By Rabbi Simon Jacobson

We are now in the saddest period of the Jewish calendar. During these “nine days” we commemorate the tragic destruction of the two Holy Temples, the first by the Babylonians 2440 years ago, and the second by the Romans 1950 years ago.

The mystics explain these days as a time of intense “concealment” of the Divine presence, with the objective of us uncovering a deeper light within this darkness.

In personal terms this concealment manifests in different forms of dissonance in our lives. Who among us does not have a conflict between our home and work, between our personal and professional lives, between our own ideals and moral standards and the need to conform to the demands of the marketplace? We all have to face the tension between our hearts and our minds, between our desires and our disciplines, between our bodies and our souls?

All these dichotomies are an expression of the schism that takes place during the “nine days,” when the Temple was destroyed, closing the window between heaven and earth, between the Divine and the mundane. Yet, in a mysterious way, this dissonance can lead us to discover deeper truths amidst the ashes.

When challenged by intense darkness, we are compelled to dig deeper. These “nine days” are therefore an appropriate time for embarking on a profound search of the hidden Divine which lies embedded in our lives, even as it may appear dormant.

In this spirit, we present here a correspondence between Rabbi Jacobson in response to a self-proclaimed agnostic.

Dear Dr. B.

Let me begin with my feelings of appreciation for your letters. I am humbled and touched by your remarks regarding the book Toward A Meaningful Life, which I had the privilege of adapting from my great teacher’s works. Without even entering into a discussion of the presenting issues, the mere fact that this book provoked your thoughtful remarks and opened up a communication between our two “worlds,” is in itself a meaningful achievement.

Now to the issues at hand. If I understand you correctly, your struggle lies, in essence, in one all-encompassing dilemma or paradox. Namely: how can I suggest the reconciliation of a deterministic world of nature and the indeterminacy inherent in man’s free will, or in other words: the reconciliation of reason and faith? You see them as mutually exclusive, and even if they are both valid perspectives, they remain separated by an absolute divide.

To allow for a meaningful discussion, I would like to dissect the issues into separate items, which can then be reviewed point by point.

Every discourse needs to assume one or more axioms. In your letter it was unclear to me what points you are ready to accept (or at least concede). So, without assuming anything, allow me to build this from scratch.

Question number one: Do we accept that there are two legitimate and valid realms (albeit, at this point, mutually exclusive ones) – reason and faith, determinacy and indeterminacy (allowing for free will)? I’ll assume that we don’t accept this, thus the need to backtrack:

Do we accept the existence of G-d? And if yes, what type of G-d? You “grant the existence of G-d as a possibility,” but your “own faith is much more mundane, gleaned from admittedly finite experience and lodged finally in the concept of a unified deterministic universe; a universe which, for all practical purposes, operates without intent.” (In your updated version you write: “I believe that that the existence of both G-d and/or chaos are possible, my own faith, when I cannot keep it at bay leans more towards a deterministically unified existence…which operates like a machine”). My question to you then is: what kind of G-d would create a mechanical universe operating without intent? What need is there for G-d and what does a G-d contribute to a universe that functions like a wristwatch? You must be suggesting a G-d-engineer that basically set the wristwatch in motion, a G-d, as you put it, who is at best “a semantic question.”

May I offer another definition of G-d and existence. Our existence does not have to be. It came to be — created by G-d. G-d implies design and purpose. No engineer would create a machine — no matter how organized — for no purpose. Organization is not an end in itself. Design implies not just a systematic machine, but purpose; a raison d’être. We need to understand why the cosmic engineer created this organized, deterministic universe. It is insufficient to say that He created it just in order to demonstrate His grand power of design. G-d created this deterministic universe in order to accomplish some objective. A universe without purpose may as well not have a G-d; G-d then is only semantic.

I believe that you may have a problem with the notion of existence being created by a G-d. You would rather prefer defining existence (the universe) as one with no beginning and end, and G-d being the designer that wound up this wristwatch. However, my definition of G-d includes the possibility that our existence has a beginning — it is just a “tip of the iceberg” of reality, a part of a much greater whole, and this “whole” informs the “part” of its unique design and purpose, its reason for being.

What is G-d’s purpose in creation? That we humans contribute — as partners with G-d — in transforming our lives and the entire universe and reuniting its material side with its spiritual side, creating one integrated universe — as a G-dly place. G-d created grain seeds; humans plant the seeds, harvest the wheat, mix the flour with water and bake bread. We tap the infinite resources G-d instilled in this universe, and actualize their great potential by civilizing and refining the world in which we live.

