The Book of Vayikra is taken up with sacrificial laws and rituals. For many people, it is easier to relate to narrative portions of the Torah or commandments that apply in our day than to those dealing with Temple sacrifices. The last sacrifices were offered in 68 C .E., before the Second Temple was destroyed. Many people would find it hard to conceive how the sacrificial system could actually be restored in practice in the foreseeable future. Nothing could seemingly be more remote from the sensibility of contemporary Jews and Gentiles alike than the daily ritual of slaughtering animals, sprinkling their blood and burning their fat on the altar with a meal offering of flour and oil and libations of wine on the Temple Altar.

While meat, fish, fruits, vegetables and other gifts of G-d's bounty are consumed in homes and restaurants throughout the world every day, how many pause for a moment before they eat in order to bless the Giver of that bounty? How many stop to thank G-d after eating and enjoying their food, before continuing with other activities?

The Temple Altar may be more understandable if we think of it as a metaphor for the actual table at which we ourselves eat every day, containing lessons about the attitude with which we should go about satisfying this vital natural function. The daily "diet" of animal, wheat, oil and wine offerings on the Temple Altar corresponds to man's daily diet, be it of animal and grain products, fruits, and vegetables or any of the other foods and beverages that go onto his table and into his mouth. Maybe the reason why some feel uncomfortable about the sacrificial ritual is precisely because it presents our existential situation so starkly in the form of the animal blood, fat and other offerings on the Altar. It is a fundamental law of creation that higher life forms consume lower forms of life in order to subsist. When a lower form of life is eaten and ingested by a higher form, the lower life form is "elevated" in the sense of actually turning into the body and feeding the activities of the higher life form. As humans, our blood and fat are made up of materials derived from other, lower levels of existence, mineral, vegetable, and animal. Our physical life-functions come to "feed" and serve a higher life form: the soul.

The Temple Altar and sacrificial system guide us to elevate our own blood, fat and energy to fuel the fire of the Service of G-d on the Altar of our own bodies. The Altar fire is a metaphor for the human soul, which indeed can only survive in the human body through a daily diet of "offerings", the various foods that "keep body and soul together". Our bodies "burn up" the various nutrients we take in, just as the Altar "consumes" the sacrifices.

The body requires tending in order to serve as an "altar" for the service of G-d, just as the Temple Altar had to be tended. This opening Mitzvah of the day in the Temple – removal of the ashes of the consumed sacrifices – may be compared to what is normally the first physical functioning in a person's day: elimination of wastes to cleanse the body for the service of G-d. Keeping the Altar fire stoked was the daily task of the priests. So each one of us has the task of keeping the "altar" of the body, the digestive system and the liver, properly stoked with the right nutrients in the right quantities. As priests of our own bodies, our aim must be to keep the fire of the soul burning brightly every day – "as a fire offering, a sweet savor for Hashem."

The fact that the priest can eat from a sin or guilt-offering and thereby accomplish atonement for the sinner is a wonder. So too is the eating of the animal to make peace between man and G-d. What distinguishes holy eating from animalistic eating for the sake of pure self-gratification is the motive of the person who is eating – his intention. Having the correct intention is a recurrent theme in all sacrifices. The priest has to have the correct intention at every stage in the sacrificial ritual.

When we eat everything depends upon our intention. The Torah is teaching us to eat with the intention of stoking the Altar of G-d with nutrients that we can elevate to His service by using this energy for our prayers and our Mitzvot day by day. The blessings we make before and after eating serve us to focus upon this intention.

Eating may serve as a means of celebrating, as in the case of the Thanksgiving offering. May we be worthy of offering the Thanksgiving offering in the rebuilt Temple very soon in our times.