Some weeks I just don't know what I think in time to post something before the weekly Shabbat reading. Tzav was especially difficult since it is mostly a continuation of last week's portion with its description of the different ritual offerings. The combination of exacting conditions that distinguish each offering and the detailed descriptions of the offering rituals, often with gory details, takes a lot of concentration to follow and understand. Add to this the fact that the rituals are no longer practiced and you have some big hurdles to taking this in.

So, in the midst of this state of mind comes the ordination of Aharon and his sons as the Kohanim. Moses plays the role of high priest this one time and "invests" his brother and sons in their new roles. As he dresses them in the priestly garments I was reminded of earlier thoughts about how closely the descriptions of these vestments corresponded to the way the Torah scrolls are adorned.

The thought came to me originally while holding a Torah belonging to another congregation and noticing that the hem of the cover was adorned with a series of miniature pomagranates and little bells, just as described for the priest's vestments. The rest was simple: the breast plate on some scrolls corresponds to the Ephod and there is the sash holding the scrolls together is similar to the priestly girdle.

This thought then expands to address the questions about what fills the place of the Temple, the priests and ritual offerings in our world. Obviously, prayer replaces the ritual offerings. The term for the ritual ceremonies is "avodah" which means "service" and we call the different prayer sessions "services" and they are closely linked by their themes and even their names to the different Temple rituals. For instance, Musaf, the additional Shabbat service, directly relates to, and refers to, the additional offerings in the times of the Temple. And during Yom Kippur there is an afternoon "Avodah" ritual that recounts the ritual of the High Priest in the Temple.

If, similarly, the Torah has come to take the place of the Priests, what does that say about contemporary Judaism? Generally, I believe this to be a good thing, an adaption to a world without a Temple, without a centralized priesthood. Whether or not the Temple can be restored, this Judaism as it has been for 2000 years. But it is radically different than the Judaism we read about in the Torah and the rest of the Tanakh. And still our prayers and our traditions are so much focused on the restoration of the Temple. It feels schizophrenic.

I like to think that Judaism survives and sometimes flourishes because it is able to hold contradictory notions at its core at the same time. I can't imagine, for instance, true Zionism succeeding in returning all the Jews to Israel, or the conservative movements restoring the Temple, its priesthood and riturals to Jerusalem. Setting aside that you'd never get the different conservative groups to agree on anything, most Jews in the world are Jews only in name and would never submit to Jewish law and even observant Jews in the Diaspora are used to Judaism as they've practice it and wouldn't submit to a new, centralized, Temple-based Judaism.

And yet our prayers are full of constant supplications for the restoration of the Temple and the ritual offerings. Should we remake the prayers - edit them - in order to fit our current reality? That would, on one level, break Judaism in a fundamental way. We all, regardless of creed, read the same Aleinu, uniting us across myriad differences in one faith. Having a dozen different Aleinus would unlink us in a way that would change Judaism irrevocably.

More importantly, I don't see that praying for the restoration of the Temple while living Diaspora Judaism and never planning to live in Israel is not a bad thing. Since modern Judaism is based on the ancient rites, that the synagogue replaces the Beit Migdash, the prayer service replaces the ritual offerings, and the Torah replaces the Priests, referring back to the original entities keeps their current incarnations in perspective. In other words, we're good with the new Judaism but the new version is only Judaism in that it is based on the original. I may not want a return to the priesthood but I respect that the Torah is stand-in for the role.