In order for our lives to have any meaning and significance, we must have the ability to choose (with free will) whether or not to utilize our resources constructively.

You suggest that perhaps the meaning of life is to gain pleasure. However, this leads us back to our understanding of G-d. If G-d would be even half as sophisticated as a great writer, He would have greater intentions in creating a universe than just for pleasure.

But now we must address your question. You write “an inferential analysis of common experience suggests that existence is One (one universe under G-d…). If this is true, then free will is an illusion… for while we obviously can do as we please, we cannot exist apart from the laws of the universe and must be not only guided, but forced by them. That man alone should be granted the reprieve from physical law required by a doctrine of truly free will seems to me ludicrously anthrocentric, appropriate only for a superstitious and primitive people.” So, how do we reconcile the divine design of the universe and free will?

The answer goes back to how we interpret G-d. Is G-d Himself bound by the deterministic laws of the universe that He created? The answer is no. G-d transcends these laws, or better put, G-d could have created entirely different laws or no laws at all. Your questions are valid only in a world of our deterministic logic where everything is governed by deterministic laws and we have no reason to say that man is different. However, this is only from a human perspective that in itself is bound by laws. From G-d’s perspective, which is not bound by any of these laws, there always remains an element of indeterminism, and He chose to infuse a glimmer of this indeterminism into our existence by granting free will to man who G-d created in His own “image.” In other words, an indeterminate G-d (undefined even by the word “indeterminate” and “undefined”) chose to create a deterministic system, and bestow man with free will to transcend the determinism of nature and choose to lift the universe to a higher place than it could ever achieve on its own.

This presents an interesting paradox: since G-d is not bound by any laws and impositions, therefore when He chooses to create a deterministic universe, it become absolutely deterministic; because G-d did not have to do so, once he chooses to do so, the determinism is much more air-tight than if G-d Himself was deterministic and simply acting according to His “nature.” On the other hand, there always remains an element of indeterminism, because even after G-d created the universe, G-d still remains G-d. And this indeterminism is reflected in the universe, in the inherent uncertainty that exists on a quantum level, which is also beginning to be understood by scientists as having effects on our macroscopic universe (enclosed are copies of two articles on the topic).

I believe that as scientists discover more of the underlying unity in the universe, they may also come to discover, that the ultimate unity (the so-called “unified field theory”) can only be understood by including the “observer” — mankind — into the equation, and recognizing that this “observer” is no objective “observer” at all, but man’s moral behavior, resulting from exercising his indeterministic free will, has an impact on the universe.

By now you see that the issues you raise are all related to our definition of G-d. For more discussion on my description of G-d (being neither deterministic or indeterminstic) as opposed to other descriptions, please read the chapters “G-d” and “Unity” in Toward A Meaningful Life. I also have tapes of my classes on the topic of free will and determinism, where I discuss this issue at length. Should you be interested in them please contact my office at the number above.

Finally you ask me how did I come to my beliefs? Before I answer that I would like to take note with the final line of your last letter describing me as “Orthodox” and yourself as “Agnostic.” True faith, as I understand and experience it, is not some cop-out or crutch. Faith does nor preclude doubts, questions and agnosticism. Neither does it deny the paradoxes of life, of reconciling a good G-d with the pain of good people and the prosperity of the wicked, and other such contradictions. Faith is an all encompassing experience that includes faith in logic, and respects all the realities of our common and empirical experiences. But it does not stop there; it also includes awareness of our sublime experiences, our feelings and intuitions, even our subconscious and beyond (or: within), regardless whether we are comfortable with the consequences or not.

If you wish, I, too, can present a compelling argument for agnosticism. After all, G-d created an agnostic universe (as I discuss in the chapter on “G-d”). However my honesty and integrity dictate that I not allow myself to be trapped in my mind. Yes, my mind, as all minds, can explain the impossibility of proving whether G-d exists, whether we have free will, or, for that matter, whether we matter at all. But if I want to live life to its fullest, not just relegated to my mind, and not just locked by my logic, but one that includes my feelings, all my innermost resources, a full-blooming life of love and intimacy – I must include faith in the equation, not some blind faith in the unknown, but a deep sense of a greater presence, of a higher “Itness.” Only logic and faith allow us to be most complete – to experience it all, and not just part of it.

