SPECIES AND GENDER OF SACRIFICES

Rambam advances a claim that, while interesting, makes an assumption that we probably would not accept. According to Rambam, the quality of a sacrifice was affected by the sin for which it was being brought. That explains why the atoning sacrifice for idolatry was generally a female goat—the goat being a lowly species of animal (compared to a bull, for example), and the female of all species being lower than the males. He extends this claim to the mode of bringing certain sacrifices, so that even the minhah offering (flour) brought in certain situations is deprived of oil or frankincense, to show how evil were the actions that led to its being brought. He does not run this systematically, however, but gives several examples that he claims make his point.

To be fully convincing, he would have had to explain all of the sacrifices there are, and the animals (and gender of those animals) that are required. In particular, Rambam’s reasons do not seem to apply to the sacrifices brought on a regular (or holiday) basis. Without covering all the examples, though, Rambam’s view does not convince us to any great extent.

SACRIFICES THAT DIRECTLY RELATE TO A SIN

For other sacrifices—and Rambam does not clearly define which are which—the sacrifice’s form is chosen directly to reflect the sin being atoned. He sees the bulls offered on the eighth day of priests’ consecration and on Yom Kippur as atonement for the Golden Calf, and various goats offered as sin-offerings—on pilgrimage to the Temple, on the New Moon, on Yom Kippur, for idolatry—as reflecting the general tendency at that time to sacrifice to se`irim (which is the word for goats, but also for devils). In that reading, these sacrifices respond, in their kind, to the sin committed in a more direct fashion than the earlier ones.

However, Rambam then goes on to cite and defend an explanation of Hazal that he sees as teaching an important lesson. According to that reason, the Jews are constantly atoning for the first sin they committed as a people, the sale of Yosef, after which they killed a kid-goat, so as to dip Yosef’s coat in its blood. Rambam recognizes that this hardly seems a convincing reason to have sin-offerings generally come from goats, but he says it teaches an important principle about repentance. In his view, based on the verse "ve-hatati negdi tamid, and my sin is constantly before me," the Yosef reference is meant to teach us that throughout our generations we have to keep that sin (and later sins) before our minds and take corrective actions for them. To quote some of Rambam’s examples, if someone sinned with their property, they should do something good with their property; if they sinned in taking bodily pleasures, they must fast and afflict their bodies; etc.

At face value, the theory is that the response to sin must be a greater action in the opposite direction, to counterbalance the act of sin. Rambam sees this not only as teaching a productive lesson about repentance, but in training one to avoid sin to begin with—if someone recognizes and remembers the lengthy process of atonement and how unpleasant it is, they may learn to avoid the sin in the first place. He closes by saying "this is of most manifest utility. Grasp also this intention."

Those words, which almost always are Rambam’s way of drawing our attention to some hidden message, I believe are meant to get us to notice how he has converted the sacrifices from animal rituals into psychological lessons along the lines of teshuvah generally. While Rambam may or may not have seen an inherent value to those sacrifices, at least this part of his explanation has given us a way to understand their role in helping a person avoid sin, a role that can conceivably be defended even in the absence of the need to wean a people from idol worship. To take the goats as the example, I can imagine Rambam reading the Torah as continually requiring animal sacrifice of us so that we never forget the sale of Yosef, the sin of the Golden Calf, etc., as the proper fulfillments of ve-hatati negdi tamid, the obligation (familial and not just personal) to remember past sins and constantly work to rectify them.

FAMILY LEGACIES OF SIN AND ATONEMENT

Rambam’s assigning atonement (or at least memory) responsibilities to later generations suggests a concept of family character that he does not make explicit. In Rambam’s view, a sin of property requires using property in the name of good causes; a sin of the body requires using the body positively, and a sin of ideas requires following the Jewish theology extremely faithfully. Seeing those requirements as applying to later generations as well means that a new Jewish child already has some elements of his spiritual path set out for him. If this child comes from a family that has sinned in business, the child’s job in the world will already be somewhat set—to remember and rectify that familial flaw. Again, Rambam does not spell this out, but it is an interesting line of thought to follow further.

A SACRIFICE FOR THE LORD

Rambam raises an issue he sees as important, and whose explanation he characterizes as a marvelous thing. He notes that the sin-offering given on Rosh Hodesh (for those who wondered whether I knew the Hebrew words for the New Moon) is called a hatat la-Shem, a sin-offering for the Lord. Ordinarily, he points out, the words "for the Lord" indicate sacrifices that are fully burnt (an olah) in a manner pleasing to Hashem. Thus, even those sin-offerings that were fully burnt could not be called la--Shem, because they were being burnt so as to wipe away all traces of a sin; the sacrifice having been engendered by serious sin, it could not be considered "for the Lord."

The exception for Rosh Hodesh has to do with its marking a naturally occurring event. Thus, while the other holidays had no natural sign to mark them, Rosh Hodesh does correspond to a natural event, which could lead to the misimpression that we were offering a sacrifice to the moon, as did other religions of the time. To forestall that error, the Torah stresses (anomalously) that it is a sacrifice "to the Lord." This means, then, that there are two meanings to calling a sacrifices la—Shem—it either means that it is wholly for, and wholly pleasing to, God, or it means that it is for God in contrast to other (false) deities we might have mistaken it for.

SA`IR LA-AZAZEL

Rambam explains the odd ceremony of the goat sent out to the wilderness as reflecting its unique status as a form of sin-offering for the entire people. As such, it could not be treated in any way like a regular sacrifice, but was sent far away, away from all human habitation. Not that the sacrifice literally carries our sins on it, Rambam says, but this locution of the Torah’s serves as a parable to teach us how we are supposed to experience the event. As we see the goat being led off, we are supposed to envision (for ourselves, and to strengthen our avoidance of sin) the goat carrying all our sins out to that deserted land.

Rambam claims to be perplexed by the offering of wine, since idol-worshippers also offered wine. He then offers a reason he heard from someone else, but we might pause even before then to remind ourselves that Rambam himself had accepted the notion that certain practices of idol-worship could be converted into our service of God, since they do serve to exalt that service. That being so, Rambam could have suggested some fundamental factor to the offering of wine that would justify using a form that idol worshippers also used. (Just as, implicitly, we offer a sacrifice on Rosh Hodesh despite the idol worshippers also doing so.)

The reason Rambam cites has to do with three central areas of the body in medieval thought—the liver, the heart, and the mind. The liver was seen as being the seat of desire, the heart as the seat of animated life, and the mind as human intelligence. That being so, the person Rambam is citing suggested that we offer as sacrifices materials that help elevate each of these three faculties. Meat is good for the liver (the seat of desire), wine for the heart, and song for the intellect. In that explanation, then, the process of sacrifice is meant to elevate all the human elements; indeed, in that explanation, the animal sacrifices are the least valuable part of the Temple service, since they only elevate the liver (it would also explain why they are so ubiquitous, since desire is so much more prevalent in humans than intellect). Wine libations, then, would be to help elevate the animal parts of a human, while the songs of the Temple are directed towards the intellect.

PILGRIMAGE

The laws of pilgrimage, for Rambam, were mostly meant to renew our attachment to the Law, both by the actual experience of the pilgrimage itself and also by the social ties created on that pilgrimage. That focus on social connections perhaps explains Rambam’s straying to discuss ma`aser sheni, which had to be eaten in the year it was harvested. Given all that excess food, people had to share it with the poor in the form of alms. Pilgrimage, then, was not only about seeing the Temple, but about seeing and sharing the boundy with those around you.

Next week, we’ll tackle tumah and taharah. See you then.