Pesachim – Passover

• Pesachim – “Passovers” – Recreating the Jewish People.
  • 11/24/20, Page 2 – Chapter 1. When most of us were growing up, we remember Passover, or Pesach, as that week every year where we couldn’t take sandwiches to school, because, no bread. Where we were subjected to endless dishes based on matzoh, few of which were memorable in a good way. There was, of course, the Seder, the first night, interminably long, sitting on cushions, reading the Haggadah, the story of how the Jews got away from the evil Pharaoh, the ten plagues, and various eating rituals that were given vague explanations as to their relationship to the whole escape process. I’m betting that it’s the rare family, or even congregation, that spent a lot of time on the socio-political “elephant in the living room” underpinnings of the festival. The Jewish people were slaves in Egypt (the exact numbers are historically questioned, and some of the story may be metaphorical). That gets passed by like it was just our mode of employment. No. Slavery. Shackles, beatings, rapes, executions, unceasing labor, and, loss of identity as a people. You don’t think Jews were allowed to go about practicing Judaism while enslaved, with all the rituals – from as simple as prayer sessions to lighting candles to going to synagogue? The Passover festival is not just about an escape from slavery, but about rebirthing Jewish identity that had been subjugated for generations (whether by actual slavery, or assimilation). Again, this may be a metaphorical story – the evidence is controversial, and early writings about the Pesach festival are about an annual pilgrimage and sacrifice, and a renewal of the people’s covenant with their faith – a practice that disappeared after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 C.E., and here we have the Talmudic rabbis, several hundred years later, recreating from scratch an annual week of rededication to faith, wrapped in a story. So that’s my intro to this tractate, which begins with a candlelight search for leavened bread at twilight the night before the festival – and a rather cursory search it is, with instructions to only look in areas where one might normally take bread into, and only in the most accessible parts of those areas.
  • 11/24/20, Page 3 – Today the rabbis delve into the world of euphemisms and coded language. Their general take is that when discussing, particularly in writing, things which are dark, things which are impure, things which are unconventional, it is best to use clever euphemisms to make your point without being crude. But, you need to know both your audience and your subject matter, because the use of a euphemism, metaphor, or simile that doesn’t make your point accurately or that takes you down an inappropriate path is worse than just simply being crude upfront. And, the consequences for trying to be clever and failing are worse than those for simply being momentarily uncouth. Something every author, journalist, speaker, comedian, newscaster, or politician has discovered at one point or another in their career.
  • 11/25/20, Page 4 – The discussion of language continues, with the brief examination of several situations where someone responds to a question in an odd manner, or even a seeming non-sequitur, but that on delving into the person’s history, it becomes immediately apparent why they said what they said. The rabbis turn to a similar situation of response behavior that seems out of place, but again, on learning the circumstances and background of the person, make perfect sense. This then leads back to the search for leavened bread, the background topic of these first few pages, and the question of whether the statement of someone other than himself can be relied upon by the head of a household, the person ultimately responsible for the search, as to whether it has been completed, and the rabbis only begin to scratch the surface of, “Do you know enough about another person to either believe or disbelieve their word?”
  • 11/26/20, Page 5 – There’s a lot of hammering to get a square peg in a round hole. The topic is when to remove leavened bread from your house in preparation for Pesach. The wording is quite clear, it says to remove it on the first morning of the festival. But, we’ve always been taught to remove it before the festival starts. The word used for “first morning” is the same used for other festivals throughout the Jewish calendar. Someone proposes it means “previous morning”, something which the rest of the rabbis proceed to trash as utter nonsense. But, they note that the same rule also states that the Paschal lamb sacrifice, which is made the day before the festival, cannot be made in the presence of bread. Ergo, obviously, remove the bread from your home the day before, ignoring all the linguistics they’ve just spent hours arguing. Just to hammer it home, they decide that since the lamb has to go on the fire, so does the bread – you can’t just throw it out or give it away, you have to burn it. Why, I ask, since the sacrifice is also supposed to be done at the Temple and not at home, why not just require that leavened bread be removed from the Temple the day before, but from the home, the first morning?
  • 11/27/20, Page 6 – How to Make Things to Fit Your Narrative 101. Statement: A detail in the Torah that comes after a generalization is just clarification, providing focus for making rabbinic rules based on the two together, but a generalization coming after a detail is jumping to a conclusion, and they shouldn’t be used together as the basis for a rule. Discuss: Interminably, and find that we can’t come to a logical resolution. Proposition: Things written in the Torah are not necessarily written in chronological order even though for a millennium we’ve believed that they were. Conclusion: If a generalization comes after a detail, and we want to use it for writing a rule, we can assume it’s out of order chronologically, that the detail really came after the general principle, and therefore we can make rules based on both together. Problem solved.
  • 11/28/20, Page 7 – In orthodox rabbinic tradition there’s pretty much a blessing before you do anything, though officially it’s before performing a mitzvah, something which God commanded us to do in the Torah. That gets muddy, as there’s disagreement over what constitutes a mitzvah, and therefore, how many of them there are. Most often we talk about 613 of them, but that’s not a universally accepted number, and sages vary on this from around 300 to over 1000. The question, arising over the blessing before starting the search for leavened bread in your home, is whether it should be in active or passive voice – “…commanded us to remove leavened bread” vs “…commanded us concerning the removal of leavened bread”. Does the latter make sufficiently clear that there is action to be taken? Yay grammar!
  • 11/29/20, Page 8 – Dichotomies. Do a thorough search for leaven in your home, but you don’t need to search places you wouldn’t normally carry leaven into. Use the brightest light source to conduct the search, but use a lamp instead of sunlight or a torch because it’s smaller, easier to carry around, more directional, and doesn’t flicker. Search inside holes in the wall, but don’t endanger yourself by sticking your hand somewhere there might be a needle or a scorpion. Do good deeds for their own sake, but it’s okay to expect a reward. When you’re performing a mitzvah you are granted divine protection, but don’t do something stupid and put yourself in danger while performing a mitzvah. The common thread? Use your brain, figure out what you need to accomplish something and how to do it efficiently, effectively, and safely.
  • 11/30/20, Page 9 – Martens and polecats and mice, oh my! If we’ve seen one of these scavengers scurrying about, carrying a bit of meat or bread, what are our obligations in regard to searching for leavened bread in places where we think it might be nesting? The arguments fly, with some rabbis saying it’s irrelevant, because the animal will have eaten it all, while others ask, mightn’t the animal store away some for another day? Rava, one of our most famous sages, quips, “What, you think this marten has suddenly become a prophetess and knows that Passover’s about to start, so she’s storing leavened bread for the week?” Now in English it’s just a mildly amusing comment of little note, but in Hebrew, the word for a marten is huldah, and Huldah was one of the seven famed biblical prophetesses. Rava made a pun, which the scribes recorded for all posterity!
  • 12/1/20, Page 10 – You’ve done your ritual search for leaven. You’ve done it three times. All the leavened bread is outside of the house, ready for the ritual burning. But… there are those martens and mice from yesterday’s page running around, maybe carrying a crumb or a loaf in or out. Perhaps a small child grabbed a cracker to nibble on and wandered into the house. Or maybe you forgot about that one odd, offbeat spot where you stored away a snack for later. Uncertainty creeps into your mind. The rabbis make fun of the “what ifs” with one after another crazy scenario, with mice zipping about, mice of different colors, and martens carrying mice around. Look, they say, life is never lived with 100% certainty, we always live with a touch of doubt, we learn to live with it, we do our best, and that’s all anyone should ever be asked to do.
  • 12/2/20, Page 11 – We’ve all heard the adage that Time is just a construct, or as sci-fi author Ray Cummings (not Albert Einstein, as it is commonly attributed to) put it in a story back in 1919, “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” As I’ve been reading through Talmud, reference is often made to things happening at the first hour, the second hour, the eighth hour, etc. My mind just automatically interpreted these as talking about “o’clocks”, but I realized that sometimes they’re talking about morning, sometimes afternoon, or, evening. A little research, and indeed, in the tradition of those times many centuries ago, the day was divided into a familiar sounding twelve hours, but running from sunrise to sunset, based on the overhead position of the sun, and therefore changing in length with the different seasons. Let Siri and Alexa fight that one out!
  • 12/3/20, Page 12 – Yesterday’s page started with the discussion of hours of the day in which to perform Pesach activities, and led me to looking into the definition of hours. I didn’t expect a detour into witness testimony based on individual interpretations of what hour it was. Nor exploring what sort of examination or interrogation a witness should be subject to in a death penalty case, and how much credibility should be given each witness based on their accuracy of determining what hour of the day things happened. And I didn’t see coming the sudden whiplash back to the hour at which to stop eating leavened bread, the hour to burn it at, and how much leeway is to be allowed, especially, as our humorous rabbi friend Rava (page 9) points out, “it might be cloudy”. I know they’re trying to impart some gravity to the holiday, but maybe the analogy was a bit of… overkill?
  • 12/4/20, Page 13 – Part of the approach to Pesach is this whole 30-day period during which one reviews the rules, plans things out, gets oneself in the right mindset for the coming holiday. It’s preparation versus procrastination. It’s emphasized, even, by pointing out that the prophet Elijah, for whom we wait on Pesach to arrive, will not show up on the eve of the holiday, because he would never interrupt the preparations for it. And yet, today’s page, and those that came before it, are filled with details of handling things that you didn’t already get done, right up to allowing leeway for doing things on into the first morning of the holiday. It appears that people 1700 years ago weren’t any better at following their to-do lists and keeping deadlines than they are now.
  • 12/5/20, Page 14 – “Interpretive process” is a core part of the Talmud as we’re reading through it. Try to follow this logic as we circle in on a particular Pesach tradition, the timing and place for burning leaven prior to the holiday. There’s a passage in the Torah (Numbers 19:16) that says that a person who comes in contact with a corpse slain by a sword becomes ritually impure for a week. Hold onto your seats for this one: If a person becomes impure, then so does the sword. A sword is made of metal, so the metal which comes in contact with something impure becomes impure. Like a metal lamp that comes in contact with impure oil. If the metal of the lamp can become impure, then it transmits that impurity to pure oil which it is later used to burn. If it’s true for oil, then it must be true for other things burned “together”, in the same place, even if at different times, or the same time, even if in different places. Therefore… you have to make sure that you’re not burning your impure leaven near to where you burn sacrifices, nor even burn the two at the same time, even separately, because in the flames or smoke, the impurity will transfer to the pure and invalidate the sacrifice. Got it?