I have come to my beliefs in many ways. By process of elimination. By intuition. Through logic. And perhaps more than all — through love, that all embracing feeling that also has no logical explanation, and yet it exists as the most powerful force in life. All these processes have helped eliminate some of the obstacles that obfuscated my inner voice and allowed the natural knowing of my soul to emerge. After taking into account everything I know and feel, I firmly believe that we are all people of faith (read: people who have an intimate relationship with G-d), which becomes increasingly obscured as we grow into “adults” with minds that help us obfuscate our inner voices and become ever more comfortable with the “here and now.”

Dr. B., let me add this on a personal note. Faith, like any of our resources, needs to continuously be nourished. Indeed, if our bodies continuously need food for sustenance, how much more so does our faith — which can be so elusive — need “food.” The “food” that nourishes faith are the “mitzvot,” living our daily lives and behaving according to the divine laws of the Torah. Putting on tefillin, keeping the Sabbath, eating kosher, study, prayer and  charity. Though we may not fully understand the dynamic, these deeds are all different “vitamins” and “minerals” that feed and nourish our soul, our faith. They instill us with confidence in our inner voice, and allow it to be channeled into our conscious, material, “faithless” life. Faith is a continuous struggle, paralleling and reflecting the struggle of life itself. How often is our faith tested, how often does it waiver? However this struggle is our greatest challenge and gift: Will I rise to the occasion and allow my faith to fill me with passion, to lift me to the greatest heights in impacting this world in a G-dly way, or resign myself, as so many have, to the mediocrity of  a meaningless existence, where my greatest passion is in the temporary and the mercurial?

G-d’s question to Adam, “Where are you?” is an eternal question asked of us all. It is a spiritual query not a spatial one: “Where are you” — what are you doing with your life? Where do you stand? Are you recognizable as one created in the Divine image?

I invite your response to this letter and any further dialogue. As you suggest, perhaps our discussion can be of assistance to others as well. Feel free to share these thoughts with anyone you choose.

All the best,

Simon Jacobson

As taken from, https://www.meaningfullife.com/devarim-g-d/?utm_source=Meaningful+Life+Center&utm_campaign=653309e318-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_07_19_08_11&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_0bcb4308af-653309e318-82293993

by Paul Socken

Albert Einstein. Photo: Wiki Commons.

Albert Einstein, the greatest physicist since Isaac Newton, was a Jew. That is a simple and obvious statement, but what does it mean?

Einstein’s relationship with his Judaism evolved as did his science — slowly over time, in complex fashion. The General Theory of Relativity was not born overnight, and neither was Einstein’s eventual strong affiliation with Judaism and Israel.

Walter Isaacson writes in his magisterial biography that both of Einstein’s parents were Jewish and traced their ancestry back more than 200 years in Germany. They had assimilated into German culture and were completely secular. Albert was born in 1879, and they were going to name him Abraham, but decided that it sounded too Jewish.

Albert attended a Catholic elementary school. Although the teachers did not discriminate against him, his fellow students did. They insulted him and beat him. He learned at an early age that being Jewish in Germany was to be an outsider.

JNS.org – At only 28 years old and with nothing but an upset primary win in a New York City congressional…

In high school, a Jewish teacher was hired to provide Jewish students with instruction in Judaism and — initially — Albert took to it enthusiastically, keeping kosher and Shabbat. That did not last long.

Einstein encountered antisemitism when he launched his career as well. After graduating from university, and even after earning a doctorate and formulating the Theory of Relativity, he received no job offers and ended up working in a patent office in the Post and Telegraph building.

He was offered a professorship in 1909 at the University of Zurich, but there were strong reservations because of his Judaism. A letter from the faculty mentioned that Einstein did not exhibit any of the usual Jewish characteristics — “all kinds of unpleasant peculiarities of character, such as intrusiveness, impudence, and a shopkeeper’s mentality in the perception of their academic position.”

Because of his increasing fame as a genius of science, Einstein met with important people like Chaim Weizmann, a fellow scientist and ardent Zionist. Together, they went to America to seek support for the establishment of a Jewish university in Palestine, which would become the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. On his way back in 1922, he made his only trip to Palestine, where he stayed for 12 days and was received like a head of state.

