By Rabbi Moshe Pogrow
The navi Malachi condemns the Jews who offer blind, lame, and sick animals as korbanos, calling it a desecration of Hashem’s mizbeiach. He rebukes the kohanim for causing this desecration through their teachings, for in their eyes, the Beis Hamikdash was not a place for the best and freshest, all the strength and vitality that a man has to offer. Klal Yisrael had degraded it to a hospital, a home for the crippled, established solely for those whose lives have been shipwrecked. They saw it as a shelter for life’s castoffs, for people who could find no other place. Only the dregs, people not needed anywhere else, were brought to the House of Hashem. “Try presenting this to your [human] governor,” Malachi cries angrily, “and see whether he will be pleased with you or receive you graciously!”
This is the same rebuke hurled by Hoshea at the priests of malchei Yisrael: ki avel alav amo, uchmarav alav yagilu: when the people mourn, their priests are delighted (Hoshea 10:5). The priests, with their sanctuaries, await the misfortune and grief of their “believers.” It is not the joyous and happy people who go on pilgrimages to their houses of worship, but the blind, the lame, the sick and the weak. Religion, to them, was a consolation for the suffering and the disadvantaged. It held no sway in lives that were vibrant and effervescent with the joy of action.
Not so is the mizbeiach Hashem, through which klal Yisrael calls in the name of the G-d of the world. The Beis Hamikdash demands the whole of a person’s life—unlimited and total commitment. In return, it grants life that is worthy of being called “life,” life in which even death and pain lose their force.
Therefore, just as kohanim must not have any mum if they are to approach and serve at the altar, so too—and to a greater extent—must the korbanos themselves be whole, without blemish. By offering them, man draws close to the Shechina.
An offering embodies the nature of our relationship with Hashem; “wholeness” is a primary condition of this relationship. Being whole with G-d entails no less than the absolute surrender of one’s entire being. It is the essence of bechol levavcha ub’chol nafshecha ub’chol meodecha (Devarim 6:5). It is a duty that follows directly from the very first demand made of us: veheyisem li segulah (Shemos 19:5).
This command lays the foundation stone for our entire mission: our relationship to God must be all-encompassing, without reserve or limit.
Based on the commentary of Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch zt”l on Chumash, with permission from the publisher.
