Interesting! These
Bishwakarma puja threads, which I just noticed, have overlapped the couple of weeks when the weekly Torah portions read in synagogues around the world have been the several chapters in Leviticus that concern animal sacrifices.
Here, for purposes of comparison, are the instructions for a peace offering of a goat:
3:12 If his sacrifice is a goat, he shall present it before God.
3:13 He shall press his hands on its head, and have it slaughtered before the Communion Tent. Aaron's descendants shall then dash its blood on all sides of the altar.
3:14 As his fire offering sacrifice to God, he shall present the layer of fat that covers the stomachs, and all the other fat attached to the stomachs.
3:15 The two kidneys along with the fat on them along the flanks, and the lobe over the liver near the kidneys, shall also be removed.
3:16 The priests shall burn them on the altar, to be consumed as a fire offering, an appeasing fragrance.
The rest of the animal is eaten by the priests and Temple staff. This has not been done for about 1,930 years. Note that the person bringing the offering has to put his hand and that herbivore's head and look him in the eye. Most of us modern urban types never see the living animals we or anybody else eat.
Since there is a civil but very earnest debate going on a Jewish e-mail list I'm on, over whether we would really hope for the renewal of the sacrifices when God sorts everybody out, with modern urban folks saying
Ewwww-yuck!, I took the liberty of sending the list links to these nine threads here and in the H.I. Archive, for comparitive study.
If Uncle Bill is still e-mailing the "other picture," I suppose I'd like to see a copy too. I'm guessing it was no more gruesome, and much quicker, than the predator-prey scenes that I've seen on nature programs on prime-time television, or printed in places like National Geographic.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles police have now been instructed that when Persians move into a new or renovated house, and they have a party, and the main course is a sheep or lamb that arrives on the hoof, this is not a "barbaric sacrifice," but dinner.
Speaking of dinner, Uncle Bill said in one of the related threads,
. . .the goat was cooked in a Nepali style recipe, tarkari, and it was delicious.
I don't anticipate being invited to a Hindu sacrifice ceremony, in Nepal or locally, and if I was I would have more polite explainig to do than a Buddhist would, because, even if the offering was vegetarian baked goods, eating it would be a violation of my rulebook, just as I don't take Communion when I'm in a Christian church for a friend's life-cycle event.
So . . .
Is the recipe available? And/or one that approximates the recipe, with ingredients that can be found in the produce section of one or another grocery in a multi-ethnic American city?
Shalom from the tax accounting office in Glendale . . .
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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001
