Shabbos in the Beis Hamikdash - 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 Shabbos in the Beis Hamikdash. What was Shabbos in the Beis Hamikdash like? It wasn’t a particularly busy day. It was relatively simple. To give a general overview: in the morning they offered the daily morning offering, then the additional offering—which was essentially twice the morning offering, since it consisted of two lambs. They brought the lechem hapanim, replaced the lechem hapanim inside the Heichal, and offered the daily afternoon offering. Those were all the offerings in the Beis Hamikdash on Shabbos. Still, there are many beautiful, precise details here, and we’ll learn them. We’ll begin with the principle that all the acts of Shabbos are doubled. We have two lambs; each loaf of the lechem hapanim is made from two tenths of an ephah; we have two bowls of frankincense and two rows of loaves. The acts of Shabbos are doubled. Doubling is something we speak of in song. Machpelah means something doubled. Our Sages say that the Cave of Machpelah was doubled in couples and doubled in levels. The idea of Shabbos is that it is a foretaste of the World to Come. So everything that happens on Shabbos reflects the saying, “Whoever labored on the eve of Shabbos will eat on Shabbos.” It describes our state in the World to Come. That is the idea of the holy Shabbos: revealing how I take my entire reality and reveal it in a state that is a foretaste of the World to Come. It isn’t the World to Come yet; things still happen, the children squabble a little, and that’s perfectly fine. But the idea is that we can reach this doubled state, and it is expressed in everything done on Shabbos in the Beis Hamikdash. As for the vessels relevant to Shabbos, let’s explain them. There is the Ulam, the entrance hall, and in it are two tables: one of marble, or of silver—marble so bright it looked like silver—and one of gold. Sorry, a gold table.

02:29 Speaker 2 There are two tables in the Ulam. Inside the Heichal, corresponding to the inner sanctuary of the Mishkan, the Ohel Moed, we have three vessels: the menorah, the golden altar, and the table for the lechem hapanim. There are three crowns: the crown of priesthood, the crown of Torah, and the crown of kingship. The crown of priesthood is the rim around the golden altar. The crown of Torah is the rim around the Ark, and the crown of kingship is the rim around the table. The Hebrew letters of Shabbos can be rearranged to spell “sit,” pointing to kingship. This is about self-revelation. The role of kingship is to show that, ultimately, it will succeed in bringing what is above down below as well. For now, it struggles; it bears what it cannot yet reveal below. But in the future, the revelation will be complete. That is the idea of Shabbos. Shabbos reveals this doubling: for those buried in the Cave of Machpelah, life here and life in the World to Come are exactly the same life. In other words, they stand and serve here, and they stand and serve there too. There is even an opinion that Moshe Rabbeinu and Tzipporah are buried in the Cave of Machpelah, not only Adam HaRishon. The Chida cites it. Of course, others disagree: How could that be? He was buried outside the Land of Israel. Well, perhaps there is a tunnel leading to the entrance; there are various answers. But this idea of doubling points to the notion that as things are here, so they are there. So, as we said, we have two tables and the table for the lechem hapanim. Those are the vessels we’ll be using. What do we do to serve on the holy Shabbos with these vessels? We have to make the proper preparations. Lechem hapanim has three names, three. One name is lechem hapanim because

04:41 Speaker 2 it has faces: the loaf itself is shaped like a box, with sides rising on both ends. It has faces on both sides, quite literally. It is also called lechem hatamid, the continual bread, and lechem hama’arachah, or lechem hama’arachos, the bread of the rows. Those are its three names. They each represent something, and the lechem hapanim is meant to reveal something to us. What does it reveal? The doubling of Shabbos, and the fact that Shabbos is connected with a king. What does a king do? He bestows kindness. The Hebrew word for bread, lechem, is related to the word for joining things together. Bread connects the soul to the body; in the same way, the king—or the heart of the Jewish people—connects the life force of the worlds with the Jewish people. That is the idea of lechem hapanim. Before Shabbos, we need to do several things. First, get proper rest—but before that, we need to prepare the lechem hapanim. As we said, each loaf contained two tenths of an ephah, which is around four to four and a half kilograms of flour, depending on how one measures a tenth of an ephah. That is for each loaf. There are six in each row, twelve loaves altogether, divided into two groups of six. They stood on the table as follows: the table was twelve handbreadths long—about 1.2 meters—and sixty centimeters wide. It stood lengthwise from east to west. We had two rows on the table, and we needed to place both rows on it. Each loaf was ten handbreadths by five—one meter by fifty centimeters, half a meter. So we have a block of bread like that. How did they arrange the bread? They baked it in molds. There were three molds. The first was used to shape the bread while it was still dough, holding it together.