  • 12/6/20, Page 15 – If you’ve ever played Dungeons & Dragons, you know that creative interpretation of the rules is built into the fun of the game. These Talmudic rabbis would fit right in to any campaign. But in the end, it’s always the decision of the designated DM, the Dungeon Master who designed the quest your group is on. After a particularly discursive session on whether impurity can be created simply by thought, by intention, even without action, Rabbi Yosei, 2nd century sage and poet, throws up his hands and basically says, let’s just do whatever we do, roll the dice, forge ahead, and when the Prophet Elijah gets back from his bathroom break, he can issue his gameplay ruling. Or, as Admiral Grace Hopper so famously put it, “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.”
  • 12/7/20, Page 16 – You may remember a few passages in the previous tractate, Eruvin, where I talked about the self-privilege of the temple priests (pages 103 and 105 in particular). It rears its head once again on today’s page in an argument between Rabbi Yosei – our poet from yesterday – who is all about the priesthood and its sanctity. In a discussion about the purity of liquids and sacrifices, he opines that any liquids, foods, or other sacrifices that are produced on temple grounds, by the priests, are by their innate nature, pure, even if the rules for purity aren’t followed. Simply because temple priests are by nature more pure than everyone else and don’t have to follow the same rules to maintain purity. Taking the opposing view is Babylonian sage Shmuel, who basically says, science is science, process is process – if you want purity, you follow the rules. If you don’t follow the rules, not pure, and your social, economic, and/or political status is irrelevant. This sounds a whole lot like the arguments going on today over pandemic response.
  • 12/8/20, Page 17 – I’m going to pass over the the chain of impurity argument that is innumerated on today’s page from dead creeping animal to garment to bread to meat to wine to oil and whether that constitutes a fourth or fifth degree impurity. It’s value, apparently, is only in that fifth degree impurity is the limit and can’t create a sixth. Instead, I noted a tangent about an assumption of purity of liquids – those held in artificial vessels are considered impure by default, while those in the ground are considered pure. This came up once before, back on Shabbat page 14, and I poked a little fun at it in regard to cleanliness. But ritual purity is not about cleanliness, and I find myself wondering if this is a vestige of a naturalistic age, with a liquid that has a connection to some sort of earth mother or spirit, versus one which has been cut off from that connection. It’s not uncommon for religions to take animistic beliefs and incorporate them, repackaged to fit their own narrative.
  • 12/9/20, Page 18 – There’s some reinforcement here for my thought yesterday that liquids coming from the earth, by their nature are not impure, or are purified when consumed directly, while those that come from a vessel, from something manmade, are not. And indeed, there’s some discussion out there among Talmudic scholars on the idea of either the vessel or the liquid having been separated from its connection to the earth being what renders it impure. It’s worth noting that being impure is not a cleanliness issue, but a spiritual one, and it’s also not a bad thing. Being impure puts you in a state where you are then obligated to perform a ritual, to learn more, to grow and improve, to open yourself up to the divine. I have an inkling that this whole arena is what later on in the New Testament became the basis for the concept of being born again via baptism, though within Judaism it’s something one does over and over, not just once, as part of spiritual growth.
  • 12/10/20, Page 19 – Today’s page is dedicated to the literal, as opposed to proverbial, spit-take. Yes, it’s a day dedicated to saliva. Now first, it should be noted, that the rabbinical approach to saliva found on the street re-emphasizes the point that ritual purity and cleanliness are not the same thing. None of them are saying, oh look, a glob of spittle, how lovely it is on a Jerusalem sidewalk. They are, however, ascribing an idealized view of Jerusalem as a city where people are hypervigilant about ritual purity and the rules, blessed to simply live there, and therefore it can be assumed that saliva found on the streets of that city is ritually pure because it came from someone who is too. In contrast, people and their saliva anywhere else in the world are assumed to be impure. It’s worth noting that in the era of the Talmud, it’s likely none of the rabbis in the conversation lived in, or even had ever been to, Jerusalem. It’s a shining city on the hill, a fetishized place of spirituality that gave them something to strive for.
  • 12/11/20, Page 20 – We’re winding up chapter one with today’s page, and, we shall see, perhaps this deep dive into purity vs. impurity. My Hebrew is rudimentary and my Aramaic is non-existent, so sometimes some of the concepts require more explanation, as does today’s where things get muddled up with a bunch of what-ifs (I’m reading the Talmud in English translation, which, like any translation is subject to some interpretation on the part of the translator). A bit of sleuthing about, and apparently, one of the Hebrew words for ritual impurity (khoolin) is the same root as that of a vacuum (khalal), which dovetails very nicely with my notes from two days ago on the idea that impurity isn’t related to physical cleanliness, but of being in a state of readiness to move forward, or to receive. It also, probably through shared language roots, seems to fit with the Arabic word halal (literally, permissible), which is, like the Hebrew kosher, the ritual preparation and purification of something to be ready for consumption or use.
  • 12/12/20, Page 21 – Chapter 2. Back on the topic of getting rid of leavened bread prior to Pesach. While the “official” way to do so is by burning, two alternatives are offered – crumbling it up and throwing it in a body of water, or, casting it into the wind (the faint strains of Kansas’ Dust in the Wind are now in my head). Also, you can feed it to animals, and sell it to gentiles. This leads to an argument about one’s responsibility for something after you’ve sold it to someone else. Some of the rabbis opine that once you’ve sold it, it’s no longer your concern, others that you can only sell it to someone who will eat it before the holiday starts because you’re responsible until it’s consumed. Shades of gun and pharmaceutical legislation these days. They end up in an argument over our old friend kutah, the spicy fermented bread, milk, and salt dip from back on Shabbat 19, as it’s asserted, it’s so intense, people use it up a little at a time, so it will never be consumed before the holiday starts. I’m going to have to experiment with making this kutah, which strikes me as a sort of barley and milk based sour miso-like paste.
  • 12/13/20, Page 22 – Today’s page is talking about side “benefits” from kosher slaughter. Benefits is an interesting choice of word, in that they’re talking about, for example, if you remove certain organs, scraps, nerves, tendons, whether or not you can feed them to your dog, or sell them to someone who doesn’t keep kosher, thus saving or earning money. This took me down a tangent on chicken tendons, which apparently we’re going to get back to eventually in tractate Chullin. Back on track, what struck me were examples where the discussion segues to not leading someone else into temptation. From not putting alcohol in front of a person who is prohibited from drinking, nor non-kosher meat in front of someone who keeps kosher, nor leavened bread in front of someone observing Pesach… the summation compares these to the admonition, don’t put a stumbling block in front of a blind person.
  • 12/14/20, Page 23 – One argument after another has been shot down over the last pages as to just exactly where the prohibition against deriving any benefit from leavened bread, or the idea that one is responsible for it after it leaves your possession, derives from. In the end, the rabbis admit that it’s a long jump from “you shall not eat” and “you shall not possess” to those concepts, and so they back-engineer its development over the centuries. It’s an arena we’re all familiar with from the news, “the appearance of impropriety”. Even if you haven’t done anything wrong, any thread connecting you to something that is wrong might lead to the conclusion that you have. And, like yeast in bread, that inference may bubble and grow and take on a life of its own.
  • 12/15/20, Page 24 – What about one of the most well known kosher food prohibitions, not eating meat and milk together? In point of fact, there is no such prohibition in the Torah, it was made up by the rabbis based on connecting two unrelated prohibitions, first, not cooking a kid (baby goat) in its own mother’s milk (nothing said about eating, just the cooking process), and second, not eating scavenged meat from a wild animal killed by a predator. Both passages refer to the sacredness of the meat, and therefore, despite being widely apart in the Torah, and on pretty unrelated topics, the rabbis conjoined them into a prohibition against eating meat and dairy together. As Rav Ashi basically opines, “if we can find anything in the Torah to make a law out of, no matter how tenuous the evidence or connection, we’re going to do it.” This is followed by a long conversation on exceptions to prohibitions, which occur when “eating something in a way you normally wouldn’t eat it”, which opens up all sorts of room for experimentation. This idea of creating exceptions for when you do something in an abnormal or creative way has come up before in getting around many Sabbath prohibitions, as we saw in tractates Shabbat and Eruvin. Bacon cheeseburger milkshake, anyone?
  • 12/16/20, Page 25 – A key tenet of the Torah is preservation of one’s own life, or those of your family, friends, and community. Any means necessary to do so is permitted, including bending or breaking any Torah or Talmud rule. There are three exceptions – idolatry, forbidden sexual relations, and bloodshed. Those are inviolate. Except when they’re not. It is acceptable to kill someone who is caught in the act of committing rape or murder, and it’s also acceptable to “save a potential victim by taking a pursuer’s life”. We’re on the path to Minority Report, as no definition is given as to what actions constitute pursuing. Stories of other situations where crossing one of these redlines crop up in the Torah and is permitted because of exigent circumstances. My sense is it’s about knowing the existence of that redline and the gravity involved in crossing it.
  • 12/17/20, Page 26 – I can be easily sidetracked. I could go on about “accidental benefits” of performing mitzvahs where one gets a personal gain out of doing something good for others, or I could go on about whether internal impacts of things like sight, sound, smell, and taste have an impact on the rest of the world. These are the things Talmud scholars delve into on today’s page. I realized I didn’t really know what they’re talking about when they talk about the “Holy of Holies”, a phrase that pops up now and again. This is the “secret” chamber in the First Temple where, supposedly, the Ark of the Covenant was kept, supposedly containing the original slabs of the Ten Commandments. The chamber was only entered once a year by the high priest, on Yom Kippur. And, occasionally by artisans to make repairs (but lowered in within special “pods” so they couldn’t see anything but whatever they were repairing. That all led down a deep hole of the Well of Souls, the Foundation Stone, and the Dome of the Rock, along with all the competing religious and political machinations surrounding those. Very Indiana Jones. Except, no archaeologists allowed.