Seeing Jews working on building a new state, he was deeply impressed. He wrote: “Today, I have been made happy by the sight of the Jewish people learning to recognize themselves and to make themselves recognized as a force in the world.”

If Einstein could not accept organized religion or believe in a personal God who intervened in history, he did consider himself religious in one sense: “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible, and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion.”

Clearly, study of the universe inspired in him a sense of awe and wonder.

As he turned 50, Einstein’s appreciation for his Jewish identity intensified. He did not believe in free will or immortality, but he valued Judaism’s emphasis on social justice. “Striving for social justice,” he wrote, “is the most valuable thing to do in life.”

He declared that he was not an atheist: “We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but does not know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God.”

To a schoolgirl’s letter inquiring about religion, he wrote, “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe — a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

Finally, he described radical atheists as those who “cannot hear the music of the spheres.”

In 1932, Einstein became a refugee. He left Berlin for America; his third visit. The Nazis raided his cottage at Caputh and he never returned to Germany. The Nazis even turned on his science, declaring it relativist — confusing relativity with relativism — and non-Aryan. They appointed the arch antisemite Philipp Lenard as the new chief of Aryan science.

Einstein was moved to write an article that year — “Why Do They Hate the Jews?” — in which he declared that Jews have always shared “the democratic ideal of social justice coupled with the ideal of mutual aid and tolerance among all men.” In that spirit, he threw his support behind the struggle for civil rights in America.

He spent his last years promoting the concept of world government to prevent war and, as a result, was under scrutiny by the FBI, which had a file of 1,427 pages on him. He declared that he was not a German but “a Jew by nationality” and compared himself to Cervantes’s Don Quixote, because he resembled the great character of the novel in his tilting at windmills.

Einstein considered his relationship with the Jewish people “my strongest human tie once I achieved complete clarity about our precarious position among the nations of the world.” The Israeli diplomat Abba Eban met with Einstein in 1955. Einstein told him that he saw the establishment of the State of Israel as one of the few political acts in his lifetime that had a moral quality.

Albert Einstein began his life as a secular, assimilated German Jew — a brilliant mind focused on the universe beyond our tiny planet — and ended up a committed Zionist, a man clearly dedicated to the advancement of world peace and the welfare of his own people, a man very much of this Earth. He reached an understanding of the stars, yet his other great discovery was his own people and its culture.

Dr. Paul Socken is Distinguished  Professor Emeritus and founder of the Jewish Studies program at the University of Waterloo.

As taken from, https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/07/19/albert-einsteins-judaism/?utm_content=opinion1&utm_medium=daily_email&utm_campaign=email&utm_source=internal/

By Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

The first verse of Devarim, the fifth and culminating book of the Torah, sounds prosaic. “These are the words that Moses spoke to all Israel beyond the Jordan—in the wilderness, on the plain opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Di-zahav.” There is no hint of drama in these words. But the sages of the Talmud found one, and it is life-changing.

What is odd in the verse is the last place-name: Di-zahav. What and where is this place? It hasn’t been mentioned before, nor is it mentioned again anywhere else in Tanakh. But the name is tantalising. It seems to mean, “Enough gold.” Gold is certainly something we have heard about before. It was the metal of which the calf was made while Moses was on the mountain receiving the Torah from God. This was one of the great sins of the wilderness years. Might the enigmatic mention of a place called “Enough gold” have something to do with it?

From these clues and cues, the sages inferred a remarkable drama. This is what they said:

Moses spoke audaciously [hiti’ach devarim] towards Heaven . . . The school of R. Jannai learned this from the words Di-zahav. What do these words mean? They said in the school of R. Jannai: Thus spoke Moses before the Holy One, blessed be He: “Sovereign of the Universe, the silver and gold [zahav] which You showered on Israel until they said, ‘Enough’ [dai], was what caused them to make the calf . . . R. Hiyya bar Abba said: It is like the case of a man who had a son. He bathed him and anointed him and gave him plenty to eat and drink and hung a purse around his neck and set him down at the door of a house of ill-repute. How could he help sinning?[1]

Moses, in this dramatic re-reading, is portrayed as counsel for the defence of the Jewish people. Yes, he admits to God, the people did indeed commit a sin. But it was You who provided them with the opportunity and the temptation. If the Israelites had not had gold in the wilderness, they could not have made a golden calf. Besides which, who needs gold in a wilderness? There was only one reason the Israelites had gold with them: because they were following Your instructions. You said: “Tell the people that every man is to ask his neighbour and every woman is to ask her neighbour for objects of silver and gold” (Ex. 11:2). Therefore, do not blame them. Please, instead, forgive them.

