The Eli B. Sitt edition and audio series of the Talmud Bavli discusses two additional tables besides the Table of Moses. There was a table as one entered the Entrance Hall: one account describes it as marble and another as gold. In fact, it was silver. Since silver resembles white marble, it was called “marble.” As we learned yesterday, if you look at Rashi on yesterday’s page, on the first column, he explains that although it was called marble, it was white like silver. Thus, when the sources speak of gold and silver, they mean gold and marble, but the term silver is used to maintain the parallel with the gold table.
There were two tables inside the Entrance Hall, one of marble and one of gold. When the priests entered with the new showbread, they placed the old bread on the marble table so that it could rest there. When they left with the old bread, they placed it on the golden table. Once the bread had been placed on the Table of Moses, which was gold, it could not then be placed on a marble table. Therefore, when they removed it, they rested it on the golden table. There was also a third golden table inside.
When the loaves were changed, four priests entered. Two carried the two arrangements of bread, six loaves in each arrangement, and two carried the two bowls of frankincense. Four priests entered ahead of them: two to remove the two arrangements of bread and two to remove the two bowls of frankincense.
Those who entered to place the new loaves stood on the northern side of the table, facing south. Those who removed the old bread stood on the southern side, facing north. Since the northern side was holier, the priests placing the new bread stood in the holier location. One group would remove the bread while the other group simultaneously placed the new bread. The back of one loaf was opposite the front of the other. As one group removed the bread, the other immediately pushed the new bread into its place, so that the table was never without bread, even for a moment. The verse says that the bread must always be before God.
Rabbi Yosef says that even if the old bread was removed in the morning and the new bread was not placed until the evening, it would still be considered “continual.” The word “continual” means only that the table may not remain without bread overnight; it does not require the replacement to take place in the same instant. As long as the new bread was placed on the same Sabbath, it is considered continual.
They removed the old bread and placed it on the golden table that was in the Entrance Hall. They then burned the frankincense and divided the bread among the priests.
If Yom Kippur fell on a Sabbath, the priests had to eat the portions of the offering by the end of the day. They could not leave them until the following day, because that would constitute remaining overnight and would disqualify them. Since the offering had to be eaten on Yom Kippur, they had to finish eating it by the conclusion of Yom Kippur, even though that was the beginning of the next day.
The final part of the Mishnah discusses a case in which Yom Kippur fell on Friday. The goat offered on Yom Kippur could not be eaten during the day, so the unusual point is that it was eaten that night, on the Sabbath. Normally, when Yom Kippur falls on a weekday, the meat is cooked after Yom Kippur and then eaten. But when Yom Kippur falls on Friday, it cannot be cooked after Yom Kippur, because that would be the Sabbath. Nor can it be left until after the Sabbath, because it would become disqualified by remaining overnight. Therefore, it had to be eaten on the Sabbath.
The Mishnah says that the priests from Babylonia would eat the meat raw. This requires clarification. Rabbi Abba bar Bar Ḥana says that they were not actually Babylonian priests; they were priests from Alexandria. The rabbis of the Land of Israel disliked the Babylonians, and whenever they wanted to give an unflattering nickname to people they disliked, they called them Babylonians. These priests were Alexandrian, but they were called Babylonian because of that attitude.
Why does the Mishnah single them out? Technically, the meat had to be eaten raw only when Yom Kippur fell on Friday, because there was no opportunity to cook it. The Alexandrian priests, however, ate it raw every year. Even when Yom Kippur fell on a weekday and they could have cooked the meat that evening, they still ate it raw. That is why the Mishnah describes them as people who were not particular or refined in their eating habits. They were willing to eat the offering raw, even when there was no necessity to do so.
The Gemara returns to Rabbi Yosef’s statement. Rabbi Yosef said that even if the old bread was removed in the morning and the new bread was not placed until the evening, the requirement of continual bread was fulfilled. But how can this be called continual if the table remained without bread for many hours? The Gemara answers that “continual” means only that the table may not remain overnight without bread. It does not mean that the table must contain bread every moment.
The Gemara then applies this idea to Torah study. If a person studies one chapter of Mishnah in the morning and one chapter in the evening, that is considered continual study. The verse says, “This Book of Torah shall not depart from your mouth; you shall contemplate it day and night.” Even though the person did not study throughout the entire day, his study in the morning and evening fulfills the idea of continual Torah study.
Rabbi Yoḥanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai that even if a person recites only the morning and evening recitations of the Shema, he fulfills the verse, “This Book of Torah shall not depart from your mouth.” This is why the statement is mentioned in the morning service. However, it should not be presented during the evening service in a way that would cause people to rely on it. A person should not conclude that reciting the Shema alone is sufficient and therefore neglect regular Torah study.