  • 12/18/20, Page 27 – Most of today’s page is taken up by a discussion of loopholes in the rules about getting rid of leavened bread for Pesach, both the method of destroying and/or by temporarily giving up ownership – a process we call “selling chametz“. It’s a balancing act between keeping the spirit and letter of the law, giving a nod to both obligation, but also practicality. I’m, instead, down another rabbit hole with discussions about asheira wood (or asherah), a wood that was used for making asheira poles, more or less altars to a Canaanite tree goddess. There seems to be no solid conclusion as to what sort of tree it was, though given the region, likely some sort of palm. Interestingly, despite both Jewish and Christian prohibitions on idolatry, the pagan rituals with them have persisted to modern day in the form of the palms Jews ritually wave for Sukkoth, and Christians on Palm Sunday, as well as, some theorize, the advent of the Christmas tree.
  • 12/19/20, Page 28 – It’s not unusual for people to hold bread up as something sacred. From “staff of life” for survival to “breaking bread” as a way of creating friendship, to sourdough baking during pandemic quarantines, bread holds a special place in our lives. So perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising how much time the rabbis spend on the care to be taken one week of the year devoted to a festival around avoiding leavened bread, and eating matzah (something I’ve written about before). Getting rid of it via sacrificial flames, or via careful crumbling and casting it into the desert winds, or on moving water, all seem appropriate. Jewish mysticism goes a bit further, noting that in Exodus 34, the long litany against idolatry when Moses comes down the mountain with the Ten Commandments segues directly into the announcement of keeping Pesach, something that the mystics assert equates the sacredness of the two concepts.
  • 12/20/20, Page 29 – Growing up, my family didn’t do the whole burning, crumbling, casting to the wind or waters thing with the chametz, the leavened bread. We wrapped it all up in plastic and stuck it in the freezer in the basement. Now, that didn’t get us around the ownership of it, which some Jews do by “selling” the chametz to a gentile for a token amount, like $1, and then buying it back after the holiday, which always seemed a cheat (and the Talmudic rabbis would generally agree, with exceptions for those who have a large financial stake involved), nor did it get us around the prohibition of seeing chametz, because now and again we needed something else from the freezer. Three of the rabbis argue the realities of complying with the rules versus those of people’s actual lives, and the accidental contamination of food with chametz and just how much contamination is enough to require you to throw everything out. Like everything else in the Talmud, they don’t unanimously agree.
  • 12/21/20, Page 30 – One thing that keeping a kosher kitchen requires are separate dishes for meat versus dairy based foods, plus, a separate set just for Pesach, all to avoid what these days we’d call cross-contamination. Or, is it really required? Because the rabbis are pretty clear that it’s dependent on the type of vessel, plate, utensil and what it’s made of and/or coated with, as to whether or not in its substance it can or cannot “absorb the flavor” of one ingredient (in regard to Pesach, leavening) and then impart it to another. There was also the question of economics – not everyone could afford 2-3 sets of everything. Back in the day of earthenware, wood, or roughly beaten metal, this was a necessary spiritual and practical discussion. In the modern era of glass, enameled surfaces, stainless steel… not so much. Which is part of why many modern Jewish households, including those who keep kosher, do not keep separate sets of things, but simply ensure that they are well washed.
  • 12/22/20, Page 31 – Two concepts caught my attention today. The first is the idea that bread can be used as collateral for a loan. I’m guessing not for a long-term loan, though it’s not specified. The second is that, in the event that some of your bread gets buried under a landslide, you don’t have to dig it up and burn it for Pesach, you can consider it as having been removed from your house – however, you should make a point “in your heart” that the bread has been lost to you. Just in case, you know, you find a croissant sticking up out of the rubble and are tempted to eat it.
  • 12/23/20, Page 32 – In ancient times, fines for violating spiritual edicts were paid to The Temple, and those for non-spiritual paid to the wronged party. Calculation of the fine (roughly 20%) was variably based on monetary value or on measure, depending on circumstance. For example: If you steal a kilo of figs you might repay with about a third kilo of dates, based on value, as dates were considered more valuable than figs; Whereas if you stole four loaves of bread, and repaid in kind, you’d repay with five loaves of bread, covering the fine. The question arose, what happens during Pesach, when bread ostensibly has no value, either monetary or measure? An interesting philosophical jaunt with the rabbis as to whether or not any fine is due, and even whether or not any theft has been committed. Surprisingly for something that would seem rather important, it’s left unresolved.
  • 12/24/20, Page 33 – Rav Nachman is in the spotlight today with a discussion about unintentionally violating of Temple sacrifice and tithing rules. The conversation hinges on separating out two types of violations – ones where you had no idea that what you were doing was against the rules; and one where you are doing something that could be a violation in certain circumstances, but think that you’re not in those circumstances. In the former case, as with most rabbinic rulings, you’re generally exempt from paying any fine or receiving punishment. In the latter, in most rabbinical rulings, you’re also exempt, but here, the ruling is that because you’re dealing with such a sacred arena, you are responsible for taking extra care, and are therefore liable for the fine or punishment. The interesting twist at the end, is when he states that this is because these particular rules were created by “The Watchers” (angels sent down to earth to keep an eye on us), which is the first time they’ve come up in my Talmudic read. I’m sure they’ll make a return, and of course, they call to mind the eponymous pop-culture Watchers.
  • 12/25/20, Page 34 – Mindfulness. Absolute discipline. Don’t take your eye off the ball. Don’t break the chain of custody. Keep your concentration here and now, where it belongs. Today’s message, as viewed from different walks of life. The conversation centers around the purity of various Temple offerings, and that someone is always to be paying attention to them. If their attention is diverted, even for an instant, despite any other measures in place, the assumption is that “something might have happened” and the offerings are no longer pure.
  • 12/26/20, Page 35 – I have written about matzoh in the past on my blog, that the Torah specifies that it must be made from wheat, barley, spelt, rye, or oats. Not true. Those are the grains listed as permissible for making challah, and the rabbis argue, more or less, if those are the grains for challah, they must be the grains for matzoh. But that was made up centuries later, and today the rabbis argue about using other grains, like millet (dismissed with barely a word), rice (quite the argument, and not settled), and a wild grain called shitzanita that grows alongside papyrus reeds (too obscure, no one knows it, let’s move along). Also whether or not additives like oil, honey, wine, or fruit juices are permitted – here, they agree that these won’t create a leavening effect, but argue whether or not adding such “rich” ingredients negates that matzoh is supposed to be the “bread of affliction” by making it taste good.
  • 12/27/20, Page 36 – If you’ve never studied Hebrew, you might not know that it’s written without vowels. The alphabet is made up of consonants, and you can add various marks to indicate what vowel sounds accompany them. But much, particularly for ancient writings, is simply based on context. The vowels can change the meaning of words. Because of this linguistic quirk, the argument over matzoh continues and has Rabbi Akiva arguing that the words for unleavened bread mean “poor man’s bread”, while Rabbi Yosei argues it means “mourner’s bread”. Both result in a “bread of affliction” as we’ve come to know it, but Akiva’s argument, which prevailed particularly in Ashkenazi, or European orthodoxy, is why most matzoh is made of nothing but flour and water and is tasteless and dry, while Yosei’s, which still has a Sephardic, Middle Eastern following, allows for various oils and flavorings, being a bread that you eat celebrating someone’s life. Guess which vowel interpretation I like? By the way, Akiva relents and says that this only applies to the matzoh eaten at the first night Seder, after that, additives are permitted. So why are we still eating dry crackers?
  • 12/28/20, Page 37 – Because the Temple and its priests was supported by the community, one of the things that was an obligation was that when baking bread or matzoh, you put aside a portion for them, even if it was never actually going to be delivered to the Temple. In modern orthodoxy, bakers will tear off a small piece of dough, say a prayer over it and leave it set aside (where, presumably, it either gets thrown out or mixed into the next batch). Today’s page focuses on types of doughs and breads that don’t qualify for this obligation and therefore you don’t separate a portion – basically amounting to cakes or sweet breads, steamed or boiled doughs, pan-fried doughs, and sunbaked doughs. So those priests are getting plain bread and nothing but. No prawn and chive jiao tse, or glazed pork belly gua bao for them!
  • 12/29/20, Page 38 – While there’s a “negative obligation” during Pesach to not eat leavened bread, there’s also a “positive obligation” that requires that on the first night, at the Seder, you eat a piece (actually, more than one, traditionally, though that’s a somewhat later interpretation) of matzoh in commemoration of the exodus. But whose matzoh? The rabbis debate different types of matzohs and who or what they were originally made for – flatbreads were a big thing even back then. Can it be just any old flatbread? Does it have to be one you personally “own”? When you buy or make, and give matzoh to someone else at the Seder, is it still yours or does it become theirs? This led me to an old argument that I’ve had more than once in a restaurant where I’ve been told I can’t take a picture of my food, because “it’s our property”. Well, not if I’m paying for it, and not if you’ve given it to me. It’s now mine, and if I want to take a photo, rearrange the plating, or eat it in a different order than you recommend, that’s my right.
  • 12/30/20, Page 39 – We’ve beaten our olive oil matzoh to death and it’s time to move on to the “bitter herbs” on the Seder plate. The rabbis argue over a dozen different possibilities, but basically come down to that it needs to be vegetable, it needs to be fresh or dried, it can’t be boiled or pickled, and ideally it will be a sort of green and white combination of color, like lettuce or endive, because to them, the white part indicates bitterness. They do kind of make it clear that lettuce is their preferred option over all others. Even over horseradish, which is a common choice in American Jewry (though the beet-pickled horseradish would not be acceptable). The modern kale obsession. I wonder how the rabbis would feel about kale. Or wasabi?