This is a wonderful passage in its own right. It represents what the sages called chutzpah kelapei Shemaya, “audacity toward heaven.”[2] (We tend to think of chutzpah as a Yiddish word, but it is in fact Aramaic and comes to us from the Babylonian Talmud). The question, though, is: why did the sages choose this passage to make the point?

After all, the episode of the Golden Calf is set out in full in Exodus 32-34. The Torah tells us explicitly how daring Moses was in prayer. First, when God tells him what the people have done, Moses immediately responds by saying, “Lord, why should Your anger burn against Your people? … Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that He brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’?” (Ex. 32:11-12). This is audacious. Moses tells God that, regardless of what the people have done, it will be His reputation that will suffer if it becomes known that He did not lead the Israelites to freedom, but instead killed them in the desert.

Then, descending the mountain and seeing what the people have done, he does his single most daring act. He smashes the tablets, engraved by God Himself. The audacity continues. Moses goes back up the mountain and says to God, “These people have indeed committed a great sin. They have made themselves an idol of gold.  But now, please forgive their sin – but if not, then blot me out of the book You have written.’ (Ex. 32:31-32). This is unprecedented language. This should be the passage to which the sages attached an account of Moses’ boldness in defence of his people. Why then attach it here, to an obscure place-name in the first verse of Deuteronomy, where it is radically out of keeping with the plain sense of the verse.[3]

I believe the answer is this. Throughout Devarim Moses is relentless in his criticism of the people: “From the day you left Egypt until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the Lord… You have been rebellious against the Lord ever since I have known you.” (Deut. 9:7, 24). His critique extends to the future: “If you have been rebellious against the Lord while I am still alive and with you, how much more will you rebel after I die!” (Deut. 31:27). Even the curses in Deuteronomy, delivered by Moses himself,[4] are bleaker than those in Leviticus 26 and lack any note of consolation.

Criticism is easy to deliver but hard to bear. It is all too easy for people to close their ears, or even turn the criticism around (“He’s blaming us, but he should be blaming himself. After all, he was in charge”). What does it take for criticism to be heeded? The people have to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the leader is always ready to defend them. They have to know that he cares for them, wants the best for them, and is prepared to take personal risks for their sake. Only when people know for certain that you want their good, do they listen to you when you criticise them.

That is what led the sages to give the interpretation they did to the place-name Di-zahav in the first verse of Devarim. Why was Moses able to be as critical as he was in the last month of his life? Because the people he was talking to knew that he had defended them and their parents in his prayers for Divine forgiveness, that he had taken the risk of challenging God, that he had declined God’s offer to abandon the Israelites and begin again with him – in short, that his whole life as a leader was dedicated to doing what was the best for the people. When you know that about someone, you listen to them even when they criticise you.

One of my all-time heroes is the great Hassidic rabbi, Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (1740-1809). Many stories are told of how he interceded with Heaven on behalf of the Jewish people. My favourite, doubtless apocryphal, story is this: Levi Yitzhak once saw a Jew smoking in the street on Shabbat. He said, “My friend, surely you have forgotten that it is Shabbat today.” “No,” said the other, “I know what day it is.” “Then surely you have forgotten that smoking is forbidden on Shabbat.” “No, I know it is forbidden.” “Then surely, you must have been thinking about something else when you lit the cigarette.” “No,” the other replied, “I knew what I was doing.” At this, Levi Yitzhak turned his eyes upward to heaven and said, “Sovereign of the universe, who is like Your people Israel? I give this man every chance, and still he cannot tell a lie!”

The great leaders of Israel were the great defenders of Israel, people who saw the good within the not-yet-good. That is why they were listened to when they urged people to change and grow. That is how the sages saw Moses. This was the man who had the audacity to win forgiveness for the people who had made the Golden Calf.

It is easy to criticise, hard to defend. But the Midrash about Moses tells us a life-changing idea: If you seek to change someone, make sure that you are willing to help them when they need your help, defend them when they need your defence, and see the good in them, not just the bad. Anyone can complain, but we have to earn the right to criticise.

Shabbat shalom.

