The Korban Pesach - Rabbi Yaron Yitzchok Lederman shlita

00:02 Speaker 1 You’re listening to the “Lema’an Yishme’u” podcast from Machon Halacha Chabad.

00:09 Speaker 2 At long last, the time has come. We’ve reached the time of the Geulah; with Hashem’s help, we’ll celebrate the festival of redemption. Pesach—we want to talk a little about what Pesach is, and understand it a bit through the subject of korbanos. We’re all hoping that on Seder night we’ll be sitting there not just with matzos and paper bags—perhaps we’ll still have the bags—but that we’ll sit down on Pesach and eat the Pesach offering. So today we’ll try to learn a little and get a clearer idea of what this is and what the procedure is. Let’s look at how we approach it. The Pesach offering was the first korban the Jewish people brought as a communal offering. Yet it’s a unique korban with a special place: on the one hand, it’s communal and must, of course, be brought in the Beis Hamikdash—as all korbanos must. On the other hand, we eat it in a group, not... not necessarily in Jerusalem. We have to register to eat it. It’s a special korban, the first korban of the Jewish people. So what is Pesach? Pesach is one of the three pilgrimage festivals, when we go up to see and be seen. We come to see the full order of the festival in the Temple courtyard. We won’t have time to cover it all today, but we’ll talk a little about what we do on Seder night and about the Pesach offering. On the festivals, we have to purify ourselves. On a festival, all Jews are considered pure, and that has practical implications for many halachos. For example, if an am ha’aretz opens a barrel of wine, you can take wine from him during the festival, but once the festival ends, suddenly you can’t. There are various special laws concerning the general purity of the Jewish people during a festival. So Jews need to purify themselves for the festival—specifically, from impurity caused by contact with the dead. We

01:58 Speaker 2 are all impure from contact with the dead today. When the Rebbe comes, when Moshiach comes, we’ll prepare the red heifer—the tenth one—and mix its ashes with all the ashes that remain. Then we’ll become pure. That process takes a week, so we’ll need to begin seven days before Pesach itself. Once we’re pure and arrive at the Beis Hamikdash in a state of purity, we’ll actually be able to bring the korban. Of course, communal offerings may be brought in a state of impurity, but we don’t want to rely on that; we want to come to Pesach pure. So the stages of purification are as follows: A Jew realizes that he’s impure from contact with the dead, or someone tells him. The kohanim, with the ruach hakodesh they had, would tell us that we weren’t allowed to be in the Beis Hamikdash. There are many stories about this. In any case, we know we’re impure from contact with the dead. We were [unclear], we went on mivtzoim, we were in Ukraine, G-d forbid—it doesn’t matter what happened. We were somewhere and came into contact with a dead person. A dead body conveys impurity. A Jewish person who has died conveys impurity under the same roof: it’s enough simply to pass over the grave or over the body. With a non-Jewish person who has died, physical contact is required. That’s why the Arabs put a cemetery by the Eastern Gate. They have a tradition that Moshiach will come through the Eastern Gate, so they put a cemetery there to prevent him from entering because of the graves. But they don’t know that a non-Jewish person who has died does not convey impurity under the same roof. So one can pass between those graves without touching a grave, and enter the Eastern Gate even today without becoming impure. Besides, in the Third Beis Hamikdash, the Eastern Gate will be moved much farther toward the Mount of Olives. Now, if a person is impure from contact with the dead, what does he need to do? First of all, he needs to learn the laws of purity and impurity, because a

03:57 Speaker 2 person who doesn’t know at least the basics of those laws might, even after being sprinkled with the purification water, touch things that can make him impure again. Then the sprinkling won’t have helped him at all. Keys, glasses—anything that touched the dead body—can be among the objects that received impurity from a primary source and can therefore cause the person to remain impure. So after becoming pure, a person needs to be careful. What is the order of purification? He begins counting the days while guarding against sources of impurity. He is sprinkled on the third and seventh days of his purification. On the third day, he goes to a special office in his city. Every city in the Land of Israel has such an office, where people impure from contact with the dead are sprinkled with water prepared using the ashes of the red heifer. One sprinkling is enough; just one drop has to touch his skin, anywhere on his body. His purification process began on the first day he started counting. On the second and third days he comes; on the third day he is sprinkled. He then counts the remaining days until the seventh day, when he is sprinkled again. That’s the second sprinkling, and he’s finished with the ashes of the red heifer. He immerses in a mikveh before sunset, and when the sun has set and the stars come out on the seventh day, he is pure and can go up to the Beis Hamikdash. Of course, there are many details, but those are the main points. With Hashem’s help, may we become pure in our days. As for the ashes of the red heifer, there were tubes, long pipes of a sort, set into the eastern wall of the Second Beis Hamikdash. Each time, ashes were taken from them to mix with the ashes of all the red heifers. In other words, we still have some ashes from the first red heifer, prepared by Moshe Rabbeinu; they are now hidden beneath the Beis Hamikdash. And from the red heifers prepared afterward,

05:57 Speaker 2 too, we have the ashes of them all. We mix them all together to maintain a continuous chain of purification, with the most extraordinary power there is. Soon, speedily in our days, we’ll bring the korban Pesach. You know, in ’67, during that extraordinary lightning war, when the Rebbe said, “Who has not heard this great shofar?”—the Rebbe said it was advisable to stay away from Jerusalem, or even forbade shluchim from being near Jerusalem, so they would not become obligated to bring the korban Pesach. It was that close and that real: the korban would have to be brought. As the Rambam rules, korbanos may be offered even if there is no altar there, no Beis Hamikdash, no building. You build an altar and offer them, because the site of the Beis Hamikdash is there. For a communal offering, impurity is overridden, so korbanos can be offered. The Rebbe said that someone in the Jerusalem area would become obligated to bring the korban Pesach, and therefore told people to keep their distance. So let’s learn a little about this remarkable prospect. What does it mean to understand the korban Pesach? What do we need to do? Suppose the Beis Hamikdash suddenly appears right now, in the middle of our scrubbing the dishes. We want to know how to bring the—bring the korban Pesach, and what we need to do. Let’s go through the stages. First, let’s read what the Mishnah says. The last Mishnah of Eizehu Mekoman, which we recite every morning, tells us: “The firstborn offering, the tithe offering, and the Pesach offering are kodashim kalim. They may be slaughtered anywhere in the Temple courtyard, and their blood requires one application, provided it is applied opposite the base of the altar.” What does this Mishnah mean? It goes on to discuss how they are eaten: the firstborn offering, the tithe offering, and the Pesach offering each have different laws about how they are eaten. But as for how they are handled,

