Seeing the korbanot in the davening was the perfect conclusion to this assignment. I realized the significance of these korbanot and how they actually directly related to people's lives. They weren't just a barbaric, weird aspect of Judaism, as we may view them today; instead they were a vital part of Judaism. Specifically on Yom Kippur, they were life and death matters. Yom Kippur had special korbanot and practices that were only done on this one day out of the entire calendar. For example, the kohen gadol takes a goat and pushes it off a cliff. This seems weird but it really was extremely important and somewhat determined the lives of everyone. When the kohen gadol entered the Kodesh Hakedoshim, the entire nation waited anxiously to see if he would come out. They waited to see if the string would turn red or white, symbolizing whether or not Hashem forgave them. These practices were not just procedures that affected the kohen gadol; they affected the entire nation and whether or not they would live or die.
Although it's hard for us to understand, the korbanot really did have significance. I do not think that tefilla is an equal substitute for korbanot because when we daven, we don't really see the results of our prayers. With korbanot, people really could see Hashem's response. Korbanot were clearly much more effective and showed that people back then were really much closer to Hashem. I think that by applying the korbanot to things that we can relate to today, such as Yom Kippur, we can try to have a deeper understanding of this practice that we sometimes see as barbaric, foreign, and strange.
Yes i am glad that we have similar ideas, but i like this! At first in class i kind of thought that korbanot were boring, but it gave me a better understanding of the viduy when I was davening on yom kippur and I was really happy about that! It is very interesting how things worked back then, but I think the nation was able to connect more to Hashem with the korbanot because they were actually doing the action, and all we dos is read about it. Of course since we say a lot of the same things over and over again during the davening it was difficult for me to concentrate because I felt that it was very repetative, but learning about the specific korbanot right before yom kippur definitely helped strengthen my davening a lot!
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