Tamid IV

2:
Our mishnah states that the animal about to be killed was not trussed up but 'secured'. This is the best
translation that I could think of for the Hebrew terms, which unintentionally shed light on a well-known
story in the book of Genesis. The Hebrew term which I translated 'secured' comes from the same root as
the term we traditionally use to identify the intended sacrifice of Isaac by his father Abraham: Akedah.
The Gemara [Tamid 31b] states that the reason why the lamb was not 'trussed up' was because this
was the way that contemporary non-Jews would prepare their animals for sacrifice. On that explanation
Rashi comments: 'they would tie all its four feet'. (For the sake of completeness let me add that the
Gemara also gives another opinion that the reason why the animal was not trussed up in this way was
because this was the way that animals were taken to market, and this would be unseemly when the animal was
about to be killed for the greater glory of heaven.)

3:
Tying knots and taking animals captive are two of the thirty-nine major prohibitions that apply to Shabbat
– indeed, following Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, these prohibitions and their ramifications actually
create the 'Temple in Time' which is Shabbat – and ignoring them destroys the illusion. When the Mishnah
[Shabbat 5:3] discusses this matter it, too, uses the terms 'truss' and 'secure'. In his
commentary on that mishnah, Rambam explains that 'secure' means the securing of one 'hand' to one 'foot',
and in Mishneh Torah [Temidim ve-Musafim 1:10] he adds that this was not done with a rope but his
fellow priests just held the lamb down in this manner with their hands while the slaughterer did his work.
This, presumably, is how Abraham is to be pictured preparing his son for sacrifice: securing with his grip
Isaac's hand and foot as he raises the knife to slit his throat. (If you don't know this story [!?] you
can read the happy end in Genesis, chapter 22.)

4:
Our mishnah describes how the animal was secured in one of the rings in the slaughterhouse, while it was
held down by the other priests in attendance as we have described. It will be easier to understand all
the details given in our mishnah with such loving precision if we imagine ourselves, once again, as the
men of the Ma'amad witnessing this sacrifice. You will recall that we are standing in a narrow
strip just inside the Courtyard of the Priests; ahead of us to our left is the altar and ahead of us to
our right is the slaughtering area. In the slaughtering area twenty-four rings are set into the ground.
Each of the six rows contain four rings, the first being the one nearest us and the fourth being the one
farthest from us. (We could, of course, imagine a different arrangement where there are four rows with
six rings in each row; it is not clear from the sources which was the arrangement.)

5:
We note that the lamb has been secured in the ring farthest from us in the second row of rings. (For the
corresponding Afternoon sacrifice the animal is secured in the ring nearest us in the second row.) The
lamb has been secured in such a way that its head is nearest the altar and it is facing the Sanctuary.
The slaughterer, of course, is standing behind the animal with his back to us. The other priests hold the
animal down (as described previously) as their colleague slits the animal's throat with one swift pass of
his knife. (The manner of slaughtering animals today for Jewish consumption is, of course, derived from
the way it was done in the Bet Mikdash.)

6:
The moment the animal's throat is slit the blood gushes out. This blood is caught in a special receptacle
by 'the receiver' – the priest who won the privilege of performing this function. He, of course, faces us,
so that he can perform his function properly.

My colleague, David Bockman, writes:

True. It seems weird to read these descriptions. But I'd like to commend you for going through this
masechet. I found myself during Ĥanukka reading about the various bonfires ignited in places on the
altar, and it immensely enriched for me the import of this 'holiday' that celebrates the re-institution
of sacrificial rituals in a building complex that is long gone, and has perhaps been superseded. The
shiur on the magrefa and the ability of the Temple rituals to be perceived clearly in Jericho, meant a
lot as well. First of all, because I am a musician, and the legends about Buddy Bolden's trumpet music
being heard across Lake Pontchartrain (27 miles) are similar tribute and similar exaggeration. But think
also of the 'distance' between 'Jerusalem' and 'Jericho', and the unifying effect of the sounds, sights
and smells that were said to connect them, and you have an immediately contemporary starting point for a
discussion regarding what peace between Israel and the PA might be based upon. Shared mideastern music?
Foods? way of life? To me, although the Temple is far away, our study of it lights countless fires in my
mind vis-à-vis living a Jewish life: prayer, peace, connectedness, the ordinary lives of janitors,
etc. Mightn't someone undertake the construction of the Temple in virtual reality and sell it as a
meditation assisting video game? I know my nephew would play it for hours, were it in the nintendo format…

