The Mishnah will continue with the phrase, “never more than the following, never less than the following,” and will bring down different laws that have limits: a minimum and a maximum. The first thing we’ll talk about is the Jewish calendar. The Goyim (non-Jews) and the way their calendar is set up are based on the sun. The earth rotates around the sun in 365 and a quarter days, and that’s how the secular calendar is made up. But the Jewish calendar is all based on the movement of the moon around the earth. The moon first appears every month as a thin crescent, and then, slowly but surely, each night it adds to it until the middle of the month. We have the full moon, and then it starts to wane and lose its image until it completely disappears at the end of the month. Then the new month starts again with the new moon. When that happens 12 times, 12 lunar months make up a Jewish year. The moon goes around the earth approximately every 29 and a half days. We’ll clarify that number in a moment to add another detail, but for now we’ll assume it’s 29 and a half days for the moon to rotate around the earth. The Jewish month can’t be made up of half days. We have to have a complete calendar and a complete day. That’s the way the calendar would work, in order to have a certain complete nature to it. So, in order to figure out how to do that, some months have to be 29 days, and some months have to be 30 days. A month that’s 30 days is called Me'ubar, pregnant. It’s extra to it. A month that’s 29 days is called Haser, which is lacking. We would usually think that we’ll alternate one full month and one missing month, 29 and 30, to come to that 29 and a half average. But in reality, the moon going around the earth is not exactly 29 and a half days. It’s really 29 and a half days, 44 minutes, and three and one-thirds of a second. Those extra minutes beyond 29 and a half days add up to more than nine hours in one year. If you put that together over three years, you end up needing to add one or even two days to the calendar to make sure that things even out with the secular calendar in some capacity. So we want to make sure that the Hachamim (sages) make these adjustments, and therefore in certain months they’ll add extra full months, and in certain years they’ll add extra short months. That’s the way the Sanhedrin will do it. There’s no rhyme; there’s no exact formula for how they would do it. They may decide, during one part of the year, to have two full months in a row or two short months in a row. There’s no necessity to have six short and six full months in one year. Some years have more than others, but there’s a minimum number of full months and a certain minimum number of short months that we could have. The reason for that is that the Hachamim wanted to be careful that Rosh Hashanah falls on the first of Tishrei, before the new moon, right before the new moon appears. If we had too many months set up as short months—let’s say we had nine short months in a year—then Rosh Hashanah would fall three days before the new moon, and that would be problematic. It would look foolish to have Rosh Hashanah be way earlier than the new moon. So therefore, the minimum they set up is the following: we don’t have less than four 30-day, full months in a year. That’s the minimum we could have. And it doesn’t seem proper to have more than eight full months in a year. That’s the range that we have. You could have a minimum of four 30-day months in a year and a maximum of eight 30-day months in a year, in order to make sure that things stabilize properly, so we’re going to have a proper Jewish calendar with the holidays falling out at the right times.
The next part of the Mishnah will talk about the Shtei HaLechem, the two loaves that are brought as a special korban (offering) in the Beit HaMikdash on the holiday of Shavuot. Two loaves are brought together with two lambs, which are a Shelamim (peace offering) of the community. The loaves are not offered on the Mizbeach (altar), but they’re waved together. Tenufa (waved together) with the two lambs, and then the lambs are slaughtered and offered as a korban, and the loaves are eaten by the Kohanim (priests) with the lambs. Even though we said that the Shtei HaLechem are brought on Shavuot, they’re not baked on that day, but have to be baked beforehand. So they’re never eaten on the day that they’re baked. Here we’ll give the rules: For how many days after being baked are the Shtei HaLechem eaten? “Shtei HaLechem ne'echalot ein pachot mishnayim.” The Shtei HaLechem, the two loaves of bread that are brought on Shavuot, are never eaten by the Kohanim less than two days after being baked. “Ve'lo yater al shelosha,” nor more than three days after they’re baked. What we’re saying here is that if the holiday of Shavuot falls on any normal weekday, then the Shtei HaLechem are baked the day before. So they’re baked the day before day one, and they’re eaten on day two. But if the holiday of Shavuot falls out on a Saturday, and the Shtei HaLechem falls out on a Sunday, we can’t bake the Shtei HaLechem on the Shabbat beforehand. So it has to be baked the day before that, which is Erev Shabbat, Friday. So it’s Friday, Shabbat, and then they’re eaten on the holiday of Shavuot on a Sunday, which is a total of three days. That’s the second din that we’re learning in this Mishnah.
