Animals are disqualified from being offered up as sacrifices if they are blemished, and are accepted as sacrifices only if they are at least one week old.
Nurturing Emotions to Maturity
שׁוֹר אוֹ כֶשֶׂב אוֹ עֵז כִּי יִוָּלֵד וְהָיָה שִׁבְעַת יָמִים תַּחַת אִמּוֹ וּמִיּוֹם הַשְּׁמִינִי וָהָלְאָה יֵרָצֶה לְקָרְבַּן וגו':
(ויקרא כב:כז)
[G-d told Moses,] “When [an animal] is born, it must remain in its mother’s care for seven days; it will be accepted as a sacrifice . . . from the eighth day [of its life] onward.
Leviticus 22:27
The mystical meaning of this law is as follows:
“Mother” signifies the intellect, since the intellect “gives
birth” to the emotions. When the intellect recognizes the virtue of something
or someone, it “gives birth” to the emotion of love for it; when it recognizes
the undesirability or harmfulness of something or someone, it “gives birth” to
the emotion of hatred or fear for it; and so on.
The “animal” signifies the emotions, since animals are driven by
their instinctive emotions rather than by intellect.
When an emotion is first “born,” it must be matured by the
intellect. This process takes place over the course of seven “days,” i.e., it
is a sevenfold process – one for each of the seven basic emotions. Only after
the emotions have been matured are they fit to be “an offering for G‑d,” i.e.,
worthy of becoming part of the psyche of a human being dedicated to G‑d’s
service.1
