Send this to a friend Ismar Schorsch is the chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary. With this week s parasha we take up the manner in which ancient Israel was to worship God. The cult bespeaks the effort to institutionalize the peak experience of Sinai. The model society envisioned by the Torah would not long endure without a ritual link to the source of its inspiration.
Nothing confirms just how vital the cult was than the amount of attention paid to it by Scripture.
For the rest of the book of Exodus and through the books of Leviticus and Numbers which are to follow, we shall be largely concerned with matters relating to the cult. Let it be said at the outset that as Conservative Jews we read and study the massive minutiae of the construction of the Tabernacle and its sacrificial system with no expectation of their restoration in the messianic era. Since mid-century, the prayer books of our movement have progressively eliminated all pleas and passages related to the Temple. Thus, its editors omitted the passages from Torah and Talmud that deal with sacrifices to be recited privately each morning before the start of services. A belief in the power of virtual reality dictated their inclusion originally, that is to recall was as effective as to offer.