07:53 Speaker 2 Theirs with the gifts is the same thing. So let’s learn a little about this order. What does the Mishnah tell us? First of all, we have to make preparations. What preparations? “You shall not slaughter the blood of My sacrifice while you have chametz.” None of us may have chametz when we slaughter the Pesach offering, and that is why we burn the chametz so early. That is why, tired as we are after all that scrubbing, we hurry to get up early, eat our meal early, brush our teeth, and make sure we have no chametz left. Then we burn the chametz. That’s it—we’ve gotten rid of the chametz, and now we can move on to the second part of the day, which is much more sacred. That is why work is prohibited then. Unlike other Yom Tov eves, on Erev Pesach after midday it is forbidden to get a haircut. That creates a real problem, because one may not enter a festival looking unkempt, so one has to make sure to get a proper haircut early. In any case, why is work prohibited from midday? Because it is already the time for bringing an offering. As we mentioned, there is a positive commandment concerning the order of the offerings: there are two daily offerings, the morning tamid and the afternoon tamid. All the offerings the Jewish people bring are brought between those two. The morning offering comes first, and the afternoon offering concludes them all. There is one unique offering that we bring after the afternoon tamid. This is derived from verses discussed in Tractate Pesachim: “in the evening” is stated twice, and it is stated once more regarding the Pesach offering. That additional mention teaches us that its time for offering extends even after the afternoon tamid. And if, by mistake, they slaughtered the afternoon tamid before the Pesach offering—sorry, if they slaughtered the Pesach offering before the afternoon tamid—then they must keep stirring its blood so it does not congeal, bring the afternoon offering, and only then

09:43 Speaker 2 sprinkle the blood of the Pesach offering. So we’ve prepared and burned the chametz. Now, of course, we have all purified ourselves for the festival; all Jews are ritually pure for the festival, and we have purified ourselves from impurity caused by contact with the dead. We need to go up to Jerusalem. Pesach is a Yom Tov like the other festivals, and we need to bring the offerings we know about: the olas re’iyah, the shalmei chagigah, and the shalmei simchah. But the Pesach is a special offering, brought only at night. We don’t slaughter an offering at night, but the Pesach is different, because it was the first offering the Jewish people brought as a people, together as one. So what do we do? We are ritually pure, and we go to the market while it is still day. With the Pesach offering in Egypt, they did this four days earlier and tied it to the leg of the bed. Many laws are learned from those four days. The Pesach in Egypt was on a Thursday. So they took it on Sunday—Shabbos Hagadol was just before that, and that is one of the great things associated with it—and tied it to the bed, keeping it until Thursday. We, though, take it on the day of Erev Pesach. For example, if Pesach falls on a Tuesday, we need to bring it on Monday afternoon, and we bring it to the Temple courtyard. We are careful with it, but we do not consecrate it. We must not consecrate the Pesach offering yet. In general, we do not consecrate an offering early, because we do not want to risk misusing consecrated property. A person has an animal that he intends to bring as an offering. At the moment, it is just an animal bought at the market. We have checked it for blemishes, and it is free of blemishes, ritually fit, and everything is in order according to halachah. So we now have an animal for an offering—but it is not yet an offering. This animal is an animal

11:41 Speaker 2 that we bring to the Beis Hamikdash. Hillel would consecrate the animal at the gate of the Beis Hamikdash. Why did he consecrate it there? So that he would not end up in a situation where, for example, he led it up the steps, pulled it a little too hard, and it got hurt. It could become disqualified by an injury above the knee, or even become a treifah. That animal would then be unfit and could not be offered. He did not want to risk bringing an offering improperly. So only when he knew the animal was standing beside him at the entrance to the Beis Hamikdash would he take it and consecrate it: “This is consecrated; this is for my Pesach offering.” It would then acquire kedushas damim, meaning that its monetary value became consecrated. So now we have an animal whose value is consecrated, and Hillel the Elder taught us for all generations that we can bring it into the Temple courtyard, because one may not bring unconsecrated things into the courtyard. We therefore stood at the entrance to the courtyard. The Pesach offering can be slaughtered anywhere in the courtyard, so we would then enter with the consecrated animal. Now, as we said, with kedushas damim only its monetary value is consecrated, because the body of an animal brought as a lesser-order offering does not become consecrated. What does become consecrated is its sacrificial portions; they truly become consecrated, and those are burned on the altar. In contrast, with offerings of the higher order of sanctity, such as a sin offering, a guilt offering, or a burnt offering, consecrating them does confer kedushas haguf on the entire animal. The whole offering becomes fully consecrated. So we would take this kid from the market, buy it there, and on the Temple Mount we would be met by Temple Mount officials who received their wages from the treasury chamber. Their job was to check that we were bringing a suitable offering into the courtyard.

