Regardless of how we may feel about the idea of sacrifices, the symbolism is very important even after two thousand years of no Temple, no Altar and no performance.

The Sin Offering was probably the most popular of the individual sacrifices. If a person had done something wrong, then he or she first of all had to confess what they had done. Unlike Christian confession, this was not directed to the priest. Each person had to confess directly to God and specify what it was that he or she had done wrong.

There was no concept in Judaism of a priest absolving you or forgiving you, no concept of atoning for someone else or forgiving on behalf of another. If you had done something wrong to another person, then you had to make restitution before you could confess or before you could bring your offering. But the actual atonement was between you and God.

There is no concept in the Torah of a human sacrificing himself for others. This was the lesson we learned from the Binding of Yitzchak. God does not want human sacrifice in any shape or form. What He does want, according to the Talmud, is "our heart".

This is connected to our ideas on sin. We have not taken on board the idea of "Original Sin" in the Christian sense. It was "original" only in that was "the first example", although you can find Midrashic sources that say that its "poison" had an ongoing impact. But humanity is not essentially evil, needing to be redeemed by a human sacrifice. We are not in a State of Sin. We simply act in wrong, stupid or inappropriate ways, when, according to the Talmud, "a spirit of stupidity takes us over".

Once we have erred, then what we need to do is to repay and rectify, the human and the Divine. We do not wallow in a state of guilt, so long as we act to expiate the guilt by confession and sacrifice or, in our day, by charity and good deeds. The heavy guilt that affects so many Jewish people has more to do with their historical suffering and experiences of other cultural values than with the demands of the Jewish religion.

This notion of forgiveness often crops up in the context of our response to Nazis. If a reformed Nazi seeks forgiveness, finding a living Jew will not help. Just as for us finding a rabbi to atone for us is simply not part of our world. Ours is based on personal responsibility. That is why only we can atone. Only we can ask for forgiveness. Only we can find ways of trying to rectify what has gone wrong. This what the Sin Offering means for us, even now, when sacrifices have no practical application.

The psychology of this is brilliant. It is all about recognizing for oneself what the true situation is. You can fool others, but it is much tougher to fool yourself. Only after a complete restitution and confession could you bring a sacrifice. You had to face up to your actions and their consequences instead of hiding behind a ritual.

The prophets kept on complaining about abuses of the sacrificial system. Their objection was to people who were corrupt and continued in their corruption, thinking that sacrifices by themselves expiated, regardless of their actions or state of mind. (This is just like people nowadays who think they can wash away any odium of money acquired illegally or dishonestly by donating large sums to religious institutions.)

What the prophets were complaining about was not sacrifices, as such, but the hypocrisy and the abuse of the system. Isaiah asked what the point of bringing a sacrifice was, if the person remained a criminal, cruel to others and insensitive to poverty and deprivation. One has to get one's priorities right. The sacrifice was not an easy way of getting out of trouble or a way of salving one's conscience. It was a way of getting us to appreciate life. "There but for the grace of God go I." You had to do justice and right wrongs and try to make the world a better place. Only then could you turn up on God's doorstep and ask for forgiveness.