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Document Details :

Title: Les sacrifices, la prière, et l'étude chez Maïmonide
Author(s): HERVEY, W. Zéev
Journal: Revue des Études Juives
Volume: 154    Issue: 1-2   Date: janvier-juin 1995   
Pages: 97-103
DOI: 10.2143/REJ.154.1.519431

Abstract :
Maimonides explains (Guide, III, 32) that the sacrifices were instituted in Israel as an accommodation to the habits of the times. An idolatrous practice was cleverly turned into a form of divine worship. As an halakhist, Maimonides was the champion of the laws of sacrifices. Others ignored them as anachronistic, but he elaborated and codified them. One must study these laws, he wrote, because studying them is tantamount to offering the sacrifices (Commentary on Menaḥot 13:11). In fact, it is preferable! Sacrifices are crass, prayer more spiritual, but the study of the sacrifices is a higher form of worship than both.

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