Do you have a question you’d like answered? Submit it anonymously here!
Rabbi, I recently attended my congregation’s Torah Study, where we were reading from the book of Leviticus. It seemed like the whole book was dedicated to animal sacrifice, which we obviously don’t do anymore. But how did we go from that process to what we know of as Judaism today? And how do we read a book of the Torah that feels so distant from our own realities right now?
Animal sacrifice was, in the earliest days of the Jewish tradition, the primary way that our people communicated with God. As you’ve experienced, the book of Leviticus is a deep dive into the intricacies of what kinds of sacrifices need to be made and at what times. In an agricultural society like that of ancient Israel, it made sense that to offer an animal from one’s flock was a true sacrifice, a giving up of a valuable asset in the name of investing in one’s relationship with God. Multiple times a year, festivals required Jews to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to make the correct offerings to God on the Temple’s sacred altar.
By the start of the Common Era, cracks were beginning to appear in the sacrificial system. The priests, who were tasked with administering the sacrificial system and maintaining the House of God, were accused of corruption and bribery. (As an aside, this is the origin of the Christian story of Jesus overturning the table of the money lenders; he was making the claim that the average person didn’t need to deal with corrupt human beings in pursuit of a relationship with God) And then, in 70 CE, catastrophe struck: the Romans destroyed the Temple, leaving the Jews with no ability to access their old way of being.
In the wake of the destruction, a new generation of Jews had to figure out a path forward. Adapt or die off were the only options. So the new leadership, known as the rabbis, created a new interpretation of their tradition that centered prayer and offerings of the heart in the place of animal sacrifice. Not only does this wind up being a smart change from our modern perspective, but it also made it so that any Jew could create a bond with God regardless of geography or finances, an accessibility that had been much less possible in the old way of doing things. This is why, in any synagogue around the world, there is a structured prayer service, known as a liturgy, that maintains a specific order for prayers and rituals that uphold tradition while also allowing for personal, individualized prayer.
So the first part of your question can be answered easily by saying that prayer replaced animal sacrifice (and thank God for that…) But the second part is where the real work lies. How are we supposed to find value in the book of Leviticus when it describes a practice we no longer use? In some ways, studying the intentions of past behavior can be incredibly powerful. After all, what basics of human nature do we see reflected in the way we engaged in this antiquated system? In Leviticus 4:2, we read that “when a person unwittingly incurs guilt in regard to any of God’s commandments…” Notice that the text says “when” not “if.” There is an expectation that humanity is going to inevitably err, and thus needs a process for repairing that which is broken. That is a beautiful notion that we can carry with us beyond the sacrificial cult, and is just one example of the treasure trove of values contained within the Levitical description of the system.
Additionally, Leviticus is a helpful data point that helps us track the evolution of Judaism over time. There is a common misconception that Orthodox Judaism has changed very little throughout history, whereas Reform Judaism has played fast and loose with tradition. By reading Leviticus, we can see how innovation and creativity have been embedded as a Jewish value and take ownership of what it means to make our own adaptations and recontextualizations based on the needs of our modern day.
Judaism has been a great many things to a great many people, and the practice of animal sacrifice and its eventual replacement are deeply helpful in guiding us toward understanding what we want our relationship with our tradition to be. The goal is not to read Leviticus in the hopes that one day we will have to put animal sacrifice to good use again. Instead, the hope is that we will be able to keep a record of where we’ve been and to continue to record that which we do to ensure that Judaism will remain relevant, accessible, and meaningful to any and all future generations.
Austin Zoot is the Rabbi Educator at Valley Temple in Wyoming, Ohio.