06:59 Speaker 2 That mold was made of metal. Then there was another mold. They took the dough after it had risen a little and placed it in the second mold, which was also made of metal. They baked it in that mold. Notice that, again, they always baked two loaves at once. Always two: one from here and one from there, one from each side. We build this world and the World to Come together. So they took the bread in the second metal mold and put it in the oven. Where was the oven? In the Chamber of the Bakers of the Lechem Hapanim, located in the Beis Hamoked. There was a chamber there opposite the Chamber of the Lambs, and in that chamber they prepared the lechem hapanim in a large oven, two loaves at a time. That was the second mold. The third was a gold mold. Once the bread was fully baked, they removed it from the metal mold and placed it in the gold mold to cool. After making twelve such loaves before Shabbos, each row weighs four times six, twenty-four kilograms or more, depending on the calculation. That’s quite a weight. So they carefully took the loaves and placed them on the marble table in the Ulam. There they waited until the next day, Shabbos, when we would come and replace them. Now, someone entering the Ulam would see those loaves laid out in two rows of six. On the table for the lechem hapanim were the loaves from the previous week. Before Shabbos, we made sure we would be able to replace them on Shabbos. Between the loaves were rods—half-rods—which allowed air to circulate between each loaf. Before Shabbos, we removed all those rods and carefully placed them on the floor. It isn’t clear

09:16 Speaker 2 Exactly how to do it. Some of the early commentators raise a fairly justified outcry about this: What is this? Is this what it looks like to serve before a King—to take the table apart and set down its pieces? It looks like some kind of garage. I really sympathize with those commentators, and rightly so. Unfortunately, it isn’t clear to us exactly how it was done. What did they do with the table of the showbread? When did they take it apart? Where did they put the rods? Was there an orderly place for them? Presumably there was. It doesn’t make sense that they just set them down anywhere. It could be that this was how the service looked; we don’t know. In any case, the table was built so that when we came on Shabbos with two arrangements, two sets of six loaves, we could use the new set to push out the one being replaced. There was a special miracle with this bread, which we’ll discuss later. How many miracles were happening with it all the time! Now we have loaves at the entrance, freshly baked on Friday, and we have the loaves on the table of the showbread in the Heichal, on the right-hand side, to the north—the table was in the north. We’ve removed the fourteen rods, and we’ve also taken out what will allow us to move the loaves and take them off the table. Now Shabbos arrives. The kohanim certainly immerse in the mikveh; everyone gets organized and prepares everything, including, of course, the lambs for the morning burnt offering, and they begin the day’s service. The day’s service proceeds as it does every day. There is a lottery, as there is every day, though of course no fire is lit; that fire has been burning since before Shabbos. They determine who will perform the tasks of the morning tamid offering, and the kohanim who perform those tasks are also the ones who perform the service for the Shabbos offerings. Then, after they finish the morning tamid, they bring two lambs. They bring those two lambs in a way very, very similar, almost

