Dear Friends,
Among the most misunderstood elements of our biblical Jewish life – and how we relate to them today – were the sacrifices made at the ancient Tabernacle and Temple. It is hard to imagine that for nearly 2000 years, until the Second Temple fell at the hands of the Romans in the First Century CE, our primary form of religious devotion was through animal and other sacrifice! Doesn’t it sound archaic and antiquated, at best, and foreign and faulty, at worst?
Thus, when we read again this week, and for the next several weeks, from the Torah details of the rituals and rules for the sacrificial offerings and the sacrificial cult, it feels to me, and likely to you, as if we are encountering some other, foreign tradition and people. We are! Yet, perhaps we can find some meaning if we plow ahead!
Firstly, it may be a common misconception that the offerings were thoroughly burnt on the altar, and reduced to ashes. In some cases, that was the case. But, we also read the following regarding the meal offering: “This is the ritual of the meal offering: Aaron’s sons shall present it before the Eternal, in front of the altar. A handful of the choice flour… shall be turned into smoke on the altar… What is left of it shall be eaten by Aaron and his sons; it shall be eaten as unleavened cakes…” (Leviticus 6:7-9)
Similarly, other offerings were consumed by Aaron and his sons, who served as the initial high priests of the people of Israel. Essentially, then, the offerings served as an additional means of taxation and sustaining the religious administration in the ancient day. Israelites also paid a half-shekel per person tax, annually. Yet, the offerings were a significant means of feeding and maintaining the religious functionaries in antiquity, whose daily functioning was to serve the people, and not to manage farms or tend sheep.
It was an early example of our present taxation – the Temple administration was tantamount to the IRS! The Torah set rules for payment of obligations, and the “government” was thereby funded by the offerings. In that understanding, although it seems at first blush to be antiquated and archaic, it really was not terribly different from our system, today. It was a means of providing for the civil servants who served the greater good.
Essentially, in every age and continent, once societies became complex – beyond the simple needs of the caveman or the simple herder or gatherer – the communities needed to specialize and provide professionals to conduct affairs, and a means of compensating them. Hence, the Temple offerings.
Perhaps, we are not so distant from our earlier cousins. After all, most of us are completing our 1040 forms right about now!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn
Among the most misunderstood elements of our biblical Jewish life – and how we relate to them today – were the sacrifices made at the ancient Tabernacle and Temple. It is hard to imagine that for nearly 2000 years, until the Second Temple fell at the hands of the Romans in the First Century CE, our primary form of religious devotion was through animal and other sacrifice! Doesn’t it sound archaic and antiquated, at best, and foreign and faulty, at worst?
Thus, when we read again this week, and for the next several weeks, from the Torah details of the rituals and rules for the sacrificial offerings and the sacrificial cult, it feels to me, and likely to you, as if we are encountering some other, foreign tradition and people. We are! Yet, perhaps we can find some meaning if we plow ahead!
Firstly, it may be a common misconception that the offerings were thoroughly burnt on the altar, and reduced to ashes. In some cases, that was the case. But, we also read the following regarding the meal offering: “This is the ritual of the meal offering: Aaron’s sons shall present it before the Eternal, in front of the altar. A handful of the choice flour… shall be turned into smoke on the altar… What is left of it shall be eaten by Aaron and his sons; it shall be eaten as unleavened cakes…” (Leviticus 6:7-9)
Similarly, other offerings were consumed by Aaron and his sons, who served as the initial high priests of the people of Israel. Essentially, then, the offerings served as an additional means of taxation and sustaining the religious administration in the ancient day. Israelites also paid a half-shekel per person tax, annually. Yet, the offerings were a significant means of feeding and maintaining the religious functionaries in antiquity, whose daily functioning was to serve the people, and not to manage farms or tend sheep.
It was an early example of our present taxation – the Temple administration was tantamount to the IRS! The Torah set rules for payment of obligations, and the “government” was thereby funded by the offerings. In that understanding, although it seems at first blush to be antiquated and archaic, it really was not terribly different from our system, today. It was a means of providing for the civil servants who served the greater good.
Essentially, in every age and continent, once societies became complex – beyond the simple needs of the caveman or the simple herder or gatherer – the communities needed to specialize and provide professionals to conduct affairs, and a means of compensating them. Hence, the Temple offerings.
Perhaps, we are not so distant from our earlier cousins. After all, most of us are completing our 1040 forms right about now!
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Douglas Kohn