Avot293

Today's shiur is dedicated by Edith Freedman
in memory of her father,
Binyamin Ben Shmuel Pulier z"l,
whose Yahrzeit is today, 16th Elul.

1:
Our present mishnah is extremely problematic. When a modern person reads this mishnah for the first time he or she is almost bound to raise an eyebrow, if not show a greater sign of incredulity. On a second reading, assuming that there is one, one might be persuaded to categorize these ten miracles: some could well have happened and some may have happened; as for the rest, if they did happen it would have been a true miracle! I shall relate to these ten miracles not according to the order they are presented in the mishnah, but in a more accommodating order.

2:
The holy flesh never went off. This is not at all surprising. When we studied Tractate Tamid we saw that the daily ritual of the Bet Mikdash started before dawn. After the preparations had been completed and the officiating personnel established for that service the slaughterer could proceed to his task. Once the animal was slain and dismembered the pieces of meat would be left for less than half an hour or so while the priests held a short morning service. Then they would carry the pieces of meat up the altar ramp and they would be incinerated on the altar fire (of which later). Thus, even in the sweltering heat of a hot summer's day there was no real opportunity for the sacrificial flesh to go off.

3:
No defect was ever found in the Omer, in the two loaves and the Shewbread. The Omer was a measure of barley offered on the second day of Pesaĥ; the two loaves were offered as part of the ceremonies on Shavu'ot; and the Shewbread was offered after the Musaf sacrifice every Shabbat. They are all grain offerings, so it would be almost impossible to find in them a disqualifying defect, unlike the meal offerings for which an animal had to be physically unblemished. If the grain harvested for the Omer was carefully selected by the High Priest before he applied the sickle it could hardly be expected to prove defected after it was cut. Similarly, if the flour for the two loaves on Shavu'ot and the weekly shewbread was carefully checked before the oil was added and the mixture baked it is hardly possible for a defect to be found later.

4:
No woman ever aborted because of the stench of the sacrificial meat. The Second Temple functioned for 585 years: from early spring in the year 515 BCE until summer of the year 70 CE. It would seem impossible that there could have been any recollection of such an event for all those years. If our mishnah had said that there was no record of a woman ever having aborted because of the stench of the sacrificial meat we could accept this statement with equanimity: if there is no record of such an event there is no record.

5:
I think that two further comments need to be made in connection with this claim. Firstly, there is here an implied admission that the sacrificial ritual in the Bet Mikdash produced a gut-wrenching stink that probably caused a great deal of physical pain and nausea for many people – particularly on festivals when many sacrifices were offered. Secondly, our mishnah tacitly admits that women were present in the Bet Mikdash and not, as modern orthodoxy claims, that they were permitted entrance only on one evening of the year and on that occasion they were relegated to a balcony view. On that one occasion, Simĥat Bet ha-Sho'evah on the night following the first day of the festival of Sukkot, there were no sacrifices offered to endanger a woman's pregnancy. So women must have been present at other times too. And, of course, women even entered the priestly courtyard where the main altar was when they had a personal sacrifice to offer.

To be continued.

In Avot 287 we highlighted the difference between Christianity and Judaism: the Akedah story teaches that God does not want or require human sacrifice.

Jacob Chinitz writes:

The point vis a vis Christianity should also be made that God does not want the sacrifice of the son, not His Son, and not Abraham's son. Perhaps a more righteous Abraham would have said: I will sacrifice myself for You, God, but I will not prove my Righteousness by sacrificing my son.