מַעֲשֶׂה שֶׁהָיוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם שָׁוִין וְרָצִין וְעוֹלִין בַּכֶּבֶשׁ
Once it happened that there were two [priests] who were equal as they were running and ascending on the ramp [to the altar]…
Back in the first chapter of Mishnah Yoma, we learned all about how the High Priest gets prepared for the special duties of Yom Kippur. Our text got him all the way up to the pre-dawn moment of clearing the ashes from the altar in order to make new sacrifices. And now, in the 2nd Chapter, in order to put all that action in context, we’re granted a diversion into what the practice of clearing ashes was like on a normal day in the Temple. At first, anyone who wanted to just did it; but when there were many priests all vying to clean, they raced! And if the race ended in a tie, a specially appointed priest would play a little finger-counting game to randomly select a priest.
But!! Notice that our last chapter opened with the word “בָּרִאשׁוֹנָה“—at first, formerly, they would do this. That doesn’t mean “formerly, as in, when the temple was standing”, but rather that this was the practice until something happened and the practice changed. In the next few days we’ll learn why…
What we have here is a מַעֲשֶׂה / ma’aseh / a story with big implications for the halakha, the way we do things. I’m reading an awesome amount of drama into the tenses in this sentence. We could read the verbs as present tense or participles. The translation above is passive participles (e.g. “were running”), but we could read it as “A Happening: there were two priests, they’re totally alike, and they run, and they ascend the ramp…” or even “Action! There were two priests! They’re neck and neck! And they are running! And they are going up up UP the Ramp!” In our more involved Talmud courses at SVARA, an important step in the learning is recitation, taking the words from symbols on a page, to an embodied production from the seat of our understanding of them. This is a text that really calls to me as a performer and reminds me that these were, בָּרִאשׁוֹנָה / at first, oral texts. SO! What will happen next?! What could possibly happen that will get us to change from the race game…find out tomorrow at Mishnah Collective!