Mishnah Yoma Chapter 2 Mishnah 3 Pt. 2

Overall in this chapter of Yoma, we are witnessing a major transition in the ways the priesthood runs the sacrificial rituals. We learn that the “original” system of priests competing for the various roles in the daily sacrifices became, well, competitive and therefore damaging. We learn of priests who became injured or injured others in the race to reach the altar first, and the process of replacing this with a lottery. As I read this, I always keep in mind that this text is composed after the fact, and the memory of priestly infighting is of course shaped by the Rabbinic desire to reshape the system as a whole.

This lottery, the second of four, determines thirteen total priests who will carry out the various functions in the Temple. The bulk of this list consists of “וּמִי מַעֲלֶה אֵבָרִים לַכֶּבֶשׁ” / “who will bring up the various parts of the sacrificial animal”. Stay tuned, the fully detailed list of who carries which limbs in which order is yet to come. For now, I am fascinated by the way we get the term אֵבָרִים for limbs or parts. It starts with the root א-ב-ר, which can mean “to strengthen,” “to harden,” or “to measure,” and then the “measure” meaning comes to refer specifically to measuring wingspan or “wing-shaped” projections beyond a determined area. It is from that journey that the noun form comes to mean “wings,” which then extends to all kinds of limbs, sections, or body parts. I love that this language is applied even to animals that do not have wings at all! In a sort of backwards way, it reminds me of what we know about how birds with their wings evolved from dinosaurs (yes, I spend time with kids, and yes, my cool-adult-cred is measured entirely in dinosaur trivia), and how finding the points of connection between creatures that look completely different expands our knowledge of the world.

Dino-related tangents aside, I am fascinated by this list of tasks that is assigned by lottery. These are daily tasks that are messy, don’t seem glamorous (to contemporary sensibilities anyway), and out of all the days in the year there would seem to be ample opportunities for every priest to participate. So why this daily lottery? Together, we wondered whether this was an explicit invitation for the Divine to be able to choose who would come close each day, or a way to mitigate the harm cause by the system of racing. I also wonder if this is a way for the Sages who are composing the Mishnah (again, writing well after the fact), to show us the limits of the Temple system, and to remind us that we can reverence for past systems without ignoring their flaws, and that we can hopefully create better systems when we are able to be both generous towards and critical of what came before.