הֶפְשֵׁטָן וְנִתּוּחָן שֶׁל אֵלּוּ וָאֵלּוּ שָׁוִין
[In regards to] the flaying and the cutting of both [individual offerings] and [communal offerings], they are [done] the same.
We have arrived at the final line of Mishnah Yoma Chapter 2! Mishnah 7 has been all about the nitty gritty of how many priests it takes to carry the various parts of a bull sacrifice in the Temple. Yesterday’s text established that it’s only in the case of communal offerings that the priests would follow the 24-person arrangement that was laid out earlier in Mishnah 7. Today’s text taught us that, regardless of the offering type, the meat was always prepared in the same way.
Hef’sheitan / הֶפְשֵׁטָן took me on a bit of a decoding journey! It comes from the root peh-shin-tet, meaning to stretch, straighten, strip, undress. At first it seemed like the –הֶ was signifying that the word was in binyan hifil…but the vowels aren’t right for that. Then I thought that maybe the -הֶ was just a prefix meaning “the”…but that’s usually “הָ / ha” not “הֶ / heh”. I finally realized the simple truth that hef’sheitan is just a noun! Hefsheit means the act of flaying/stripping. Though, another meaning in the layers of peh-shin-tet is “p’shata” / “plain or direct wording”…turns out the correct approach to decoding hef’sheitan was hidden in the root’s meaning the whole time!
My favorite thing about this text is how absurdly off-topic we’ve gotten. If you might remember, we’re in Mishnah Yoma, which is supposedly all about Yom Kippur! Now, Yoma did start out by talking about the holiday in question. But we have strayed so far from that path, moving from Yom Kippur sacrifices, to daily sacrifices, to different types of daily sacrifices, to the very act of preparing the meat for the sacrifices—Yom Kippur is nowhere to be found anymore. I know when I’m studying Talmud in chevrutah, it is so easy to get distracted and end up down multiple rabbit holes, each more distant from the text than the last. Sometimes this feels like doing something wrong, so I appreciate this subtle and perhaps accidental reminder from the rabbis that the rabbit holes are also sacred and worthwhile torah.