Sotah 078

How [are we to understand] the High Priest's blessings? The Overseer would take a Sefer Torah and pass it to the Head of the Assembly, who would pass it to the Deputy, who would pass it to the High Priest. The High Priest would recite Aĥarei-Mot and On the tenth day. Then he would roll up the scroll and, holding it close to his chest, he would say, "More than what I have read to you is written here." [Then] he would recite by heart On the tenth day from the book of Numbers. Now he would recite eight blessings: on the Torah, on the ritual, on thanksgiving, on the forgiveness of sin, on the Temple, on Israel, on the priests, and on the rest of the prayer.

1:
We now come to the fifth item of the eight enumerated in mishnah 2 as being required to be uttered in Hebrew only. This item is concerned with the activities of the High Priest during the ritual of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Most of our present mishnah is a replica of Yoma 7:1. On Yom Kippur the High Priest would enter into the Holy of Holies with his pan of burning incense, he would sacrifice the animals and send off the scapegoat (all of which is described in detail in Tractate Yoma). After all this he would read from the Torah and having done so he would recite eight blessings. It is these blessings which must be recited in Hebrew only.

2:
The officers named in our mishnah were prominent persons in the hierarchy of the Bet Mikdash. We commented on the Overseer when we studied Tamid 5:3 -

The Hebrew word Chazzan I have translated "overseer". Perhaps "organizer" would be more appropriate. The term Chazzan derives from the Aramaic verb "to see" - the person who "sees to things" and makes sure that they get done. Thus originally the term Chazzan ha-Knesset meant the person who organized the activities of the synagogue. During the first century of this era the Hebrew term was also taken over by the fledgling church to indicate the "person who sees to things" or "oversees". In Greek the term "overseer" was translated literally as "epi-skopos", from which eventually developed the task of the bishop.

Gregory Ashe writes:

In your discussion of Mishnah 1 in Chapter 7 [it was on February 3rd last - SR], you stated that Maaser Ani (tithe for the poor) is separated out before Terumah and Maaser Rishon. I thought the opposite was true. First Terumah was separated and given to the Kohen. Then Maaser Rishon was separated and given to Levites (from which the Levites separated out Terumot Maaser to the Kohen). Then after Maaser Rishon, one separated out either Maaser Sheni or Maaser Ani (depending upon which year in the shemittah cycle it is).

I respond:

The enumeration to which Gregory refers was not intended to be sequentially accurate, but merely a description of some of the more prominent levies exacted from the farmer. The sequential procedure described by Gregory is accurate.

Gregory also asks (concerning the blessings and the curses described in mishnah 5):

Was the text of Deuteronomy fixed as to the locations of the blessing and curses at the time of the return of the Babylonian exile? In which case, the Samaritans' reversal of the locations of the blessing and curses can be seen as an attempt to legitimize their practice. Or was the text still fluid, and the variant readings represent each side's attempt to legitimize its practice?

I respond:

I think that Gregory's mention of the Return of the Babylonian exiles (in several waves from 536 BCE to 445 BCE) is to a certain extent a red herring. The Samaritan schism seems to have reached the stage of the building of a rival Temple some time during the 4th century BCE (say around 350 BCE), and by that time the text of the whole of the Torah, including Deuteronomy, was doubtless already fixed and accepted. (This was almost certainly due to the activities of Ezra about one hundred years previously.) It seems most likely that they made a genuine error concerning the two mountains, but, having already built their temple, they decided to justify it by a deliberate (but pious) reversal of the text. (Modern Samaritans would, of course, vociferously and indignantly deny this.)

I have received many requests concerning the Halakhah Study Group that is intermittently available via the home page of the Virtual Bet Midrash. Since this seems to be something that interests not a few people I shall do my best to update this study group at least once a week. If enough people are interested I shall send out each shiur by email as I do the shiurim of this Mishnah Study Group. If you would like to receive such emails from the Halakhah Study Group please send an email to bmv@masorti.org saying "Subscribe Halakhah". If at least 20 people subscribe I shall create the list; if less than 20 people subscribe I shall post the Halakhah shiurim on the web site, as at present. The present topic of the Halakhah Study Group is Shulĥan Arukh, Oraĥ Ĥayyim 135: Torah Reading.