  • 12/31/20, Page 40 – First, we find that it’s okay to use regular, refined flour during Pesach as long as there’s enough liquid to prevent it from leavening, for making things like gravies and thickening soups and stews. We always used matzoh meal, but apparently that wasn’t necessary. In particular, they recommend fruit juice or vinegar, both of which they claim prevent flour from leavening, but not mustard or charoset (these days, typically a mixture of some of the following: apples, pears, figs, raisins, wine, fruit juice, nuts, and/or cinnamon), which they claim will promote leavening. Second, I want to know what goes into their charoset, which they define as “a seasoned, pungent food”, which doesn’t at all sound like that modern day version. I am back to shaking my head at the lack of kitchen knowledge of the rabbis. Where is Harold McGee when you need him? Why wasn’t he part of these debates? Okay, rabbis aren’t supposed to be chefs, but couldn’t they talk to one?
  • 1/1/21, Page 41 – It’s amazing how much work these guys put into trying to get around a rule that they don’t want to have to follow. The “paschal lamb”, the official main dish of the Pesach Seder, is a flat out requirement. There’s no two ways around it, like “but I don’t really like lamb”, or “I’m a gluten-free vegan”. There’s a “positive mitzvah”, i.e., you must eat the paschal lamb at the seder, and then there are both positive and negative ones about how it’s to be cooked: “it must be fully (not partially) roasted whole, with head, legs, and innards, over fire” and “it cannot be boiled in water” (Exodus 12:9). The rabbis are twisting themselves in knots to figure out how to have a wine braised leg of lamb, or a tuna fish sandwich, or something. Then again, I doubt I’ve ever been at a Seder where a whole fire roasted lamb was served, and I’d imagine most people haven’t either.
  • 1/2/21, Page 42 – Chapter 3. Five things which were banned during Pesach that one might not ordinarily think about. First, the condiment that has come up repeatedly, kuteh, because it’s made from fermented bread and milk (this time they spell out that it contains salt, leavened barley breadcrumbs, and whey). Second, beer that contains barley or wheat, which, given that they name a few specific beers has me wondering what the other beers are made from. Third, the same for wine and vinegar – barley wine or something similar. Fourth, wheat paste or glue, like we might have used for arts and crafts in kindergarten, which at the time was used for bookbinding. And, Fifth, zitom, a leather dye that was a mix of barley, safflower, and salt. Every time I forget about kuteh, the Talmud reminds me. Now that my kitchen is repaired and replaced… it’s like a calling.
  • 1/3/21, Page 43 – Girls, girls, girls…. It may be appropriate that the inordinately sexist song by Motley Crue started running through my head while reading today’s also inordinately sexist passage. There’s this statement we haven’t gotten to yet in a future tractate, that while women are obligated in regard to negative mitzvahs (“thou shalt not”), they are exempt from positive ones (“thou shall”) IF they’re specific to a time period, like a holiday. I imagine we’ll get to the explanations for that at some point. In regard to Pesach, that meant at one time that women were enjoined from eating leavened bread (or, it is pointed out, using depilatories, which might contain grain), but were not required to eat matzoh. In today’s discussion is an argument over whether women are also required to eat it, and through a lot of logistical jumping around, the sages decide, yes, yes they are. Pesach becomes the one declared exception to the rule.
  • 1/4/21, Page 44 – The spirit, if not the letter of the law. Or in this case, the flavor, if not the substance of the ingredient. Does something which tastes like it’s violating a prohibition actually violate the prohibition? Three examples are used: our old friend the condiment kuteh in regard to eating leaven on Pesach, marinating meat in milk or dairy prior to cooking it (the prohibition is actually only against cooking meat in milk), and water in which grapes have soaked in regard to those who’ve taken a vow of temperance. While the general agreement is that while the quantities consumed of the “other” substance are too small to matter, or the process is different, the mere persistence of flavor of it carries the same weight as its full presence (hence why, a slice of cheese on a burger isn’t permitted, even though not violating the actual prohibition). Molecular gastronomists and soy cheese producers take note.
  • 1/5/21, Page 45 – First, while I’m not a dog person, do not follow these sages’ advice to give moldy bread that’s unfit for human consumption to your dog. Dogs can get just as ill as people can. Second, I know my ancestors were known for being thrifty, but repairing kitchenware with bits of bread dough (which, of course, causes a problem, come Pesach) seems a bit much. Go buy some Krazy Glue or Duct Tape. Like normal people.
  • 1/6/21, Page 46 – A lot of these rabbis of old really didn’t like deaf-mutes. The topic has come up time and again over the course of the first year of Daf Yomi, usually in conjunction with minors, imbeciles, gypsies, tramps, and thieves…. oh wait. On today’s page they come up on their own, with a mere swat in their direction, and the comment that they are “unable to communicate”, and, as such, are compared to dough that you don’t know how long it’s been since it was mixed, to whit “deaf dough”, because you don’t know if it’s started to leaven. I refer the rabbis back to page 15 of Berakhot, the end of just our second week of Daf Yomi for refutation.
  • 1/7/21, Page 47 – Rav Chisda is a not very secretive Christian Gray. The ostensible subject on the table is the permissibility of working on Pesach, given how many of its rules are similar to Sabbath rules. But I see Chisda taking particular glee in the idea of flogging as a punishment as he sends questions to Rabba… “What if someone plows their field? How many lashes?” “Okay, what if they plow their field with both an ox and a donkey, which you’re not supposed to team up? How many then?” “Okay, what about if the person doing the plowing is a priest? How many?” “Okay, suppose the priest is also a Nazirite? Can we give extra lashes?” “And what about if he kills a bird in the process of plowing? More lashes… puhleez?” “What about if it’s rocky soil, or mud, that isn’t ready for planting? Come on, can’t we give them more?”
  • 1/8/21, Page 48 – How do you know if your dough is leavening or not? As someone who bakes, It’s an easy call – I literally look to see if it’s puffing up, rising, bubbling inside, forming gases. It’s not even hard to see. So how do our kitchen whiz rabbis go about it? The first stage they look for in leavening is when the “dough surface has become pale like the face of a person whose hair stands on end due to fear”. What? The second stage they look for is when fine cracks appear in the surface of the dough that are “like locust antennae”. Seriously? Actually, I could see the second one, but that’s way down the line in the leavening process before that’s going to happen. Let’s go back to the first one. What?
  • 1/9/21, Page 49 – A sudden non sequitur about acceptable marriages leads to the rabbis heaping scorn upon the ignoramus, a man who has no education, no manners, no class, no values. He might be handsome and all that, but he’s a brute, I tell you, a brute. The conversation spirals, calling him an animal worthy of nothing more than being “gutted like a fish” or “stabbed to death”, with each one trying to top the last with a more gruesome manner of dispatch of this amorphous uncouth individual. Given where the conversation started, it’s pretty obvious that one of these rabbi’s daughters has just run away with the town blackguard and the rest are just trying to make him feel better.
  • 1/10/21, Page 50 – The third chapter finishes in a prophetic dream of Jerusalem being expanded to boundaries of as far as a horse can run at full speed during a day during what sounds like a full eclipse (the moon as bright as the sun and the sun behind it seven times brighter than normal) accompanied by roiling clouds, and a vision of Heaven in which those who have dedicated time to the study of Torah will be the most exalted, while those who have spent their lives enriching themselves and ignoring Torah will be the poorest. Chapter 4 opens with a look at the value of work beyond money. It’s not so much a discussion as laying out some considerations – self worth, communal contributions, rewards for being industrious, the way you present yourself and your work to the world, and the loss of physical, mental, and spiritual benefits if you don’t observe the Sabbath and take time off to unwind, reflect, and celebrate life.
  • 1/11/21, Page 51 – When in Rome, the saying goes. If you are someone who loves to travel, and find yourself in places where customs are different, do you partake or not? Are you the kind of traveler who eats at the little hole-in-the-wall down the alley that a local pointed out as their favorite, or do you look for the closest branch of TGIF, McD’s, or Hard Rock? What do you do if you find that local practices violate some precept that you consider part of your faith? Do you jump in and participate, watch from afar with fascination and/or disgust, or try to put a stop to it? The rabbis come down pretty squarely on accepting local custom for local residents, without criticism, but to not participate if it violates your own ethics or morals, excusing yourself from the practice without moralizing to others. Fits in with the Jewish anti-missionizing stance.
  • 1/12/21, Page 52 – There is a biblical agricultural tradition of allowing your land to regenerate once every seven years. Farmers rotated which tract of land to leave fallow, and one or another crop might not be available during a given growing season. But it might well be available at a neighbor’s farm. The wise ones are concerned once again about the appearance of impropriety. If you are eating a ripe, juicy tomato when your tomato patch is supposed to be left unharvested, even if you got it from Farmer Shmuel down the road, it might appear that you’ve wandered into your fields and nabbed one for lunch. “We trust you, but someone else might get the wrong idea.” If you want to eat a tomato, go have lunch at Shmuel’s house. I guess non-farmers, like those self-same rabbis, who just buy whatever’s in the market, don’t have to worry about the propriety of their caprese salad.
  • 1/13/21, Page 53 – Another “when in Rome” page, but this time, literally. We are introduced to Theodosius, a Jewish Torah scholar who was the leader of the Roman Jewish community at the time. The topic under discussion is that he had introduced various changes to traditional practices which were not in keeping with the dominant “Babylonian” or “Jerusalem” customs. It was decided to let him get away with it because a) he’s a great Torah scholar, b) local customs are known to vary in the Jewish diaspora, and c) he’s wealthy and donates a lot of money to other Torah scholars including the ones having the discussion. Got it. Interestingly, this led to a bit of a deep dive, as it turns out that many of the different practices, rites, and prayers which he introduced remain until today in the Italian Jewish community, and are recognized as the “Italian nusach“. Something I knew nothing about!
  • 1/14/21, Page 54 – Way back on Shabbat page 89 there was a long-winded tangent that talked about what existed before the world we know that sounded a whole lot like our existence was created as a diversion for a petulant teen. Today’s passage talks about seven things that existed before our world was created and plugged in, almost module-like, and another ten things that were more or less tools, or items of power, that were created early on, but not released into the world until, well, the appropriate moment in game play. You know, many of the rabbinical discussions sound a whole lot like a group of Dungeons & Dragons players arguing over arcane rules and rulings that pop up in the middle of a campaign. It keeps me wondering.
