MARCH 23 • 2023 | 51

T

he laws of sacrifices that dominate 
the early chapters of the Book of 
Leviticus are among the hardest 
in the Torah to relate to in the present. 
It has been almost two thousand 
years since the Temple 
was destroyed and the 
sacrificial system came 
to an end. But Jewish 
thinkers, especially the 
more mystical among 
them, strove to understand 
the inner significance 
of the sacrifices and 
the statement they made about the 
relationship between humanity and God. 
They were thus able to rescue their spirit 
even if their physical enactment was no 
longer possible. 
Among the simplest yet most pro-
found was the comment made by Rabbi 
Shneur Zalman of Liadi, the first Rebbe 
of Lubavitch. He noticed a grammatical 
oddity about the second line of this par-
shah: 
Speak to the Children of Israel and say 
to them: “When one of you offers a sac-

rifice to the Lord, the sacrifice must be 
taken from the cattle, sheep or goats.” 
Lev. 1:2
Or so the verse would read if it were 
constructed according to the normal 
rules of grammar. However, the word 
order of the sentence in Hebrew is 
strange and unexpected. We would 
expect to read: adam mikem ki yakriv, 
“when one of you offers a sacrifice.” 
Instead, what it says is adam ki yakriv 
mikem, “when one offers a sacrifice of 
you.”
The essence of sacrifice, said Rabbi 
Shneur Zalman, is that we offer our-
selves. We bring to God our faculties, 
our energies, our thoughts and emo-
tions. The physical form of sacrifice — 
an animal offered on the altar — is only 
an external manifestation of an inner 
act. The real sacrifice is mikem, “of you.” 
We give God something of ourselves. 
What exactly is it that we give God 
when we offer a sacrifice? The Jewish 
mystics, among them Rabbi Shneur 
Zalman, spoke about two souls that each 
of us has within us — the animal soul 

(nefesh habeheimit) and the Godly soul. 
On the one hand, we are physical beings. 
We are part of nature. We have physical 
needs: food, drink, shelter. We are born, 
we live, we die. As Ecclesiastes puts it: 
Man’s fate is like that of the animals; the 
same fate awaits them both: as one dies, 
so dies the other. Both have the same 
breath; man has no advantage over the 
animal. Everything is a mere fleeting 
breath. Eccl. 3:19
Yet we are not simply animals. We 
have within us immortal longings. We 
can think, speak and communicate. We 
can, by acts of speaking and listening, 
reach out to others. We are the one life-
form known to us in the universe that 
can ask the question “why?” We can 
formulate ideas and be moved by high 
ideals. We are not governed by biolog-
ical drives alone. Psalm 8 is a hymn of 
wonder on this theme: 
When I consider Your heavens, 
the work of Your fingers, 
the moon and the stars, 
which You have set in place, 
what is man that You are mindful 

Rabbi Lord 
Jonathan 
Sacks

Why Do 
 We Sacrifice?

SPIRIT
A WORD OF TORAH

continued on page 52

