Understanding Sacrifice

Where there is love, there is sacrifice.

Just two highlights from a fascinating article on Jewish sacrifice:

“…some people thought of sacrifices as a kind of bribe: if we make a generous enough gift to God then He may overlook our crimes and misdemeanours”… “This is an idea radically incompatible with Judaism.”

“In other faiths the driving motive behind sacrifice was fear: fear of the anger and power of the gods. In Judaism it was love.

We see this in the Hebrew word for sacrifice itself: the noun korban, and the verb lehakriv, which mean, “to come, or bring close”. The name of God invariably used in connection with the sacrifices is Hashem, God in his aspect of love and compassion, never Elokim, God as justice and distance. ”

https://www.ou.org/torah/parsha/rabbi-sacks-on-parsha/understanding-sacrifice/