiritual one.
Q: In what way?
A: Well, for one thing, when a person
brought a sacrifice, his mental focus was crucial. If his mind was
not focused on the correct meaning and intent of the sacrifice,
the whole thing could be deemed useless, or worse.
Q: What sort of meanings?
A: Well, if it was being brought
to atone for some inadvertent sin, he had to have in mind some remorse
over what had happened. But it went far beyond that: The priests
would focus their minds on the higher spiritual spheres according
to esoteric traditions. That explains why they had the Levites singing
and musicians playing. After all, if it was all just a grand barbecue,
what need was there for inspirational music? Rather, it was a deep
spiritual experience for all involved. You went away truly elevated.
Q: Okay, I can see the experiential
quality of it all -- an ancient temple with heavenly music and mystical
song, priests in flowing robes deep in meditation, mesmerizing,
choreographed ritual. It's an image I hadn't realized before.
A: Most people don't.
Q: But I think we could get the elevation
without the blood and guts.
A: Well, in fact, today our prayers
are in place of the sacrifices. So the principal aspect of the sacrifices
was never terminated. Just the outer aspects that the Torah also
demands, those are temporarily suspended.
Q: So, if we can have the spiritual
experience without dicing meat on the altar, why go back to it?
A: So we need to come to a deeper
understanding of what the sacrifices and the Temple are all about.
Q: If you have an explanation, I'm open.
A: Well, perhaps our problem is
that we are looking at it from a flat perspective.
Q: Flat?
A: I mean like trying to understand
a multidimensional process from only one dimension.
Q: ?
A: Here's an analogy: Let's say
you never heard of a telephone, and you're watching someone walking
along the street in an intense conversation. Except there doesn't
appear to be any second party to this conversation. In fact, he
appears to be deeply engaged in an argument with. his wrist.
Q: Because his hand is cupped to his
ear?
A: Yes. And he's nodding his head,
waving his other arm. Then shouting. Then quiet. Then laughing and
suddenly quiet again.
Q: Looks totally nuts.
A: But people do it all the time.
Q: Okay, but it makes sense because
we know there's someone else on the other end.
A: The other end of what?
Q: The phone.
A: That looks even more preposterous.
Where exactly is that someone hanging from?
Q: You know what I mean. There's a mobile
phone network. There are signals traveling through the air.
A: Where?
Q: We can't see all those things, but
it connects people over large distances. It's only our ignorance
of those signals and that network and all the sophisticated technology
behind it that makes this guy look silly.
A: Exactly. And that's the same
problem we have with sacrifices: We have to realize there's a whole
other dimension here that we don't see. From that dimension, everything
makes sense.
Q: Whose dimension is that?
A: Well, there are higher planes
of reality than our own. Spiritual realms. And beyond. There's a
whole chain of worlds working down from the plane of the infinite
light until arriving at us and our little physical cosmos down here.
Q: Kabbalah stuff.
A: It's in the Talmud, too -- lots
of details in tractate Chaggigah about the seven heavens, etc.
Q: So, with sacrifices.
A: Rabbi Isaac Luria, the Arizal,
explains that the sacrifices were a way of elevating the matter
and vitality of this world up to a higher plane.
Q: You know, I read a story about some
tzaddik who would meditate and carry his consciousness up to higher
places.
A: Actually, anytime someone meditates
and prays with focus, s/he is doing that to some small degree.
Q: So we're back to square one: Who
needs the BBQ?
A: Because that only elevates human
soul. The human soul has many layers. The G-dly, The rational. The
animal within. The sacrifices in the Temple elevated that plus a
whole real animal. It touched not just the spirit, but the body
as well.
Q: So the animal became holy?
A: Thereby having a general effect
on all the animals in the world -- plus the flour and wine that
was used with it, which pulled along all the vegetable world, plus
the salt and water, which pulled the inanimate realm along with
it.
Q: Let me get this straight: You're
saying that what prayer accomplishes on a spiritual level, the sacrifices
accomplished with the physical world? You're saying that the Temple
was a sort of transformer, to beam up physical stuff into the spiritual
realms?
A: You're getting it. That's why
the space of the Temple was so important. You know there is a tradition
that the place where the altar of the Temple stood, that was the
place from which Adam was formed. Cain and Abel made their sacrifices
there. Noah made his sacrifices there after the flood. The Binding
of Isaac took place there.
Q: So why did they all have to use that
spot? What's so special.
A: It's the spot where Jacob had
his dream about the ladder and the angels going up and down. He
said, "This is the gateway to heaven!"
Q: Hmmm. You mean like what we call
in Net jargon a "portal".
A: Right. Or a transformer. The
interface between the physical and the spiritual. That's what the
rabbis mean when they say that when G-d went about creating this
world, the place he started from was the place of the Temple Mount.
So you'll say, there was no space when G-d started creating the
world. But what they mean is that this is the first link from the
higher worlds to this world. That's where above stops and below
begins. Heaven to Earth. And so, that's where the transmission line
between the two is situated. The portal.
Q: What happens when all this meat and
wine gets up there?
A: Obviously it's no longer a chewy
steak when it's in a spiritual domain. But we are physical beings,
so we can't really imagine what spiritual roast beef looks like.
But there are conscious beings that have no physical bodies, and
they are on the receiving end of all this.
Q: You mean angels?
A: That's what they're called in
English.
Q: I find it hard to relate to the angel
thing. I know there are plenty of references to them in the Bible
and rabbinical literature.
A: The Ramban (Nachmanides) says
that our souls are more closely related to the angels than to the
animals. After all, human beings live principally in a world of
ideas and abstractions, more than in the visceral, tangible world.
Q: Depends who you're speaking about,
rabbi.
A: At any rate, there is no reason
not to believe that there is consciousness that is not associated
with a physical body. And if we would ask one of those conscious
beings whether the Temple sacrifices make sense to him/her/it, it/she/he
would likely exclaim that it is one of the few things human beings
do that make any sense at all! And I bet they're real peeved that
it's been stopped all these years.
Q: What do they get out of it?
A: According to the Kabbalah, returning
energy.
Q: You mean like energy bouncing back?
What do they need that for? Don't they get enough when it's on its
way down?
A: Because the energy they get is
only direct energy, filtered down through many steps. We get the
final, most condensed creative energy to sustain our existence in
this world. But, since we are the final stop, we also have the essence
of that energy. That's something they can get only when we elevate
matters of our world up to theirs.
Q: You're telling me those angels have
a real interest in our sacrifices?
A: They have a real interest in
anything good we do. Any mitzvah we do elevates some aspect of the
material world -- perhaps not to such an extent as the sacrifices.
But the sacrifices provide a paradigm to understand what all mitzvahs
are really about.
Q: So are these bodiless conscious beings
involved in that as well?
A: Without them, not a single mitzvah
would ever get done. The Talmud says that whenever a person does
a mitzvah, it is only after the Holy One sends His angels to set
everything up for him to do it. And they complete the job as well.
Often, our entire input is no more than making the conscious decision,
that, yes, I want to do this mitzvah.
Q: So really,
all of our mitzvahs happen within this larger, multidimensional
context.
A: Which is why so many of
them are so hard to understand. Like trying to make sense of a single
instrument playing its part out of a whole symphony. That's what
each of our mitzvahs is like. Because we only see the material plane.
By
Tzvi
Freeman, author of Be
Within, Stay Above and Bringing
Heaven Down to Earth
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