Chagigah – “Festival Offering” – Nu, What Can I Bring?
- There are three pilgrimage festivals on the Jewish calendar. These were the three weeks a year when every adult male in Israel was obligated to head to Jerusalem and both see and be seen, as well as offering up a sacrifice. We’ve covered two of those holidays, Pesach and Sukkot, in earlier tractates, with Shavuot still to come. There’s a lot of info on the sacrifices in particular – checking the animal’s fitness and the actual procedure for offering the sacrifice. What’s covered in this tractate is everything beforehand – how to select the animal, how to bring it to Jerusalem, and how to prepare yourself, particularly around the rules of ritual purity, to offer it. As well, I gather, this tractate will cover a lot of esoterica – things that aren’t usually talked about or taught to the common folk, like us.
- 2/11/22, Chapter 1, Page 2 – Basically, this page reads like the fine print on one of those contest offerings we all get all the time. It’s a list of who’s not obligated, or even qualified, to make the pilgrimage and and sacrificial offering. We have our standards that have popped up time and again in these readings: deaf-mutes, imbeciles, and minors; and also tumtums (people of indeterminate gender), hermaphrodites (people of both genders), women, and slaves; and then adding in the lame, blind, sick, old, and anyone who can’t ascend the Temple Mount on their own two legs without help. The rest of the page argues over several of these, particularly whether someone who is just deaf or just mute qualifies as a deaf-mute; and what defines a slave.
- 2/12/22, Page 3 – It is asked, ‘How can/why do we study Talmud when there are so many different opinions and tangents and lack of agreement?’ The answer comes, ‘Talmud is all rooted in Torah, which all comes from the same source, and it acts likes a prod, letting us explore and wander, though gradually pushing us in the same direction.’ The Talmud is nothing if not self serving and self referential.
- 2/13/22, Page 4 – Continuing where page 2 left off, the rabbis discuss the reasoning behind the rest of the exemptions from pilgrimage and sacrifice, going through the different genders (they’re quite clear that there are other genders besides male and female, though obviously they discriminate against them), and those who are disabled in one way or another. They also add in that one wouldn’t want to obligate, nor associate, with people who smell bad, particularly those who work at jobs that cause them to be odiferous, like tanners of hides, smelters of copper, and, a new one for me, “scrimpers”, whose job it was to collect dog poo and deliver it the tanners who used it to create a tanning extract.
- 2/14/22, Page 5 – Sometimes… one of your students hides under your bed “in order to learn from you 24 hours a day”, and eavesdrops on you and your wife having foreplay talk, and calls out to you to stop, because he’s embarrassed and now feels obligated to tell everyone about you, and therefore you will now be the subject of gossip. Bizarrely, the Talmud glosses over the hiding and eavesdropping, and the prohibition against gossiping, especially from a Torah scholar, instead focusing on that they now have to do damage control, and berating the teacher for talking frivolously and not assuming that someone might be listening. Once again, for the Talmudic rabbis, public image trumps all.
- 2/15/22, Page 6 – Having dispensed with differently abled, ill, smelly, non-free, and/or non-male folk, the Talmudic crosshairs turn to the last remaining category, minors. First, the rules about at what point a minor becomes obligated, but then… minors who are afflicted with any of the previously tossed aside “conditions”. If, it is decided, there isn’t a likelihood that they will overcome their deafness, muteness, blindness, handicap, gender, or gender fluidity, and become a hale and hearty, unblemished male of the species, well then, there’s no reason to teach them anything, because they’ll never be obligated to know it. What’s really unfortunate is that nearly two millennia later, that attitude still exists within various different cultures and religious sects in the world.
- 2/16/22, Page 7 – Just yesterday in the 929 readings we covered Noah bringing six extra pairs of sacrificial animals to offer up when the Flood was over. I recently finished going through tractate Pe’ah, which is skipped in this Daf Yomi project, talking about leaving produce in your fields for the poor, and is mentioned on today’s page here. The question is, do you bring a sacrifice for God each time you come to the Temple, or is it enough to simply show up? It’s compared to bringing a gift or food with you when you’re invited to someone’s home. The rabbis have as much difficulty with the former as etiquette experts seem to have with the latter, and, as is common, do not come to a solid decision.
- 2/17/22, Page 8 – In order to rejoice, you must feast on meat. And not just any meat… not fish, not fowl, not, obviously, ham or bacon, but… lamb or beef. If those are not present on your festival table, you have neither truly rejoiced, nor fulfilled the festival mitzvah, the obligation. So say our carnivorous sages. Those, too, are the only acceptable festival sacrificial offerings. If it’s good enough for God, it’s good enough for your dinner plate.
