Musings on the Torah

This analysis explores how and why korban pesach differs from all other korbanos as reflected through two disparate philosophies of korbanos in general Rambam's opinion in the Moreh (3:32) is that the mikdash, the various avodos and korbanos etc are a concession to the kind of astral worship that was in vogue when the Torah was given as people used to offer incense and sacrifice animals to supposed celestial deities, see there his theory of gradual development namely that people cant abruptly turn on a dime, stop doing what they're familiar with, and start doing something foreign to them, rather, they need to be slowly weaned off the negative behavior and incrementally redirected to the desired goal.Ramban (vayikrah 1:9) strongly disagrees with this utilitarian conception, maintaining that there is inherent value in korbanos. He marshals proof from the fact that the Torah consistently refers to them as providing "reiach nichoach" to HaShem, apparently indicating essen

This observation (not my own) shows how differences in various korbanos' blood services are reflective of the specific korban's expiatory purpose  There are four chata'os delineated in vayikrah 4: the "inside" parim of the kohen mashiach and he'elem davar shel tzibur which are brought for erroneous hora'ah with the caveat that the mistaken hora'ah be acted upon (by said kohen mashiach and rov yisrael, respectively), and the "outside" sair of the nasi & seirah/civsa of the layperson which are generated by mistakes in action but do not involve wrongly rendered hora'ah. The former two have their blood service performed in the ohel whereas the latter two are executed in the chatzer. Moshe entered the ohel to receive hora'ah. I've seen it explained that as the parim are for wrongly decided hora'ah—which is received inside the ohel—their blood avodah is correspondingly located there as well, as it comes to atone for "inside

This piece posits that a medieval disagreement about why hebrew is termed holy coheres with other opinions espoused by the respective disputants  Ramban writes (Shemos 30:13) that the reason shiklei hakodesh are referred to as holy is due to the fact that the shekalim that are used in various mitzvos (eg arachin, pidyon haben, machatzitz hashekel, and other payments mentioned in the torah eg rape and remuneration for a dead slave) are exclusively of this coinage (Moshe's shekel—see there). In other words, they're referred to as holy because they are used for many Torah based obligations, which are themselves holy. Likewise, Ramban continues, Hebrew is referred to by Chazal lashon hakodesh—the holy tongue—as it is the medium through which God created the world and communicates with people via prophecy; His names, the names of angels, all manner of nature and His various holy people (the Avos, Shelomo and the like) are all drawn from this language, thus earning it this appellatio

This piece explores the role of coercion as it relates to religion BT Shabbos 88a makes the following well known & astonishing assertion ויתיצבו בתחתית ההר א״ר אבדימי בר חמא בר חסא מלמד שכפה הקב״ה עליהם את ההר כגיגית ואמר להם אם אתם מקבלים התורה מוטב ואם לאו שם תהא קבורתכם א״ר אחא בר יעקב מכאן מודעא רבה לאורייתא אמר רבא אעפ״כ הדור קבלוה בימי אחשורוש דכתיב קימו וקבלו היהודים קיימו מה שקיבלו כבר Perhaps the following explanation can be ventured: As the Israelites experienced an extremely high level of exposure to God at the "the foot of the mountain" viz the revelation (the Torah describes them as being afraid of dying, the Talmud says that they actually died and were resuscitated, perhaps the meaning is that their physicality along with all of it's biases was no longer a factor in their decision making), they were for all intents and purposes "coerced" ie the veil that nature typically imposes on God was temporarily pushed aside allowing them to be confronted