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GENESIS — 4:8 killed

GEN493 Why sacrifices? To be sure, they have not been part of the life of Judaism since the destruction of the Second Temple, almost two thousand years ago. But why, if they are a means to an end, did God choose this end? This is, of course, one of the deepest questions in Judaism, and there are many answers. Here I want to explore just one, first given by the early-15th-century Jewish thinker, Rabbi Joseph Albo, in his Sefer Haikkarim. Albo’s theory took as its starting point not sacrifices but two other questions. The first: why after the Flood did God permit human beings to eat meat? Genesis 9:3-5. Initially, neither human beings nor animals had been meat eaters Genesis 1:29–30. What caused God, as it were, to change His mind? The second: What was wrong the first act of sacrifice, Cain’s offering of “some of the fruits of the soil” Genesis 4:3-5? God’s rejection of that offering led directly to the first murder, when Cain killed Abel. What was at stake in the difference between the offerings Cain and Abel brought to God? Albo’s theory is that killing animals for food is inherently wrong. It involves taking the life of a sentient being to satisfy our needs. Cain knew this. He believed there was a strong kinship between man and the animals. That is why he offered not an animal sacrifice, but a vegetable one (his error, according to Albo, is that he should have brought fruit, not vegetables -- the highest, not the lowest, of non-meat produce). Abel, by contrast, believed that there was a qualitative difference between man and the animals. Had God not told the first humans: “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves in the ground”? That is why he brought an animal sacrifice. Once Cain saw that Abel’s sacrifice had been accepted while his own was not, he reasoned thus: if God, who forbids us to kill animals for food, permits and even favors killing an animal as a sacrifice, and if, as Cain believed, there is no ultimate difference between human beings and animals, then I shall offer the highest living being as a sacrifice to God, namely my brother Abel. Cain killed Abel as a human sacrifice. That is why God permitted meat-eating after the Flood. Before the Flood, the world had been “filled with violence.” Perhaps violence is an inherent part of human nature. If humanity were to be allowed to exist at all, God would have to lower his demands. Let humans kill animals, He said, rather than kill human beings-the one form of life that is not only God’s creation but also God’s image. SACKS 159-60

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GENESIS — 4:8 said

GEN495 The classic example … of those rare and powerful instances in which the Torah deliberately uses fractured syntax to indicate a fractured relationship … is [this] untranslatable verse in which Cain kills Abel.  The breakdown of words expresses the breakdown of relationship which leads to the breakdown of morality and the first murder. SACKS 43

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GENESIS — 6:5 evil

GEN559 Genesis [chapter] One tells me that “I” am in the image of God. Genesis [chapter] Nine tells me that “you,” my potential victim, are in the image of God.  Genesis One tells us about human power. We are able, says the Torah, to “rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air” Genesis 1:28. Genesis Nine tells us about the moral limits of power. We can kill but we may not. We have the power, but not the permission. Reading the story [that begins with creation and ends with Noah] closely, it seems that God created humans in the faith that they would naturally choose the right and the good. They would not need to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil because instinct would lead them to behave as they should. Calculation, reflection, decision-all the things we associate with knowledge-would not be necessary. They would act as God wanted them to act, because they had been created in His own image. It did not turn out that way. Adam and Eve sinned, Cain committed murder, and within a few generations the world was reduced to chaos. That is when we read: [this verse]. Everything else in the universe was tov, ”good.” But humans are not naturally good. That is the problem. The answer, according to the Torah, is covenant. Covenant introduces the idea of a moral law. A moral law is not the same as a natural, scientific law. Scientific laws are observed regularities in nature: Drop an object and it will fall. The moral law is a rule of conduct: do not rob or steal or deceive. Scientific laws describe, whereas moral laws prescribe.  When a natural event does not accord with the current state of science, when it “breaks” the law, that is a sign that there is something wrong with the law. That is why Newton’s laws were replaced by those of Einstein. But when a human act breaks the law, when people do rob and steal and deceive, the fault is not in the law but in the act. So we must keep the law and condemn-and sometimes punish-the act. Scientific laws allow us to predict. Moral laws help us to decide. Scientific laws apply to entities without free will. Moral laws presuppose free will. That is what makes humans qualitatively different from other forms of life.  So, according to the Torah, a new era began [i.e., with Noah; the Noahide covenant - AJL], centered not on the idea of natural goodness but on the concept of covenant-that is, moral law.  SACKS 11-12

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GENESIS — 8:20 offerings

GEN631 According to [Rabbi Joseph] Albo, the logic of the passage [Genesis 8:20-9:6] is clear. Noah offers an animal sacrifice in thanksgiving for having survived the Flood [this verse]. God sees that human beings need this way of expressing themselves. They are genetically predisposed to violence (“every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood “). If society were to survive, humans would need to be able to direct their violence toward non-human animals, whether as food or sacrificial offerings. The crucial line to be drawn is between human and non-human. The permission to kill animals is accompanied by an absolute prohibition against killing human beings, “For in the image of God has God made man.” It is not that God approves of killing animals, weather for sacrifice or food, but that to deny this to human beings, given their genetic predisposition to bloodshed, is utopian. It is not for now but for the end of days. Until then, the least bad solution is to let people kill animals rather than murder their fellow humans. [On why God never chooses to change human nature, see Rambam, The Guide for the Perplexed, III:32].  Sacrifices are a substitute for violence directed against mankind. SACKS 160-1

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GENESIS — 8:21 evil

GEN636 (Continued from [[DEUT468]] Deuteronomy 10:19 stranger SACKS 13-14) Second, God Himself recognizes that we are not naturally good. After the Flood, He says: [This verse]. The antidote to the yetzer, the inclination to evil, is covenant. We now know the neuroscience behind this. We have a prefrontal cortex that evolved to allow humans to think and act reflexively, considering the consequences of their deeds. But this is slower and weaker than the amygdala [what the Jewish mystics called the nefesh habehemit, the animal soul), which produces, even before we have had time to think, the fight-or-flight reactions without which humans before civilization would simply not have survived. The problem is that these reactions can be deeply destructive. Often they lead to violence-not only the violence between species (predator and prey) that is part of the order of nature, but also to the more gratuitous violence that is a feature of the life of most social animals, not just humans. It is not that we only do evil. Empathy and compassion are as natural to us as are fear and aggression. The problem is that fear lies just beneath the surface of human interaction, and it threatens all else. Daniel Goldman calls this an amygdala hijack. “Emotions make us pay attention right now -- this is urgent -- without having to think twice.  The emotional component evolved very early: do I eat it, or does it eat me?” Daniel Goldman, Emotional Intelligence (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 13ff. Impulsive action is often destructive because it is undertaken without thought of the consequences. That is why Rambam [i.e., Maimonides – AJL] argued that many of the laws of the Torah constitute a training in virtue by making us think before we act. Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot Temura 4:13. So the Torah tells us that naturally we are neither good nor bad but have the capacity for both. We have a natural inclination to empathy and sympathy, but we have an even stronger instinct for fear that leads to violence. That is why, in the move from Adam to Noah, the Torah shifts from nature to covenant, from tov to brit, from power to the moral limits of power. Genes are not enough. We also need the moral law.   SACKS 13-14

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