- 2/18/22, Page 9 – A child born to a married woman after intercourse with a man who was “forbidden to her” (there’s a list) was a mamzer. It’s not synonymous with “bastard” because if the woman was unmarried, the child was simply born out of wedlock, and not a mamzer. If the woman was married she was forever forbidden from having sex with her husband again (I have the feeling we’ll come back to this one in future readings); the man she had sex with, and the child conceived, were both considered “crooked”, an irredeemable condition. However, other than that mamzer status was passed down to one’s children, it carried, little, if any social consequence, and, in context of this tractate, didn’t change one’s obligations for pilgrimages and/or sacrifices.
- 2/19/22, Page 10 – As we’ve seen over these last 25+ months, the Talmud was often used by the rabbis and sages as a way of imposing a particular agenda on the way of life of the Jewish people. On today’s page, they admit that, with a long discussion about how, as long as one can find a passage in the Tanakh (the Torah plus the other 19 books of the bible) to bolster your argument, you can make it law. It’s part of why Talmudic arguments get twisted, because somewhere in those 24 books, people of vastly opposing views and intentions can generally find justification for theirs. I like how one of them sums up many a law, “a mountain supported by a hair”. I often find that it seems like one of them has built an entire construct out of little more than a tenuous bit of grammar or word choice.
- 2/20/22, Page 11 – Following on the observation that Talmudic rules are often supported rather tenuously from the Tanakh, today’s discussion notes that the more details and rules on any subject given in the Tanakh, the less there is said about it in the Talmud. And things which are barely mentioned in the Tanakh have lots of rules and long-winded explanations in the Talmud. With a complete lack of self-awareness, as well as a bit of hubris, the rabbis and sages seem to think that this justifies their existence. Rather than seeing themselves as making stuff up without divine backing, they interpret the situation as being their mission in life, to fill in the stuff that God apparently forgot about.
- 2/21/22, Chapter 2, Page 12 – What, it is asked, is the etymology of the word shamayim, or heaven? It’s not clear why it’s asked, in fact, it’s noted as an “incidental” question. Two paths are proposed, apropos of the last few days’ conversations about how things are made up from tenuous connections. The first, shesham mayim means “water is there”, the second, esh umayim, means “fire and water”. They kind of leave it hanging, undecided, which kind of leaves me with an image of a burning sea being the foundation for Heaven. Not exactly the usual portrayal, and hopefully just used as building materials.
- 2/22/22, Page 13 – There are things we aren’t meant to know until we’re ready to know them. That’s the gist of today’s page, that enumerates various “secrets of the Torah” that we may read and study, in the quest to obtain hidden, divine knowledge. But it comes with a caveat. If we’re not ready (and what constitutes being ready is not really defined), discovering the answers we seek and/or understanding the ultimate questions, will destroy us. Or so say the sages, and there’s a bit of pointing towards the Book of Ben Sira, an apocryphal text that I’d never heard of, but will have to check out.
- 2/23/22, Page 14 – I’ve talked before about a sort of synchronicity between the Torah/Talmud stories around creation, and that of the creation of worlds in the online gaming arena. Today’s page mentions God having created the Torah with the intent to give it the world after 1000 generations, though in the end, he does so after 974. Scholars have speculated about God’s attempt to create other worlds before the one we live in, that didn’t live up to his standards, and that it took nearly 1000 tries to get it right. Sounds exactly like programming, beta testing, and finally releasing, a new MMORPG.
- 2/24/22, Page 15 – So, Samuel ben Abba, more commonly referred to in the Talmud as Shmuel, is bragging that he regularly has had sex with a variety of women, but that he’s capable of leaving them appearing as virgins, since he doesn’t break their hymen. He claims his intent is to show that simply examining a bride to see if her hymen is intact isn’t sufficient evidence of her virginity. I’d say that he doesn’t realize he’s bragging about having a small penis. I suppose those are not mutually exclusive.
- 2/25/22, Page 16 – Don’t look at rainbows. The explanation is that the rainbow is, in some way, a likeness of God, and it’s disrespectful to look directly at God, ipso facto, at rainbows. However, my scriptural understanding was always that the rainbow was created by God after the Flood, to signify his commitment never to destroy the world again. As such, it was a sign that humans could look to and be assured of his promise to them. If you can’t look at it… just sayin’.
- 2/26/22, Page 17 – “Go big or go home.” The Talmud begs to disagree, with the Hebrew aphorism, “tafasta m’ruba, lo tafasta”, which equates to our expression, “don’t bite off more than you can chew”. In their argument, the sages note that rather than going for the temptation of the big win upfront, you’re better off breaking a goal down into tasks that you can accomplish, one by one. In the end, you’re more likely to reach your goal, with a string of successes, rather than one spectacular and frustrating failure.
