YESHIVAT HAR ETZION
ISRAEL KOSCHITZKY VIRTUAL BEIT MIDRASH (VBM)
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INTRODUCTION TO PARASHAT HASHAVUA

Parashat Shemini 

Introduction to the Sacrifices, Part 2
By Rav Michael Hattin

INTRODUCTION

Last time, before the Pesach break, we began to consider some of the essential elements of the sacrificial service, in the hopes of arriving at a more profound appreciation of its significance.  We constructed a very broad outline of the typical sacrificial ceremony and noted that there were essentially two discrete stages in the ritual.  The first stage concerned the presentation of the animal, its slaughter, the collection of its blood in a vessel, and the presentation of that blood upon the altar.  While there might have been many variations between specific types of sacrifices insofar as details are concerned, the basic outline remained the same, and revolved around the element of blood.  The second stage addressed the actual burning of the sacrificial parts upon the altar, and here again, while the exact provisions may have been a function of the specific grade of sacrifice, the fundamental scheme was similar and this time revolved around the element of the altar's perpetual fire.  Blood on the one hand and consuming fire on the other, brought together in a matrix of devotion by the physical earth and stones of the altar.  While grain offerings, at first glance, did not appear to be related to this scheme, we noted last time that the early sources (Mishna Menachot Chapter 1) recognized a correspondence that was understood to be integral and real.

THE READING OF THE RAMBAN

What might be the meaning of the blood and the fire, what might be the symbolism of the altar, and how might we understand the service of the sacrifices that for a thousand years was the cornerstone of Jewish national life?  The Ramban (13th century, Spain), quoting an opinion advanced in much more concise form by the Ibn Ezra a century earlier, understood that the matter of the sacrifices related to the theme of substitution:

	It is better to adopt the view of those who suggest that human deeds are accomplished through the agency of thoughts, speech and acts.  Therefore, when one transgresses and presents a sacrifice, God commands that he place his hands upon the head of the creature as an expression of the act and then verbally admit his wrongdoing as an expression of the speech.  The innards and kidneys, instruments of thought and desire, are then consumed in the fire, as are the quarters that represent the limbs of the man by which he does all of his deeds.  The blood is thrown upon the altar to represent his own life blood, so that a person ought to consider while performing this service that he himself transgressed against God with his body and soul, and it would have been only fitting for his own blood to have been spilled and his body to have been burned, were it not for the compassion of the Creator who accepted a substitute and ransom in the form of this sacrifice: its blood for his blood, a soul for a soul, and the major organs for his own.  As for the flesh, it is for the maintenance of the Torah instructors (the Kohanim) so that they might pray on his behalf.  The daily sacrifice (a communal offering for all of the people of Israel) is brought because the community can never be free of misdeed…(commentary to VaYikra 1:9).

The Ramban, in rather unsettling imagery, here suggests that the sacrifices are a graphic object lesson in human culpability and corresponding Divine compassion.  A person who transgresses God's laws ought to suffer the consequences of having abrogated the will of the Creator.  But God sees fit to allow the supplicant the opportunity to make amends and thus escape a fate more tragic and severe.  The animal perishes instead but the supplicant is admonished to take the lesson to heart, for it should have been his own sorry end to suffer slaughter and immolation!  For the Ramban, then, the shedding of the animal's blood is meant to parallel the shedding of the person's, and consuming fire of the altar is a metaphor for infernal destruction.

GOD'S TRANSCENDENT AUTHORITY

We may indeed take issue (offense?) with the Ramban's formulation, for on surface reading it appears to perpetuate uncomfortable portrayals of a vengeful and cruel God versus a corrupt and irredeemable human being, both renderings fundamentally incompatible with our tradition.  But that would be missing the point.  The Ramban's intent is to impress upon us a truth that we often prefer to willfully overlook and otherwise ignore: God is an absolute and transcendent Being who created heaven and earth and all that they contain.  If we accept that astonishing premise, then how could we ever consent to abrogate His will?  Would we dare to oppose the command of much lesser temporal and earthly rulers such as the mercurial mediaeval monarchs that the Ramban was only too well acquainted with, or else the tyrannical and brutal despots that are their modern-day descendents?  

