Hitzonim | Outsiders

In Tzav (“Command”), God tells Moses about the sacrifices offered in the Mishkan (Tabernacle), including a meal offering brought by the high priest, guilt offerings, and offerings of thanks. Moses initiates Aaron and Aaron’s sons for priestly service in the Mishkan

Sefaria

To be a little more clear, or maybe I mean visceral, this week we read about dashing blood on all sides of an altar, turning fat into smoke to make a pleasing aroma, donning special garments for use in cultic rituals, and preparing oneself for service to the community through a time spent away from the community. But these are trees, where’s the forest? We’re confronted with a question I have on my mind each time I write, and especially, each time I write about Torah, and it is this: Why?

Like. Okay, there was a sacrificial system in practice in Ancient Southwest Asia, perpetuated by, seemingly the Ancient Israelites, shared Canaanite ancestry and traditions notwithstanding, from the portable tabernacle in the wilderness, to the First Temple, “Solomon’s Temple,” to the Second Temple, ultimately sacked by Rome in a terrible act of occupation, military superiority, and ethnic cleansing. Sacrifice seems to be a through line connecting these thousands of years. These are hallmarks of the cult. Sacrifices served a number of functions to govern social dynamics, to conform with worldview and theology, to differentiate one population group’s identities from another, to feed the priestly class who operated the cult, and so on. Ultimately, reworking the cult for a time without a Temple that delivers to us modern, Rabbinic Judaism today, when traditional sacrifice has been replaced with liturgy, study, rituals, and, if you’re doing it right, acts of loving-kindness.

But I’m still unsatisfied with this introduction. What I mean to say, in varying degrees of sound scholarship, as I mostly just tap away at these old keys in a dark kitchen at 5:47 am EST, with a cup of coffee and a desire to write, is that the question of why anyone should care about this is not an insignificant question to ask.

Here it is: How am I – are we – served in March 2024 by appealing to something that I cannot historically validate; that describes complex rules for butchering animals, burning some, boiling others, making bread, and sprinkling blood around; that is a practice we cannot fully characterize; and that has been abandoned for 2,000 years. It turns out this last point about abandonment may be the thing to think more about.

Now before I say anything else, let’s call out that I’ve gone pretty fast and loose with much of this. For example, does it make sense to speak of sacrifices as though they were as described, when the Exodus/wilderness event itself is ahistorical and a founding myth for a people? And actually, if they did not happen as described, that itself is a pretty cool finding. Why have complex legislative and procedural codes if they are not followed?

What else have I failed to address? I’ve failed to call out that during a divided kingdom, the “high places” for sacrifices in the North were decreed to be torn down in the religious reform effort to consolidate the cult (and power) in Jerusalem, in the South. What of those at Shiloh rather than those in Jerusalem? Richard Elliott Friedman, ostensibly the most prominent 20th century popularizer of the Documentary Hypothesis, argues that there was in fact a contentious divide between two the priestly lines and their concomitant sacrificial practices, finding Aaron’s line to be favored in the Temple in Jerusalem, while the Mosaic tradition was prized in the North. In Friedman’s view, the authorial source associated with the Elohist tradition (E) is pro-Moses and Northern. The Yahwist (J) is pro-Aaronic and settled in the South. Through the different sources, each priestly brother receives their due respect at the expense of the other.

Some modern scholars say these conclusions all rest on just so much shaky ground that all we can really say is that traditions existed before the priestly “P” and after. So then today, in Leviticus, an unashamedly P document, with all its rules, rites, rituals, painstaking details of tabernacle construction and so on, who’s the priestly “P” writing for this week’s portion, and what is their attitude about the Aaronic line? If P favors Jerusalem as the center of the cult, it would make sense for Aaron to get the authorization, but we also see the P source and later Redactor “R” not harmonizing sources but allowing each.

I’m missing all sorts of other things, too, I’ve said nothing of the times of exile, were the sacrifices offered then? Between Babylonian Exile and restoration in Jerusalem.