13:46 Speaker 2 They would inspect it for blemishes. They had very sharp eyesight, and within moments they would check the animal, send it onward, and move on. We would go farther in, pass through the cheil, the area by the latticework barrier—in the Third Beis Hamikdash, we no longer have any indication of this feature, though perhaps it will still be there—and then climb the steps. We would reach the entrance to the courtyard, by the steps, and consecrate the offering there: “This is for my Pesach offering.” After saying that, we could offer it. That is the Pesach offering, and we will now learn the order in which it was brought. Two kinds of problems can arise with a Pesach offering. One concerns the animal itself: it might be stolen or lost, it might have been used for idol worship, or some other forbidden act might have been done with it. The other concerns its owners: for example, an owner might be uncircumcised, or one of the people registered to share in it might be uncircumcised. So there are problems with the animal itself, and problems arising from other factors. Those other factors can also prevent the Pesach offering from being brought. We need to make sure the animal is protected from everything that could make it unfit, and of course we must also attend to the other matters that are our responsibility. What are the issues with the animal itself? The Pesach offering must be free of blemishes. Blemishes matter with offerings. A blemish is something visible: a split lip, a damaged eye, a misshapen ear, or a wart with bone inside it. All sorts of things count as blemishes that make an animal unfit to be brought as an offering in the Beis Hamikdash. “Offer it, if you please, to your governor!” We must bring an offering that is as fine and honorable as possible for Hashem. Therefore, at the Beis Hamikdash, before one entered the courtyard, there were officials on the Temple Mount

16:05 Speaker 2 They check that no one brings an animal in as a korban before it has been inspected; they examine it before the person arrives to bring it to the Beis Hamikdash. We’ll talk more about that in a few moments. So now we need to bring the Pesach offering. What kind of animal do we bring? Either a lamb in its first year—that is, still within its first year. For korbanos, they even count the hours. In other words, if it was born at eight-thirty in the morning, then a year later, until seven-thirty, it can be used as a korban. After that, after eight-thirty, it is already considered to be in its second year and is unfit for the Pesach offering, though it is fit for other korbanos, for shelamim and the like. So the Pesach offering must be within its first year. First of all, it must be a young animal. That means it is still young. It must be past the point when it is presumed fit. For most korbanos, that is thirty days. The Pesach offering has a special rule from the Torah: it need only have been under its mother for eight days. One of the reasons given is that there was such a shortage of lambs and so on, so they wanted to make it easier for the community to bring a Pesach offering that is permitted after eight days, as Torah law allows. But by rabbinic law, we need an animal to be past the possibility of being a nonviable newborn: it must have lived thirty days before we bring it. The Pesach offering and its mother must not be slaughtered on the same day. In other words, we must not slaughter its mother as a shelamim offering and then slaughter the animal itself as the Pesach offering. That is forbidden under the prohibition against slaughtering an animal and its offspring on the same day; it is a Torah prohibition. We need to check this. There are various prohibitions like these connected with the Pesach offering, and we need to be aware of them. But once we have checked it for blemishes, seen that it is not a treifah, seen that it is fit to be brought, and seen that it was purchased with permissible money—money

18:02 Speaker 2 for an obligatory offering, as we said, ordinary funds. We must not purchase it with maaser funds, because if we do, it is unfit. Then we move on to the people registered to eat it. Usually one person was in charge of the registrations. Who was in charge? Generally, the person who told everyone about the Pesach offering. The organizer was usually the head of the household, the Pesach offering being eaten in family groups. Because we take a Pesach offering, and the verse says, “You shall count yourselves for the lamb.” We need to count ourselves for the lamb. What does that mean? We need to register enough people to eat the entire Pesach offering. Because if, G-d forbid, we do not eat all of it, we bring it to a state where it becomes unfit: at midnight on Seder night, eating it becomes prohibited by rabbinic law, and then we have to wait until the day after Yom Tov—the first day of Pesach—to burn it. Yes, a person would take whatever was left of the Pesach offering that he had not managed to eat and burn it. But to prevent that situation, we need to count ourselves for the lamb, to register for the lamb, so that everyone knows what he is eating. The children already start arguing over who gets this piece of meat and that piece of meat, and one does not like the ear and another does not... all the usual arguments children have. But in general, the entire Pesach offering must be finished; after it is roasted, it must all be eaten. So everyone needs to... needs to be registered for it. We need enough people registered for the Pesach offering to know how many will be eating and to make sure it really gets finished. The minimum amount to eat is a kezayis, because the minimum measure of eating is a kezayis, but of course one can eat more. A person can even register for a Pesach offering by himself, and if it is a small animal or he has a big appetite, then

19:57 Speaker 2 he can eat the entire Pesach offering. But the condition is that all of it be eaten. So, as we said, the registered participants are the people who sign up for the Pesach offering, and each person needs to take responsibility for his family, for the people who will be eating. He needs to know how much he will eat, how much his wife will eat, how much the children will eat, how much the guests will eat, the uncles and aunts, the grandparents. Everyone joining must be put on an orderly list in advance, so we know the minimum number of people who will eat. And if there is more left, thank G-d, we’ll eat a little more. But the main thing is not to bring the Pesach offering to a state where it becomes unfit. The Torah says, “You shall not leave any of it over.” This is called a prohibition that can be remedied by fulfilling a positive commandment. It is a prohibition: if someone leaves some over, he has violated it, but he can remedy that violation by fulfilling a positive commandment. What positive commandment remedies it? Burning what remains. But we do not want to violate the prohibition against leaving any over. So from the outset, we register enough people for the Pesach offering to cover the whole animal, with each person eating at least a kezayis. Uncircumcised people, of course, may not eat the Pesach offering, and we may not make a group consisting only of elderly people. There is a risk that those elderly people will not all manage to eat their kezayis of the Pesach offering. Suddenly one does not feel well; suddenly another has a headache and needs to take pills afterward. So we need to register people who can eat, and others who can join those elderly people—some younger people with healthy appetites who can truly commit to eating their portions. A Pesach group may not consist only of women and servants, lest it lead to improper conduct. In the past, women and servants were more likely to come to improper conduct; today, we no longer have the laws of servants. The rabbi says that this, too, will return with the Beis Hamikdash, when all the laws of Yovel apply. And then, then it is forbidden