Now of course, God is not an arbitrary and capricious dictator, and His laws are about life and not death, for they seek to foster moral improvement of the person and the ultimate repair of the human condition.  But because He is compassionate and kind, merciful and caring, ought we to patently pretend that His austere authority can be so cavalierly dismissed as a figment of more primitive man's fearful imagination?  We strive to serve Him with love, but the second pillar upon which the edifice of the Torah rests is reverence and fear.  As one of the early Sages put it, in language and imagery more digestible than the Ramban but no less forceful:

	Akavia son of Mehallalel used to say: Gaze upon three things and they will prevent you from transgression.  Know from whence you came, and to where you are going, and before whom you are destined to give an accounting of your deeds.  From whence did you come?  From a fetid drop.  To where are you going?  To a place of dust, worms and maggots.  And before whom are you destined to give and accounting of your deeds?  Before the King of Kings the Holy One blessed be He! (Mishna Avot 3:1).

Having failed to find fault with the basic inference of the Ramban's words, we may nevertheless mitigate them by noting that he himself was not entirely comfortable with their implied reading.  He concludes the thought by stating that while "these are plausible ideas that inspire the heart after the manner of homilies", the true import of the matter is only to be found in mystical interpretations that the layman is ill-equipped to fathom.

THE PROHIBITION OF CONSUMING THE BLOOD

Perhaps we may borrow from the Ramban's imagery in order to offer a slightly different formulation but a completely different implication.  Of all of the elements that make up the Ramban's reading, blood for blood, limbs for limbs, innards and internal organs for thoughts etc., it is the first for which there is the most direct textual evidence.  The blood of the animal, the physiological vehicle for the life force that allows the creature to live, is referred to by the text as the "soul".  In the famous passage that outlaws the consumption of an animal's blood, the Torah states:

	If any man from the house of Israel or from the converts that dwell in their midst consumes any blood, then I shall direct My anger against the soul that eats any blood and I shall cut it off from among its people.  FOR THE SOUL OF THE FLESH IS IN THE BLOOD, AND I HAVE ENJOINED THAT IT BE PRESENTED FOR YOU UPON THE ALTAR TO ATONE FOR YOUR SOULS, FOR THE BLOOD BY ITS SOUL WILL ATONE.   Therefore I have said to the house of Israel that any soul among you shall not consume blood, and the convert that dwells among you shall not consume blood.

	If any man from the people of Israel or from the converts that dwell in their midst captures a wild animal or bird that may be consumed, then he shall pour out its blood and cover it with dust.  FOR THE SOUL OF ALL FLESH IS ITS BLOOD THAT IS ITS SOUL, AND I HAVE THEREFORE SAID TO THE PEOPLE OF ISRAEL THAT THE BLOOD OF ANY FLESH YOU SHALL NOT EAT.  FOR THE SOUL OF ALL FLESH IS ITS BLOOD, ALL WHO EAT IT SHALL BE CUT OFF… (VaYikra 17:10-14).

In other words, the text above draws a direct parallel between the blood of the creature and its soul, between the blood and its life force.  Of course, the link is biologically straightforward, for the blood bears the oxygen that is essential for any higher creature (including man) to survive.  It is therefore synonymous with the creature's life force or "soul", for as it ebbs away, biological function and ultimately life itself dissipates with it.  Therefore, the Torah forbids its consumption for it represents an act of unacceptable human hubris.  Shall the person claim the Divinely apportioned life force as his own and make it subject to his authority?  Instead, the blood is to be presented upon the altar, in effect returned to the Author of all life who initially bestowed it.

AN EARLIER REFERENCE

While the text of VaYikra 17 speaks only of animal blood and animal life, much earlier the Torah had perhaps taken the metaphor one step further.  According to the narrative in Sefer Breisheet, in the aftermath of the Flood, Noach and his descendents had been granted Divine dispensation to consume the flesh of other creatures, something that had been taboo in the Garden of Eden.  It was in the context of that remarkable allowance that the Torah implied a most startling parallel:

	God blessed Noach and his sons, and He said to them: be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.  Your fear and your dread shall be upon all of the living creatures of the earth and upon all of the birds of the sky, for everything that creeps upon the earth or swims in the sea is given into your hands.  Any creature that lives shall be for your food, for I have given you all of it like the grass of the field.  BUT FLESH, WHILE ITS SOUL AND LIFEBLOOD ARE YET IN IT, YOU SHALL NOT EAT.  BUT YOUR BLOOD, YOUR SOUL, I SHALL REQUIRE, FROM ANY CREATURE I WILL REQUIRE IT, AND FROM THE HUMAN, EVEN FROM HIS OWN BROTHER, I SHALL REQUIRE THE SOUL OF THE HUMAN.  HE WHO SPILLS THE BLOOD OF THE HUMAN SHALL HAVE HIS OWN BLOOD SHED BY HUMANS, FOR THE HUMAN WAS FASHIONED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD.  As for you, be fruitful and multiply, swarm upon the earth and multiply upon it (Breisheet 8:1-7).

