In this week’s Torah portion, Tzav, the Torah continues its description from last week of the sacrifices and their rituals. For us, who live in the current period of time in the Western world, animal sacrifice is foreign and seems, in many respects, barbaric. Reading about the sacrifices in the Torah, imagining the most central national Jewish space as one of burning animal carcasses, flowing blood, and incense burning seems very un-Jewish. How are we to understand that the laws of the Tabernacle and its sacrifices take up such a large portion of our holy Torah?

Nachmonides (b. 1194) saw the Tabernacle and its sacrifices as a continuation of the Mount Sinai experience, and thus relevant for all times. God was revealed to us at the mountain and in the Tabernacle and its successor, the Temple, God “dwelled” among the Jewish people. Sacrifices were used to atone for sin according to Nachmonides in order that the one who brings the sacrifice would comprehend that, there but for the grace of God go I.

Maimonides (b. 1135) in his book of Jewish philosophy, The Guide for the Perplexed (3:32), saw prayer as the true mode of relating to God, but believed God gave sacrifices to the Jewish people at that time since after living in Egypt they were used to the idea of idol worship. God decided that instead of sacrificing animals and bringing incense to idols the people should do it for God in the Jewish Temple. But, according to Maimonides, sacrifices, while required for that generation of Jews, were by no means the best way of connecting to the Divine.

Rabbi Gunther Plaut, a Reform Jewish commentator, surprisingly emphasizes the sanctity garnered from the sacrificial rite: “I object vigorously when I hear people say that we moderns have progressed beyond such practices [of sacrifice]….we have retrogressed in essential areas upon which Biblical sacrifice was founded…Most of the offerings were shared meals…in an atmosphere of prayer and devotion…an experience in an awe inspiring religious setting which impressed itself more on the participants than a mumbled berkat hamazon (grace after meals prayer)…offering the olot (totally burnt offerings) meant to give a valuable animal without deriving any measurable human benefit from them, purely for the love of God. How often do we do this [today] in any form or fashion?”

I have always thought it the hand of God in history that we do not have animal sacrifices today and indeed we would not relate well to them. But we should not let these parshiot go by without reflecting on the notion of sacrifice and what we might learn from them.