21:46 Speaker 2 to make a group consisting only of women and servants, because there needs to be a responsible person there to guide and lead the group in a responsible, halachically proper, and dignified way. Until when can someone register for a Pesach offering? The halachic ruling is that one can register until it is slaughtered. One can also withdraw from one group. I registered with a group in my community because I could not arrange anything else, so I joined that community group. Then I suddenly found out that my family had returned from the Rebbe and wanted to have the Pesach offering with us. So of course we would all have it together. I tell the first group, “Thank you very much; give my kezayis to someone else. I’m joining my family, or other friends, or another group.” One can change which Pesach offering one belongs to until it is slaughtered. Once it has been slaughtered, that is it: I belong to that Pesach offering, and I have taken on a financial obligation as well. I must pay what I committed to pay, and of course I must eat my portion, so that I do not cause the offering to become unfit. They were counting on me to eat at least my kezayis. So we have gone through the process, purified ourselves, and now we can go up to the Beis Hamikdash. What do we need to do to bring the Pesach offering? First of all, we know that on Seder night there are two things on the Seder plate that recall korbanos. We have the shank bone, corresponding to the Pesach offering, and the hard-boiled egg, corresponding to the Chagigah offering. We mentioned in earlier classes that the Chagigah is a particular kind of korban called a shelamim offering. We have a shelamim offering. What is the shelamim offering that we bring together with the Pesach offering? Is it the obligatory shelamim offering we bring on every festival, called the Shalmei Chagigah? Or is it the offering for rejoicing, which is a voluntary offering, so that only if I want to eat meat am I commanded

23:49 Speaker 2 To eat meat for the mitzvah of rejoicing—are there still shelamim on the festival in Jerusalem, or is that perhaps a different offering? So the answer is that there are two chagigah offerings: the chagigah of the 14th and the chagigah of the 15th. The chagigah of the 15th is the regular offering we bring, called the korban chagigah, which is brought on every festival. On every festival we bring three offerings—or, more accurately, three types. One is the olas re’iyah, the second is an obligatory shelamim offering, the shalmei chagigah, and the third is a voluntary shelamim offering connected with rejoicing, the shalmei simchah. What is the difference between them in how they are offered? There is no difference. The shalmei simchah and the shalmei chagigah are exactly the same offering; the difference is in the nature of the obligation. In other words, any obligatory offering must be brought from ordinary funds; we cannot use tithe money. By contrast, the shalmei simchah, the offering with which we fulfill the mitzvah of rejoicing on the festival, may be brought mostly from tithe money. So the difference is where the money comes from. In other words, the source of the money indicates the level of obligation attached to the offering. That tells us which offering we have before us. Of course, the olas re’iyah is also obligatory, so it comes from ordinary funds, and the Pesach offering is obligatory and comes from ordinary funds as well. Let’s return to Pesach. For Pesach, we have the chagigah of the 14th. Its counterpart today is the hard-boiled egg on the Seder plate. Yes, the hard-boiled egg signifies mourning; an egg generally symbolizes the cycle of life and mourning. What are we mourning? The fact that we do not have the Beis Hamikdash. We keep that subdued—we don’t mention mourning on a festival, which is a time of rejoicing. So why is this chagigah offering brought? Its purpose is for the Pesach offering to be eaten when we are already satisfied. Therefore

25:56 Speaker 2 they would bring a shelamim offering, the shalmei chagigah of the 14th, which would, of course, be slaughtered before the Pesach offering. They bring the animal to the courtyard, consecrate it, then once again check it for blemishes—uh, check that the offering is fit. They enter with it through any of the gates to the courtyard. According to the different views, there were seven or thirteen gates in the Second Beis Hamikdash; in the Third Beis Hamikdash there will be far fewer. We enter the courtyard with it, and there in the courtyard we may slaughter it anywhere—wherever there is room. We just need to make sure that a kohen is there to receive the blood immediately. The kohen must take the blood of the chagigah offering we have just brought. We say, “This is for my chagigah.” We enter with this animal, and we will probably have to do this ourselves—or someone proficient in slaughtering will do it. The slaughter is performed, and then the kohen receives the blood, carries it to the altar, and makes two applications that count as four, as we described with the olah. What are two applications that count as four? One at the northeastern corner and then one at the southwestern corner. One sprinkling here, one sprinkling there, on the corners, so that the two applications reach all four sides of the altar. Then we pour the remaining blood onto the southern base, skin the offering—yes, this offering is skinned; we remove its hide. After removing the hide, we take out the sacrificial portions, as we discussed with the chatas: the two kidneys and their fat, the fat over the stomach, the fat of the intestines, and the diaphragm. We also take the fat tail from a ram or a lamb. All of these are called the sacrificial portions, and we burn them on the altar. Then the offering

27:58 Speaker 2 may be eaten, and it may be eaten in Jerusalem. Of course, the meat must be trimmed of all the other forbidden fats. Those were among the fats that had to be burned, but there are other parts that must be removed as well, such as the sciatic nerve and the like. That isn’t fat; it’s a nerve. So there are various parts of the offering that must be cleaned away, just as is done at any butcher shop. Then we eat this offering at the Seder meal. We eat it before the Pesach offering, of course, and at the very end we eat the korban Pesach. So it turns out that on Erev Pesach we actually have two offerings: the chagigah of the 14th and the Pesach offering, which we will now discuss. We already mentioned—and we say this every day—that there are two daily offerings: the morning tamid, corresponding to Shacharis, and the afternoon tamid, corresponding to Minchah. Between these two tamid offerings, they brought every other offering they could: chatas offerings, asham offerings, voluntary offerings, olos, bird offerings, meal offerings—everything was brought between the two tamid offerings. This is called the positive commandment of completion: “Upon it you shall complete all the offerings.” All the offerings had to be completed before the afternoon tamid. Pesach has a special rule. What is special about Pesach? Two verses about Pesach say “in the evening”: “In the evening you shall eat matzos,” and “In the evening you shall slaughter the Pesach offering.” So Chazal derive from this, in the Gemara in tractate Pesachim, that Pesach is the only offering slaughtered after the afternoon tamid; all the other offerings must be brought before it. Since that is so, the chagigah offering that we need to bring so that we can eat the Pesach offering at the Seder table is brought on the 14th. It can be brought from the morning. Usually, an offering may be eaten