NOTES

[1] Berakhot 32a.
[2] Sanhedrin 105a.
[3] Note, for example, that Rashi gives almost the opposite interpretation.
[4] According to the Talmud, Megillah 31b, Moses delivered the curses in Leviticus but the words themselves came from God; the curses in Deuteronomy were formulated by Moses himself. Obviously, the fact that they are in the Torah means that God ratified them.

As taken from, http://rabbisacks.org/effective-critic-devarim-5778/

by Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo

One of the most puzzling elements of Jewish Tradition is the institution of the Temple and its sacrificial rites. Although the Temple serves many purposes, sacrifices lie at the very heart of its mission.

There are profound differences of opinion among the early and later commentators on how to view the Temple, how important it is, and whether it is really our ultimate goal to rebuild it as the pinnacle of our service to God. The same is true regarding the need for sacrifices. Are they an integral part of Judaism, or a deviation from real Judaism?[1]

Ovadya Seforno, the great 16^th-century Italian commentator, makes it abundantly clear that the need for the Tent of Meeting in the days of Moshe, and therefore the Temple in later days, is a compromise to human weakness. It resulted from the sin of the golden calf and its spiritual consequences, thus making it far from ideal.

It should not have been.

On the verse “And so shall you make it” (Shemot 25:9), relating to the construction of the Tent of Meeting, Seforno makes the following remarkable statement:

In order that I shall dwell among you to speak with you and to accept the prayers and service of Israel. This is not as it was before the sin of the golden calf where it was said: And in any place where I shall have My name mentioned, I shall come to you and bless you (Shemot 20:21).

For Seforno, the Tent of Meeting and the Temple are edifices that became necessary once the Israelites rebelled, became corrupt, and fell from their high spiritual level due to the sin of the golden calf (ad loc.). They now needed a physical and tangible place to symbolize God’s greatness. But had that transgression not taken place, God would never have commanded us to build a Tent of Meeting (or Temple).

A similar approach seems to be taken by Rashi (Shemot 38:21).

The truth is that the whole universe is God’s Temple.

Rambam in his famous Guide for the Perplexed (3:32) makes a similar comment concerning sacrifices:

It is impossible to go suddenly from one extreme to the other; human nature will not allow people to suddenly discontinue everything to which they have been accustomed. Now God sent Moshe to make the Israelites a kingdom of priests and a holy nation… The Israelites were commanded to devote themselves to His service. But the general mode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up (in earlier days) consisted of sacrificing animals in temples containing images, bowing down to these images and burning incense before them. It was in accordance with the wisdom of God, as displayed in the whole creation, that He did not command us to give up and discontinue all these modes of worship; for to obey such a commandment would have been contrary to human nature. For this reason, God allowed these rituals to continue. He transferred to His service that which had formerly served as a worship of created beings… and commanded us to serve Him in the same manner.[2]

As in the case of Seforno, Rambam sees the sacrificial service as a compromise to human weakness.

The sacrifices are not an integral part of Judaism. They are a concession. The ultimate goal is to liberate Judaism from the sacrificial cult and wean the Israelites away from idol worship symbolized by these sacrifices. But since it could not be done overnight, God gave the Israelites some time to achieve that goal.[3]

What then is the purpose of all our prayers to rebuild the Temple and be able to offer sacrifices? Have we by now not been weaned from idol worship, a Temple, and sacrifices?

Perhaps the answer to this is found in a profound statement made by Rabbi Eliezer Ashkenazi in his work Ma’asei Hashem (The Works of God), chapter 27. He draws our attention to a strange but repeated commandment in the Torah concerning the sacrifices: They must be brought as a “re’ach nichoach LaShem” normally translated as “a pleasant aroma to the Lord” (for example, Vayikra 1:9). This is a rather strange expression, as if God is in need of some aroma to please Him.

