As the title says, What Other Terms, Besides "Korban," Mean Sacrifice in Some Form or Another?
I am trying to understand sacrifice better. In English, this one word has narrow and broader meanings, but one essential word. Thus, to start looking deeper into this question, I want to know:
are there any other words for sacrifice in Hebrew (explicitly connected with Judaism, Torah, Tanakh, Talmud, etc.)?
A better translation of "korban" is "that which brings one close". It's not that you're "giving up" something (e.g. an animal from your flock) in some sort of tit-for-tat scheme to balance out a debt or transgression; rather, you bring a korban because God commanded it and we want to follow God's commands.
There are several types of korban, and you'll sometimes see them used without the word "korban" specifically. They're enumerated in the early chapters of Sefer Vayikra (Leviticus). Judaism 101 provides a good summary, which I'll in turn summarize here:
There's also the special case of the parah adamah (the red heifer), explained in Parshat Chukat.
Sacrifice means "(transitive) To trade (a value of higher worth) for one of lesser worth in order to gain something else valued more such as an ally or business relationship or to avoid an even greater loss; to sell without profit to gain something other than money".
In Shulchan Aruch, Choshen Mishpat 227:20, it's called "המחליף… מחט בשריון או טלה בסוס".
Mesiras neffesh is a common term term used in the context of someone performing an act where colloquial English would use sacrifice.
I.E. He raised his children with mesiras nefesh. In English the phrase would be: He sacrificed himself for his children.