  • 1/15/21, Page 55 – No work is to be performed on the eve before and the day leading up to the start of Pesach! Everyone is to be treated as an esteemed scholar and allowed a day of rest, just like us! What about my servants? We said, no work! But we need food to have you guys over for the Seder…. Oh yeah, your cook can work, but no one else! The house needs to look good…. Yes, yes, obviously your maid needs to do some tidying up. People do need to dress nicely for dinner…. Okay, tailors can work. And their clothes need to be clean…. Launderers can work, but that’s it! Umm, not just their clothes, but they might need a nice pair of shoes…. Shoemakers, yes, okay, shoemakers, but come on, really…. And ya know, you could use a little sprucing up yourself, as we all could…. I do? Well then, barbers, but no more! And….
  • 1/16/21, Page 56 – Remember the whole “when in Rome” thing from a couple of pages recently? Apparently that doesn’t apply to the neighboring city of Jericho. The Jerusalem Sages have decided that the people of Jericho have gone a step to far, they’re just too different. And they talk funny. The shema, the holiest prayer in Jewish tradition, you see, they kind of rush through it and you can’t quite get what they’re saying. Three different Sages listening to it report back with different versions of what they heard and didn’t hear as the words jumbled together. Jericho is… Brooklyn. Fuhgeddaboudit.
  • 1/17/21, Page 57 – The tirade against Jericho continues, turning to its priestly class, a corrupt group of pampered, thieving, self-entitled thugs if ever there was one. It gets vicious, calling them out by name and action, with punishment demanded… and already exacted. Remember that the Talmud is being written half a millennium later – neither their traditions, nor their priestly class, were extant by that time. So why make a point of it? There’s a clear message in the commentary against hereditary entitlement to position. Leaders must show merit through studying, learning, and action, earning the respect of the people they lead, and making decisions in keeping with the spirit, if not the letter, of traditions. We could use a bit more of that in the world today.
  • 1/18/21, Page 58 – Chapter 5. Up to now, Pesachim has primarily been about things the average person does in their home in preparation for Pesach. This chapter starts looking at the ritual practices at The Temple. I found out, Pesachim was originally two separate tractates on those different topics. This section begins with the timing of the slaughter of a lamb for the daily sacrifice at The Temple, which is earlier on Pesach and the Sabbath in order to accommodate services and practices specific to the two. One note struck me as humorous when the rabbis opine that you can’t kill the lamb too far in advance of the sacrifice as “the meat will get warm and spoil”. As a chef, I guarantee that the meat was warmer while the lamb was alive.
  • 1/19/21, Page 59 – Many rites have specified times of the day during which they are to be performed. The wise folk remind us today that things that are slated for the morning should be performed before things which are on the agenda for the afternoon, which in turn should be performed before those scheduled for the evening. Continuing yesterday’s discussion of the timing of the afternoon slaughter of the Paschal lamb for the evening burnt sacrifice, they redouble this admonition, which I applaud, as I’d rather we not have to contemplate performing those in the opposite sequence. That they consider it necessary to make sure everyone understands this is… icky.
  • 1/20/21, Page 60 – The process of ritual slaughter is fraught with exacting steps, from the selection of the lamb, to the killing of it, to the draining of its blood, to the carrying of the blood, to the way that it’s sprinkled on the altar. As a side note, the lamb itself gets roasted and served up to the people who “registered” for that particular lamb. But why, again, hundreds of years after the fact, are the rabbis arguing over fine points of a ritual that’s no longer performed? I can’t imagine that even if they think that some day The Temple will be rebuilt that they think we’ll return to ritual sacrifice. My takeaway is that it’s once again about performing practices with intentionality, something they emphasize that in each step of the ritual, one’s attention must be focused on, and only on, the purpose of the sacrifice, nothing else. What in modern parlance we might call “mindfulness”.
  • 1/21/21, Page 61 – Sacrifices were all about faith and ritual, and by the rules were only for those who were observant Jews – those who were a) circumcised and b) in a state of ritual purity. Since part of offering a lamb for sacrifice was that your family and friends got to eat it afterwards, the question naturally arose… what about if we have guests that might not be Jews? What about if someone in the family isn’t ritually pure? Do we still get to eat? Does the sacrifice still count? The answer, after much deliberation…. Yes. As long as the intention is there, that the sacrifice was intended in the proper spirit, and the person offering it fit the bill, then enjoy the Pesach dinner with your friends and family.
  • 1/22/21, Page 62 – Sefer Yochasin. The Book of Genealogies. It’s not a book we hear about. From a few paragraphs, and the only place this book is mentioned in the Talmud, we know that it was shared with a very limited circle of people, and that it has been lost to all time. And what was it? Apparently not only a detailed genealogical record of… well, we don’t know, though speculation is that it was the detailed genealogy of all the most powerful families involved in the creation of Judaism. But, and this is key, it also contained the rationale, reasoning, legal arguments, for why each and every law and rule in the Torah was created. That has a pretty vast implication, because it would be proof of the human, rather than divine, origin of the Torah. No wonder “they” made it disappear.
  • 1/23/21, Page 63 – This or that. This (or that) is the subject of today’s page. To whit, if you mean to say something about one thing but make a mistake and say it about something else, or accidentally reverse the order of something, does it matter? Can’t you just correct yourself? And in context, doesn’t God know what you meant anyway? The “Aherim” (the anonymous commentators in the Talmud, in this case is dragged out of the closet and identified as one Rabbi Meir) says words matter more than thoughts, once you’ve said it, that’s it, no take backs. Everyone else tells him that making verbal mistakes is simply part of being human and that he should shut up and keep his commentary not just anonymous, but to himself.
  • 1/24/21, Page 64 – The gruesome choreography of the ritual slaughter of Paschal lambs is laid out for us on today’s page, with legions of priests holding silver and gold bowls to transport blood to the altar – the gold and silver arranged in aesthetically attractive rows. We’ve got descriptions of hooks and flesh tearing and all sorts of detail, and numbers, oh do we have numbers. 600,000 lamb kidneys piled up to one side awaiting roasting. Come to think of it, other than the pageantry, and that it’s lamb rather than beef, this sounds like a weekend asado here in Argentina.
  • 1/25/21, Page 65 – There are times, in reading about a culture from two to three millenia ago, that I find things disconcerting. I imagine even the rabbis of Eastern Europe in the 4th or 5th century were looking back at some of the rituals of the time found themselves discomfited. We’ve already had rows of priests passing bowls of lambs’ blood to sprinkle on the altar of the Temple, today we have the admonition against rinsing the blood from the floor on either the Sabbath or Pesach, because it involves work. In fact, the drains are to be plugged for the duration of the day, so that “the priests will walk ankle deep in blood”. I realize that if you look back, anthropologically, at pretty much any religion of that era you’ll find similar rites, but it still brings me up short, to read about it in the past of mine.
  • 1/26/21, Page 66 – Chapter 6. I know that Hillel is a popular sage in Judaism. He’s got a foundation named after him that has chapters on hundreds of college campuses, dedicated to offering Jewish education and social activities, and, he’s got his own sandwich. And while his wisdom is certainly cited in the Talmud, he’s mostly known for stories and aphorisms. On today’s page, a group of villagers go to him and ask how the Paschal lamb sacrifice and all its associated effort overrides the Sabbath “no work rule” when they happen to fall on the same day. He starts by chastising them for laziness in not having spent their lives studying rather than working, which now means he has to do their thinking for them. He then walks them through a barely tenable workaround of the no work rule with a self-satisfied “isn’t this obvious?” I find Hillel to be a smug, pompous git, but maybe that’s just me.
  • 1/27/21, Page 67 – Traditional Judaism has a very complex system of ritual impurity, something that’s popped up here and there throughout the readings to date, and apparently there’s an entire tractate devoted to the details in our future. Things that have come up repeatedly so far have been contact with a corpse, contact with creeping animals, zav (unexpected genital discharges), and lepers or contact with them. I ended up down a bit of a deep dive on the latter two today, leading me to find that we’re not talking about what I’d thought. Zav is more talking about “abnormal emissions” like gonorrhea or similar STDs, less than things like nocturnal emissions (though those seem to be included for some situations). The latter, while it may include actual leprosy, seems to include any skin condition that involves skin sloughing off, like eczema and and psoriasis.
  • 1/28/21, Page 68 – This page is one of those that pinballs from one topic to another, from warts to nocturnal emissions, to the preparation of lamb intestines, to Peter Parker’s epiphany of “With great power comes great responsibility”. So many to choose, and I find myself thinking about The Rapture. An evangelical Christian concept, that there is an End of Times when the faithful will be transported to Heaven to meet their creator and the rest of us will be left behind. Today we get a short hit from the book of Isaiah, with a Judaic view of the End of Times, where Jews live forever on earth in peace & happiness, food & wine, study & learning, and a few gentiles get to live for a hundred years at a time as servants, tending to the mundane. Maybe I should have stuck with the preparation of intestines. Chitlins anyone?
  • 1/29/21, Page 69 – A whole lotta sprinkling going on. In recent pages we’ve been reading about the sprinkling of the sacrificial lamb’s blood on the Temple’s altar. Today we are reminded that there are also purification rituals around the sprinkling of water mixed with the ashes of a red heifer. This itself is a tangent, as pure red heifers are a rarity, and there’s a homeopathic continuity of some amount of ashes from past sacrifices being blended with new sacrifices, stretching back to the first one ever sacrificed… like the solera system of making Sherry. It doesn’t do to make light of these rituals, as Rabbi Akiva, student of Rabbi Eliezer, finds out when he does so, and the latter curses him as to the manner of his death – something which years later will come true.
  • 1/30/21, Page 70 – Somewhere back a few pages ago I mentioned that people register to receive a portion of a Paschal lamb sacrifice. It’s like an RSVP to a dinner. But, today’s page notes, if the registration fills up, everyone’s just going to get a small piece. That’s okay, they say, you should eat first, and just have your portion of the sacrifice after, joyfully. It sounds like every Jewish family going to a party at a gentile’s house. “Do we know if they’re serving dinner, or just passing hors d’oeuvres? We should eat a little something before we go.” In fact, maybe this is where that tradition started….
