Pesach 5770 The Practice of a Pseudo-Korban Pesach after the Churban Rabbi Dov Linzer

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1 Pesach 5770 The Practice of a Pseudo-Korban Pesach after the Churban Rabbi Dov Linzer This week I gave another shiur on the Korban Pesach not on bringing it on Har HaBayit without a Beit HaMikdash, 1 but on a practice to bring a pseudo-korban Pesach outside of the environs of the Beit HaMikdash and Jerusalem. 2 There is good evidence that such a practice existed. The Tosefta tells of a burial that took place in Beit Dagan on erev Pesach. The men, who had not become tamei, then went and ate their Korban Pesach in the evening (Ohalot 3:9). Now, it is not clear when this recorded event took place maybe it happened when the Beit HaMikdash was still standing. However, Beit Dagan is near Tel Aviv, about 35 miles from Jerusalem, so it would seem impossible that these men got to Jerusalem on the same day to arrive before the beginning of Yom Tov at nightfall. Similarly, another Tosefta states that R. Pinchas ben Yair reported regarding the halakhic status of Ashkelon, that its inhabitants would go the mikveh in the day and eat their Korban Pesach that night (Ohalot 18:18). Now, Ashkelon is a good 50 miles from Jerusalem, and it would be impossible that these people got to Jerusalem by evening time. It is clear from these two sources that Jews were eating a pseudo-korban Pesach outside of Jerusalem, and were even undergoing an act of taharah, of ritual purification, to prepare for this event. It further seems reasonable to assume that this was taking place after the churban, the time when R. Pinchas ben Yair lived (late 2nd Century), for when there was a Beit HaMikdash there would be no need for such a pseudo-korban. Now, if this truly was a post-temple pseudo-korban, would they really have called it a Pesach, a Pascal lamb? Wouldn t this have made it seem like they were eating sacrifices outside the Temple? This was exactly the concern of the majority of Chazal, and they expressed their opposition to this ritual, when enacted with such a degree of verisimilitude. The Mishnah records that Rabban Gamliel (immediately post-destruction, end of 1st century beginning of 2nd) allowed people to make a gedi mekulas, a roasted goat, for Pesach, while the 1 For more, see my devar Torah for Pesach 5770 entitled Korban Pesach Nowadays. 2 For a source sheet, download Pseudo- Korban Pesach after the Churban from the Torah from the Beit Midrash section of my website.

2 Rabbi Dov Linzer 2 Sages prohibited it (Beitzah 2:7). What was this gedi mekulas? The Tosefta records that it was a kid goat that had been roasted entirely, just like the Korban Pesach, and that was prepared on the first night of Pesach. However, if any part of it had been prepared differently even if just one piece had been cooked rather than roasted or if it had been prepared on a different night, it would be permissible. What we have then, is a seemingly popular practice to create a pseudo-korban Pesach, which some of the rabbis allowed fully (or perhaps even supported), while others insisted that some small difference be present, so it would not look exactly like the Korban Pesach itself. The Tosefta ends with a fascinating historical fact: Rabbi Yossi said: Todos, a man of Rome, accustomed the people of Rome to take lambs on the eves of Passover and they made them mekulasim (roasted). They said of him: He was very close to feeding them sacrifices outside the Temple, because the people called them Pascal lambs. Here we see that that this practice spread outside of the Land of Israel, and that in some communities for the Jews of Rome it had become a widespread practice. We also see that these goats were actually called Pesach, and that this explains the events recorded in the Toseftas of Ohalot, of people outside of Jerusalem eating a Pesach. Finally, we see the rabbinic objection to this practice - not that it was completely objectionable, but that it could not be so similar to the actual Korban Pesach so that it would be confused with the korban itself nir eh ke okheil kodashim bachutz, appearing like eating sacrifices outside the Temple. Now, we find another story with Rabban Gamliel and the Korban Pesach. The Mishnah states that one cannot roast the Korban Pesach on a metal spit or grate, because then it would be roasted by the heated metal and not directly by the fire (Pesachim 7:2). The Mishnah then records the statement of Rabbi Zaddok: A story of Rabban Gamliel who said to Tavi his slave, Go out and roast for us the Pascal lamb on the grate. On the face of it, this is a dissenting opinion that allows the Korban Pesach to be roasted on a metal grate. However, there is a serious problem here, as the

3 Rabbi Dov Linzer 3 Rabban Gamliel who had a slave name Tavi, was the same Rabban Gamliel mentioned above, the Rabban Gamliel of Yavneh who lived after the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. So, what was this Korban Pesach he was preparing? Reshash (Rabbi Shmuel Shtrashon of Vilna, printed in the back of the Gemara) hits upon the answer, connecting this story of Rabban Gamliel with Rabban Gamliel s own stated position regarding the gedi mekulas: In my humble opinion it appears that this event occurred after the destruction of the Temple. And because we find that he is of the opinion in the Mishna that one can make a gedi mekulas on the eve of Passover, and Rashi explains that it is as a remembrance for the Temple, therefore because of its dearness he would call it a Pascal lamb... For Rabban Gamliel because he wanted to show that it was only a remembrance and people should not think that he is eating sacrifices outside the time, he commanded to do it differently and to roast it on the grate. That is to say, that Rabban Gamliel himself did the practice of gedi mekulas and went so far as to call it a Pesach. However, even he accepted that something needed to be done to distinguish it from the actual Korban Pesach, so he commanded Tavi his slave to mike a minor change in its preparation one that would have invalidated it had it been a real Korban Pesach, but one that was subtle and not to noticeable he had him roast it on a metal grate. It is possible that this also connects to the famous saying of Rabban Gamliel in the Hagaddah, quoted from the Mishnah (Pesachim 10:5) that one who does not say pesach, matzah, and marror does not fulfill one s obligation. Now, in the hagaddah we say, The Pesach that our forbearers used to eat... But the text in the Mishnah is This Pesach that we eat is on account of Is it not possible that Rabban Gamliel had a gedi mekulas at his Seder, called it a Pesach, and when he got up to this section of the Seder, said: This pesach is on account of...? This ritual would have taken the place of the Korban Pesach, and had a role perhaps a central role at the Seder night. This pseudo-korban Pesach, with or without small changes to mark its nonkorban status, was practiced in the generations immediately following the destruction of the Beit HaMikdash. This is completely understandable. The major ritual of Pesach in the time of the Beit HaMikdash was not matzah or the

