Menachot 103 and 104 - Same As It Ever Was

Hey there, and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one perfectly

ordinary page of Talmud each day.

Because today's page is minachot one with three and one of four, sing the praises of the

perfectly ordinary.

Behold.

One of says it is incumbent upon me to bring a meal offering from barley should bring

the meal offering from wheat as voluntary meal offerings are brought exclusively from wheat.

One who says it is incumbent upon me to bring a meal offering from flour should bring

the meal offering from fine flour as it is written his offering should be a fine flour.

If one vows to bring a meal offering without oil and without frankincense, he should

bring it with oil and frankincense as voluntary meal offerings require oil and frankincense.

What the rabbis are asking?

What happens?

If some dude wants to go all extra special super fancy and bring a primo, grade A, top

of the line, luxury mincha offering, I mean after all, these things are voluntary.

Part of some temple time finance hot shots say decides that wheat is for poor losers

and that real winners should offer bespoke barley.

Again, shouldn't he be allowed to do so as again the whole offering is voluntary?

No can do say the rabbis.

The rules of the offering are the rules of the offering and you cannot change them.

You cannot offer less, but also you cannot offer more.

The first glance, this is pretty obvious, isn't having strict rules precisely the purpose

of religion?

I mean, if everyone could do as they please, there wouldn't be little to bind us together

to each other and to tradition.

But the insight here goes much deeper.

The rabbis, after all, are master observers of human psychology and they know us mortals

all too well.

Our urge they understand is always to innovate, to seek out the different, the extraordinary,

the new and improved.

That's a terrific thing.

The sort of person who looks at the offering of fine flour and says, huh, I wonder what

will happen if I being barley instead is exactly the sort of person likely to discover penicillin

say or figure out a way to go to the moon or write some great and perfect poem capturing

big emotions in a few little words.

But grow addicted to this form of thinking and what you will have is a ruthless, rudderless

society, constantly trying to find the new and perpetually tossing out the old.

What you think about it is a nightmare.

Imagine a society in which you wake up each morning having completely dismissed all the

achievements and all the agreements of yesterday.

That person who just yesterday was your hero, uh, he's the villain now.

That virtue that just yesterday ranks so true and inspiring, time to chuck it away today.

It's not only a way of life guarantee to drive you crazy, but also one that makes community

and society and civilization all but impossible because community and society and civilization

all depend on tradition and the knowledge that come what may, some things will forever

be true and unchanged.

That the 14th of the sun, for example, will always mean that it's pesakh or that the

4th Thursday in November is always Thanksgiving or that the Minha offering will always be

made of fine flour mixed with oil and frankincense even or especially if we grow so wealthy

we can afford to sacrifice much finer things.

It's a lesson us inveterate innovators desperately need to hear.

We're all addicted to the new eager for some strange thrill clamoring to break the routine

of the same old same old.

But the same old same old is what keeps us together and in today's pages of Talmud the

rabbis urges to keep it simple, keep it old school and keep the faith.

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