Mishnah Yoma Chapter 2 Mishnah 3 Pt. 4

Once upon a time, the priests would race to determine who cleans ash off the altar. That ended in disaster, so there was a pivot to a lottery system, that involved counting fingers. That was the first lottery, it covered the first step of cleaning up the previous day’s sacrifice. The second lottery covers thirteen people, nine who carry up all the many bits and bobs to be sacrificed, and four who do the sacrifice itself.

I was really hooked by the word zakhu! From the root zayin-khaf-yud, meaning originally to be ritually pure or clean, it came to mean to be acquitted, to be right, to be privileged, to succeed, take possession, or gain a privilege of. (And much more! Check it out on page 398 of the Jastrow dictionary.) In this context the multi-layered meaning of this word seems to imply that the lottery winners weren’t selected just by chance, but that they succeeded. They were right. Does this then imply that they were chosen by the Divine in some way? (The runner up for word-of-the-day was khavitin / griddle-cake offering, connected to the root khet-vav-taf, meaning “to panfry”. Many of us ended up hungry for some holy pancakes!)

I really liked the understanding of zakhu as “gain the privilege of”, because it really highlights that the work in the temple was a privilege. Not only was it limited to the priests, but limited even more to a small group within the larger priesthood. It makes me curious about where that sense of limitation exists today. Who is and isn’t in the front of the room in Jewish learning? Who gets pushed off the ramp? How are we creating better versions of bringing people forward? And, importantly, who is creating those versions? What a blessing to be figuring out all of this with you, one day at a time!