Menachot 61 and 62 - Raise Your Lambs in the Air

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

page of Talmud each day.

And today's pages, in a hot 61 and 62, deliver a stunning masterclass on how to be religious.

Like all lessons worth learning, this one too unfurls slowly and is well worth every drop

of our attention.

So let's begin.

The Mishnah teaches that the two loaves and the two lambs are waived in the following

manner.

The priest places his two hands below the lambs, extends them to each of the four directions

and brings them back, then raises and lowers them.

That's the act known as Snufah, holding up the sacrifices in the air and waving them in

all directions before raising and lowering them.

It's appealing and very cinematic.

We can almost imagine the priest, all dressed in white, holding up those lambs and these

loaves, hoisting them in the air for all to see before waving them about dramatically.

But why, pray tell, all the dramatic waving?

Today's death gives us not one, but three divergent explanations.

Rabiqya Baraba says that Rabi'ohan says, he extends the lambs and brings them back in

order to dedicate them to he, to whom the four directions belong.

He raises and lowers them in order to dedicate them to he, to whom the heavens and the earth

belong.

Make sense?

God, after all, is the creator of all things.

So what better way to acknowledge his omnipresence and omnipotence than pointing our offerings

in all directions to suggest that we understand full well, that God is here, there, and

truly everywhere.

It's a simple, elegant, and soulful explanation, so we're a bit surprised to learn that

while the rabbis in Babylonia seemingly endorsed this beautiful and spiritual notion, their

colleagues over in the land of Israel had a radically different take.

In the West, the Talmud continues, Eratis Rehr, they taught the idea like this, Rabiqya

Baraba'uqwa says that Rabi'ohsi Baraba'haninah says, he extends the lambs and brings them

back in order to request a halt to harmful winds and storms that come from all directions.

Similarly, he raises and lowers them in order to halt harmful do's and rains that come

from above.

Nevermind, sweet and ephemeral recognitions of God's powers goes to this explanation.

We are human, we live right here in this world, which means that the things that matter to

us are earthly things, like winds and rains and dew.

And what really do we pray for if not protection against such completely plausible disasters?

The act of Tsunufa, according to this interpretation, is not an almost new age tribute to God's

powers, call it a sky acknowledgement, if you will, but a practical plea to keep the

earth safe from meteorological phenomena.

The rationalistic street continues.

Rabiqya Baraba'haninah says, that is to say, i.e., it can be derived from here that a

non-essential Mitzvah helps prevent calamity as waving as a non-essential Mitzvah, even

if one failed to waive the loaves he has fulfilled his obligation, and nevertheless waiving

halts harmful winds and do's, Rabiqya says, and one should conduct himself similarly

with a lulav on the festival of Sukkot, i.e., he should extend and bring back and raise,

and lower the lulav for the same reasons.

And this mention of the lulav, another thing we shake in all directions, brings us to

Rav Acha.

The Gammara relates.

Rav Acha, Bariqya, would extend and bring back the lulav in this manner and would say,

I am here by shooting an arrow in the eye of Satan, as despite Satan's best efforts the

Jewish people continue to fulfill Mitzvot joyously.

The Gammara comments, it is not correct to say, because this will induce Satan to come

to incite the Jewish people to sin, gloating about his victory over the evil inclination

will lead Satan to redouble its efforts to corrupt them.

So which of these three explanations is correct?

The question, as you know by now, if you've been listening to this podcast for a while,

is kind of silly, by delivering all three, the rabbis offered us three approaches to

religiosity.

You can approach religion or spirituality or mindfulness or whatever you want to call

it, by seeking out gauzy and reaffirming explanations, beautiful and soothing metaphors

about God being everywhere that help you feel connected to God, or the universe, or the

force, or whatever it is you believe is in charge.

Or you can go full cerebral, seeing your faith as the operating system that helps you download

and analyze the empirical data all around you, like precipitation rates or temperatures

or the direction of the wind.

And finally, you can perceive of your faith as a shield in a very personal and very real

war against the citra-achra, the other side, or the Yitzir-Hara, the evil inclination,

or whatever you imagine is out there personally invested in seeing you tempted and ruined

and failed.

These paths are very different, but for being honest, many of us frequently dabble in all

three, feeling metaphysical some days, and matter of fact on others, and waking up some

mornings, wondering if we're somehow cursed, and if there's something, maybe some act

of waving a sacrifice about, we can do to make all the bad things go away.

It's this theological diversity that makes faith so rich and so nourishing, inspiring

us each day to rethink our approach to the deepest questions imaginable.

This has been Take One.

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