- 2/27/22, Page 18 – In modern life, we take it for granted that washing your hands before touching food, be it to move it, prepare it, or eat it, is the intelligent thing to do. In ancient life, things weren’t so clear. Though the rabbis and sages thought it overall a good idea, they were loathe to come out and say it, given that the Torah only mandated it before handling ritually pure food for sacrificial purposes. So they settle on, wash your hands before handling food, but when you’re going to handle sacrificial food, do it mindfully.
- 2/28/22, Page 19 – We’re still on handwashing, and more, full immersion, comes into play today, be it in the ocean or a mikvah (ritual bath). Two things are key. First, the volume of the water must be at least 40 se’ah. A se’ah is 248 ounces, or just shy of two gallons of water, so a total of 77.5 gallons, or 293 liters. Second, and returning to a theme that’s been important throughout the Talmud, is intentionality, as alluded to at the end of yesterday’s page. Ritual purity requires intent, not just action.
- 3/1/22, Page 20 – We’ve all heard “cleanliness is next to godliness”, and that’s the theme explored on today’s page. That expression doesn’t appear in the Bible, it was an 18th century dictum apparently by John Wesley, founder of Methodism. But it’s derived from Talmudic principles, where “cleanliness” isn’t about washing behind your ears and knees, but about the ritual purity ideals of intentionally protecting things which are to be used for sacred purposes from exposure to the profane.
- 3/2/22, Chapter 3, Page 21 – Your parents tried to teach you how to load the dishwasher or hand wash dishes in the sink right, or how much clothing to put in the washer. If water and soap don’t get in contact with all the surfaces of your dishes or your clothes, there are going to be spots that just don’t get completely clean. The Talmud agrees with your mom when it comes to ritually purifying multiple vessels, dishes, or clothes, they shouldn’t be in contact with each other or inside of one another, or the purifying waters won’t reach every spot.
- 3/3/22, Page 22 – A matter that has continued from two millennia ago until the present day, even if in different form. The question arises around offerings of food or sacrifices from “amei ha’aretz”, literally “people of the land”, a term used for Jews who have chosen to not become learned nor follow Torah or rabbinic laws. Not surprising that this is a matter of contention, over the ritual purity and intention behind the offerings. In modern day, the same shows up in strife between the various branches of Judaism, as to who is “really” Jewish.
- 3/4/22, Page 23 – When transporting barrels of consecrated food across a river, the only acceptable method is to cart it across a bridge. All methods that involve the potential to contact the water, which might impart ritual impurity, or to be handled by workers who might not be pure, are to be avoided. Of course, as one rabbi points out, this only applies to open barrels. If you put a top on the barrel so nothing can get inside, you can transport as you please. Why would anyone transport something they were concerned about the purity of in an open container?
- 3/5/22, Page 24 – During the harvest and pressing season for grapes and olives, the amei ha’aretz, the non-followers of halakic law, can produce wine or olive oil and it is considered ritually pure until the end of the season. At the end of the season, the same barrel of wine or oil becomes impure, because it was produced by non-believers. But they can hang onto it until the next harvest season, at which time it becomes automatically pure again. The same barrel. Apparently the rabbis and sages wanted their wine and olive oil, regardless of who produced it.
- 3/6/22, Page 25 – Continuing from yesterday… we find that the amei ha’aretz of Galilee have a caveat on the purity of their produce. Not that their wine and olive oil isn’t considered pure, but in order to get it from Galilee to Jerusalem and the Temple, they would have to pass through land that would render them impure. So the Galileans produced their pure wine and oil, and warehoused them in escrow for the Temple, awaiting the arrival of Elijah, who will purify the road between them and allow them to deliver what I assume will now be oxidized wine and rancid oil.
- 3/7/22, Page 26 – If tax collectors enter your home, it becomes ritually impure, as it is likely that at least one of them is not ritually pure, and, horror of horrors, might even be a gentile. If thieves enter your home, only the places where they walked and things that they touched are ritually impure. No explanation is given for this disparity, but I’m sure that many modern folk, particularly of the Ayn Rand libertarian sort, might well agree.
- 3/8/22, Page 27 – Observing that a passage in Exodus starts out referring to the altar in the Temple, but changes midway through to talking about a table, the rabbis are loathe to admit that perhaps this passage was cobbled together from two different narratives. Instead, they assert, this was intentional, presaging the destruction of the Temple, where people would no longer make atonement at the Temple’s altar, but at their own table, at home. Then, a brief tangent into the creation of salamanders as entities of fire, comparing them to Torah scholars and their passion, before this tractate AND this book of the Talmud, end.
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