non-parsha bit: Yom Kippur

[cellio]

On Yom Kippur afternoon we recall the service of the high priest on the day of atonement. The mishna tells us of the preparations made on behalf of the high priest: seven days ahead of time he is secluded, and a back-up high priest is appointed lest anything cause the original one to become unfit for duty. Rabbi Yehudah said that in addition, another wife is prepared for the high priest in case his wife dies in that time, because it is written "he shall make atonement for himself and his house"; "his house" includes his wife. (Yoma 2a)

(As you might expect, the mishna also discusses in a fair bit of detail the preparations on the night before and day of the service.)

I think after Simchat Torah, instead of doing parsha teachings for another year, I'm going to switch to teaching something from talmud, following the daf yomi (page a day) cycle. We'll see how that goes.

Comments

[chaiya.livejournal.com]

I vote for daf yomi! I enjoy your parsha discussions, and want to hear more about your thoughts on the Talmud. :)

[cellio]

Thanks! I figure there ought to be plenty of material to choose from; they pack a lot into a single page of talmud.

(Hmm. I'm going to need a new icon.)

[wrenb.livejournal.com]

Daf yomi would be really interesting. I don't have any exposure to Talmud at the moment.

As for the Yom Kippur prep, that's one thing I love about Judaism. It seems like the rabbis thought of everything (or most things that could possibly happen at the time). Thanks for posting it.

[cellio]

As for the Yom Kippur prep, that's one thing I love about Judaism. It seems like the rabbis thought of everything (or most things that could possibly happen at the time).

The later misneiyot make it clear that the rabbis were prepared for everything from "accidentally becomes ritually impure" to "is a clueless dolt who has to be taught what to do in words of few syllables". All sorts of contingencies...