daf bit: Menachot 27

[cellio]

The mishna first talks about how if part of something to be offered on the altar, like part of the handful of grain or part of the cup of wine, is missing, that invalidates the whole offering. It then goes on to talk about other things that can be invalidated by quantity reductions. The absence of one of the two goats for Yom Kippur invalidates the other; the absence of one of the two lambs for the festival of Shavu'ot invalidates the other; the absence of one of the two loaves or one of the two rows of showbread invalidates the other; the absence of one of the four plants used in the lulav on Sukkot invalidates the others; and there are more cases. The g'mara supports each statement with a text. (27a)

Comments

[minoanmiss]

Well begun is but half done.

[magid]

I was at a talk Wednesday about different paradigms of sacrifice (looking particularly at the Akedah and the prophetic quote about Rachel crying for her children, both in the RH liturgy), and the speaker pointed out how the YK sacrifice is sort of a reenactment of the Akedah. And it occurred to me that the sending of the goat to Azazel is sort of the casting out of Ishmael. I'm not sure where to go with that, but it makes sense that they're a pair....

[jducoeur]

The amateur physics nerd in me is reading this and wondering about the implications of offerings as a quantized process. Surely there is a Ted Chiang story in this...