הָעֹקֶץ וְהָרֶגֶל הָעֹקֶץ בִּשְׁנַיִם וְהָרֶגֶל בִּשְׁנַיִם
For the tail and the [left] leg, the tail [is carried] by two [priests] and the leg by two.
We are in the midst of breaking down who carries what of our 24 pieces of bull (which sounds like the beginning of a joke but it isn’t). We learn that two people are responsible for carrying the tail and two people are responsible for carrying the [left] leg.
The word that seemed the trickiest in this small piece was הָעֹקֶץ, from the root עָקַץ, which can mean to bend or twist, or in our case tail or sting. We know that bulls don’t have stingers so, we will go with tail.
I think it’s important to remember the bigger picture when reading about these (somewhat grotesque sounding) korbanot, which is that this is how our ancestors were coming close (karov) to the Divine, or the Divine was coming close to them. There is something beautiful about the teamwork involved in this project, how nearly none of this is done solo. Each person has their task, however small. Perhaps in a recently post-Temple era, the Rabbis are encouraging us to glean the good from the project of the Temple. Maybe they are reminding us that in our lives without the Temple, we can still embody this much collaboration in our projects to come close to the Divine or to create a better world.