The basic moral principles outlined above, included according to tradition among the so-called Seven Noachide Laws that are to govern all functioning human societies, speak of two fundamental issues: the prohibition of consuming animal flesh while the creature is yet alive, and the prohibition of murder of another human being.  While Noach and his descendents were permitted to consume flesh of other creatures, they were not to do so while the animal was yet alive.  As long as its "soul" or "lifeblood" was yet in it, which is to say while it was yet alive, the flesh could not be eaten.  And while a person could take the life of another creature, he could not kill another human soul by spilling ITS blood, for God would "require" or exact retribution for such an act.  On the one hand, then, the passage presents us with a glaring contrast between man and beast that is meant to highlight the inherent sanctity of human life: kill animals and consume their flesh if you must, but do not lay a hand upon another human being to take his life.  But on the other hand, the Torah clearly employs a charged and analogous vocabulary that equates the blood with the life force, WHETHER THE SUBJECT UNDER DISCUSSION IS AN ANIMAL OR A PERSON.

A SYMBOL FOR CLOSENESS

We would therefore not be overstepping our bounds in adopting the gist of the Ramban's symbolism without adopting its interpretation, for if there is an equation to be made it must perforce concern the blood.  Indeed, the presentation of the blood upon the altar is, as the Ramban suggested, a bold metaphor for the human life force.  But rather than understanding it as an ominous expression of grave and deadly consequences, of "what should have been" for having abrogated the will of God, we may understand it as a daring symbol of "what could yet be", a provocative emblem of the human desire to draw close, to devote oneself entirely to God with the very fiber of one's being.  The presentation of the blood expresses the fundamental human wish to approach God, to dedicate the very life force that courses in our veins to His service.  How we wish to feel His immediacy in our lives, to experience His concern, to know His love!  If only we could bridge the great distance between heaven and earth, between the spiritual and the physical, between the noble ideal of human triumph over evil and the painful reality of a world teetering on the brink of self-destruction!  If only we could bind our life force with His and achieve rapprochement and reconciliation!  

For this alternative interpretation concerning the sacrificial presentation of the animal's blood we may find support in a most significant episode, namely the Akeda (Breisheet Chapter 22).  Recall that God had asked Avraham to surrender that which was most precious to him in all the world, namely his only son Yitzchak, and thus to demonstrate his steadfast trust in His will and his selfless love for Him.  While the analysis of the Akeda is clearly beyond the scope of this lesson, for our purposes we need only note the conclusion of the matter.  After Avraham's hand had been stayed at the last moment by Divine intervention, after he had shown himself prepared to fulfill God's will at any cost, the text tells us that "Avraham lifted up his eyes and saw that a ram had become entangled in the thicket by its horns.  Avraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a sacrifice in place of his son…" (22:13).  

Here, the sacrifice of the ram could have signified only one thing, for while the text states clearly that it was offered up "in Yitzchak's stead" thus reinforcing the symbolism of presenting the life force to God, there can be no possibility of understanding the act as an expression of Divinely-mandated slaughter and self-immolation.  How could the act have possibly signified that Avraham or his son had escaped some sort of deserved destruction because of God's compassion?  Quite the contrary.  Avraham had shown, as much as any human being possibly could, that he was prepared to devote himself entirely to the execution of God's will.  His faith would not be compromised nor his steadfast trust shaken.  And it is in the aftermath of that transformative episode that he offers sacrifice to God, TO EXPRESS HIS OWN READINESS TO GIVE UP ANYTHING, INCLUDING LIFE ITSELF, FOR THE SAKE OF GOD'S SERVICE.  His act of sacrifice of the ram, then, is to demonstrate that he desired only one thing: to be close to the God whom he loved with such fervor.  

Next week, we will conclude the discussion by considering the other two elements of the sacrificial service that we singled out last time, namely the consuming fire as well as the altar of earth and stones upon which it perpetually burns.  

Shabbat Shalom