Rabbi Dovid Bashevkin:
Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily, our 40-week tour in just 10 minutes a day, more or less, of the entire Talmud. And this week, we are beginning Tractate Pesachim.
Pesachim, if you listen to that word, is the plural for the term Pesach. Now, Pesach, normally called Passover, is a holiday that I assume nearly all of our listeners are already familiar with, along with the classical text known as the Haggadah that we read on Passover night. That, you will have to wait for the last chapter of Pesachim, which is the tractate that governs all of the laws and rituals and ideas behind the holiday of Passover. That’s the final and last chapter that talks about the actual ritualization of how we remember the events of Egypt in contemporary times on Passover night after the destruction of the Temple.
Most of the tractate is not about that. So, if you’re wondering, “Are we just going to go through the Haggadah?” No. We’ll get to it, but that’s not what Pesachim is actually about.
First, let’s note that Pesachim is written in plural. It is the only one [tractate] that is written in plural. Why is Pesachim written in plural? Not Shabbos, not Megillah, not any of the other tractates that talk about other holidays and special days on the Jewish calendar? There are a few reasons given, but the most, I think, basic reason is that there are really two Passovers, both of which are discussed in this tractate.
There is the classic night of Passover that we celebrate on the 15th of Nisan, really beginning from the 14th. That’s the day before. A lot of preparations to do. And that day, day before Passover that we’re going to discuss. But there is another holiday of Passover known as Pesach Sheni, the Second Passover, and that takes place on the 14th of Iyar, and emerges from a story that is recounted in the parsha of Beha’aloscha, which appears in the ninth chapter of Bamidbar. In the parsha of Beha’aloscha, you can look that up there, and it’s really a story of people who, because of their impurity, were unable to participate in Passover at the normal time, which is the 15th of Nisan.
Now, we’re going to get to a lot of this, like, this is the one holiday that has a makeup date. We don’t really normally have this. We don’t have a second Chanukah, we don’t have a second Sukkos, we don’t have a second Shavuos. But we do have Pesach Sheni, a Second Passover, which is probably why Pesachim is written in plural.
But let’s just give an outline of what is discussed in this tractate. The opening of this tractate talks about getting your home rid of chametz and the unique status of chametz, which is the product of unleavened bread. The definition, what types of bread, what type of grains can create chametz. What happens if it’s just a little bit? Chametz is very unique. It is not just prohibited to eat. It is prohibited to own, and you’re supposed to rid your house of it completely in a ritual that we do right before Passover known as bedikas chametz, which is how we search for chametz.
But really all of this is just a preparation for the central idea, the main dish of Tractate Pesachim, which is not the Seder, that is absolutely wonderful, but is really what the Seder is commemorating and having us remember. And really at the heart of the observance of Passover in the time when the Temple stood, what is being described in the Mishnah, what’s being contended with throughout this tractate, is the offering of the Paschal Lamb. That is known as the Korban, which is the sacrifice, Pesach. Korban Pesach, which is usually translated as the Paschal Lamb, is the central idea of Tractate Pesachim. What is unique about this sacrifice, and why is it so important?
So number one, the origins of this sacrifice, and this is very important to note, come before the giving of the Torah. You know, you have to understand the arc of Jewish history. So Jewish history begins with individual families. We have Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and their family, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah, and then the children of Yaakov, Rachel, and Leah form the twelve tribes, and they descend into Egypt.
Before they actually fully leave Egypt, and then afterwards receive the Torah at Sinai, right as they are leaving, God commands in the twelfth chapter of Exodus as they are leaving to bring a Paschal lamb. This is part of their exit from Egypt. And this sacrifice is a very unique sacrifice in all of the sacrifices, many of which we will discuss This is really unique, and I want to surface some of the oddities of why this is such a strange sacrifice.
Number one: The story begins, and this is very rare, before the giving of the Torah. Meaning this is a commandment [that], while we may return to it later in the Torah, the origins of this predate Sinai.
Number two: When did Jews bring this? So normally, all sacrifices are kind of bookended in the Temple schedule between the first sacrifice that’s brought and the last sacrifice that’s brought, which is the same korban, the same sacrifice known as the Korban Tamid, the daily sacrifice. And normally, all other sacrifices are bookended in between those. This is a rare case, the only case, where the Pesach sacrifice is brought after, in the afternoon, after that daily afternoon sacrifice is brought. So this is brought in the afternoon on the day before Passover, where all the Jews who were traveling from around the world to Jerusalem, to the Temple, to spend Passover in Israel as one of the three holidays that we have an obligation for a pilgrimage for, known as the shalosh regalim, the three—a regel is a foot. You could think of like a footstool is only going to stand if it has three legs on it. But it also is the three pilgrimages where you would go up to the Temple in Israel, and that is Passover, Shavuos, and of course Sukkos. So those are the big three.
You can think to yourself now it is not a coincidence that we have three patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, they correspond to these three holidays. This is the holiday that is the beginning of the Jewish people, which we will explore in a moment, which is really all about Avraham, the founder, so to speak, of the Jewish nation.
So the Jewish people would go up, and they would offer this sacrifice a little bit later in the day. No other sacrifice is brought during this time, to understand. But there was something even stranger about this, which is that all sacrifices have this dichotomy: Is this a sacrifice being brought by an individual, or is this a sacrifice on behalf of the entirety of the Jewish people? The one sacrifice that is probably the hardest to categorize, is it an individual sacrifice or is it a kind of collective sacrifice, is Korban Pesach.
It’s very strange. It has qualities of both. We eat it, like some individual sacrifices. It is not something that is only given to the kohanim, the priests. It is not something that is completely burnt in the Temple. But even more importantly, it’s not just individual because it had to be brought as a group. People would sign up together, and they would come as a group and offer this. Really like families would come together, or multiple families, and they would designate beforehand this is going to be our Korban Pesach. This is going to be our Paschal Lamb, and it’s representing these, let’s say, 10 people. But it had to be brought as a part of a group, which makes it sound that it is more collective.
Another thing that’s very important, and this explains the logic of the tractate, is that we’re commanded to clear our homes of all chametz before this sacrifice is given. What is the core idea of this sacrifice? And it has to do with this dichotomy that we find with all other sacrifices: Is it individual or is it collective? And this is really at the heart of what Tractate Pesachim is all about and really what Passover represents. And that is the Korban Pesach, the Paschal Lamb, was the ritual that transformed the individual to become a part of the collective.
Passover at its heart, and what this tractate is entirely all about, is about the creation, the birth, the formation of the Jewish nation. Our exit from Egypt is what transforms us from a group of individuals, Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, into a family. We have the 12 tribes, and then we take that family, and now that family becomes an eternal nation.
When do we become a nation? When does Jewish identity take hold that we become a people, not just a collection of families, not just a collection of individuals, but there is a collective entity known as the Jewish people? This is the process of leaving Egypt and then eventually receiving the Torah. And it begins in our exit from Egypt, and it specifically begins—the mechanism through which we go from the individual to the collective is the Korban Pesach.
And what this holiday represents, and what this sacrifice represents, and what we’re going to see throughout this tractate is the celebration, the commemoration, and really bringing it home and internalizing in the hearts of each and every Jew is this transition from the individual to the collective. Because Passover, Pesach itself, is the celebration of the formation of the Jewish people.
So I’m so excited to explore this tractate with you in depth, and let’s keep making Torah sweet.