  • 1/31/21, Page 71 – What do you on the Sabbath during Pesach? After all, being a week long festival, there’s a guarantee of one of the days being the Sabbath. You can’t slaughter a Paschal lamb and roast it, that would violate the no work/no cooking rules. If you’re Average Yosef, you stay home and do whatever you normally do on the Sabbath. You put on your Saturday finest, crack open a bottle of “fine old wine”, and you eat male goat meat. Raw.
  • 2/1/21, Page 72 – In a series of examples relating to circumcision, timing of sexual relations, skewers of meat, sacrificing calves, and Sukkot rituals, we are reminded that people, even the wisest and most experienced among us, make errors in timing and planning. Sometimes it’s a simple mistake, sometimes it’s a lack of paying attention, and ofttimes, it involves someone else causing the error, even at times, intentionally. But in the end, you made the decision to act, you performed the action, you take the responsibility, and appropriate consequences for it.
  • 2/2/21, Page 73 – What if you offer a sacrificial lamb on behalf of someone who can’t partake of the eating of it – someone elderly, someone sick, someone… dead. What if it turns out that the animal is not ritually pure as was thought? At first blush, this appears to invalidate the sacrifice, since part of the ritual is the joy of eating it, and part is that the animal be unblemished. Have you just turned what would have been a spiritual sacrifice into nothing more than a lump of meat? Through torturous arguments, the rabbis conclude no, you haven’t. As the intent was there, in some way, you have “improved” at least some part of the sacrificial animal by offering it up. I mean, we’re not going to let those lambchops go to waste now, are we?
  • 2/3/21, Page 74 – Chapter 7. Finally, a recipe! Or at least a cooking method for roasting the Paschal lamb. It is to be spitted on a branch of pomegranate wood, and only pomegranate wood. Not metal, not palm, not carob, not fig, not oak, nor sycamore. Pomegranate. It can be stuffed with forcemeat. The innards that you are cooking should be hung separately on the spit. Reasons for all of the above are given, spelled out in Talmudic logic, worthy of a graduate level course in Materials Science, but I’m guessing it all comes down to that stuffed, roasted lamb on a pomegranate spit tastes really good.
  • 2/4/21, Page 75 – “Roast my lamb on a grill!” Rabbi Gamliel instructed his servant, in contradiction to the previous page which requires spit roasting and forbids the use of metal. First, the rabbis discussing this have to decide whether he was right or wrong. If the latter, they can come up with excuses for him or just declare that he had violated the rules. They decide that he had been wise enough to know what he was doing. This, once again, means they have to redesign rabbinical law. And they do, deciding that a perforated metal grill allows meat to be flame roasted rather than cooked by the heat of the metal. But there must be flames. Red-hot glowing coals, stones, or metal will not suffice, and neither, indirect heat like an oven. Flames are required!
  • 2/5/21, Page 76 – Food physics goes head to head with rabbinic law on this page where we find that, in the latter view as to prohibitions and ritual purity, two hot ingredients that come together affect each other, but two cold ones don’t; and if one is hot and one is cold, the one that is added into the other from above dominates that decision. If either or both are salted, they mix, if not, they don’t, except some situations where rinsing is enough to cancel the effect. An argument ensues over whether aromas and/or splatter from sizzling fat, which all admit transfer between foods, are of sufficient substance to affect the status of either – the general consensus, though not unanimous, is, no. Again, keep these guys out of the kitchens, they’re basically clueless about how cooking works.
  • 2/6/21, Page 77 – With all the thousands of sacrifices at The Temple, there were bound to be some slipups. Rather than throw the proverbial wrench into the works, the Talmud of course provides a workaround. The High Priest, wearing his tzitz, or golden frontlet on his head, an ostensible direct line to God, could declare pretty much any sin null and void (I wonder if that’s where Catholics got the idea of priestly absolution?). It brought to mind a training exercise I participated in, where a group of us had to prepare a room for a course – no details given. For hours we arranged and rearranged, cleaned and straightened, and then called in the monitor to ask if we’d gotten it right. Each time, she said no, and walked out. In a flash of inspiration, most of a day into the process, we suddenly got what we were being asked – called the monitor back and announced “we say the room is ready”. She smiled, nodded her head, and told us to take a well deserved break.
  • 2/7/21, Page 78 – “Everything is true.” On the face of it, ridiculous. But, how do we know? In looking back at the comments of the 2nd century sage Yosei, the rabbis of the Talmudic period note that he constantly sides with… everyone. Is he just a sycophant avoiding conflict? They start by assuming not and delve into it. They conclude he was able to see that each of those he agreed with had the reasoning and evidence to support their position in certain circumstances, but were not taking into account the big picture. “Everything is true sometimes” isn’t a basis for creating a rules based community, and while they applaud him for his clever insights into the psyches of his fellow sages, they get back to making practical rules, though now mindful of the need to create exceptions for certain circumstances.
  • 2/8/21, Page 79 – We have just spent the last twenty pages of chapters 5 and 6 learning about how important both parts of the Paschal lamb sacrifice are – sprinkling blood on the altar and everyone getting a bite of the roasted lamb. We also just learned, three pages ago, that aromas are irrelevant, they don’t transfer impurity, they are, in essence, nothingness. And now we are told… hey, the meat is irrelevant, if no one gets to eat anything it’s okay, as long as there’s blood sprinkling going on and a little bit of lamb fat that we can sizzle to send the aroma up to the heavens, it’s all good. What’s important is not important and what’s not important is important. Wait, yesterday we had “everything is true… sometimes”… I’m beginning to sense a direction.
  • 2/9/21, Page 80 – We’re definitely on a theme here over the last pages of dealing with exceptions to the rules and workarounds. On today’s page we’re introduced to “the Deep” (shades of Everquest!), a place of mystery from which challenges to life spring forth. Here we find that sometimes there are secret things hidden away from us that would cause ritual impurity, and thus invalidate sacrifices, that we don’t find out about until later (get out the crown!), or perhaps, never find out. In psychobabble parlance: there are things that you know that you know, things that you know you don’t know, things that you don’t know that you know, and things that you don’t know that you don’t know.
  • 2/10/21, Page 81 – Today’s page continues with a discussion of “the Deep” and considers that hidden beneath the surface of our lives, there is always some level of unknown, of disorder, of potential ritual impurity. Perhaps you walked across a patch of earth and there was a body buried beneath it which neither you nor anyone you know knows about; perhaps when you weren’t paying attention a creeping animal came in contact with you or your clothing; perhaps you had a genital STD but somehow didn’t notice. As, theoretically, you could at any moment in your life be ritually impure but not know it… amazingly enough, a group of worrywart Jewish sages basically said, “Hakuna matata”.
  • 2/11/21, Page 82 – When you went to the Temple with your sacrificial lamb you had to use the Temple’s consecrated wood for cooking it, not bring your own. Why? To avoid both embarrassment or suspicion, depending on which sage you asked, of appearing to be poor, or showing off your riches. It reminded me of our BYO experiment in our communal restaurant, and exactly the reason we stopped doing it. Some would show up with expensive wine and others would show up with something cheap; some shared, some didn’t. Intentional or not, comparisons naturally happened, and it was inevitable that someone would feel (a)shamed. We put a stop to it. So did the Temple.
  • 2/12/21, Page 83 – Marrow bones. Today is all about marrow bones. Leftover marrow bones. Which, because they’re leftover from the sacrifice and the feasting afterwards, have to be burned to a cinder. It’s considered too late to consume them. So, the moral of the story, eat your bone marrow when it’s roasted, right off the fire, and stop with all this leftover stuff. Who leaves leftover bone marrow? Defriend me, now.
  • 2/13/21, Page 84 – I like that we’re still on marrow bones today. In particular, there’s a prohibition against breaking the bones to get to the marrow… if it’s a pure, sacrificial animal. And that’s punishable by 40 lashes. However, if it’s not 100% pure, while breaking the bones is considered wrong, it’s not punishable. And what about the leftovers, the day after? If there’s still meat on the bones, the prohibition still holds, however, if there’s no meat left, it no longer does, and you can happily eat your roasted marrow. Just means you have to do a good job of getting all the meat off the bones during the festival!
  • 2/14/21, Page 85 – They are really hung up on cracking marrow bones. For the third day in a row the discussion is still going. Today starts with an argument over whether the marrow inside the bone should be counted as meat, and therefore, in contrast to yesterday’s ruling, no bones should be cracked and no marrow eaten, from the leftovers of the festival. No decision is reached, and no new ruling is issued. In a side tangent, we find that what this is really all about is a bunch of gluttonous Temple priests who have a tendency to declare a whole bunch of leftover bones as impure, clean them off, and then gorge themselves on bone marrow. The debate rages on.
  • 2/15/21, Page 86 – We finish up this discussion of the fine points of the sacrificial lamb with a discussion of etiquette when it comes to the actual eating of it. Topics covered, in brief, including introducing yourself with or without your title, politely declining or accepting requests of a host, how to mix or separate disparate groups of diners, and, what might be one of the world’s first discussions of tipping a waiter. I recently got into a brief online discussion of the history of tipping and its origins (that differs quite radically from the current “woke” view of it that’s been going around for the last several years), and am reading through a short book published in 1916 by William Rufus Scott, called The Itching Palm, in which he cogently argues the comparison of tipping to both slavery and piracy.
  • 2/16/21, Page 87 – Chapter 8. Prostitutes and the Diaspora. Today’s page explores the ostracism of “the other” within the Jewish community. Are there real Jews and Jews in name only? Are there people who claim to be part of our community who, because they “aren’t like us”, we don’t accept as a part of it? In a series of stories, God demonstrates that all Jews are “real Jews”, and until “the other” is accepted and embraced by all, we will neither thrive nor fulfill our destiny as a people. A lesson for everyone, in all communities.
  • 2/17/21, Page 88 – You’re only allowed to share in the Paschal sacrifice once each festival, there’s no going in for a second lamb chop. So what happens when you belong to more than one household? Today’s page looks at the people who find themselves torn between two familial obligations and their individual opt out or opt in rights, which, no surprise, are complicated, and the considerations of the consequences of making those choices. What surprised me most is how much freedom to choose that the sages give the individual, versus the head of either household.
