My dear fellow classmates,
Today, I had the pleasure of doing my chavruta work with Jamie. Together, Jamie and I read what Rambam had to say about Korbanot in the Moreh Nevuchim. Rambam states that the reason why Hashem gave Bnei Israel the permission to sacrifice animals was not because he needed the Korbanot, but rather because the people needed to give the Korbanot. All the other nations around Bnei Israel were sacrificing animals to their gods and therefore the people of Israel needed that as well in order to connect to god. My question is the following: Why would Hashem give the people the permission to do something that all the other nations do? If we are different from all the other nations to begin with then why must we be like them in that one area? Wouldn’t it be more special if we had a different way to connect to god and to repent rather than giving Korbanot like all the other nations? We are supposed to fight that influence, then why is Hashem permitting their influence?
Well, you know how you listed a few questions? If you would only read the last one you would be like, "What is she talking about?" But it is all connected. That's what I do during class! One question leads to another!
ReplyDeleteTo answer you: He gave them permission because He knew that they could not go from one extreme to another. We are only human.
I mean, I completely agree with you and even though we explained how to US it seems odd because we have hindsight bias and whatever, I still think that regardless it is weird. Moshe didn't need the korbanot. G-d should have challenged the Jews to survive without it. It's sad when we see that even after seeing all of G-d's miracles, they still wanted to do practices of other nations. And yes, people say that we can't understand, and it was part of their culture to bring korbanot, wouldn't you be terrified to believe in anything other than G-d if you saw all of the things G-d did?
I guess, as much as this was one of the only opinions I really liked, it still isn't such a good one.
I agree with Zahava for why God gave them the permission to bring Korbanot. I also very much agree with the Rambam since this is not the first case where God fulfills our wishes since when the Jews saw that other nations had a king, and they wanted one aswell, God let them have a king. This again shows how he let us have something that the other nations have, since it is hard to go from one extreme to another or look at others and not be able to have it.
ReplyDelete