Vayikra Chapter 7 – Transcript

Sefer Vayikra Chapter 7: Introduction to the Laws of Korbanos

Opening Remarks

A new attempt to continue our learning of the daily chapter according to the schedule of the 929 website. Since we’ve been struggling on getting it out every day, I want to try to do it this way. Maybe we’ll manage to do it live, maybe with a crowd. We’ll try to do it in the morning every day. I think at 7 a.m. if anyone wants to join live every day, we’ll try to do it every day at 7 a.m. But today we’re just starting and we’re following the schedule of the 929 order website.

The rule is that if we miss a day or miss a month or miss a year we don’t care, we just continue from that day, because otherwise we would always be stuck in the beginning. So today we’re studying Vayikra chapter seven. We started Vayikra last week as everyone else started Sefer Shemos, we’re starting Vayikra, and we’re up to chapter 7.

General Context and Structure of Vayikra

To give the general context of this chapter, as you can see here, I wrote in my chumash, where you can see on the headers on the top, the general structure of the book. The beginning of Vayikra—in other words, the first 7, 8, 9 chapters, or maybe we could say the first seven chapters, so this is the last chapter explicitly in that order—is all the laws, toiras ha-korbanos. Of course it has a story, we should have discussed that in the first chapter, but I’m going to skip that for now. We’ll get back to part of the story at the end of this chapter, the narrative in which this book is framed, in which the halachos of this book are framed.

But there are the laws of the different kinds of korbanos, and that’s how they’re framed. There’s different kinds of korbanos, known generally as:

– korban olah

– korban mincha

– korban chatas

– korban asham

– korban shlomim

Those are the five general kinds of korbanos mentioned in this chapter. Really, as we always say, there’s only two kinds of korbanos: olah and zevach. All the other korbanos are variations of that. But those are the kinds of korbanos.

The Two Series of Korban Laws

And there’s two series. That’s the important thing for understanding the chapter where we’re in. There’s two series, two sets of laws of each of these groups. So the first set is Parshas Vayikra, and the parsha of the week organized it actually very well, matches with this division.

Parshas Vayikra is the first five chapters, the first order which gives step by step the laws of each kind of korban:

– korban olah

– korban mincha

– korban shlomim

– korban chatas

– korban asham (which is a variation on a chatas, as we’ll see today explicitly)

And then another kind of korban, which we call korban oleh v’yored, which is also a variation on a chatas or asham, depending on how you want to read it. I think that’s a variation on asham, but there can be disagreement about that.

Now, in the beginning of Parshas Tzav, we have a new series of the same laws, seemingly, or different aspects, different parts of the laws of the same korbanos. So working in the same structure, in the same way, there’s lists of olah, chatas, shlomim, and so on, but they’re not the same exact laws, and we need to understand what the difference in these two are.

There’s different theories for what’s going on here. Why are there these two series of laws of the same thing? There’s some details that are here that aren’t in the previous series, but they all could have been there, it seems like, and some of them are there explicitly, some of them are just repeats. So this needs an explanation.

The Headers and Footers

What we do have explicitly is a header. So the previous set, what starts Vayikra, was only framed by this call, Vayikra el Moshe—Hashem calls Moshe and gives him these laws. There isn’t a header in the sense of what we call headers in the Chumash, where my Chumash is usually printed, centered, as you can see, because that’s a header of the text itself, right?

So here we have a header, we have a general header, or we have a general header—like not a header, how do you call a header on the bottom, a footer, right? Like when we have the fancy, what do you call them? The fancy beams. So they have like a header on top and a footer or a header, like kind of nice thing on the bottom, the title works that way. This is a midrash already.

But in any case, we have specific headers in the beginning which start—they start with a story, with a command, tell the children this and this, but then it has a header. And so do all the other kinds of korbanos in this series—they have each header. Those are the headers.

And then at the end, all the way at the end, if we’ll skip ahead very quickly to the end here, you’ll see there’s a footer, like a header again, which is, its only purpose is to give you the end. So this is the bottom header, the footer of this set, specifically of this set. We shouldn’t make the mistake to think that this is also on Vayikra. So this Torah is explicitly framing the parasha that started, and then how we get the bottom of that, the end.

So the zos is sometimes something that goes on what precedes it, sometimes it goes on what follows. We have to figure out by the context which kind of zos. Same thing as the word eileh can be about what preceded or can be about what follows.

So that’s the structure of this parasha. And as you see here in the end, in the end of chapter 7, this is the end of today’s chapter, we have this double kind of structure, right? It finishes zos ha-Torah, and then it also has asher tzivah Hashem, just like in the beginning, which is the beginning of Parshas Tzav, it started, right?