11:21 Speaker 2 identical to the way they bring the morning tamid offering. They bring the burnt offerings, inspect them, bring them to the rings, and the kohanim slaughter them. The blood is applied in two applications that count as four, because these are burnt offerings. They take them, cut them up, including the heads, and set them down. They are placed elsewhere—not, admittedly, directly before Hashem. Since there is also the tamid and they want to make a distinction, they place them on the eastern side, a little farther from the ramp. That is where they place the two lambs of the musaf offering. They place them on the ramp, and then, at the end of the musaf service, they come and burn them on the large pyre. That is the musaf. Of course, we perform this service with the same care and the same fear of Heaven with which we perform all the services. The kohanim now burn the two lambs. So we essentially have three lambs—or portions of lambs—lying on the large pyre: one from the morning tamid and two from the musaf. Then they perform the wine libation. Some say they do that after the bread, but now we come to the stage of replacing the showbread. What do they do? Eight kohanim approach the area of the Ulam. There is a disagreement about which kohanim belong to the outgoing watch and which to the incoming watch. On Shabbos, two watches serve: a family group from the outgoing watch and a family group from the incoming watch. Shabbos was when the watches changed over. That is, the watches would arrive joyfully and meet. The kohanim would be blessed at the end of the morning prayers. They would say the morning prayers and then add a special blessing for the kohanim. What was the special blessing? “May it be the will of He Who causes His Name to dwell in this House that He cause love, brotherhood, peace, and friendship to dwell among you.” We need to bless the kohanim: yes, you have come to serve in the House,

13:44 Speaker 2 but there should be peace. We bless the incoming watch now, not the outgoing one. What the outgoing watch did this week is already done, but the incoming watch needs this blessing. In the Beis Hamikdash there is pressure, there is work, people come, there are halachos, and if we haven’t done a particular task for even half an hour, we may have forgotten a little. All kinds of things happen. So this shows us how weighty the service in the Beis Hamikdash is, and how special it is. The eight kohanim arrive, four from the incoming watch. It seems straightforward that those who bring the new arrangements belong to the incoming watch, and those who remove the old ones belong to the outgoing watch, but there are different opinions about this. In any case, four kohanim come empty-handed, and four come carrying things: two each carry one arrangement of bread, meaning six loaves. We said that weighs between twenty-four and thirty kilos, perhaps even more. The other two carry two bowls. A division of labor—and there’s already a reason why a division of labor might not be entirely fair. “I’m not taking the arrangement; it’s heavy!” “What’s wrong with you?” So they might raise one objection or another. In any case, two carry the two arrangements, each weighing thirty kilos, and two carry the two bowls. Each holds one frankincense bowl, weighing about four hundred grams. Those are the four kohanim we have here. What do they do? The kohanim with the full arrangements, carrying the showbread, stand to the north, and the empty-handed kohanim stand opposite them to the south. The kohanim with the full arrangements signal to the empty-handed kohanim to begin carefully drawing out their arrangements of showbread, and they draw them out carefully. Now, the arrangement on the table has been standing there for a week, and usually

15:54 Speaker 2 that bread remains warm, as though it had just come out of the oven—the same warmth, the same freshness, the same crispness. So they have to be careful. They take it with great care, and the two who brought the new arrangements begin using them to push the old arrangements out, little by little. This way, no more than a handbreadth of the table is ever left without showbread, because it is called “bread before Me continually.” They make sure there is bread on the table the whole time. So we have two arrangements of bread—two... four arrangements. This happens simultaneously. Two kohanim receive the old arrangements on the south side of the table, while two kohanim push with the complete new arrangements on the north side. Little by little, those who came empty-handed take the old arrangements into their hands, while those who brought the new arrangements from the marble table in the Ulam free their hands by setting the new ones down. Now the new bread is on the table, where it will remain for an entire week. We would do this at about one or one-thirty in the early afternoon, immediately after musaf. It took some time. Then those who entered with the bowls placed the new bowls on the table, and the four who had come empty-handed left: two with the two arrangements of bread, and two with the bowls. Now, with consecrated offerings, there is something we may have mentioned before: a concept called a matir, something that permits the rest. With an offering, you cannot benefit from any of it, or say that it has been offered or has atoned, unless its matir has been offered. Its matir permits the other parts of the offering. This is more relevant to offerings that are eaten. For example, a sin offering needs four applications of blood corresponding to the four corners. We