Another explanation is given for mentioning this idea in the morning service. People may see scholars studying Torah all day and wonder where this practice comes from. They may think that it is enough to recite the Shema in the morning and at night. It is therefore useful to tell them that the scholars study throughout the day because the reward for Torah study is great. This can motivate people to teach their children more Torah and to increase their own study.
The nephew of Rabbi Ishmael asked him, “I have studied the entire Torah. I would now like to study Greek wisdom and philosophy. What should I do?” Rabbi Ishmael told him, “Find a time that is neither day nor night, and study Greek wisdom then.” In other words, he was telling him that there was no available time for it. The nephew responded that the verse stating that the Torah should not depart from one’s mouth day and night is not an obligation or a legal command. It is a blessing that God gave Joshua son of Nun because he loved the Torah so greatly. It is not a requirement that every person study Torah every moment of the day.
The Torah should not feel like a debt or a tax that a person is forced to pay. A person should not say, “I have to go study now so that I can discharge my obligation and get it off my back.” The blessing given to Joshua was that the Torah would never leave his mouth because of his love for it. It was not stated as a burden imposed upon him.
The Gemara then discusses the verse, “I have turned you away from the narrow place.” The ways of the Holy One, blessed be He, differ from the ways of human beings. A human being who causes another person to leave a good path and follow a bad one is described with a term associated with misleading or inciting someone. The Holy One, blessed be He, does the opposite: He turns a person away from the path of death and brings him to the path of life.
The verse says that God turns a person away from the narrow place. This refers to Gehennah, whose opening is narrow. The smoke collects there rather than dispersing, making it extremely hot. God saves a person from Gehennah through the merit of Torah.
One might think that just as the opening of Gehennah is narrow, the entire place is narrow and therefore contains little smoke. The verse therefore teaches that Gehennah is very broad, and it contains a great deal of smoke and wood. One might further think that Gehennah is not intended for a king. Perhaps a person who studied Torah when he was young and later abandoned it would be considered a king, since Torah scholars are called kings, and perhaps his earlier Torah study would protect him. The verse therefore says that even a king is destined to go there.
One might also think that Gehennah will eventually run out of wood with which to fuel the fire. The verse therefore teaches that there is abundant wood for its fire.
Finally, a person might think that the entire reward for Torah study is simply to be saved from Gehennah. But the verse says that one’s table will be filled with delicacies. This teaches that the reward is not merely the avoidance of punishment; there is also positive reward.
The Gemara returns to the case of Yom Kippur that falls on the Sabbath. The offering was eaten on the Sabbath, but the priests from Alexandria ate it raw. Rabbi Abba bar Bar Ḥana explains that the people called Babylonian were actually Alexandrian. The statement is reassuring because it resolves the difficulty of why Babylonian priests would have followed this unusual practice. The Alexandrian priests ate the meat raw every year, even when Yom Kippur fell on a weekday and they could have cooked it. This is why the Mishnah presents them as people who were willing to eat raw meat.
The Mishnah then discusses the showbread and the frankincense bowls. If the bread was arranged on the table on the Sabbath, but the frankincense was not placed there until the following Sabbath, the frankincense was disqualified because it had not been brought at the proper time. It had remained on the table for only six days and had not completed the required period.
The rule is that once the bread is placed on the table at the proper time on the Sabbath, the table sanctifies it. After that, it cannot simply remain on the table until the next Sabbath. Once the next Sabbath arrives, the bread will have remained overnight beyond its proper time and will be disqualified.
Once the frankincense has become disqualified, the laws of improper intention, remaining overnight, and ritual impurity do not apply in the ordinary manner. Improper intention does not apply because that law concerns bringing the accompanying element with the intention of eating the bread after its permitted time. Here, the accompanying element was already disqualified, so it was not being brought in the proper manner.
The law of remaining overnight also does not apply because bread becomes subject to that law only after it has first been fit to eat. In this case, it was never fit for eating, because the frankincense had been brought improperly.
The law of ritual impurity likewise does not apply in the regular way. If someone ate the bread while in a state of bodily impurity, he would not incur the severe penalty associated with eating consecrated food in impurity, because that penalty applies only to food that was fit for people in a state of ritual purity to eat. Here, the bread was never fit for eating, since the frankincense had been brought improperly.
The Mishnah then gives a second case. If the bread and the frankincense were both placed on the table on the Sabbath, but the frankincense was burned on the following day, the frankincense had been brought too early. It had been on the table for only one day and had not remained there for the required period. It was therefore disqualified, and the laws of improper intention, remaining overnight, and ritual impurity did not apply to it.
