Our Gemara on Amud Aleph rules: Any priest who does not believe in the validity of the sacrificial rites has no portion in the gifts of the priesthood.

What is the exact definition of “not believing”? Rashi (132b) says that he does not believe sacrifices are a Torah law, but rather an idea that Moshe made up. Chasam Sofer on our Gemara considers Rashi’s answer difficult: what would be the reason for the priest to doubt that one aspect of the Torah over any other? Chasam Sofer offers a explanation, but in order to understand it we need an introduction.

The Rambam famously asserts in the Moreh Nevuchim (III:46) that the rituals of animal sacrifice were a concession to the Jews’ dependence on, and familiarity with, worship via concrete actions—vestiges of idolatrous practice. The Rambam argues: imagine a person being told he can be religious without any of the observances he is used to, such as Shabbos, fast days, or tefillin. It would be disorienting and unsustainable. So Hashem legislated a form of worship and devotion by means already familiar to the Jews. Similar to the principle that the Torah speaks in common vernacular and idiom (Berachos 31b), the Torah used sociological and psychological touchstones to allow a successful transition to monotheistic worship.

The Ramban (Vayikra 1:9), however, is horrified by such a position and finds it theologically absurd. The sacrificial rituals have deep mystical secrets and effects. They must not be dismissed as mere leftovers from an idolatrous past. Furthermore, the Ramban asks of the Rambam: what about the sacrifices brought by Cain, Hevel, Noach, and Avraham? Is it tenable to say that at such an early time in history they too were contaminated by idolatry?

Chasam Sofer adds that the Rambam himself states in Meilah (8:8) that sacrifices are one of the mysterious commandments given to us. This sounds like there is an intrinsic mystical reason and not simply a concession to idolatrous urges in human nature. I will add an even more explicit contradiction: the Rambam (Beis HaBechirah 2:2) records a tradition that Adam brought a sacrifice the day he was created. So how can the Rambam call sacrifices idolatrous?

Chasam Sofer answers clearly: the Rambam did not mean to say that sacrifices were originally idolatrous. Rather, it was an ancient mystical tradition going back to the beginning of time. However, it was appropriated by idolatrous practices and should have become forbidden, much as the matzeivah was originally used in worship by the patriarchs but the Torah forbade it because of its later association with idolatry (see Rashi Devarim 16:22, quoting Sifri). Chasam Sofer therefore asserts that the Rambam in the Moreh Nevuchim was only explaining why the practice of sacrifices remained valued by the Torah even after it had become integral to idolatrous practice.

I think the Chasam Sofer’s explanation needs to be expanded and developed in more detail. After all, the context of the Moreh Nevuchim’s original statement does not, in a simple reading, follow the Chasam Sofer’s path. Yet the contradictions—both from Scripture and from the Rambam’s other writings—are glaring.

How could the Rambam, with his towering intellect, have missed that the patriarchs offered sacrifice? He must have had a different way of understanding these early sacrifices. I would say that, to the Rambam’s thinking, there was a universal human religious instinct to offer sacrifices, analogous to the human religious instinct to purify oneself by bathing (Rambam Mikvaos 11:12), which exists in other cultures as well. At that point in history it was not particularly Jewish. Therefore, for the Rambam, it was not a problem or repulsive that Adam, Noach, and the Patriarchs utilized sacrifices, because they were expressing a religious instinct and worshiping God—much as one might invent one’s own prayers or rituals to serve God in one’s own way. However, his argument still was that it was not a particularly Jewish feature, nor more significant than any man-made expression of devotion to God. If Cain decided to light a lamp in devotion to God, or Noach decided to make a rain dance (ironically!), that too would have been equally valid insofar as their devotion was sincere and enacted, but not more religiously powerful than anything else they might have done.

Sacrifices only became specifically holy when mandated by the Torah. Thus the Rambam’s argument was that the only reason it was mandated in such a particular physical way was that there was a pre-existing custom and religious impulse in that direction. True, in the beginning it was not idolatrous. Still, shortly enough, in the times of Enoch, it became idolatrous (see Rambam, Laws of Idolatry 1:1). Thus God did not require or specifically need sacrifices as a mode of expression in ancient times prior to the giving of the Torah, and the Rambam can still argue that the Torah chose this mode of religious expression to ease the transition from concrete idolatrous worship of physical gods to the monotheistic worship of an invisible, abstract God.

I think this fleshes out the Chasam Sofer’s explanation in a way that fits better with the simple reading of the Rambam’s text in the Moreh. Even so, the Rambam’s text and contradictions remain problematic. There is another approach. The Rambam in his introduction to the Moreh explicitly states that there are secrets of the Torah that he cannot divulge, and that he will deliberately place contradictions within the text to hint at ideas that must be understood only by inference, for those who are ready, and will not be stated outright. This is likely one of those examples. Regarding what this secret by sacrifices might be, I’ll only give you a hint: see Moreh Nevuchim I:2.

sponsored by https://empowermentaftertrauma.com/

Translations Courtesy of Sefaria, except when, sometimes, I disagree with the translation

Free resource for couples/families:

The Chosson and Kallah Shmooze You Wish You Had But Never Got

Over 80 lectures on heathy communication, marriage and sexuality from a Torah perspective  Click here

If you liked this, you might enjoy my Relationship Communications Guide. Click on the link above.

Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, Rabbi Simcha Feuerman, LCSW-R, LMFT, DHL is a psychotherapist who works with high conflict couples and families. He can be reached via email at simchafeuerman@gmail.com