1) Leviticus 1:14-17:

14)  If his offering to the Lord is a burnt offering of birds, he shall choose his offering from turtledoves or pigeons.  15)  The priest shall bring it to the altar, pinch off its head, and turn it into smoke on the altar; and its blood shall be drained out against the side of the altar. 16)   He shall remove its crop with its contents, and cast it into the place of the ashes, at the east side of the altar.  17)  The priest shall tear it open by its wings, without severing it, and turn it into smoke on the altar, upon the wood that is on the fire.  It is a burnt offering, an offering by fire, of pleasing odour to the Lord. 

2) Avot d’Rabbi Natan 4:

On one occasion when [Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai and his disciple Rabbi Yehoshua] were leaving Jerusalem, the latter gazed upon the destroyed Temple and cried out, “Woe to us!  The place where Israel obtained atonement for sins is in ruins!” Rabbi Yochanan said to him, “My son, be not distressed.  We still have an atonement equally efficacious, and that is the practice of benevolence.” 

3) Pirkei Avot 4:2:

Ben Azzai said:  Run to fulfil a slight mitzvah as if it were a weighty one, and flee from transgressions: For one mitzvah draws another mitzvah, and one transgression draws another transgression, because the reward of a mitzvah is a mitzvah and the reward of a transgression is a transgression.

4) Eliyahu Rabbah in A Torah Commentary for Our Times, p. 100:

Let a person do good deeds, study Torah, and bring an offering.  Then God will have mercy and extend repentance.

5) Meditations on the Torah, B.S. Jacobson, p 137-142:

Nehama Leibowitz explains that the sacrifices are a “positive means of promoting communion with the Divine” and “a symbol and expression of a person’s desire to purify himself and become reconciled with God. 

6) Rabbi Morris Adler in A Torah Commentary for Our Times, p 101:

Prayer is the heart…of significant living… Prayer is a step on which we rise from the self we are to the self we wish to be.  Prayer affirms the hope that no reality can crush, the aspiration that can never acknowledge defeat… Prayer seeks the power to do wisely, to act generously, to live helpfully… Prayer is the search for silence amidst noise… Prayer takes us beyond the self… Our prayers are answered when we are challenged to be what we can be.

7)  Maimonides, Guide for the Perplexed, as quoted in A Torah Commentary For Our Times, p. 100:

Moses Maimonides, in his famous book Guide for the Perplexed, argues that sacrifices were an early form of worship given to the Jewish people so they could learn how to serve God without feeling different from all other peoples surrounding them.  Slowly, Maimonides says, the people learned that the “sacrificial services is not the primary objective of the commandments, but that prayer is a better means of obtaining nearness to God.”  Agreeing with the early Rabbis, Maimonides emphasizes that the superiority of prayer is that “it can be offered everywhere and to every person.”

Compiled by Shira Schwartz

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