Sorry, I went all the way to Vayikra. But in the beginning of Parshas Tzav, it started Tzav es Aharon and zos ha-Torah, and here we have them specifically: olah and so on. But then, in the end, we have the same kind of ending.

Okay, so that’s the framing of these parshiyos.

The Key Distinction: Focus on the Kohen

Now, I do want to give one thing that can help us understand what the difference, what these toiros—so, of course, this word toira is where we get the word Toras Kohanim. It’s probably named for all of these different little patches in it called toira specifically, and that means something like “the law” or “the order.” You can think about exactly how to translate it in the best way. But toira is how these laws are called, and this we have specifically here. We don’t have that in Vayikra.

And I think that all these toiros, one focus that we could see, and this is why it’s specifically framed to the Kohanim, Tzav es Aharon, is that it has a focus on what a kohen does. So what a kohen does with a korban.

If you notice, the first parasha, Parshas Vayikra, very explicitly started, right, not speaking to the kohen: “Adam ki yakriv mikem”—a person, a man, and then nefesh, ish, other words which mean just an individual human or individual Yid that wants to bring a korban. And it starts from he’s bringing the korban, and then at some point the Kohanim take over. As it says—and there’s of course halacha, where exactly the work of the Kohanim begins in a korban.

If you compare, which is where we are now, and you go right in the beginning, you’ll see that it starts off from what the kohen does. So from the olah talks about how the kohen takes care to burn the olah, and the chatas and the mincha talks about how the kohen does kemitza, and there’s korbanos of the Kohanim themselves, a mincha. And in chatas it talks about what the kohen eats, and also where the shechita is, which according to Chazal is not something the kohen has to do, but it’s explicitly framed as the parts of the Kohanim they eat. Some korbanos they eat, some korbanos they just burn, and so on.

So that’s, I think, one big difference between these two parshiyos. There might be other differences, but that seems to me to be the obvious difference.

Introduction to Chapter 7

So that’s the general introduction to this parsha of Toras ha-Chatas, Toras ha-Korbanos. There’s something interesting we can note now that we talked about this footer header, that the Torah doesn’t usually deal in generalities.

So I put my header because this is my header for this whole section: korbanos and so on. So how do we call them all together? That’s how Chazal call it at least. And the Torah when it does give this, we have in the end of the chapter, it doesn’t say—it says a long list. There’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 different parts of this list.

And that’s the style of the Tanakh. The style of the Tanakh is not to deal in generalizations. If it has to give a long thing, it would prefer to give you the long detailed list than to just give one word. And if it does give one word, it’s always going to be a metonym, always a one detail that the generality, that the genus, that the klal is called by, not a new name for the klal. That’s just how the Torah works, the language of the Torah.

So now to get back to go through the parts, the details of this chapter which starts here—and whoever split chapter six and seven I have no idea what they were doing or why they split it here. It’s a coherent place, it’s a good place to split, there’s a beginning of a parsha here, but like why these two should be the two parts of this parsha, that doesn’t seem to me to have any logic to me. Maybe just by length, although the second one is longer than the first, so I don’t know.

Laws of Asham and Chatas

We start here with torat ha-asham, with the laws of the asham, with how the kohanim are going to deal with the korban asham. As we’ve said, a korban chatas seems to be almost the same as a korban asham functionally. The main difference between a korban chatas and a korban asham is what kind of chataim, what kind of sins it comes to atone for. I think it also works in a different way, but I’m not going to discuss that here. It seems to me that asham is more something that functions as a punishment, while chatas functions mostly as an atonement, like seeking forgiveness or something like that.

Textual Structure and Parashat Divisions

When we had—there’s definitely a parasha, as you see here, I also made a parasha, because this is another way which we can see that the text itself splits up its parts. When it wants to give you a new beginning, a new parasha, it has another “Vayedaber Hashem el Moshe.” Now this doesn’t need to be taken as like a story—it happened to be that Hashem spoke this twice. Even if it would have happened, even if it’s true, it’s not important. Why do I need to know how many shiurim Hashem had to give to Moshe for this subject? It’s not important. We only get these reports when it’s important because this organizes the structure, this organizes the parashiyot correctly. And vice versa, it’s possible that it’s not necessarily always a report that this is what happened, and all of it is established on Moshe and the writer—Moshe himself—and the act of writing it gets added whenever there’s a new parasha.