I just wrote about Purim, and one thing I emphasized was the lack of religious rite or ritual appearing in that story about living in a non-Jewish majority. Whereas the Book of Daniel cites Daniel’s vegetarian diet to avoid eating foods inconsistent with kashrut, to keep from defiling himself, no such mention is made for Esther and Mordecai. Were the sacrifices and commitments to preparation of offerings left behind in Judea? Seeing that the Esther story is fan fiction, one may think this is a moot point, but here the facts matter less than observing that sometimes ancient authors prioritized ritual and other times did not.

When we thread these strands together, we’re left with so many nuances and topics beyond the scope of a single post that we may ask, how might we even make sense of this week’s parsha, let alone the entire sacrificial system, without either penetrating interest or deep scholarship? And yet, when we ask, how might we make sense of this, we’ve side stepped the former question, why make sense of it? If we don’t know why, I don’t think we can stay diligent with our how.

So I guess one answer to our rhetoric, why even bother with reading about these seemingly primitive practices is owing largely to the fact that these rites are foundational to the origin of Ancient Israelite religion, and so, study for study’s sake should pique interest. I guess for me, if I buy into the myth that it means something to say we all (“we” Jewish souls; neshama) stood at Sinai when down came Torah, it’s no more a choice to learn it than to accept it on duty and principle. But, of course, back to the whole ahistorical foundational myth thing. My critical scholarship precludes Divine appeal and reconstructs our experiences centered on the holiness of humanity, not the supernatural. Ah, but maybe that’s a clue into this work, too, isn’t it?

At any rate, I have no plans to oblige Torah with all facets of my life, but candle lighting on a Friday night, weekly Torah reading (and sometimes writing), swapping challah with the neighbors, and giving our kids a sense of the generations that flow through them; these are among the ways that I honor what I feel obligated to do so. I am not ashamed to use the word obligation. And framed in these ways, I think this all has at least some infinitesimal connection to Aaron’s bloody garments in the desert, even if there were no desert; no bloody garments. But truth need not require facts of the matter.

When I challenge myself to answer the why question, the response is in the vicinity of a sense of responsibility to speak to the core tenets of something that I take to be core to me.

We immediately recognize the shortcoming of just such a response: Why would you read this? And if the answer is, because Adam thinks it’s important, then thank you, but I think you’re fibbing, and either way, that’s not sustainable. But I do want you to read this. I’m putting in the effort, when I could be keeping it to myself, so there’s some reason for action that we could locate. What might that be?

Here is what studying sacrifice does for me: It centers me on ritual and intention. What if we separate the act of sacrifice from the concept of a deity? Could the act of offering itself present something of value, even symbolically? And what would this look like? The bread crumbs I’ve left here are to suggest that I answer the why question by appeal to the nature of personal forming narrative reflected in the mirror of a people, and with that, mobilizing my worthiness as one who has the right to intervene in our shared history toward reconstructing rituals for today.

Torah is a long moral discourse of written words, oral history, interpretation, refiguring, and all else that we’ve claimed it to be here on this blog for more than a year, and during these months you’ve all read in me a changing of focus and intention. Oh shit, that’s what I said thinking about sacrifice raises for me: focus and intention!

Unencumbered by metaphysical atonement, I pivot toward a socially constructed atonement. Can we dedicate ourselves to fixing what’s broken in society? Militarism, nationalism, poverty, food insecurity, and so on. This aligns with the concept of Tikkun Olam. repairing the world, a core value in modern Judaism. Bringing individual sacrifices was a thing, but the sacrificial system is largely a corporate enterprise.

The sacrificial system involved a shared experience and reinforced community values. Can we find ways to create rituals and activities that strengthen our communities and the values we hold dear? My why is personal forming narrative and reconstruction in radical ways, borne out of deep study and a desire to locate focus and intention.

In the end, maybe sacrifice is the answer to what we take to be demanded of us, not because it was what is Divinely decreed, but because community care is a mandate, a giving up of one thing to go big on something else, and if we’re going to really go big, we don our vestments, dash our blood, and stay the course, with focus and intention.