레위기 1:9의 Musar

I will select only the very best of all the material that I have seen in the various commentators, and build further on the insights they have already revealed to us. One of the reasons for animal sacrifice which is discussed by Nachmanides on Leviticus 1,9 is as follows: "It would have been more appropriate if the fools who thought that the animal sacrifice legislation was only an accommodation to the people who were in the habit of offering sacrifices to pagan deities would have paid attention to the reason that Maimonides gave for this. He described the people among whom the Jews lived as deifying the animals in question. The Jewish people had to learn by slaughtering precisely those animals that they were not deities. In India cows are not slaughtered to this day. Man's actions comprise three elements, thought, speech and execution. G–d commanded that when man has sinned and offers an animal sacrifice as a sin-offering, he must place his hands (weight) on the animal as a symbol of the sinful act he has committed. He must recite a confession as a symbol of the words that preceded the sinful act for which he is attempting to atone. He has to burn the animal in fire, i.e. the entrails, including the kidneys which are the organs within which sinful thoughts originate. He has to burn the feet -which in turn symbolize hands and legs- the organs that facilitate the carrying out of most sinful intents. He has to sprinkle the blood of the animal on the altar, the blood representing his life-form, נפש. By performing all these actions, the sinner will concentrate on the enormity of the error he committed against his G–d with both his body and his soul, and he will realize ??? his own life that should have expiated for his sin, ??? to him by G–d that he is able to substitute the life of the animal for his own. The מנות, meat portions, which are consumed by the priests, are intended to give physical strength to the Torah scholars who in turn will pray on behalf of the sinner who offered the animal. The daily public offerings, on the other hand, are in the nature of a preventive action, seeing that the multitude will not always be saved from committing sins. These words are appealing to one's mind if one understands them allegorically." Thus far Nachmanides.

The mystical dimension of all this is that the sacrifice is designated for G–d in His capacity as the Ineffable Name, not for any of the non-essential attributes of His. It is in the nature of what the prophet Isaiah 43,4 said: ואתן אדם תחתיך, that G–d will forego the offer of any other human beings to serve Him in lieu of the Jewish people. Our sages have revealed the reason for all this in Menachot 110a where they quote Rabbi Shimon ben Azzai as saying that it is remarkable that the name for G–d used in the entire קרבנות legislation in פרשת ויקרא is invariably the four- lettered Ineffable Name of G–d. We do not find such names as אלוקים, אל, צבאות, but only the four-lettered Ineffable Name regardless of the type of sacrifice the Torah discusses. Nachmanides discusses the implication of this statement at length.

It is this aspect of the food which determines our affinity with G–d as a nation, not the aspect of the "nutritional" value of the animal sacrifices presented on the altar. Should these considerations not be present and not motivate the animal sacrifices presented by the priest on behalf of the Jewish people, the Heavenly Table, i.e. the altar, may be considered as uprooted. Thus far the words of Rabbi Yitzchak Arama.