  • 2/18/21, Page 89 – Priest for hire! Bring your own bought and paid for priest to certify your lamb for sacrifice! Not so fast, say the Talmudic judiciary. Has the payout influenced the priest to certify a lamb as unblemished that, perhaps isn’t? Is the priest offering his services to multiple groups, violating the “one portion of sacrificial lamb only” rule? In fact, much hinges on this one, as they discuss scenarios where a priest, “discovers” after the fact that a lamb isn’t up to ritual snuff, declaring that he was just sharing a non-sacrificial meal, while letting his “employers” off the hook because they sacrificed and dined in good faith on his word. Sounds like every TV trope of an expert witness we’ve seen.
  • 2/19/21, Page 90 – In keeping with the theme of inclusiveness that was started in this chapter, the rabbis discuss the rights of assigning registration for portions of lamb by the person who offered the sacrifice. The conclusion is that he retains the ownership of the lamb (versus a regular sacrifice where the lamb or other animal is given to the Temple for the priests’ consumption) and has the right to sell or use as payment those “dinner tickets” to anyone he wants to include at his table as long as he doesn’t make a profit. Including payment for the services of a prostitute. My question, given the requirement to share the lamb at one table, does she sit with his wife and kids?
  • 2/20/21, Page 91 – While continuing in the spirit of inclusiveness – with workarounds offered for mourners, rescue workers, prisoners, and elderly and/or infirm shut-ins to register for the Paschal lamb sacrifice – there are two groupings not allowed. Those composed of women, slaves, and minors all together; or slaves and minors together. Why? With all three – frivolity might ensue. It’s not clear why that might not happen with any of them individually; women and slaves; or women and minors; nor exactly what frivolity entails.  If you put slaves and minors together, homosexual activity will commence. It always does, you know? Apparently they couldn’t control their overwhelming sexual urges long enough to participate in the ritual. Such is the allure homosexuality has for these Talmudic sages. Personally, I’ve managed to get through many a dinner without an under-table hand or blowjob.
  • 2/21/21, Page 92 – Does a person “unintentionally traveling” who misses the Paschal sacrifice violate the rules? And what’s to be done about it? It’s complicated, but I’m stuck at “unintentionally traveling” and finding oneself in distant lands. How does one travel afar without intention? Were you magically transported to, say, Cancún during a blizzard in Texas? In the end, though there’s disagreement about the rules, the fallback solution is “second Pesach”. This is the only holiday with a built-in do-over. Thirty days after the first, everyone who, for one reason or another didn’t participate (even if you traveled “intentionally”, like a normal person) in the Paschal sacrifice gets another shot at it.
  • 2/22/21, Page 93 – Chapter 9. Although a new chapter, we don’t get the usual abrupt change of focus. Continuing from the previous page, much of today is about the intentionality of violating the Paschal lamb sacrifice, particularly travel away from Jerusalem and the Temple. Again, unintentional… which they seem to define as having misjudged how long it would take to get there, as opposed to intentional, you just decided to go somewhere else and skip the sacrifice. Missing the sacrifice is one of 36 violations of scripture that result in karet, a sort of excommunication of the soul – something I know there’s a whole tractate on somewhere down the line. But intentional or not, you can be repentant, you still get a second chance sacrifice a month later at second Pesach. I’m also intrigued about the “36” – it’s a number that comes up in Jewish mysticism repeatedly.
  • 2/23/21, Page 94 – In this never-ending discussion about (un)intentional distant journeys, the rabbis take a tangent to explore the size of the Earth. There are several theories propounded, though it’s quite clear that all of them start from the premise that the world is flat, which is kind of interesting, as it had been established that it was vaguely spherical a century earlier. Of note, in one of the tangents, are the estimates of the size of Eden (paradise) and Gehenna (hell) – which come in at, respectively, 3,600 times the size of the Earth and 216,000 times the size of the Earth. Brings up the old rock and roll adage “The fact that there is a highway to hell and a stairway to heaven says a lot about the anticipated traffic load”.
  • 2/24/21, Page 95 – Does the second Pesach involve all the same detailed preparations as the first? Not remotely. It’s pretty pro forma, with the only real requirement being to offer and participate in a Paschal lamb sacrifice, and a brief nod towards unleavened bread in that you eat your sacrificial portion of lamb with a piece of matzoh and some bitter herbs. There are a few ritualistic trappings draped around it, but it’s clear that the sacrifice is key, and all the rest is fungible. Basically it’s “you screwed up, make a sacrifice to appease God, get your forgiveness from the priests, eat some lamb, go away”. I wonder how many folk got away with made up excuses and opting to do second Pesach in order to get out of the work of the first?
  • 2/25/21, Page 96 – The first Paschal lamb sacrifices, in essence, were done in the haste of the Exodus from Egypt (a likely apocryphal story, rather than a historic account), a founding mythos of Judaism. Sacrifices were common. The Temple didn’t exist. The Paschal sacrifice rules came later – in fact, the celebration of Pesach doesn’t appear until more than a millennium after the Exodus, around the time of the building of the Second Temple – the First had existed for 500 years before it was destroyed. At some point the last 95 pages of rules were created by religious leaders. Why? The conclusion is that they were put in place to change the focus of the sacrificial act from one of prayers for material results to spiritual ones.
  • 2/26/21, Page 97 – Sometimes, as the adage goes, life gets in the way of living. The Paschal lamb that you had designated develops a blemish, or one is discovered after it has been consecrated, or just prior to sacrifice; the lamb wanders away and gets lost, perhaps or perhaps not to be found again; etc. There’s a whole system defined for last minute substitutions, but what of the original lamb? In what seems to me unnecessary cruelty, that lamb is not just turned out to pasture with the remainder of the flock, but, as if the lamb itself has done something horrific and must be punished, it is placed in isolation, where it cannot graze, and left to die an ignominious death via starvation. “Pardon my French”, but that’s fucked up.
  • 2/27/21, Page 98 – In wrapping up this chapter, the rabbis touch on the last rights (as opposed to rites) of the Paschal sacrifice. When something goes awry with the ownership – be it a case of death and inheritance, a group that separates, a lost lamb, a mingling of lambs… who owns what, who sacrifices what, and, of course, most importantly, who gets to eat? We know, from past experience and passages that no matter what, the priests of the Temple are going to get their share, one way or another. As to the rest? It seems that the best advice is to keep your mouth shut, sit up straight, and eat whichever lamb you’re given. If you don’t go down the path of “mine, mine, mine” or “my rights”, you and everybody else get credit for the sacrifice and everyone gets to eat. Advice for living.
  • 2/28/21, Page 99 – Chapter 10. Finally, on to the details of the Seder. It’s tradition in Judaism to fast before the start of pretty much every holiday, from lunch until sundown – i.e., no afternoon snacking – so that you “enter the holiday looking forward to the meal”. Because, as the old joke has it, all Jewish holidays celebrate “They tried to kill us. We survived. Let’s eat.” But the wording for the pre-Pesach fast is odd, and, while the argument is interrupted at the end of this page, it appears they’re coming down on the side of “eat an early lunch, then don’t snack, just to be sure”. I’m wondering how this is going to square with the modern practice of no fast before Pesach, except for “firstborns”, and even that is limited to those who don’t take part in a mitzvah (good deed).
  • 3/1/21, Page 100 – Three rabbis walk into a bar… well, actually, three rabbis, sitting around on a Friday afternoon, having lunch, and suddenly, without warning, sundown happens and it’s time to start the Sabbath. The question arises – does the meal they’re having count as the Sabbath evening meal – can they just continue it, or must they clear the table and start a new meal? Yehuda says “new meal”, Yosei says “same meal”, Gamliel spends his time pitting them against each other. I have one question – given the detailed, intricate, excruciating detail of getting ready for the Sabbath, how did it sneak up on them?
  • 3/2/21, Page 101 – I really thought this chapter was supposed to be all about the details of the Seder. Today’s page is about… re-blessings. We have blessings for pretty much everything, including any time we eat or drink, both before and after. The rabbis look at what situations require that you say the same blessing over again. So, for example, each new dish in a multi-course meal? No. if you open a new bottle of wine? No. If you switch tables? Yes. If you leave the table to go chat with friends and then come back? Depends. If all of you leave the table and come back, it’s considered a new meal, and Yes. If one person holds down the fort (they recommend an elderly or infirm person), then No.
  • 3/3/21, Page 102 – There are blessings recited at the start and end of a meal, and then a sort of wrapping up, end of the day sanctification. In modern day, the former two are simply recited over the table, but in the Talmudic days, they were recited over a cup of wine. The question on that table is whether you can use the same cup of wine for all three or any two, or do you need three separate cups of wine. Some rabbis basically say, “it’s symbolic, one cup will do”, while others go on these long rants about “bundling”, or rushing through, your blessings rather than keeping them each distinct. That’s, of course, as opposed to drunkenly yelling, “you lightweight, can’t hold your wine, pour me another glass!”
  • 3/4/21, Page 103 – The rabbis are zeroing in on the sometime occurrence when Pesach starts on a Saturday, at the end of Shabbat. There are five blessings to end one and start the other, and the argument today is over their order. Each is represented by a letter – H, K, N, Y, Z for their purposes. Z must be at the end as it starts a new festival. H can’t be first, because, it can’t. Eight different permutations for the order in which they’re to be said are proposed, and in the end, it’s YKNHZ, or “YaKNeHaZ” (Jewish prayer trivia question). Then there’s a whole outside the Talmud tangent about rabbit illustrations in the Hagadah, which is neither a typo for rabbi, nor the oft cited but apocryphal tie to the Old German “rabbit hunt”, Jag Den Has, as the imagery was also used in cultures that didn’t speak German.
  • 3/5/21, Page 104 – The Havdalah prayer, the “H” from yesterday, meaning “to separate”, is an acknowledgement of both the end of Shabbat and the start of the new week. It classically enumerates four distinctions, though some extend it to seven. There’s some argument over whether those who extend it are just looking for extra credit in the eyes of their colleagues. That theme carries over into a story at the end of the passage where Rabbi Yehuda berates his son for arranging to have a gift delivered to another rabbi, rather than delivering it himself, near apoplectic that the person who did the delivery will “get credit” for the gift, rather than the two of them. Whatever happened to Pride is the root of all Evil?