Now we’ll talk about another halacha that follows this pattern: another type of bread, the Lechem HaPanim, the twelve breads, the show breads, that were arranged on the Shulchan (table) every week in the Beit HaMikdash. They were replaced every Shabbat. They were removed from the Shulchan. The two spoonfuls of Levonah (frankincense) that accompany them are burnt on the Mizbeach, and the breads were eaten by the Kohanim. Like the Shtei HaLechem, the Lechem HaPanim are not allowed to be baked on Shabbat. We’ll talk about how many days after being baked the Lechem HaPanim are eaten by the Kohanim. The Lechem HaPanim, 12 breads that were placed on the Shulchan every Shabbat and then eaten by the Kohanim on the following Shabbat, are never eaten less than nine days after they’re baked, and never more than 11 days after they were baked. How do we get to the nine days? The Lechem HaPanim are baked on Friday, then arranged and put onto the Shulchan the next Shabbat, and then they have to last all the way until the next Shabbat. They’re placed on the Shulchan basically on the second day after baking: they’re baked on Friday, and on day two, Shabbat, they’re placed on the Shulchan. They last the entire week until the next Shabbat, which is a total of nine days from when they were baked. That’s the minimum. But if a Yom Tov (holiday) falls out on a Friday, they have to be baked on the Thursday before that, which is the day before Yom Tov, since you’re not allowed to bake them on Yom Tov. So when Yom Tov is on a Friday, you’re baking them on a Thursday, and therefore you end up eating them two Shabbats from then, which is the tenth day from their baking. But if there are two days of Rosh Hashanah, falling on the Thursday and Friday, you have to bake the Lechem HaPanim on the Wednesday. So you’re baking the Lechem HaPanim Wednesday, which is day one. The two days of Rosh Hashanah are day two and day three; now day three is that Friday. Shabbat is day four, and then they last the entire week until the next Shabbat, which equals a total of eleven days. That’s the maximum amount of time that someone may wait to eat from the Lechem HaPanim, the gap the Kohanim would have between the baking and the eating.
Now we’ll talk about the fourth rule, which is a law of Milah (circumcision). A boy is given his B'rit Milah (circumcision) on the eighth day of his life. If a boy is not healthy enough, we would delay the Milah. But even if the eighth day falls on Shabbat or on a Yom Tov, the B'rit Milah happens. But if the Milah could not be done on the eighth day, for whatever reason, we never do it specifically on Shabbat or Yom Tov. The eighth day is the only day that has us override Shabbat or Yom Tov. But if we’re not doing it on time anyway, we’re not going to do it on Shabbat or Yom Tov. We’ll give the rule for when a healthy baby could not be given his Milah on Shabbat because of a Safek (doubt), if it was the eighth day. Here we’ll talk about the maximum number of days he has to wait before being circumcised. A healthy child who has no other conditions going on is usually circumcised on the eighth day. There’s never a case where he is given a Milah before the eighth day, and the limit, the maximum, is 12 days after he’s born. So the earliest day, as we mentioned, for a healthy child is the eighth day, and the latest is the twelfth day. Under normal circumstances, a child is given a Milah on the eighth day of his life. It gets tricky when we throw Bein HaShmashot, the period between sunset and Tzet HaKochavim, nightfall, into the mix. What do we consider that? Do we consider it part of the day that just ended, or is it part of the day that’s about to start? So if a child was born during that time, we have a Safek, we have a real doubt whether he was born during the day or during the night, which is the next day. So we wait until the eighth day from the day that begins at nightfall to give him a Milah, just to be sure that we’re giving it to him at least on the eighth day. But in reality, it could possibly be the ninth day. A lot of details and facts go into this, with a lot more background to be spoken out. But that’s what we’ll give for now. That’s how we normally work a Bein HaShmashot Milah: it’s looked at as Bein HaShmashot, not as, “Oh, he was born with five minutes left in the day, and therefore that counts as day one.” No, if he was born after sunset, we say, “You know what? We’re going to look at it as part of the following day.” Therefore, in reality, he may be given a Milah on the ninth day, but it’s at least eight days. So we’re going to do that. We’d rather do that than have a Safek Milah on the seventh day. That’s how it works, aside from Shabbat, in the case of Friday night. If a child was born during Bein HaShmashot on a Friday night, that means after Shekiah (sunset) on Friday night, we can’t give him a Milah on the following Friday, which possibly is day eight, because it’s also possibly day seven. Because if we are not including the day that passed, the day that’s about to end, then it’s really Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—day seven. So we don’t do that, obviously, as in a regular case of Bein HaShmashot. But we also cannot give him a Milah on Shabbat, because we only give a boy a Milah on Shabbat if we know that he was born on Shabbat. So it’s a definite certainty that we have the ability to override Shabbat because it’s day eight. In this case, we don’t know if he was born on Shabbat. Maybe he was really born on Friday. Maybe we treat the Bein HaShmashot period as part of the day that’s ending. Therefore, we’re not allowed to give this boy a Milah on Shabbat because we don’t know with certainty if it’s the eighth day or not. So we would circumcise him on Sunday, which is possibly the tenth day of his life. But if Sunday is a Yom Tov, we also cannot give him a Milah on that day, because you can only give a child a Milah on Yom Tov if it’s the definite eighth day. So here, it’s not definitely the eighth day. We have to push the Milah again until Monday, which is going to be possibly the eleventh day. If Rosh Hashanah of that year falls out on a Sunday and a Monday, then we cannot give him his Milah until Tuesday, which is the twelfth day of his life.