Achrei Mos: 5784 - When Rabbi Chizkiyahu Medini, one of the great latter-day sages and author of the "Sdei Chemed", from Chevron, was invited to a pidyon haben in Jerusalem and refused to come. Presented by Rabbi Shimon Zonnenfeld at the conclusion…

00:00 Speaker 1 A blessing. In Jerusalem, the custom is that whenever there’s a pidyon haben, everyone comes and rushes for the bread over which the kohen makes a blessing. Because whoever eats from the pidyon haben—from the bread over which the kohen made the blessing—it’s as though he fasted 84 fasts. This has been well known for generations, and whenever there’s a pidyon haben, everyone comes. Once, the Sdei Chemed came to Jerusalem. He was Rabbi Chizkiyahu Medini, a tremendous Torah scholar who was familiar with all the sefarim. He had been in Chevron, and when he came to Jerusalem, they invited him to a pidyon haben, but he didn’t come. They asked him why he hadn’t come. After all, it’s like 84 fasts. So why didn’t he come? He said he hadn’t found any source for this idea in the sefarim. He knew the Torah thoroughly, but he couldn’t find a source for it. It was just a nice custom people spoke about, but he found no source for it in the Torah, and he wrote that in his sefer. So, regarding pidyon haben, the Sdei Chemed writes that what people say is merely a pleasant saying that circulates among people, but it has no source in the Torah. In Jerusalem, this caused quite a stir. It was a custom they had observed for generations: tasting the food at a pidyon haben was considered like fasting 84 fasts. And the Sdei Chemed wrote in his sefer that it had no source in the Torah; it was merely a pleasant saying that circulates among people. One of the Torah scholars in Jerusalem held a pidyon haben, and they argued about it. Was there a source for it or not? Was it true or not? And what about what the Sdei Chemed had written? The rabbi of Jerusalem was there, so they came to him and asked whether it had a source or not. He gave a very

02:23 Speaker 1 clever answer, and I’m telling this story to encourage learning the daily daf. He said: “There’s no source for it in the Torah; it isn’t written anywhere. But although there’s no proof for it, there is an allusion to it. There’s a verse in the Torah: ‘And every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.’” He said that the words adam bevanekha tifdeh—“man among your sons you shall redeem”—form an acronym. How so? Adam stands for “if you eat some food”; bevanekha, “at a pidyon haben”; and then it will count as though you had fasted 84 fasts. He found an allusion in the words adam bevanekha tifdeh to this idea that it’s like 84 fasts. That was his insight. So even though it isn’t stated explicitly, there’s an allusion to it in the Torah. But then he added: there’s another way to gain the merit of 84 fasts. What is it? When someone studies a daf of Gemara—daf, too, is the letters of 84—it also counts for him as though he had fasted 84 fasts. But there aren’t many people rushing to do that.

03:41 Speaker 2 When it comes to eating, everyone shows up. [unclear].