As the days dwindle down to Passover, and we frantically turn our houses upside down searching for any crumb or speck of dust that we can get our hands on, running near and far to purchase the newest fad of Kosher for

Well, what can we do, there is no Temple today to bring the sacrifice.

Passover toilet paper, somehow we seem to be missing the main point of the holiday - the Passover sacrifice.


Sadly, today we can only fulfill two of the four Biblical commandments that the Torah has given us on this holiday: 1) relating the story of Passover; 2) the eating of the matzah.


Missing are: 3) the Passover sacrifice; and 4) the eating of the bitter herbs, which today is only a rabbinical commandment.


So many people will respond and say: Well, what can we do, there is no Temple today to bring the sacrifice and at any rate, we are all tameh - spiritually unclean. In truth, many of us just couldn’t care less anyway about some old sacrifice, and would just rather get out on the golf course down in southern Florida.


Truth be told, the Passover sacrifice could be brought today without any real problems, if we only had the will.


First of all, one can bring a sacrifice even when the “House” is not standing; meaning that, even though today there is no Temple standing, one does not need the building to bring sacrifices, one only needs the altar and, of course, the sheep. For, as the Rambam writes: "We sacrifice even though there is no building."


But, you say, we are all tameh - spiritually unclean - and so cannot do the holy work in the Temple. True, but the Talmud teaches us that when the majority of the Jewish people are tameh, one can then bring communal sacrifices, even in the state of tumah. Today, being that we are all spiritually unclean, we would be allowed to bring the Passover sacrifice, which is a communal sacrifice.


So now that we have the sheep and can sacrifice on the Mount, even though there is no building, and we can bring the sacrifice even in our state of tumah, we still need kohanim - priests - to do the work. The Chatam Sofer already answered this problem some 100 years ago, when the question of renewing the sacrifices came up. He writes that someone known as a kohen is presumed to be a kohen; and if there is no question about his priesthood, then he can do the sacrificial work in the Temple service.


Another obstacle that comes up is where the place of the altar is. This must be an exact location and cannot just be anywhere (unlike according to some people in Monsey, who would like to think that it could be there). But this,

HaShem would not give us a commandment if we could not carry it out.

too has a solution based on halacha. The altar in the time of the Second Temple was quite large - 16 by 16 meters - but in reality, under Torah law, we only need to build an altar that is half a meter by half a meter. And being that we know today approximately where the altar stood, our small altar of half a meter just has to be placed anywhere in the area of the 16-meter altar. This, then, is quite easy to do.


Another problem: uncut stones for our altar. These are easy enough to find in the Holy Land, and they can be placed in plastic containers until transferred to the Temple Mount. Priestly garments have already been prepared, and so have the Temple vessels which receive the blood of the sacrifice.


In short, no stone has been left unturned, and all “halachic problems” have a solution. For HaShem would not give us a commandment if we could not carry it out. It is in our hands. If we had the will, it would be as easy as pie, but in the meantime, we will continue to run after kosher toilet paper....