In the third case, the bread and the frankincense were arranged on the following Sunday, and the frankincense was burned on the next Sabbath. What should be done? The correct procedure is to leave everything on the table until the following Sabbath. Since the bread was not arranged on the Sabbath, the table did not sanctify it at that point. Even if it remained on the table for many days, there was no problem. Once the following Sabbath arrived, the table sanctified it, and the period began then.
Therefore, when the bread was placed on Sunday, it did not become disqualified at the conclusion of that first Sabbath. The count did not begin until the next Sabbath, when the table sanctified the bread. At that point, the bread could remain on the table until the following Sabbath.
The Gemara then recalls a discussion in Yoma concerning the procedure for determining when the daily offering could be slaughtered. The appointed official would instruct the person assigned to observe the horizon to go outside and see whether the light had appeared. It had to be sufficiently light to begin the service. The observer would announce that the light had appeared and that it was possible to see as far as Hebron.
Why did they specifically mention Hebron? Rashi explains that they wanted to invoke the merit of the Patriarchs—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—on Yom Kippur. By mentioning Hebron, they recalled the merit of the Patriarchs.
The Gemara asks why such an elaborate procedure was necessary. Why was it necessary to appoint an official observer and require him to say that he could see as far as Hebron? The reason was that one night the moon was very bright, and the priests mistakenly thought that dawn had arrived. They slaughtered the daily offering while it was still night. The offering was therefore disqualified and had to be burned. Following that mistake, they established a system in which an appointed observer would go to the roof and determine precisely whether dawn had arrived.
The Mishnah continues with the offerings that were found to have been performed at night. They were taken down and brought to the place where disqualified offerings were burned. The rule is not limited to an animal offering that was slaughtered at night. Even if the pinching of a bird offering or the taking of a handful from a meal offering was performed at night, the offering must be taken to the place of burning.
In the case of a bird offering, there is no way to correct the act after the fact. Once the pinching has been performed, it cannot be repeated during the day. In the case of a meal offering, however, there appears to be a simple solution: the handful could be returned to the vessel, and another handful could be taken during the day.
The Gemara answers that the vessels used in the Temple sanctify their contents even when the act is performed before its proper time. Thus, when the handful was taken at night and placed in the vessel, the vessel sanctified it. Although it was not yet permissible to offer it on the altar, it had already become sanctified in a way that prevented it from being returned to the remainder of the flour.
Rashi explains that once the handful had been taken and placed in the vessel in the proper manner, the vessel sanctified it even before the proper time. It could not then be returned to the flour and taken again in the proper manner. The handful was already sanctified.
The Gemara challenges this principle. It states that anything ordinarily offered during the day is sanctified by the vessel during the day, while things offered at night are sanctified by the vessel at night. Other items can be sanctified either by day or by night. This seems to indicate that a meal offering, which is brought during the day, should not be sanctified by its vessel at night.
The Gemara answers that there is a distinction between sanctification that permits an offering to be brought and sanctification that is sufficient to disqualify it. At night, the vessel does not sanctify the meal offering to the extent that it can be offered on the altar. However, it sanctifies it enough to make it subject to disqualification. Therefore, it is sanctified in a limited sense, but it cannot be offered on the altar.
Rabbi Zeira raises a further question from the Mishnah concerning the showbread. The Mishnah says that if the bread was arranged on Sunday and the frankincense was burned on the following Sabbath, everything should be left until the next Sabbath. But if the vessel sanctifies its contents even before the proper time, the bread should have become sanctified on Sunday, and the period of remaining overnight should have begun then. By the conclusion of the first Sabbath, it should already have been disqualified. How, then, can the Mishnah say to leave it on the table until the following Sabbath?
Rava says that the question is a strong one. Nevertheless, the statement cited in the name of Rabbi Avin was not an unsupported error. Rabbi Avin had a source and a basis for his position. The issue can be resolved by distinguishing between night and day.
The principle is that night is not considered an early or premature time. Since night leads into the following day, an act performed at night is not considered to have been performed before its time in the same way as an act performed during the day. The case of the handful from the meal offering involved taking it at night. Night is not considered premature in this context, so the vessel sanctifies it sufficiently to disqualify it.
By contrast, if the showbread was placed on the table during the day on Sunday, that was genuinely before its proper time. The days preceding the next Sabbath are considered premature. Therefore, the table does not sanctify the bread in a manner that begins the count. The count begins only when the following Sabbath arrives.
The Gemara concludes that days can be considered premature, but night is not considered premature in the same manner. Accordingly, when the showbread was placed on the table several days before the Sabbath, the table did not sanctify it for purposes of beginning the count. It became sanctified only on the following Sabbath.