29:58 Speaker 2 for two days and one night. In the case of this shelamim of the 14th, it may be eaten on the 14th. We won’t have time to eat an offering during the day on the 14th, because we’re busy and preoccupied with all the mitzvos of Pesach, so we will actually eat it on Seder night. But theoretically, it could be eaten on the 14th, on the night of the 15th—which is Seder night—or on the day of the 15th. That is the period during which this shelamim offering may be eaten; that is the kind of shelamim it is. But there is a special rule concerning any meat from the chagigah of the 14th that we brought on the 14th and placed on the table together with the Pesach offering: Chazal decreed that it has the same rule as the Pesach offering, which is eaten only until midnight. So we bring it and slaughter it on the 14th, prepare the offering, and carry out the whole procedure, as we’ll mention in a few moments. After that, we’re ready to bring the Pesach offering. Then we take both offerings, the Pesach offering and the chagigah offering, home with us and prepare them. Yes, on Yom Tov, food preparation is generally permitted. In our case, this year Pesach falls on Shabbos, so we will have to prepare everything we can from the Pesach offering and the chagigah of the 14th beforehand, because we have time, and the rule is that anything that can be done before Shabbos must be completed then. So Chazal gave us more time. We’ll see that shortly when we look at the schedule; there’s a diagram that will help us understand it better. So we need to bring the offering of the 14th on Shabbos. We’ve brought a shelamim offering. What happens in the Beis Hamikdash? The kohanim perform their regular daily service. What does that involve? They began with the morning tamid, the morning service, the lighting of the menorah in its proper order, and did all the

32:04 Speaker 2 The offerings that had to be brought—and all the Jewish people who needed to bring offerings—brought them. You may not bring consecrated offerings into a situation where they will become invalid. There is a rule that you may not bring an offering in a way that will require you to burn it before its permitted time for eating has passed. That is why bringing a thanksgiving offering posed a problem. People would often delay, arrive for the festival, and remember that they had a thanksgiving offering to bring. Then they would have forty loaves. What would they do with forty loaves? Who would eat them on Erev Pesach? Ten of them are chametz. We have already disposed of the chametz in the sixth hour, around ten in the morning, so everyone is already rushing to get ready for Pesach. We had to... After all, you may not offer the Pesach offering while you still have chametz: “You shall not slaughter the blood of My offering with chametz.” So we need to reach a point where we have no chametz at all. They would indeed bring a thanksgiving offering and place its loaves on the upper platform to signal to the people that the time had now come to burn the chametz. They would bring just one offering for the entire community: one person would vow or volunteer a thanksgiving offering and bring its loaves, and those loaves would be our signal that we now had to move on to burning the chametz. They would remove the first loaf in the fifth hour; then they would suspend eating chametz but not yet burn it, and in the sixth hour they would burn it. So that is the preparatory order. First we prepare: we bring a shelamim offering, the Chagigah offering, and get it ready. The kohanim continue with the other services, and then the great moment arrives: they offer the afternoon tamid. When do they offer the afternoon tamid? It depends on how the year falls and how much work we have to do with and around the Pesach offering after offering the afternoon tamid. Offerings may be slaughtered only during the day, and their blood may be sprinkled

34:04 Speaker 2 only during the day. So we cannot bring the afternoon tamid as we often do, close to sunset, because then we would not have time to bring the Pesach offering. For Pesach, we now need to bring two or three million sheep into the courtyard—how could we manage that? So we bring the tamid earlier. Our Sages give us a rule about this in Tractate Pesachim: if Erev Pesach, the day before Pesach, falls on a Friday, the tamid is offered at six and a half hours into the day. Six and a half is very, very early—around twelve-thirty or one o’clock. We already offer the afternoon tamid then because we need to roast the Pesach offering while it is still day. Roasting it does not override Shabbos, so we have to roast it then, after doing all the other work. We still have to skin and cut up the animal, take it home to the place where our group will eat it, remove the sciatic nerve and all the fats, and clean it. There is a great deal of work involved with the Pesach offering, and it cannot be done in a very short time. So our Sages permitted us to bring forward the slaughter of the tamid so that we could do all the work involved with the Pesach offering. If Erev Pesach falls on a weekday or on Shabbos—that is, if it falls on Shabbos, Pesach itself begins Saturday night—we slaughter the tamid at seven and a half hours into the day, because we only need to slaughter the Pesach offering. On all other days of the year, when we have no Pesach offering or anything else to bring after the afternoon tamid, it is slaughtered at eight and a half hours into the day. It takes an hour to offer the afternoon tamid, so eight and a half is enough, and by nine and a half hours the Beis Hamikdash service for that day is finished. So six and a half is for a year like this one, when we need to roast it while it is still day; seven and a half

35:50 Speaker 2 is for all other Erev Pesachs, in years when we do not need to do many other things besides the slaughter, because we may roast it at night: that night is Yom Tov, and preparing food is permitted on Yom Tov. On the other days of the year, when there is no Pesach offering, we are talking about the regular tamid, so it is at eight and a half hours into the day. These are seasonal hours, and that is how the times are set. So that was the order in terms of timing. To recap the order: the morning tamid; then we bring all the shelamim offerings of the Chagigah of the 14th. Someone who has offerings from vows or voluntary offerings and can eat them in the permitted way, without running into a problem with chametz and so on—he needs to finish them, and may bring them even earlier to do so. It is better to bring the Chagigah of the 14th, and to bring vows and voluntary offerings during the festival itself. A festival like Pesach lasts seven days, so we will have many days to eat our offerings from vows and voluntary offerings at the Beis Hamikdash. Toward the end of the day, we bring the afternoon tamid forward to either six and a half or seven and a half hours—twelve-thirty or one-thirty in the afternoon. We finish the afternoon tamid, and then the slaughter of the Pesach offerings begins. There is the matter of designating the Pesach offering. When I go to buy the animal itself, it is not yet an offering; it is an animal. When does it become a sacred animal, a consecrated offering? Hillel’s practice was to consecrate the animal at the entrance to the courtyard, because he did not want there to be, G-d forbid, a risk of misusing consecrated property. If, for example, someone had already consecrated an animal in the markets of Jerusalem—say he wanted it to be an olah offering; one may bring an olah. He chose a goat—sorry, an olah must be male. So he chose a male goat as an olah. Now that goat is an olah, and if he leans