So here we have it before chatas and asham together. That’s why I call it “torat ha-chatas v’ha-asham.” And as it finishes in the end of the laws of asham, they have the same laws. Of course here it’s talking about something specifically, but for the most part they do have the same laws.

Kodesh Kodeshim

We have a name for it: kodesh kodeshim. By the way, kodesh kodeshim doesn’t mean “holy of holies”—that’s not how this word functions. Kodesh kodeshim just means “holy holy,” just how the style of the Torah works. We have other examples of this, I don’t remember at the second, but kodesh kodeshim is not like that there’s kodesh and kodesh of the kodesh. It just means very holy.

In the same place as the olah—so there’s another logic here and I think that this logic always has a meaning. I don’t know if it’s only like a technically short way to write. There’s like a primary example and then there’s different examples that are learned from it. So olah is nishchat, as we learned by the korban olah, right? It didn’t even say here, but it said in Parshat Vayikra, and this is maybe a reason why we should assume that this parasha knows, is referring to that parasha. Olah is nishchat al yerech ha-mizbeach tzafonah, and tzafon, avdon, u-mizbeach. And in the same place, chatas is nishchat.

So in that sense, chatas and olah are both kodesh kodeshim. They’re both—although, right, the main difference, like to explain why—I think the main difference, as I said, is really only two kinds of korbanos: olah and zevach, or zevach known as zevach shlomim. In other words, there’s a korban that’s brought to God, and there’s a korban that is shared between God and the person that brings it, which is a shlomim. It’s more of a party than a sacrifice, so to speak. Although all these words are not entirely accurate, we’ll have to think of them in a different context.

Three Categories of Korbanos

Now, everyone knows, in halacha, there’s something in between, right? So halacha generally is described as: there’s korbanos that only the mizbeach eats, only God eats, so to speak. There’s korbanos that the mizbeach and the kohanim eat, which are chatas, asham, and mincha, and so on. And then there’s the korbanos that all three eat: both the baalim, the person that brought the korban, and the kohanim and the mizbeach.

I think that the way it should be conceptualized, and I think that the Torah conceptualizes it slightly differently, that there’s really only two korbanos. There’s one, like I said, olah and zevach. The korbanos that the kohanim also eat—the kohanim eat it, so to speak, in the name of God, right? If you think about it, there’s not such a big difference between burning something on the mizbeach and having the kohen eat it. The kohen is part of the mikdash, part of the temple. It works there. And just like we saw a mincha—a mincha is a kodesh kodeshim. That was already said in Parshat Vayikra. And the kohanim eat most of the mincha, besides for the haktarah, besides for the kemitzah.

And the same way, a chatas, an asham, the kohanim eat it, but that’s considered—that’s the part that’s given to Hashem, given to the mikdash. So chatas and asham are all kodesh kodeshim. Of course, the zevachim that are defined as kodesh kodeshim. But the kodesh kodeshim are in the simple sense that it’s not me making a party. It’s not like a shlomim, as we’ll see in a second, but it’s giving something to the mikdash. Now what the mikdash does with it is their job. You understand, like that’s for the kohanim to know. Sometimes they burn it entirely, sometimes they eat some of it. That’s something for them to deal with. The person that brings the korban, that’s not really his concern.

Details of the Asham

Okay, so that’s where we are. We get zerikat ha-dam, and then the chelev, and we’ll see later something about this chelev. But the chelev, the fats get burnt on the mizbeach, and we have this elaboration of exactly which parts of the chelev. It’s always the same, more or less. Which chelev gets burnt on the mizbeach is a function of the animal, so different animals have slightly different parts, but in general, it’s always the same. These parts—there’s theories for why these parts, but we’re going to skip that for now. And that’s the asham.

And then we have the laws of who eats it: the kohanim. So the male kohanim, so again, the ones that are doing the avodah, the actual avodah, eat it. They eat it in the makom kadosh, in the azarah, in the Beit HaMikdash, again, because this eating is part of the korban. That’s the law.

Which Kohen Gets to Eat It

Now we have a little parasha, and I think this is—I framed it here—of which kohen gets to eat it. So now again, this is an internal division between the kohanim. Since we brought the korban to the kohanim, now there’s going to be a fight between the kohanim: which kohen gets to eat which korban?

So the law, as it says here in the most literal reading, is that the kohen doesn’t get anything besides for the skin. And the same law applies to that. But which kohen gets it? So whichever kohen did the avodah—so some kohen, you know, someone brings a korban, and then, again, there’s another question of who decides which kohen does the avodah. That question is not dealt with in Sefer Vayikra. Of course, in Sefer Divrei HaYamim, and later there’s a discussion of how to figure this out with mishmarot. Over here it’s not dealt with.