Here are his words:

The phrase ‘a pleasant aroma to the Lord’ does not reflect the absolute quality of the sacrifices; on the contrary, it conveys a possible flaw in their nature. In case the worshipers imagine that they indeed have achieved atonement for their sins by just offering a sacrifice, the Torah tells them that this is far from true. The sacrifice is only ‘a pleasant aroma,’ a foretaste of what is yet to come. If the worshiper does not repent, the Almighty will then say (Yeshayahu 1:11): ‘Of what use are your many sacrifices to Me?’ The concept of aroma is attributed to the Almighty because of its metaphoric connotation. Just as a pleasant aroma coming from afar bears witness to something good in the offing, so every time the Torah uses the phrase ‘a pleasant aroma’ in connection with the sacrifices, [the meaning is that] it should be to the Almighty as a foretaste of the good deeds that the worshiper is planning to perform. It is called a ‘pleasant aroma’ because anything that can be detected by the senses before it actually reaches the person is called a smell, as is written in the Book of Iyov (39:25): ‘He smells war from afar,’ which implies that he sensed the battle even before he actually reached it. Every human being who wants to bring a sacrifice must know that it should be done for the purpose of reconciling with God. Consequently, the sacrifice is to be brought as a foretaste of good deeds that are yet to come.

It is in this light that we have to understand the purpose of the Temple. The Temple service is not the ultimate form of worship that Judaism dreams about; it is only the beginning, a foretaste of what still needs to come. Its purpose is to function, through metaphoric rites, as a medium through which people are stimulated to take their first steps toward an inner transformation.

The Temple is to be an educational institution. As such, it offers a person the first step to perfection, but it is not the culmination. It is a departure, not an arrival. That must take place within the person’s heart and can be evident in their deeds only outside the Temple court.

Ultimately, the Temple and its sacrifices are not the goal of Judaism. They are foreign intruders and the result of a compromise to human weakness.

While it is not hard to see why a Temple may be necessary in the future, as a symbol and inspiration until we once again recognize that all of the universe is His Temple, it is hard to believe that there will be a need for sacrifices, now that we have left that world far behind and have outgrown it.

I suspect that the Sages asked us to pray for them, not as a request to again be able to offer them in the future, but as a reminder to us that we still have a long way to go toward becoming more spiritual and dedicated to the service of God, which is so beautifully expressed by Rabbi Ashkenazi’s understanding of “reach nichoach Lashem” as the foretaste of what is still to come.

For thousands of years, on the date of the destruction of the Temple, we Jews have had the custom of fasting to remind ourselves that the first step to real spirituality and repentance is to renew our desire to create this foretaste.

(Whether or not we need to continue doing this by reciting Eicha (Lamentations) and Kinot while sitting on the floor, or to do this very differently now that we have experienced the establishment of the State of Israel and the rebuilding of Yerushalayim in our days, is something I have discussed in another “Thoughts to Ponder” (504) and is the subject of much discussion in rabbinical circles.)

It is not the culmination of repentance that needs to be achieved but its sincere commencement. This is what the Sages had in mind when they said, in the name of God, “Open for Me a gate of repentance the size of the eye of a needle, and I will open for you large gates through which infinite light will enter”.[4]

According to this, the Temple has no inherent value. It is only a means to something that no physical object can contain. On Tish’a B’Av, we do not mourn the loss of the Temple but rather the loss of its message, which we no longer seem to grasp.

Whether or not the Temple will be re-built is not our concern, nor is it our dream. It is of little importance. It is just a phase in an ongoing attempt to become better Jews. What we dream of is the day when we will be able to transform ourselves and reconstruct the Temple’s message within our hearts. At that moment, the physical Temple will be superfluous.

NOTES

Notes:

[1] See “Thoughts to Ponder” 536 where I elaborate on this subject.

[2] See the strong objections to this approach by Ramban on Vayikra 1:9. For a discussion on why Rambam seems to contradict himself in Hilchot Melachim 11:1, where he claims that the sacrifices are to be offered again in the messianic times, see my essay “On Silence, Sacrifices and the Golden Calf,” in Between Silence and Speech: Essays on Jewish Thought (Northvale, NJ, and London: Jason Aronson, Inc. 1995) pp. 4-12.

[3] For a discussion on the various explanations of sacrifices, see: Meshech Chochmah, the commentary of Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen of Dvinsk, Introduction to Vayikra. See, also, the many writings on this topic by the venerable philosopher and mystic, Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Kook z”l, as well as Rabbi Yaakov Tzvi Mecklenburg’s Haketav Vehakabalah, Vayikra 1:5.

[4] Shir Hashirim Rabbah 5:3.

As taken from, https://www.cardozoacademy.org/thoughts-to-ponder/tisha-bav-who-needs-the-temple/?utm_source=Subscribers&utm_campaign=53d557b3eb-Weekly_Thoughts_to_Ponder_campaign_TTP_548_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_dd05790c6d-53d557b3eb-242341409