4 Rabbi Dov Linzer 4 telling of the Exodus, it was the eating of the Korban Pesach. The very name of the Yom Tov itself in the Torah known only as Chag HaMatzot was named after the Korban Pesach. The transition away from this mitzvah as the mitzvah of the Yom Tov and of the Seder did not happen overnight. People and even some of the Rabbis did not want to give it up so quickly. So, in the absence of bringing a true Korban Pesach, the ritual of a pseudo-korban Pesach was born. In the following generations, when the memory of the actual Korban Pesach in the Beit HaMikdash began to fade, this ritual continued but became somewhat attenuated. We no longer find people calling goats Pesach, but we do find the practice to eat roasted meat on Pesach: A place that has the custom to eat roasted meat on Passover eve may do so. A place that has the custom not to eat, may not eat (Pesachim 4:4). It seems that the custom referred to here was not just to allow roasted meat on the Seder night, but a specific custom to make sure to eat roasted meat in memory of the Korban Pesach. This perhaps explains the Mishna's text of the Mah Nishtanah: For on all other nights we eat meat that is roasted, double-boiled, or boiled, but on this night, only roasted (Pesachim 10:4). While many have assumed that this text is from the period before the churban, the Temple s destruction, it is explicit in the previous Mishnah (10:3), that the rituals being described here are from a post-churban period. It seems, rather, that this text of the Mah nishtanah reflects the practice, even after the churban, to eat roasted meat - and only roasted meat on the Seder night. This practice of eating roasted meat to keep the experience of the Korban Pesach alive finds a startling expression in a text of the Hagaddah from the Cairo Geniza. In that text we find the following berakhot, after the second cup of wine is drunk: Blessed are you, O Lord, our God, Sovereign of the Universe, Who takes bread from the land. Blessed are you, O Lord, our God, Sovereign of the Universe, Who has commanded our forefathers to eat matzah, bitter herbs, and fireroasted meat, to remember His acts of might. Blessed are You, Who remembers the covenant.

5 Rabbi Dov Linzer 5 What is clearly reflected here is a practice to eat roasted meat, and to incorporate it with the mitzvah of matzah, to have a real koreikh the eating of matzah together with maror and roasted meat. Now, in the time of the Talmud, Chazal took extra steps to make sure that people would not confuse the meat eaten during the Seder night with that of the Pesach, declaring that it was forbidden to say this meat is for Pesach, and that one should not lift the meat when talking about the Pesach (Pesachim 53a, 116b). In Ashkenaz these concerns dominated, and the practice is to not eat any roasted meat on the Seder night, in keeping with the places mentioned in the Mishnah (Pesachim 4:4) where the custom is not to eat roasted meat (see Shulchan Arukh, Orach Chayim 473, and Mishnah Berurah). However, many Sephardic communities still have the practice to eat roasted meat even roasted goat or lamb on the Seder night, still keeping alive the memory of the eating of the Korban Pesach. I was even told by one of my students of a Moroccan practice to buy a lamb a few days before Pesach, and to have it in the house until Erev Pesach, and then to slaughter it and roast eat and eat it on the Seder night, all in keeping with the reading this week from Parashat HaChodesh On the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man... a lamb for a house. (Shemot 12:3). Some practices take a long, long time to fade. Two important themes emerge from the above discussion. The first is the question about where we go after the churban. Do we continue to hearken back (or forward) to a time of bringing korbanot, or do we come to grips with our current reality and recognize that we live in a world without korbanot? This, of course, is the theme we raised last week regarding the bringing of an actual Korban Pesach nowadays, with both sides having strong proponents in Chazal and in the posekim. The other theme is the tension between a deeply felt religious impulse coming from the people and Rabbinic concerns of propriety (nir eh ke okheil kodashim bachutz). To a degree, this is the story of many minhagim, where the practices may have challenged certain Rabbinic sensibilities, but were not opposed out of respect for the people's religious impulse. In this case, that dialectic played out in an interesting way it initially gave great latitude to this pseudo-ritual, respecting the practice of places that adopted the ritual, and at most demanding

6 Rabbi Dov Linzer 6 that some small marker of difference be present. In the end, more demands were raised, and while some communities (Ashkenaz) weighed fully in favor of the rabbinic concerns, others (particularly certain Sephardic communities) gave fuller expression to the minhag, and to the religious sensibility of the people. This dialectic remains with us today and continues to play itself out in many areas in our religious, halakhic life. Chag kasher vesameach!