Simon the Righteous was one of the last members of the Great Assembly. He was wont to say: The world stands on three things: on the Torah, on the Ritual, and on Acts of Kindness.
5:
In our last shiur I wrote about possible attitudes towards the restoration of animal sacrifice. In order to complete the discussion I would like to discuss what should be our attitude to the sacrificial system as practiced by our ancestors (a system which has now been defunct for almost 1934 years). I do not think that any reasonable person would wish to deny that our ancestors saw in the ritual killing of animals an act of worship. Even less would such a person wish to pretend that such worship was never practiced, that the Temple ritual is a historical fiction. On the contrary: it is a historical fact. It is perhaps almost impossible for us today to comprehend the enormous love – yes, love – which our ancestors had for the Bet Mikdash and its ritual. In many places our classical sources offer detailed accounts of the minutiae of the system, accounts in such detail that they remind us of the ardour of the fan, the lover. This too is a very important historical fact. At the time of the publication of the Mishnah, nearly 150 years after the cataclysmic end of the sacrificial cult, the sages were still dwelling lovingly over these details and ardently prayed for its restoration. (To this day, the orthodox prayer-book retains specific pleas to God to restore the sacrificial cult.)
However, this historical perspective is only acceptable in our heads; in our hearts we have a deeper problem. While we can recognize that our ancestors loved and cherished the sacrificial cult, we are worried that the merciful Deity to whom we address our prayers and who is the object of our belief could condone and require the killing of animals for this purpose. In our last shiur I touched briefly on the way in which Rambam deals with this issue in his Guide for the Perplexed. I shall now develop his response.
Rambam claims that the sacrificial system was a historical necessity. People – including us today! – are influenced by behaviours which are generally practiced by honourable people. In the ancient world the almost universal form of worship practiced by honourable and worthy people – of all faiths and all nationalities – was the sacrifice of animals to the gods. Rambam claims that if God had denied Israel this form of worship it would have been a psychological disaster: people would have felt spiritually unsatisfied had they been denied worship by animal sacrifice, just as today people would feel spiritually unsatisfied if they were denied verbal prayer as their act of worship. Rambam says that in all matters involving the ritual killing of animals (for both food and worship) we must perceive a restrictive process at work through an imagined permission. With great brevity: you can no longer kill any animal you choose and eat it as you please. You can only kill certain animals for food, only in a certain way, and you can only consume them under certain restricting circumstances. Thus Rambam seems to be suggesting (and 750 years later Rav Kuk enthusiastically agreed) that we should see in the rules and regulations of kashrut the first tentative stages of a process designed to wean Jews away from the consumption of dead animals and back to mankind's pristine vegetarianism (culminating in world-wide vegetarianism in the messianic age). Rambam applies the same thinking to animal sacrifice: the minutiae of the laws are really restrictive rather than permissive.
To be continued.
It is so nice when people who used to take a regular part in our discussions write again.
Albert Ringer writes:
A few years ago, I was asked to teach a group that consisted mainly of the board members of one of our local synagogues. I used Simon the Just saying as a starting point, read some of the commentaries, mainly those that go in to the question, what to do now the Beth Mikdash does not exist any more. I concluded the lesson by showing that, in some way, the three pillars of the Jewish world are still the three main tasks a synagogue should perform for its members: Teaching Torah, organizing regular services and creating an organizational framework for doing acts of kindness like tsedaka etc. Together the three form a kind of action program for a board. Like the commentators, they should know for there community and time, what should have the highest priority.
In Avot013 I wrote: The classical commentators on our present mishnah interpret 'the world' as indicating the physical world in which we live.
Ed Frankel writes:
I am not sure that for the Sages there was a real difference between their physical world and their Jewish world. Yes, they were under the influence of Roman life, and certainly could not ignore Rome's role in their lives. However, in terms of their private lives, as in our own time, their physical world may have been their Jewish world. This is a matter that many of us studied in Sociology 101 when we had to deal with the world in which we live. Is the world an immediate community, our state, our nation, our planet? On some level it is each of these, but on others it certainly is not. I have no trouble with the classical commentary to Simon the Righteous. By the same token, if it is only the Jewish world to which the mishna refers I would hope that the day comes when these three pillars are extended to the world as a whole – or at least two of them. I very much doubt that avoda would ever apply as a tenet found essential by the non-Jew.
I respond:
While not disagreeing with anything that Ed writes here I think that he has misunderstood my original comment. The classical commentators understand the word "world" as indicating the physical universe – earth, sun, moon, stars etc – not the social milieu in which we live. Rabbi Ovadya of Bertinoro, for example, writes:
If Israel had not accepted the Torah heaven and earth would not have been created, as it is written [Jeremiah 33:25]: Were it not for my covenant day and night I would not have established the laws of heaven and earth.
