Shabbat Shalom and welcome to Judeo Talk. The Torah portion for this week is Parsha Tzav, Leviticus 6-8.
Much of the book of Leviticus is concerned with the proper procedures of sacrifice and other major rituals of the priestly caste. This parsha concerns itself with a reiteration of the laws of atonement sacrifices, guilt offerings, and others previously mentioned in abstract instructions. As always, by depicting the prominent individuals of this period in the Torah, namely Moses and Aaron, doing everything to the letter of God's instructions, it is meant to be proof of the righteous foundations of the first generation of Jews. In short, if it was good enough for Moses, it most certainly should be good enough for the rest of us.
But that's just the sticking point. Though I've written it many times before, I can't help but wonder about the cessation of ritual sacrifice in the Jewish faith. There is absolutely nothing in the Torah that states sacrifices must be carried out at the one and only Temple of Jerusalem. In fact, the Israelites hadn't even reached the Holy Land when the first sacrifices took place. Conceivably, one could build an altar anywhere. That's probably the original intention to begin with. Because the instructions in the Torah are so specific, even including a method of building a very portable tabernacle, it's more than a little dissonant to say that the act of ritual sacrifice and indeed most of the priestly rituals ended because the Temple was destroyed.
So, why are so many instructions from the Torah deemed irrelevant today? Why do we go so far as to cherry-pick the dietary laws, swearing off pork but choosing to consume fat without ritual regard? Why do we still have the mikvah, the ritual bath of purification, but not the soil-bath rituals prescribed for women accused of infidelity? It is my belief, and I'll make it clear that I am editorializing here and likely often will in the future, that the Rabbinic Age in which we are living and have been living for more than 2000 years has actively sought to revise the laws of the Torah itself.
Frankly, I don't think of this as a bad thing. The rabbis embraced the idea of the Torah being "The Tree of Life", an ever-changing, growing document meant to be a basis for a righteous life, not a static, unquestionable text handing down dogma to each increasingly unknowable generation. The rabbis, upon the destruction of the Second Temple, took the opportunity to enact a political shift in the ritual lives of Jews everywhere. As for why they chose to end ritual sacrifice, it seems most likely that it was out of a combination of poverty and emergent philosophy. For a people in diaspora it is absurd to spend vital resources like grain and cattle on a ritual that is, to be perfectly honest, little more than a left-over from the ambient polytheism of the ancient Near and Middle East. Removing sacrifice in any and all forms was a statement saying, "Is our concept of God so primitive and materialistic that we believe God requires earthly sustenance?"
In many of my d'varim, both written and presented live, I have encouraged people to challenge the instructions of the Torah, to not take these words at face-value or believe that such mortal concepts as words and laws are forever infallible. If the ritual or law seems unnecessary, study it, scrutinize it. This may just be my upbringing in the Reform philosophy taking hold, but I firmly believe that a lack of defiance toward dogma is the best way to eliminate the otherwise vibrant life of Judaic discourse.