18:06 Speaker 2 Until we apply the blood, the offering’s permitting rite has not been performed, so the offering has not yet brought atonement. After the four applications of blood, they could cut up the sin offering, remove its sacrificial portions and burn them on the altar. That is the second permitting rite, which permits the remaining meat of the sin offering to be eaten by the kohanim in the courtyard. Similarly, the permitting rite for the showbread is the two bowls of frankincense. Until they were burned on the altar, the bread could not be eaten; it was forbidden to eat it. And if something happened to the bread—if it broke before the permitting rite was performed—that was a problem. There are many situations and many laws dealing with this. So where were those two bowls of frankincense burned? On the altar’s second fire. In the morning, we had taken coals from that fire to place on the golden altar and burn the incense. What remained—the coals left in that fire, because we had not taken all of them, only four kav, about four liters, which is not all that much, and we had put on much more—we burn the bowls of frankincense on that second fire, the one for the incense. That permits the bread to be eaten, and then we divide the showbread between the two watches. If the Kohen Gadol also wants to eat from the showbread, he can receive up to six of the loaves, three from each watch. In principle, each watch is entitled to six loaves, one of the two arrangements of bread. Then the Kohen Gadol can decide to take six loaves, three from each watch, leaving each watch with three loaves,

20:26 Speaker 2 three loaves of showbread each. As we said, each loaf weighs about four kilograms. When there is a large watch, the showbread is divided in the courtyard. Where does that take place? For the incoming watch, which has greater standing, it takes place in the north; for the outgoing watch, in the south. That is the point about Bilgah, which always receives its share in the south, as the Gemara says there. In any case, Chazal said some very striking things about this division: how the three or six remaining loaves of showbread were divided within a watch. But this showbread had to be eaten inside the courtyard. That meant each person received at least a kezayis, or even less. And there was another miracle associated with it: even if someone took only a few crumbs of the bread, once he tasted them, they brought blessing to his stomach and left him completely satisfied. He did not need to eat anything else that day. That shows how wondrous this was. There was also a certain dynamic among the kohanim. The Gemara says, “The modest ones withdrew their hands.” Who were the modest ones? Apparently, as we mentioned earlier and elsewhere, the atmosphere in the Beis Hamikdash was not simple. Everyone wanted a share in the sacred service; everyone wanted to be close to the Beis Hamikdash; everyone wanted to burn the incense so they would become wealthy. Everyone wanted to be holy and elevated. But the modest ones did not like the pushing and the cries of “Give it to me!” or “What about me? I didn’t get any!” So they simply withdrew their hands and did not eat the showbread. They ate the other things that kohanim were entitled to eat in the Beis Hamikdash, but they ate none of the showbread, and the Gemara praises them. Here we learn how essential and important it is to make the division—the true division—in a spirit

22:40 Speaker 2 of Ahavas Yisroel: to divide the showbread properly, recognizing that it represents a connection with the King, with the true reality. We must know that everything comes from Hashem. What will all the arguments do for us? What will all the quarrels accomplish? After all, Hashem is the One who determines this division. And that same showbread brings us to the destruction of Nov. It says: “The kohen answered David and said, ‘I have no ordinary bread at hand, only holy bread, if the young men have kept themselves from women,’ etc. And the kohen gave him holy bread, for there was no bread there except the showbread, which had been removed from before Hashem to put hot bread in its place on the day it was taken away.” This is what is related in Shmuel, in the account from the well-known haftorah: King David fled from Shaul, and Yonasan asked what David had done. Shaul became angry with Yonasan as well, and Yonasan then knew that David had to flee. Chazal say that Yonasan should have sent a few sandwiches along with David, to prevent bloodshed. What happened was that David arrived in a state of dangerous hunger. King David came to Nov, to the kohanim, in danger, and told them, “This is the situation. My life is at risk.” But they had no bread to give him. Think how poor they were: they had no ordinary bread to give him, or even a vegetable or anything else. You have to give someone in a state of ravenous hunger something to eat—even a few vegetables; it does not have to be bread. Apart from the showbread, they had nothing to give him, so they gave him the showbread. That led to the denunciation by Doeg the Edomite, and all of Nov was destroyed because of that denunciation. And we need to understand what receiving someone means. This shows us—

24:38 Speaker 2 Chazal are teaching us here about welcoming guests and receiving people warmly, and we must make a very great effort in this. May it be Hashem’s will that we see all these wondrous things with the Beis Hamikdash, speedily in our days. Amen.