Sacrifice in Jewish Tradition

After Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70CE, Jewish tradition reimagined animal sacrifices as devotional acts, such as prayer, fasting, and study of Torah, as well as giving up individual desires to fulfil God’s will. Rabbis interpreted the story of Abraham’s binding Isaac for sacrifice (the Akedah) as the model of absolute obedience to divine commands (mitzvoth) and as the basis for the election of the Jewish people to bear witness to the one God. Their commentary, however, included the horrified reaction of Sarah’s scream to the news of Abraham’s act, ending in her death, indicating dissent from sacrifice as religious ideal. Rabbinic tradition transferred the site of sacrifice from temple to synagogue in rituals of High Holy Days, to the family table in Passover and Sabbath rituals, and to the individual will in submission to Torah. In the mystical teaching of Kabbalah, God sacrifices to create the world and Jews are called to sacrifice to redeem the world (tikkun olam). Such vocation of redemptive suffering was called into question by the Holocaust, and some contemporary Israeli poets refer to the Akedah in expressing misgivings about calls to sacrifice in defense of Israel.

Common Features of Sacrifice

This chapter identifies elements that are common to sacrificial practices and events: signification of transcendence that requires discipline or denial of natural desires to point to what is beyond nature; suspense of offering without assurance of its intended outcome, illustrated in Pascal’s wager and Kierkegaard’s leap of faith; conditionality of the gift as a result of its qualifications, ritual performance, and contingent reciprocity of the sacred recipient; self-sacrifice through partial identification with what is offered (what Marcel Mauss called the “intermingling” of persons and things in sacrifice). This chapter offers a tentative definition of sacrifice as a costly act of self-giving, in denial of natural inclinations, that is offered in suspense, under conditions that threaten failure, for the purpose of establishing a relation with transcendent reality. This definition is developed in light of Kathryn McClymond’s proposal of “polythetic classification” of sacrifice.

Introduction

The book begins with an example of sacrifice enacted in the Roman Catholic Mass, celebrated and lived out by young nuns from India of the order of Missionaries of Charity founded by Mother Teresa, caring for elderly Arabs in Cairo. Their sacrificial self-giving is compared to “costly signaling” of the rigorous demands issued by religious communes studied by Sosis and Bressler. The introduction argues that inasmuch as sacrifice seeks to establish a relation with transcendence, beyond natural and human reality, it cannot guarantee its own success—any more than human devotion can cause a miracle to occur. Sacrifice, then, signifies religious intention to restrain and conform natural impulses to a given order of spiritual ideals, illustrated by whirling dervishes.

Conclusion

Each of the religions of Abraham has appropriated the “deep symbol” of sacrifice in its own way and, despite misgivings about its practice, have elevated it as a religious and moral ideal. Unfortunately, sacrifice has been used as sanction for violence against those who oppose religious visions of social perfection or utopia. The story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son, while being prevented by God from doing so, demonstrates the moral ambivalence and profound risk in every exchange of concrete good for abstract benefit. To the five warning signs of dangerous religious ideals Charles Kimball identified, this book adds another: the call to sacrifice. Only when that call is for the welfare of humanity, particularly our children, does it signal hope for a more peaceful future.

Theories of Sacrifice

Most theories of sacrifice regard the practice as contributing in some way to social formation. This chapter examines examples of functional theories offered by Durkheim, Mauss, Robertson Smith, Girard, Jay. Unlike most reviews of theory, this one devotes considerable space to the view of Bataille that sacrifice seeks to restore individuals to a “lost intimacy” with the sacred realm of immanence by releasing both what is offered and the one making the offering from economies of exchange in which their value is determined by productivity. The offering is the “accursed share” of excess goods that must be abandoned (but not necessarily destroyed) in a gesture of liberation from humanly constructed systems of meaning, whether social, political, or religious. For Bataille, sacrifice enacts the mystical “way of negation” (via negativa) taken to the extreme of denying the enduring reality of either God or the self as defined by conventional theology or ethics.

Sacrifice in Islamic Tradition

In Islam animal sacrifice is a religious duty during the pilgrimage to Mecca. The ritual slaughter recalls Abraham’s offering of his son and expresses thanks for God’s merciful substitution of an animal. The meat is distributed as an act of charity. The Qur’an represents Abraham and his son, identified by most Muslims as Ishmael, submitting to God’s command and thus ranked with true prophets. Islamic interpretive tradition, however, indicates some reservations about Abraham’s act. In wars during the formation of the Islamic community in Medina, sacrifices were required of Muslims and their enemies. Muhammad set the precedent for armed struggle (jihad) in defense of Islam, as well as establishing the ritual procedures for animal sacrifice. Like Jews and Christians, Muslims apply the term sacrifice to acts of self-denial such as almsgiving and fasting during Ramadan. Martyrdom lies at the foundation of Shi’a Islam and inspires imitative suffering in Ashura rituals. Sufis seek union with God so complete that it constitutes annihilation (fana’) of individual consciousness. Contemporary jihadists employ sacrificial imagery to describe their deaths in the “cause of God” and the destruction of their victims. But Islam also teaches that promoting the welfare of others reflects the beauty of God.

Sacrifice in Christian Tradition

Sacrifice is pervasive in Christian theology and ethics, as the redemptive significance of Christ’s death and as the ideal of self-giving love. Paul emphasizes both meanings in his letters, and the Gospels of the New Testament focus on the sacrificial death of Christ as the climax of their narratives. The Epistle to the Hebrews interprets Christ’s death as the fulfillment and displacement of Israelite ritual sacrifices for atonement of sins. That approach was opposed by Gnostic Christians who located Christ’s significance in his esoteric knowledge leading to immortality; thus, they regarded martyrdom as foolish. Nevertheless, the dominant Christian view honored martyrs, such as Polycarp and Perpetua, as models of imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi). Sacrifice is the primary category in the orthodox theology of Athanasius and Anselm, but Abelard replaced it with a moral influence theory of atonement. Christian mystics, like Teresa of Avila, appropriated sacrifice as the ideal of self-erasure in union with transcendence. Controversy over the Eucharist erupted in the Protestant Reformation, but the Roman Catholic Church continues to regard it as a sacrifice. Finally, Abelard’s view of Jesus’s death as exerting moral suasion was revived in the theology and social activism of Martin Luther King, Jr.