  • 3/6/21, Page 105 – Many years ago I had a landlord who was a Chasidic rabbi. A few times, he invited a couple of us out to his home for holiday dinners. I was always impressed with the joy that was infused into the rituals, while still making sure they got done. It was so different from the Conservative or Orthodox approach of rigid steps and general lack of warmth that I’d seen prior. It seem the Talmudic rabbis, for all their detailed enumeration of rules, have the same general approach, as we find them today figuring out how to fit all the Shabbat prayers into a late lunch that continues into the evening, so as to both welcome (and the next day, finish) the Sabbath, but at the same time, not take away from the enjoyment of a long, leisurely meal with companions and family.
  • 3/7/21, Page 106 – Despite all the details of which prayers to say and when, the rabbis recognize that mistakes will be made. Forgot to say the prayer over wine or bread? Ask someone else to say them on your behalf, go ahead and eat and drink. Forgot to sanctify the new week with the havdalah prayer? You can say it any evening in the following three days, retroactively. The more I get into the Talmud and all its rules, the more I’m surprised how much recognition there is of the old adage, “sometimes life gets in the way of living” and that workarounds need to be provided.
  • 3/8/21, Page 107 – It’s tradition to say Kiddush over a glass of wine. And some Talmudic rabbis are adamant about that, though the blessing only refers to “the fruit of the vine”, and doesn’t specify what vine or that it be fermented (kids and teetotalers say it over grape juice). But how far can one stray? Beer is the topic. No vines involved, but, some of them admit, not all regions produce quality wine, and at times and in some places, beer is the better beverage. Others won’t budge, of course, and we don’t get a unanimous resolution. But if beer is your quaff, and it’s better quality than dishwater, it’s perfectly acceptable to say Kiddush over it.
  • 3/9/21, Page 108 – We finally get directly to the Seder and boy do they pack it in today; here are some highlights. Eating extra food when you’re already satiated is “excessive eating”, but drinking extra wine between the prescribed four cups of wine whets the appetite; then you can eat more. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Everyone is obligated to relax and recline during the Seder, but waiters are allowed to relax and recline just long enough to eat “one olive-bulk of food” and then they should get back to serving our every whim. Uh-huh. Women are obligated to drink the four cups of wine and eat the matzah, but aren’t to recline in front of their husbands, to whom they are subservient. Uh-huh. A teacher should make sure the young boys or men in his care are comfortable; he should have them huddle up and recline against each other and him.
  • 3/10/21, Page 109 – Want to celebrate? Eat meat. Give gifts of celebration… a bottle of wine to men, some pretty clothes to women. Don’t do things in pairs – e.g., don’t eat an even number of food items; drink an even number of glasses of wine; wipe yourself twice or use two hands to do so; or have ménage a trois. Why? You expose yourself to sorcery and/or demons. Except on the night of the Pesach Seder when there’s a blanket protection from both, so go ahead with the pairs. They claim to be talking about the four cups of wine, but I think one or two of them are thinking about some time alone with the Aizenberg twins.
  • 3/11/21, Page 110 – My yaoi musings recently are apparently not too far off as we head into various topics demonic. Pairs are considered mystically, the rabbis decide that things done or consumed twice may result in death, four times only result in harm, and even numbers above that are safe. Rav Pappa reports consulting with Yosef the Shade, a demonic spirit of the underworld who acts as double agent for the Talmudic council, to confirm all this. This is all applied to the number of glasses of wine to drink… 8, 10, even 16 are mentioned as safe, other than that one guy who hugged a palm tree and exploded. Methinks Rav Pappa probably went for 16. Sex comes up with admonitions against sex with two at a time, or twice in a row, but four, eight, and of course, odd numbers, are fine. Sex with your favorite demon boy is left unmentioned.
  • 3/12/21, Page 111 – Evil lurks around every corner. That’s the message of today, which is a litany of superstitions around where, when, how, and why you walk about in or near to the city. Demons of one sort or another inhabit virtually every bush and tree you pass. There are even demons that inhabit your jar of kuteh, though only in the mornings, so no kuteh for breakfast. Remember kuteh, the fermented wheat condiment that has reared its apparently demonic head more than once in past passages? The worst, however, are apparently to be found in and around palm trees, which may explain a lot about Florida and the much memed “Florida man”.
  • 3/13/21, Page 112 – I’m stuck on a two paragraph superstition about not drinking water from a river or pond at night as the demons in them will cause you to go blind. There’s a prayer you can say to negate that. But, what if you don’t remember the prayer? Two scenarios are presented – the first, you haven’t yet drunk, so get someone else to get you the water, so that they’re at risk rather than you; the second, you have drunk, so put yourself between “a thin person and a fat person” and ask the demon to take their sight instead. I assume it’s intended as an object lesson to scare people into remembering the prayer, but WTF? Sociopath much?
  • 3/14/21, Page 113 – Although yesterday I got stuck on a particular passage and its object lesson, most of the page was what amounted to, let’s call it, “fatherly advice” – a mix of proverbs and prescriptions on how to live a good life. That continues today, as the rabbis confront the idea that your children might choose not to take the path that you had hoped for them. Rather than chastise them or force them to follow your desires, the rabbis counsel teaching them how to live well and to succeed in the life that they do choose. I’m also quite taken with one line amongst many: “Treat food respectfully even if it is inexpensive.”
  • 3/15/21, Page 114 – Finally, we get to some solid mention of the Pesach Seder, with a description of the order of the meal service. Two servings of vegetable, each to be “dipped” – in this passage it’s stated as lettuce, in modern times it’s common to use parsley and/or a bitter lettuce like romaine. The dip is not named – these days, most Ashkenazic Jews use salty water, while Sephardic use vinegar. This is followed by two hot dishes, a couple rabbis announce their personal preferences (beets & rice; fried fish & egg); and then two meat dishes; and finally the “dessert” of matzoh with “bitter herb”, originally something like chicory, these days it’s near ubiquitous to use horseradish.
  • 3/16/21, Page 115 – Accepted history has it that the sandwich was “created” by the 4th Earl of Sandwich in the 18th century, when he put meat between two slices of bread so he could eat with one hand while playing poker with the other. But back in the 1st century, Hillel the Elder met the obligation to eat Paschal lamb, matzoh, and bitter herbs (as noted yesterday, probably chicory, i.e., frisée), by placing the lamb and greens between two pieces of matzoh. He added in charoset, a sort of fruit chutney, because while not an obligation, it was considered a mitzvah, a good deed, and, it tasted good. Today the “Hillel Sandwich” is eaten sans lamb, acknowledging the loss of The Temple and Paschal sacrifices.
  • 3/17/21, Page 116 – The question before the sages is whether blind people should recite from the Haggadah, the holy book for the festival of Pesach. The naysayers start from a biblical statement that “This son, who is a rebellious drunkard” is not obligated. They zoom in on the word “This”. Why not “A” or “The”? Their tortured logic is that “This” is a form of pointing at the son, and if the parents were blind, they couldn’t point at him. What? The yeasayers note that blind people are perfectly capable of pointing, learning and reciting (including many past sages), and just would rebelliousness or drunkenness have to do with blindness anyway? A bunch of caecophobes, some of those sages….
  • 3/18/21, Page 117 – At times (at times?) the rabbis of the Talmud turn to minutiae that probably leave almost anyone reading this stuff perplexed. While meandering through prayers and other various examples, the rabbis spend today’s page arguing over whether the word Hallelujah is a single word meaning “praise God with many praises” or if it’s two words glommed together, Hallelu, “praise”, and ya, “God”, which some assert makes it somehow lesser, since the “many praises” are not implicit. They don’t resolve anything, but have they never heard of the concept of “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”?
  • 3/19/21, Page 118 – Damn… Talmudic rabbis shout out to cooks everywhere, as they engage in a bit of suffering hyperbole. The task of providing a person’s food, they claim, is… “twice as difficult as the suffering endured by a woman in childbirth”; “more difficult than being redeemed from evil”; “as difficult as the splitting of the Red Sea”. They spoil it a bit with the musing that severe constipation is also as difficult as the splitting of the Red Sea, but on behalf of all my colleagues, and anyone else who is tasked with putting food on the table, let’s take the win.
  • 3/20/21, Page 119 – There is a modern practice to finish the Seder meal with finding the afikomen. The host of the meal hides a piece of matzoh and sends all the kids out to find it, and then everyone finishes the meal with a bite from it. In the Talmud, we find an odd conflation of rules. First is that afikomen, an ancient Greek word meaning “delicacies”, either savory or sweet after meal nibbles, are forbidden at the Seder, because second, the only thing you’re allowed to eat after the Paschal lamb is a single bite (an “olive bulk”) of matzoh, no more. Over the centuries, those two things have been twisted into a children’s game, and a change of definition for the word afikomen.
  • 3/21/21, Page 120 – Yesterday’s prohibition of eating sweet or savory nibbles after the Paschal lamb didn’t sit well with some of the rabbis, and arguments ensue. While the majority eventually go along with it, there are holdouts who insist on their right to nosh between the lamb and final bite of matzoh. Shades of Mr. Creosote…. Then there’s the whole question of whether the final matzoh is even required, as, with The Temple gone there is no actual sacrificial lamb to eat. Some are in favor of just chucking the obligation completely, most aren’t. They do all end up agreeing that everything needs to be wound up by midnight.
  • 3/22/21, Page 121 – As we reach the end of Pesachim, the rabbis note one last thing that needs attention. Lazy priests in the Temple. They’ve come up before, and as a parting shot, they’re back in the crosshairs. It seems too many of them just declare one or another lamb brought for sacrifice as ritually impure, without valid reason, allowing them to avoid having to perform the sacrifice, and confiscate the lamb. So the rabbis declare that the act of examining an impure lamb makes the priest impure as well, and he can’t join in the festivities and feasting. Impure lambs immediately cease to exist.

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