37:53 Speaker 2 on it for a moment, and the benefit of leaning on it is worth a perutah, he has misused consecrated property, because the animal’s body has become sacred. But if he consecrates it only at the entrance to the courtyard itself, he is not at risk of doing that. He immediately performs semichah, immediately slaughters it, and immediately carries out all the procedures for the offering. The Beis Hamikdash is a holier place and inspires a greater sense of awe in a person. So a person arrives there knowing he must do what is required. Hillel therefore taught the people to consecrate the offering at the entrance to the courtyard. How do you consecrate an offering? You say, “This is for my Pesach offering,” or “This is for my olah, my pilgrimage olah.” That is how they would consecrate an offering—not by buying it as an offering; that gives it monetary sanctity. If I tell the seller, “I want an animal for an olah offering,” and say, “Please give me this lamb,” it still has no sanctity. I bought it as an unconsecrated animal, so it is an unconsecrated lamb that I bought, and it now belongs to me. I took possession of it, making it mine. After I say over it, “This is for my olah,” or “This is for my Pesach offering,” and so on, its body becomes sacred. With offerings of the highest sanctity, as we said in the introduction when discussing the difference between offerings of the highest sanctity and those of lesser sanctity, the entire body becomes sacred at once when we say, “This is for my olah.” With offerings of lesser sanctity, misuse of consecrated property applies only to the portions burned on the altar. Anything that has a time when its use becomes permitted, when the kohanim may use it, and that may still be consecrated, has an aspect to which the laws of misuse apply. So with offerings of lesser sanctity it is harder to commit misuse, because it applies only to the portions burned on the altar. So I would take the... I bought the offering; I have

39:51 Speaker 2 I already made the list and sent it to everyone in the WhatsApp group. I bought the lamb, took a picture of it for them: “Look, this is our offering.” We brought it and sent them the picture of the offering. Everyone can see it. That’s it—this is our Pesach offering. We’ve all joined together for it; everything’s in order. The next step: if I’m in charge of the group, it’s very advisable that I know how to slaughter. I’ll explain why. We’re coming up to the Seder night, to Pesach. Right now it’s before Yom Tov, but we’re already done burning the chametz. The children are playing with nuts and getting ready; some are learning the Mah Nishtanah. Everything’s fine, but right now we need to focus on bringing the offering to the Beis Hamikdash. That’s our task. It’s already twelve-thirty; the time has come, and they’re slaughtering the daily afternoon offering in the Temple courtyard. I need to hurry—the eager are first to perform a mitzvah. I want to be in the first group. The Pesach offering is slaughtered in three groups, as we learn from the verse, “the congregation, the assembly of Israel,” so of course we need to be in the first group. When do I need to be there? Probably right after burning the chametz at nine-thirty in the morning. If I want to be in the first group, I imagine that in the first year there will be such a crush, such a crowd, that I’ll need to arrive very early. I’ll be there long before they slaughter the daily offering, standing there. They’ll say, “Excuse me, what are you doing here?” “I’m just…” “All right, move along…” “No, no, I’m just waiting here with my lamb to bring the Pesach offering.” One-thirty in the afternoon arrives, and I’m standing at the gate. I’m standing at a gate to the Temple courtyard. Which gate do I enter? We saw that, according to the different opinions, the courtyard has thirteen gates or seven gates. Where do I go in? We learned, and we say it every morning, that offerings of lesser sanctity may be slaughtered anywhere in the courtyard. I can slaughter anywhere in the courtyard. That

41:38 Speaker 2 means I can enter anywhere too, because the gates are so crowded that there’s no way to enter from somewhere else. I can’t even move. The Temple Mount is packed; millions of people are bringing their offerings. It’s a gathering bigger than the one at Rabbi Shimon’s, bigger even than at [unclear]. Millions—the Jews of the whole world are coming to the Beis Hamikdash, and we’re coming to become sanctified. So I stand at one of the gates to the courtyard, one of the gates, and wait there patiently with my offering from the time they allow me to wait. When they let me in, I’ll be in the first group. The first group arrives, and we all enter the Beis Hamikdash. But then what do I see? What meets my eyes when I enter the Beis Hamikdash? What do I see? Was everyone waiting for the important gentleman to arrive with his offering? “Yes, I brought the tickets. Here you go.” Nothing of the sort. I see hundreds of kohanim standing on concrete planks of some kind that were prepared on Erev Pesach. They’re standing in lines to carry the blood to the place where it will be applied. A kohen hurries over and tells me, “Go over there, go over there.” Where? What’s over there? There are lines upon lines, hundreds of lines of kohanim, all facing the altar—the place toward which all mouths turn. The blood of the Pesach offering needs just one application, a gentle pouring at the altar’s base. Whose blood are they carrying? The blood of my offering. Who slaughters my offering? Surely the kohanim who are prepared for that. No—the kohanim are all busy with the mitzvah of carrying the blood and the mitzvah of burning the sacrificial portions. Receiving the blood, carrying the blood, applying the blood—all those are duties of the kohanim. But slaughtering? “Sir, do you know how to slaughter? Well, if you don’t, find someone else to slaughter your lamb, because we’re working here.” So of all those kohanim, in those hundreds of lines,

43:32 Speaker 2 not one is occupied with slaughtering. The owners do the slaughtering, because afterward they have other things to do, which we’ll discuss now. So I’ve entered the courtyard with my Pesach offering, and they’ve directed me to the line where I’m going to bring my offering. I need to be proficient in slaughtering; I need to see where to stand in line to slaughter the lamb. I take my place in line, go over my preparations, the maamarim I learned, the whole account I studied, the whole how-to. And I see this whole scene, this extraordinary courtyard, with rows upon rows of people. I see streaks of gold as the kohanim move at tremendous speed, passing the full basins along and taking the empty ones back, exchanging them. Everything moved with such wondrous speed, and it will happen again this year, with Hashem’s help. We’ll see it actually happening. The kohanim draw closer. Each time someone slaughters an offering, they receive the blood. They have to collect all the blood of the offering—that’s written in the verse—so they must collect all its blood. Now, there are different opinions about what happens if a basin falls. After all, the kohanim have to stand up high. Why do they have to stand high up on those concrete planks? Because a kohen whose garments are stained—that is, soiled with blood—is disqualified. The priestly garments have to stay clean at all times. So we slaughter, and they receive the blood, and they have to be very, very careful that no blood gets on their priestly garments. Now they’ve received a basin containing all the blood of the Pesach offering I just slaughtered. How will they know that my blood reached the altar? And how can I know for certain that my Pesach offering is valid and that I can eat