But what it says is that whichever kohen did the avodah, he gets to eat it. In the same way for an olah, although there’s nothing to eat there, there is the skin that isn’t eaten, and the kohen who did the avodah is going to get it.

Same thing with a mincha. But of a mincha there’s something different. There’s one slight difference—I don’t know the reasoning behind this at the moment. But a mincha, the dry ones—sorry, the baked ones, the ones baked in an oven. We learned by mincha that there’s many different styles of mincha. Also an interesting point: why are there so many styles?

So there’s three of them here. Those get—the kohen again gets it. But then there’s another kind of belulah ba-shemen, which means the ones that were not—what does it mean? Not clear what it means, that’s the truth—that they all share. So there’s a problem to figure out which one is the ones that are not one of the first three, which I don’t have a simple explanation for this at the second.

Okay, so that’s the halachot of chatas and asham and the general halachot of which kohen gets what.

Now we have a new set of halachot: todah, zevach, and shlomim. And as I told you, shlomim is one—it’s not like there’s two words for the same korban, zevach and shlomim. Zevach is a kind of korban. And as we’ll see, the zevach todah and zevach shlomim, which is not a todah—maybe all of them are called shlomim, means something like peace, or I think peace is not a very good translation.

Now I realize it should be translated something like when we say “shalom aleichem,” right? Or something called in Gemara, she’eilat shalom. It doesn’t mean they just like blessed each other with peace. Peace means something positive. Usually also when we talk about—a lot of the talk about things like that—like it’s people coming together, right? When we say shalom, it isn’t just the lack of conflict, like sometimes translated as harmony, right? It’s the actual living together. So the same thing is about the living together, like the eating together. So when a person eats together with his friends, with Hashem, that’s a zevach shlomim.

And here we have different kinds, different variations of a zevach shlomim. One called a todah, and the other one called neder and nedavah. We call that shlomim. Todah and plain shlomim. So todah we can assume—

Zevach Shlomim: The Peace Offering

The Meaning of Shlomim

When we say Shalom Bayis, Shalom Bayis isn’t just the lack of conflict, like sometimes translated as harmony, right? It’s the actual living together. So the same thing, Shlomim is about the living together, like the eating together. So when a person eats together with his friends, with Hashem, that’s a Zevach Shlomim.

Two Types of Zevach Shlomim

Here we have different kinds, different variations of a Zevach Shlomim. One called a Todah, and the other one called Neder and Nedavah, right? We call that Shalmei Todah and plain Shlomim.

Todah – The Thanksgiving Offering

A Todah we can assume from the name is of thanksgiving. If you want to give thanks to Hashem, you make a zevach, you make a party called a Todah.

The Chalos of the Todah

Therefore you bring also chalos, and there’s three kinds of chalos, or four kinds of chalos, not clear. I think the literal meaning is that there’s only three kinds—maybe you have a choice which ones, which kind. These are similar to the styles that we saw by Mincha. It depends, there’s different options for what to do with the oil: to mix it, or to smear it on it, or to burn it somehow and like to fry it or something. There’s different ways of doing it.

These are baked chametz. So unlike what the mizbeiach eats, which is never chametz as we learned, these chalos are chametz, and probably because they’re mostly for the people to eat. But there is one of each—but one of each, it doesn’t say how many, right? Because you’ll have numbers, you go to 10 of each and so on. But what it says here is that when you make these chalos, you give one to the kohen, which will be a terumah. And again, which kohen? The one who did the avodah, the one who did the zrikas ha-dam for that shlomim.

The Law of Nosar

Now there’s one more halacha, and I don’t remember if we saw this halacha again—there’s the halacha of nosar. And it’s that a Todah has to be eaten in that day. This is obvious, because a Todah, like I said, is making a party. Like, the important thing if you make a party is that it’s not like he’s not shechting and putting it in the freezer. Even those days, there’s no freezers. Like, he’s putting it away for the next week or so to eat it.

We’ll see a regular Shlomim has slightly more time, but that’s because it’s less of a party, I think. Okay, and that’s the difference.

Neder and Nedavah – Vow and Voluntary Offerings

If it’s a regular—neder means someone, usually someone had a tzarah, and he made a neder, like we see in Tehillim many times, that if he’ll be saved, he’ll bring a korban. And a nedavah might mean he decided to bring a korban, he was in a good mood. That can be eaten for two days, not for one day, only three days.