The Gemara then raises another difficulty. If night is not considered premature, the bread should become sanctified on the Friday night before the Sabbath, since it is already on the table. By the following Friday night, it should have remained there for more than seven days and should be disqualified. How can the Mishnah say to leave it there until the next Sabbath?
Rabbah answers that the priests removed it before the arrival of Friday night and replaced it the following morning. In this way, the table did not sanctify it during the night. The bread could remain on the table from Sunday through Friday, be removed before the night of the Sabbath, and then be placed back on the table on the Sabbath itself.
A second answer is offered. Even if the bread was not removed, once it had been arranged on the table before its proper time, its remaining there later was not considered a new act of arranging it at the proper time. It was as though it had been placed there by itself. The case of the handful from the meal offering is different because the priest deliberately took it and placed it in the vessel at night. That was an act performed intentionally. In the case of the showbread, however, the original placement had taken place on Sunday, and the fact that it remained on the table until the Sabbath did not constitute a new placement on the Sabbath.
Thus, if a monkey had placed the showbread on the table, the table would not sanctify it merely because it happened to remain there until the proper time. The act of placement must be performed in the required manner. The original placement on Sunday was valid as an act of placement, but it was premature. The later passage of time did not transform it into a new placement on the Sabbath.
This is the distinction between the meal offering and the showbread. In the meal offering, the priest performed the act of taking the handful at night, and the vessel sanctified it enough to disqualify it. In the showbread case, the bread was placed on Sunday, and nothing occurred until the following Sabbath. The table did not sanctify it merely because the bread happened to remain there.
The final Mishnah states that the two loaves brought on Shavuot must be eaten over a minimum of two days and a maximum of three. The Gemara explains the different possibilities according to when Shavuot occurs. If Shavuot falls on Sunday, the loaves must be baked before the festival, since they cannot be baked on the festival itself. They would then be eaten on the second day from baking. If Shavuot falls on Monday, the loaves are baked on Friday, because they cannot be baked on the Sabbath, and they are eaten three days later.
When there are two consecutive festival days, the calculation can extend further. If the festival begins on Friday, the loaves may have to be baked on Thursday, making the following Sabbath the third day from baking. In the case of Rosh Hashanah occurring on Wednesday, the following Sabbath is Yom Kippur, and the priests cannot eat the loaves on Yom Kippur. They therefore eat them after Yom Kippur.
In the laws of eating sacred offerings, the night is counted as part of the preceding day. Therefore, the night following the Sabbath can still be considered part of the Sabbath for this calculation. Without that rule, the loaves might appear to have extended beyond the permitted number of days. Since the night is counted together with the preceding day, the calculation remains within the required period.
The Gemara then discusses vows and voluntary offerings. It states that personal vow offerings and voluntary offerings may not be brought on a festival. One explanation is that the Sages were concerned that a person would say, “I can bring this offering on the festival, so I will wait until the festival.” Someone who made a vow in the month of Tammuz might decide to wait until Sukkot to bring it. By the time Sukkot arrived, he might have delayed the offering beyond the proper time.
According to that explanation, the prohibition would be rabbinic, based on a concern that the person might delay the offering. Biblically, it would otherwise be permitted. But another explanation says that the prohibition is biblical. The proof is drawn from the two loaves of Shavuot. The two loaves are a required offering of that day, and the Mishnah teaches that their baking does not override the Sabbath. This indicates that it is not merely a concern that someone might delay the offering; rather, there is a basic prohibition against performing the relevant work on the Sabbath or festival for this purpose.
The Gemara offers another reason for not bringing personal vow offerings and voluntary offerings on a festival. A person should not arrange to perform his work on the festival. If he makes a vow in Tammuz and says that he will wait until Sukkot, he has deliberately postponed his obligation so that he can perform the work during the festival. There is also the concern that he may forget the vow and violate the prohibition against delaying it.
This concern explains the ordinary rule regarding personal vow offerings: a person may postpone the offering and then forget it. It does not, however, explain the case of the two loaves of Shavuot, because the two loaves are intrinsically connected to Shavuot and cannot be postponed. Therefore, in that case, the reason must be that baking them on the festival is itself prohibited, rather than merely a rabbinic safeguard against delay.
The same reasoning applies to bringing certain offerings on a festival. One should not perform the associated work on the festival when the offering could be brought on another day. The work involved in preparing and bringing it is not necessary for the festival’s food or sacrificial requirements of that day, and therefore it should not be performed then.
In summary, the discussion distinguishes between an offering that may be delayed and an offering whose date is fixed. In the case of personal vows and voluntary offerings, the concern may be that a person will postpone the offering and eventually forget it. In the case of the two loaves of Shavuot, the prohibition is not based on that concern, because the offering must be brought on Shavuot. Rather, the relevant work itself may not be performed on the festival.