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For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
When God commands the Nation of Israel to worship through animal sacrifices, is it because this is what the Almighty wants? Dr. Ari Ackerman, lecturer for Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Education, and the Golinkin Professor of TALI Jewish Education at The Schechter Institutes of Jewish Studies, teaches Maimonides’ stance on the question, explaining how God ultimately wants Am Yisrael to worship through prayer, but sees they are not ready and gives them a mode of praise that is fitting for both the era and the people.
Watch the video and read the article:
The Torah devotes much effort to explicating in detail the architecture of the sacred space of the tabernacle (mishkan) and even more so the sacrifices that will be performed there and later in the Temple (beit ha-mikdash). This seemingly points to how much significance is placed on religious sacrifices in the Jewish tradition. And even though the sacrificial order is no longer practiced since the destruction of the Temple, Jews continued to uphold the importance of animal sacrifices in their wish for its restoration in the messianic time. This is clear from the liturgy of Amidah prayer in which we pray: “והשב את העבודה לדביר ביתך ואישי ישראל באהבתם תקבל ברצון, ותהי לרצון עבודת ישראל עמך” (restore the service to Your Sanctuary and accept with love and favor Israel’s fire-offerings). However, a counter-tradition exists within Judaism which views the worship conducted in the tabernacle and the Temple as a divine concession to the spiritual limitations of the Jewish people in their early stages of development. In an earlier video I focused upon Abraham Joshua Heschel as a representative of this counter tradition; in this video I will look at Maimonides’ important contribution to the devaluation of sacrifices and the belief that it should not be a component of the messianic era.
Moses Maimonides’ view appears in his rationale for sacrifices in his philosophic work, The Guide of the Perplexed (3:32). This discussion is part of the section on reason for commandments in general. Maimonides there claims that all commandments somehow are related to and help us advance in the ultimate purpose of the Torah which is a better understanding of God. He must therefore explain the relationship between sacrifices and this rational goal. In this regard he famously and controversially argues: “It is impossible to go from one extreme to the other suddenly. Therefore, human beings – according to their nature – are not capable of suddenly abandoning that to which they were deeply accustomed … as it was then the deeply ingrained and universal practice with which people were brought up to conduct religious worship with animal sacrifices in temples.”
So Maimonides claims that God acts as a consummate educator who is attuned precisely to where his or her students are at. God realizes that the Jews who were deeply immersed in Egyptian pagan culture cannot suddenly change their values through a divine fiat. Instead, God must conduct a gradual and protracted educational process and the mitzvot including sacrifices are divine educational tools. Consequently, sacrifices were instituted by God not because this was the proper way to worship God. Rather it was a response to the fact that Jews held idolatrous views and then could not suddenly abandon them. The deity therefore allowed Jews to continue to sacrifice but they must sacrifice to God rather than to idols. The intention of the commandments though is to gradually wean the Jews from this lower form of worship and replace sacrifices with prayer which is a more elevated form of divine reverence and adoration. One can deduct from here that the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of sacrifices was for Maimonides actually an opportunity rather than a catastrophe. It also shows us that the counter-tradition in Judaism which viewed the Temple and sacrifices in an ambivalent manner had an important representative in the greatest Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides.
Shavua Tov from Schechter.
Prof. Ari Ackerman is the President of the Schechter Institute of Jewish Studies.
President Ackerman is Associate Professor for Jewish Philosophy and Jewish Education. Prior to his elevation to president, Ackerman held the (David) Golinkin Professor of TALI Jewish Education. He received his PhD in Jewish thought from Hebrew University and was a researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton University. His most recent book is a Critical Edition of the Sermons of Zerahia Halevi Saladin (Beer Sheva University Press, 2013). Prof. Ackerman’s new book on creation and codification in the philosophy of Hasdai Crescas – Hasdai Crescas on Codification, Cosmology and Creation (Brill Press, 2022) is newly published. President Ackerman lives with his family in Jerusalem.