If you eat it later, that’s the issur of pigul. Of course pigul has a whole interesting halacha that came out of it, but literally just means if you eat it too late, it’s not good anymore. And again, this is just the correct way of eating. Since in these korbanos the eating is part of the korban, it’s the party, it has to be done in the correct way.

Laws of Purity

Now we have halachos of the purity, just like we had by the korban chatas yesterday, which we didn’t learn. You have to eat it when you’re pure. It doesn’t, of course, define here what tumah is. We’ll get to that much later. Both if the meat gets impure or if the person who eats it is impure, that’s all not okay. And you get an onesh kareis. Okay, let’s discuss another time what that is and why.

The Prohibition of Cheilev and Dam

Now there’s an important little addition to these parshiyos. And that’s the concept of not eating cheilev and dam without this korban.

So we discussed that this whole parasha is which part of the korban the kohen and the mizbeiach eats. In general, the mizbeiach eats the dam and the cheilev, and the kohen gets his parts of each korban, depending on what it is.

Cheilev – The Forbidden Fat

And now, based on this, the Torah says that other people should not eat cheilev, the fat of any of the animals that are brought for a korban, even fat of animals that were not slaughtered in the correct way. You can’t eat them. They’re neveilah, treifah, which we’ll learn later are not eaten. You can use them, but you cannot eat them. So that’s also something that you get the onesh of kareis.

Dam – The Forbidden Blood

And the same thing with blood. You can’t eat any blood of any animal, and also you get kareis. It doesn’t say this right here, it did say already in Parashas Vayikra, if I remember.

The Reasoning

And the reasoning that you get from this context is that cheilev and dam are the parts of the animal that are special, they’re kodesh, they’re the best parts. I don’t know if they’re really the best parts, it’s complicated how to think about this, but they belong to the mizbeiach and they don’t belong to you. So eating it is like—although you’re not eating it from a korban—but it’s clearly like you’re eating kodesh, like it doesn’t belong to humans.

Matnos Kehunah from Shlomim

Okay, now we have one more important part. When you bring a shlomim, as we discussed, is defined as mostly being a korban for the party for the owner. He gives a little bit for them as back, like there’s the dam and the cheilev, but it’s really for him. So now the kohanim are left with nothing.

So here there’s a special mitzvah—like it’s matnos kehunah, it’s a part that the kohen gets from a shlomim. And the part that he gets is known as the chazeh and the shok ha-yamin—the breast and the right leg, or the right thigh really. That’s the part that you get.

The Nature of This Gift

And it’s explicitly—it’s not that it’s not right—it’s not that this is like a matanah to them as back or like the—it’s not like a kohen eats the chatas, right? When I eat the chatas, it gets to mizbeiach, and the kohen has part of it as representative of the mizbeiach, so to speak.

A shlomim belongs to the owner, but the owner gives a part, a gift, a part of his korban, of his party, to the kohen, so he should also have his part. It’s like, of course, it’s payment for the work that he did and so on, but it’s like other matnos kehunah. That’s how it’s described here.

Concluding Section: Mishchas Aharon

And that’s the end. And now we have the siyum, the header, the final header of this parasha. This is Mishchas Aharon.

Mishchas Aharon probably means—it’s not clear how to translate this word mishchas—but it means what Aharon gets. This is the—people say the part—mishcha means anointed, or somewhere they have to do with anointing, it’s not clear. In any case, maybe like Rashi says, gedulah, maybe because like if when you would make someone to a king or a kohen you moshach him, you put some oil on him, so the parts, the gifts, the honors due to him from being a kohen are also called after that, the mishcha. In any case, this is what they get.

So this is a proof to what I said, that this part is really about what the kohanim do and get from the korbanos. And again, confirm that this is what Hashem told them to get.

Summary of All the Laws

And this is all the laws of the Olah, the Mincha, the Chatas, the Asham, the Miluim. What Miluim are, we’ll see in the next chapter. It seems to be referring to that. It was already said in the previous chapter, the laws of it.

The Emphasis on Har Sinai

And which were commanded when? B’Har Sinai, on the day. It seems to be important in general, in all the parts of the korbanos—this is not the only time—to explain, to say explicitly, that the korbanos and all the detailed laws, which parts of the kohanim get and so on, were commanded b’midbar Sinai, b’Har Sinai, in the day that Hashem commanded Bnei Yisrael for the korbanos.

So, so to speak, in the day of Matan Torah—although maybe this is not Matan Torah, maybe this is like the first day of the Mishkan HaMishkan, or some other time—but it seems to be important for the pesukim always to emphasize that it was on that day. You can think about why there would be such an emphasis, but that’s this chapter.

Thank you.