45:22 Speaker 2 it with a clear conscience? Otherwise, Heaven forbid, I might be eating meat whose offering was not properly brought. After I brought it into the courtyard, consecrated it, slaughtered it, and they received the blood, that blood now has to reach the altar so that the Pesach offering can become valid and its sacrificial portions can be burned. There are two stages: applying the blood makes the Pesach offering a valid offering, and burning the sacrificial portions permits the meat to be eaten. Let me explain. The kohen received the blood in the basin, and now he dropped the basin. How does he know whether the one he dropped was mine and not the one belonging to the person before me or after me? According to one approach, each time they pass a basin along at that tremendous speed, they also call out the name of the group, or a number—thirteen or fourteen—or people’s names. There are several views on this discussed by the Rishonim. How do we identify whose blood has spilled, Heaven forbid? Whether spilled blood can be collected, and so on, makes a major practical difference. I need to know whether I may bring my Pesach offering or not. But we rely on the presumption that a person entrusted with a task carries it out. So the offering was slaughtered, they received the blood, and the blood reaches the altar at tremendous speed. There they pour it once against the altar’s base. It must be poured against the altar—against the wall of the altar below the ledge, below the red line, but in a place where the altar has a base. If he poured it in a place without a base, the status of that Pesach offering is in question. As we know, when blood reaches the altar, the offering is valid. With the Pesach offering, though, if it did not reach the base, it’s a question whether the offering has been validated. In any case, the kohanim apply the blood, and I move on to the next station. My friend and I have done it—I’ve slaughtered the Pesach offering, and now I have a slaughtered Pesach offering.

47:19 Speaker 2 And now it’s slaughtered, and I have it in my hands. That’s it; let’s keep moving. It says the kohanim walked in blood up to their knees. That means the blood in the courtyard was very, very deep because of all the blood from the offerings. I, too, make my way through that pool to skin the Pesach offering. The work isn’t over yet, because, as we said, the kohanim are busy. I take a vessel—a consecrated vessel of the courtyard—and I need to put the sacrificial portions into it. You can see it in the picture. What are the sacrificial portions? I need to know that. Besides knowing how to slaughter, I also need to know how to do some of the skinning and butchering. I really have to be a butcher or a shochet. Why? Because, again, there are no kohanim available to do this, and it’s the owners’ responsibility to bring the sacrificial portions and make sure every one of them gets into the large bowl. So now we need to skin half the Pesach offering, down to the chest, and then butcher it and remove all the sacrificial portions—all the parts, the fats that need to be burned on the altar. We said that the blood makes the offering valid, and burning the sacrificial portions permits the meat to be eaten. So now I also need to butcher the Pesach offering and remove its sacrificial portions, either myself or with someone who knows how to do it. We take those portions and collect everything, carefully scraping off all the fats that must be removed from the animal—of course, the ones relevant here: the two kidneys, the fat covering the innards, the fat upon the innards, and the lobe of the liver. There are different opinions, including those of the Rambam and Rashi; a great beis din will come and rule for us how to do it. Then we present all these sacrificial portions to a kohen in a bowl, and we watch that kohen as he takes

49:24 Speaker 2 that bowl and goes up the ramp. He, too, stands in line there on the ramp to the altar. Each kohen comes and burns the portions, because each person’s portions have to be burned from a separate vessel. He burns my portions, and I see them land on the great pyre. Fire consumes them all at once, as it did through the miracles in the First Beis Hamikdash—and, with Hashem’s help, it will be so in the Third Beis Hamikdash as well. Then the Pesach offering is permitted; its meat may be eaten. Now all I have to do is wait where I am. If I had been in the first group to enter, I would now hear trumpet blasts. Those blasts marked the beginning and end of the service. Then, after the Levi’im finished reciting Hallel—they would sing Hallel—there was an absolutely wonderful feeling of uplift, like with niggunim, a real connection. And once they finished Hallel and my entire group, the first group to enter the courtyard, finished working on their Pesach offerings, the doors that had closed earlier miraculously would open. Right? According to Abaye in the Gemara, the doors closed miraculously after everyone entered. Of course, another view is that the Levi’im simply closed them; there were Levi’im who served as gatekeepers, so they closed off the whole courtyard. From the start of the service of the offering, no one could leave or enter the Beis Hamikdash. All its gates were locked: the service was underway. So after my group finished working on the Pesach offering, the gates opened and we went out with our offering. Anyone who hadn’t managed to skin it yet would continue skinning it on the Temple Mount. There were hooks in the Beis Hamikdash for hanging the offerings, but those ran out very quickly, taken by the very first people to arrive. So sometimes people would put poles across one another, as you can see

51:28 Speaker 2 here in the video. That’s how they would skin the Pesach offering: they would work like this, with the poles on their shoulders and both hands free, removing the skin from the offering so they could take it with them. And especially with a calendar arrangement like this year’s, we need to finish skinning, butchering, and roasting it before Shabbos begins. So we would go out onto the Temple Mount, and once we were there, it was still a weekday—still Friday—so we could carry things and hurry home to Jerusalem. We have to be in Jerusalem. We’re staying with someone in Jerusalem, and that person has kindly opened the doors of his home or the courtyard he rented to us. In return, besides the rent he asked us for, we also have to give him the skin. That’s a condition laid down by beis din: we give him the offering’s skin. We hand it over—here you go, deal with it. Or perhaps we have to clean it first; that’s a matter of dispute. In any event, we would give him the skin of the Pesach offering in return for being allowed to stay at his place in Jerusalem. Then we move on to the wonderful stage of eating the offering. We’ve offered the Pesach; the kohanim have burned the... they’ve thrown the blood on the altar and burned the sacrificial portions. We’re now at our home in Jerusalem, with a slaughtered Pesach offering before us, and we need to skin it. If we haven’t done that yet, we need a butcher right there with us to show us which fats must be discarded and which other parts of the offering are forbidden. Now we need to remove them. There are forbidden fats besides... There are fats that are burned on the great pyre—the sacrificial portions we put in the large bowl, as we said—but not every fat in the animal is burned there. The sciatic nerve, for example, is

