the system of taxation that financed the priesthood and public sacrifices, and numerous other details. Rationale and rabbinic commentary Maimonides, a medieval Jewish scholar, drew on the early critiques of the need for sacrifice, taking the view that God always held sacrifice inferior to prayer and philosophical meditation. However, God understood that the Israelites were used to the animal sacrifices that the surrounding pagan tribes used as the primary way to commune with their gods. As such, in Maimonides' view, it was only natural that Israelites would believe that sacrifice would be a necessary part of the relationship between God and man. This view is controversial since the Torah also forbids worship of foreign idols and practices of pagan religions as "detestable" before God including their sacrifices. Maimonides concludes that God's decision to allow sacrifices was a concession to human psychological limitations. It would have been too much to have expected the Israelites to leap from pagan worship to prayer and meditation in one step. In The Guide for the Perplexed, he writes: In contrast, many others such as Nahmanides (in his commentary on Leviticus 1:9) disagreed. Nahmanides cites the fact that the Torah records the practices of animal and other sacrifices from the times of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and earlier. Indeed, the purpose of recounting the near sacrifice of Isaac was to illustrate the sublime significance and need of animal sacrifices as supplanting the abomination of human sacrifices. Abraham built a number of altars; the text does not mention that he sacrificed animals on them but only that he "called out in the name of God". This has been interpreted as a theological statement that God does not need animal sacrifices. In spiritual practice The also has a spiritual meaning and refers to some part of an individual's ego, which is given up as a sacrifice to God in honouring the mortality of the worshipper. In keeping with the root of the word, meaning to draw close, and to the common usage as the sacrifice of an animal, so can the worshipper sacrifice something of this world to become closer to God. The end of sacrifices With the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, the Jewish practice of offering stopped for all intents and purposes. Despite subsequent intermittent periods of small Jewish groups offering the traditional sacrifices on the Temple Mount, the practice effectively