8:
This paragraph is purely parenthetical. The Christian tradition to this day in its worship maintains the
philosophy and format of the Bet Mikdash. At the heart of its worship is the 'sacrifice' which is offered
by the priest on the altar, and this sacrifice 'of the lamb', the divinely ordained 'substitute'
effectively performs the 'salvation' of the group and the absolution of its sins is achieved by being
'washed in the blood of the lamb'. In the Bet Mikdash the people, present in the person of their
representatives, the Ma'amad, were entirely passive spectators. The whole sacrifice was performed
by the priests. This is still the case in Christian worship. When we compare the philosophical bases of
traditional Christian worship with the traditional bases of the ritual of the Synagogue we can appreciate
the enormous distance that Judaism has covered. The synagogue was never a substitute for the Bet Mikdash:
it was a completely separate institution in which the individual worshipper personally fulfilled (and
fulfills) his or her ritual duty, and not through the mediation of a priest; and when the individual joins
forces with other individuals for the purpose of public worship the ceremony is conducted by a fellow
'representative' and not by an ordained priest. In the synagogue ritual the congregation is not a passive
spectator but an active participant – and thereby hangs the whole ethos of the synagogue experience. (It
is unfortunate that too many Ashkenazi congregations have adopted a church-inspired seating arrangement.
Our Conservative congregations would well to adopt the Sefaradi custom of sitting around the Bimah on
three sides, not in front of it.)

9:
The blood of a living creature was considered its very life. When the throat is slit what gushes out is
the 'life blood'. Behind this concept lies the whole attitude of Judaism against the consumption of blood.
The blood of a living creature is sacred because its life is sacred. At the very beginning of the Torah
[Genesis 9:4-6] this thought is clearly expressed in the prohibition of murder:

10:
The Torah requires that the lifeblood be splashed on the altar, separately from the burning of the
carcass. In the case of the daily lamb (Tamid) the Torah does not specifically mention the splashing of
the blood. However, the Tamid is to be classified as an Olah, a holocaust; it is no different from
the others of that same category except that it is a public sacrifice, not a private one. As far as the
latter are concerned, the procedure is made very clear by the Torah [Leviticus 1:3-5]:

12:
Our mishnah also states that the blood remaining in the bowl after these two splashings was poured out at
the base of the altar. The Mishnah [Middot 3:2-3] amplifies:

2:
After it had been slaughtered the animal was hung upside down by passing the hooks that were on the posts
through the knees of the animal's hind legs. (These posts had been described in the fifth mishnah of the
previous chapter.) As the animal was skinned the various limbs were placed on the silver salvers that
were held ready by all the priests who had gained the various privileges. These were detailed in the
first mishnah of the previous chapter, and I quote them here for your convenience.

4. 'Who will take the limbs up the ramp – the head, the foot'. The various parts of the dismembered
   carcass would be ceremonially carried to the altar. This would actually be done in two stages: the limbs
   would be left halfway up the ramp at which point everybody would go back to the Gazit Room for morning
   prayers and only afterwards would the sacrificial ritual be resumed. The rest of our mishnah details the
   various parts of the dismembered animal. The first in the procession carried the animals head and rear
   right leg.

5. 'The two hands' refers to the two front feet.
6. 'The tail and the [other] foot': the rear part of the animal's tail, where it joins the rump, and the
   animal's left foot.

7. 'The breast and the neck'. More accurately we would mention the fatty tissue adhering to the breast
   and the whole alimentary segment of the carcass – the neck and the ribs and connected to them the
   windpipe, the heart and the lungs.

8. 'Both flanks', together with the backbone, the spleen and the liver.
9. 'The guts' – what was left of them together with the legs.

3:
The suet refers to the hard fat surrounding the intestines. This fatty tissue, after it was removed from
the carcass, was placed on top of the animal's head. The head had been placed face-up on the salver,
which meant that the slit in the animal's throat made by the act of slaughter was visible and probably
still oozing blood. Since this was not a 'pleasant sight to see' and might well spoil the decorous
procession that was about to carry the dismembered carcass to the altar, the suet was placed on top of
the slit in the animal's throat in order to conceal it, and probably also to prevent the blood dripping
out.

4:
The guts – everything that was left inside the animal's stomach, together with the stomach itself, had to
be washed thoroughly. The stomach was washed clean in the Rinsing Room. According to the mishnah
[Middot 5:3] this was one of the three chambers on the northern side of the Azarah.
However, as we have noted before, the Gemara [Yoma 19a] reverses the sides; so it may well be that
this room was on the southern wall of the Azarah. The purpose of this rinsing was not only to
remove unwanted blood, but also to remove all the refuse that must still have been inside the stomach.
The guts were rinsed at the same time, but on the marble tables that were in the vicinity of the
slaughterhouse, and not in the Rinsing Room.