53:20 Speaker 2 not a sacrificial portion, but it is forbidden to eat, so it has to be removed from the offering too. There are various forbidden fats: fat around the heart and fats on other internal organs. We need to remove all these fats because they’re forbidden to eat. So we need to clean out the offering, and then roast it: put it on a pomegranate-wood spit and hang it inside the oven. Why a pomegranate-wood spit? Because we need something to hold it over the fire—hold it, rather—but not cook it from within. Other types of wood would release moisture, and the moisture coming out of the wood would boil from the fire in the oven. So the lamb, the Pesach offering, would effectively be cooked by that water, whereas the Torah says it must be “roasted over fire.” The entire Pesach offering must be eaten only when roasted over fire. There are very, very strict laws about this. If the offering touches the side of the oven, that part isn’t roasted by fire; it’s roasted by the earthenware. So that part has to be cut away and then roasted again. They were extremely careful: only someone truly knowledgeable about all the laws of roasting the Pesach offering, so that it would be roasted solely by fire and not by anything else, would roast it this way. They would position it—right?—with its outer organs, including the liver, at the top, so that the liver at the top would release all its blood outward and, G-d forbid, the blood wouldn’t congeal inside it. All this roasting was done at tremendous speed on Erev Pesach. Once the whole Pesach offering is ready, roasted over fire, we can, boruch Hashem, begin the Seder and eat the portions. Let’s go on to discuss just a few points about eating the offering. What does eating the

55:18 Speaker 2 A korban? Eating a korban. We said that with the Pesach offering, as with every korban, we may not let it become nosar—leftover sacrificial meat. With the Pesach offering there is an additional requirement: we have to register for it. Since we registered for it, only the group that registered may eat it. With another korban, for example, a shelamim offering, a person brings a thanksgiving offering in Jerusalem. He brings forty loaves, and our Sages explain that he brings them so he can invite as many people as possible and tell them about the great miracle that happened to him. But they did not have to register with him beforehand for that thanksgiving offering. He brought it himself and hoped there would be enough people in Jerusalem with whom he could eat the korban and the loaves that accompany it. Pesach is different: only those registered may eat the korban. So now we check the list we prepared ahead of time, make sure everyone registered for the korban is on it, and begin distributing the korban. What do we distribute? Which parts of the Pesach offering—or of korbanos in general—do we give people to eat? The laws of eating korbanos apply to every korban. We must not let any korban become nosar. That means eating everything from the korban that can be eaten; what may not be eaten, we leave aside. Broadly speaking, there are three categories. First, there is what must be eaten: the meat itself, such as the muscles, neck, shoulder, and all those parts of the animal. Eating them is obligatory. They are divided into olive-sized portions for everyone registered for the korban. There are additional parts that it is a mitzvah to eat, but eating them is not obligatory. In other words, if they are left over, a person is not liable for violating bal tosiru, the prohibition against leaving over a korban. It is a mitzvah to eat them, but they are not

57:17 Speaker 2 subject to bal tosiru. Examples are the unborn young, the womb, and the eyes of the korban. I know, it does not sound especially appetizing, but it is a mitzvah to eat all the parts of the korban. So whoever can eat them and feels comfortable doing so fulfills a mitzvah—the mitzvah of eating parts of a korban that are not obligatory to eat. There is a Mishnah that speaks of “kohanim with strong stomachs.” That is said in another context, about kohanim who can eat meat raw; there is no violation of the prohibition against eating a limb from a living animal in that case. In any event, there are also parts that are prohibited by rabbinic law and are nevertheless burned because of a doubt. That is not the ideal situation. It could be that the Sanhedrin, which will be reestablished speedily in our days in the Third Beis Hamikdash, will rule that they may be eaten, that there is no rabbinic prohibition. But for now the prohibition remains in force, so we may not eat them. One example is the fat around the gid hanasheh, the sciatic nerve. The gid hanasheh itself does not have much taste, so there is a question whether it counts as meat that one is obligated to eat. In any case, the fat around it is prohibited by rabbinic law, lest we cut off a piece of the gid hanasheh itself along with it and violate a Torah prohibition. There are also the ends of the thighbone. With Pesach, there is the further problem of “You shall not break a bone of it.” We therefore may not eat in a way that would cause a bone to break, or eat thin cartilage if doing so would cause a bone to break. That is a law specific to Pesach. There is something unusual here: with the Pesach offering, we are bound to have meat left over. Why? Because there is marrow inside the bones, inside the long bones,

59:13 Speaker 2 and the marrow is eaten from other korbanos too. But with Pesach there is a prohibition against breaking a bone. Since we may not break the bone to eat that meat, and yet the marrow is meat from the Pesach offering that would ordinarily have to be eaten, some of it will certainly be left over. But the Torah does not hold us responsible for that. We do have to burn those bones containing meat after the first Yom Tov of Pesach. This year that is Motzaei Shabbos, so it has to be done on Sunday morning. In other words, these parts must be burned. So, as we said, there are parts that must be eaten—the meat; parts that it is a mitzvah to eat, such as the eyes, placenta, and so on; and parts that are prohibited by rabbinic law and burned because of a doubt. The fat around the gid hanasheh, the thighbones, the [unclear] sinew, and all these parts are detailed in the works of later authorities. There are institutes working on this. Machon Toras Hakorbanos has spent many years specializing in the fine details of these laws and has earned renown throughout the country in this field. Baruch Hashem, we have a close connection with them. So we determine which parts of the korban may be eaten, which may not, and which it is a mitzvah to eat. May we soon merit, amen, to actually eat the Pesach offering. May we merit to eat of the festival offerings and the Pesach offerings—the festival offering mentioned first is the chagigah brought on the fourteenth, and the Pesach offering is the korban itself. May we merit the complete Geulah speedily, amen, amen.