May I horn in on the debate governing the reinstitution of the sacrificial cult should the Bet Mikdash
ever be reconstructed? Last summer, I had the rare opportunity of returning to the site in which I was
hidden during the [second world] war. It was a convent abbutting the historic building which was used by
the Gestapo as a deportation centre for the Jewish people of Belgium. 25,257 Kadoshim [martyrs] were
transported from there to Auschwitz. About 1000 witnesses survived. Almost 75% were gassed on arrival. In
those 25 convoys were people ranging from infancy to seniority. My father was one of them. I survived by
virtue of being on one side of the wall between the convent and the barracks, while infants my age
perished on the other side of that wall. So the Shoah [Holocaust], and the massive evil that perpetrated
this unredeemable catastrophe, is always a part of my thinking on religious and spiritual issues. And in
view of that recent butchery, and the agonizing Jewish history of the last 2000 years I have to ask why
would anyone ever want the reinstution of the sacrificial cult, and what kind of a god would demand it of
us? Have not the Jewish people already been enough of a sacrifice?

I quoted from the Torah: The life of flesh is in the blood. I have assigned it for you to atone
for your lives on the altar, for it is blood that atones for life. That is why I have told the Israelites,
You may consume no blood… [Leviticus 17:1-12]

Sue Mackson asks:

Can you explicate this Torah a bit. Is this a commandment which requires capital punishment as atonement
for murder?

I respond:

No, not at all. The intention of this passage is to require that meat intended for consumption by Jews
must have all the blood removed, because the blood of meat had a different purpose: atonement on the altar.
The verse that most seems to be requiring capital punishment for homicide is Genesis 9:6, which I also
quoted in that Shiur: The blood of anyone who sheds human blood shall be shed by a human, for He
made man in the Divine Image. [Genesis 9:6]

Juan-Carlos Kiel writes:

In Mishnah Tamid 3:9 we learnt how the priests would clean the Menorah and the incense altar in the
Heichal. Who would just clean the Temple itself? As we know from living here in Israel,
if you do not clean, wash, broom a building for a few decades, more so for hundreds of years, the amount
of sand and dust would cover it with a thick layer of dirt. Unfit for the Temple. Enough for us to look at
the Tel of Megiddo as an example. So, someone must have done the humble chores of cleaning and
housekeeping. Someone must have cleaned the stains of blod from the floors. Someone must have removed the
incense from the Kodesh HaKodashim. Someone must have removed the Paroĥet – as there were the
Paroĥet weavers that would weave a new one all time. So someone else, besides the Cohen Gadol must
have entered the inner Sanctum. Who were they? Do we have any description of this?

I respond:

We have already dealt with some aspects of this very practical question. I quoted a mishnah [Middot 3:4]
which clarifies one aspect of this topic: Both the stones for the ramp and the stones for the altar
came from Bet ha-Kerem valley, hewn from below the bedrock. From there they would bring whole stones …
They were whitewashed twice a year: at Passover and at Tabernacles (and the sanctuary once a year at
Passover). Rabbi says every Friday with a cloth because of the blood…

However, I think that the main thrust of the question is concerning the housekeeping of the main sanctuary
in general and the Holy of Holies in particular. We do have some information on this topic. (Given the
detail into which the Mishnah lovingly goes as regards all aspects of the activities of the Bet Mikdash
perhaps this should not surprise us.)

The Mishnah [Middot 4:3] tells us that the sanctuary [Heikhal] was surrounded by cells – three
stories of five cells on each of the long sides and two stories of three cells and a third story of two
behind the Holy of Holies, on the west. These cells were all interconnecting. We have already learned
how two priests gained access, first thing in the morning, to the Sanctuary. Incidentally we mentioned a
cell which was different from the others that we have mentioned: it had five entrances: to the cell next
to it on its right, to the cell above it, to a winding staircase, to the wicket and to the Heikhal itself.
This winding staircase eventually gave access to the roof. The Mishnah [Middot 4:5] tells us that
on the roof on the southern side there was an opening covered by two planks of cedarwood. This opening
gave access to the Holy of Holies from above. Workmen were let down through this opening in crates that
were attached to pulleys. The crates were closed on three sides so that the priestly workmen would be
able to clean the walls of the Holy of Holies without 'feasting their eyes on the inside of the Holy of
Holies'.

The Paroĥet, the thick curtain separating the Sanctuary from the Holy of Holies was not cleaned.
It's lower edges were clotted with the blood of centuries as High Priest after High Priest, year in year
out, would splash the blood of the sacrifice of Yom Kippur on the Paroĥet 'once upwards and seven
times downwards' carefully counting 'one, one plus one, one plus two' and so forth. It was the High
Priest himself who removed the censer from the Holy of Holies, before completing the awesome ceremony.

This concludes our study of Chapter Four, which has been a very difficult chapter because of the nature of
its content. Now we may proceed to Chapter Five which has, I hope you will find, more savoury content.