Seder HaMaarachah

"The reason I do not know"

The Gemara (the rabbis' discussions built on the Mishnah) takes this list apart step by step and asks why each one sits where it does. At one step, clearing the ash from the inner altar before cleaning the lamps, the answer comes from Abaye himself. He was a leading sage in Babylonia, and it is his list. He says: "I learned it as a tradition. The reason I do not know." Rashi (the classic commentator, France, died 1105) explains: he had no reason of his own to give. He passed the step on anyway.

A kohen who never had a shift

Abaye was a kohen (priest). In the Gemara he tells how he used to collect the gifts of meat that are owed to kohanim. A history of the sages by Rav Sherira Gaon (Babylonia, 900s) says he led the academy of Pumbedita for thirteen years. He died around 338 CE, about 270 years after the Temple was destroyed. He never saw one morning of what he lists here. The first line says where he got it: "in the name of the tradition." Rashi: the tradition of the whole academy.

Offerings could not fix his family

The Gemara says Abaye came from the house of Eli, the kohen in the book of Shmuel whose sons treated the offerings with contempt. God swore that the sin of Eli's house would never be atoned "by sacrifice or offering," and the men of that family died young. Abaye read the verse closely. Not by sacrifice or offering, he said, but it can be atoned by Torah and by acts of kindness. The Gemara adds that he was busy with both and lived sixty years. It is his list of offerings you read here.

Why split seven lamps into five and two?

The menorah (the gold lamp stand in the Sanctuary) had seven lamps. The kohen did not clean them in one go. He did five, another job was done, and then he did the last two. Why? Reish Lakish, a sage in the Land of Israel: "to stir the whole courtyard." Rashi explains that phrase earlier in the tractate: the sound of a large crowd, heard again and again, is an honor to the King. His colleague Rabbi Yochanan learns it from the Torah's doubled "in the morning, in the morning": split the job into two mornings.

Not every step was for every day

Most of this list happened every morning. A few lines did not. The musafin are the extra offerings of Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh and festivals. The bazichin are two small bowls of frankincense that sat with the loaves on the gold table in the Sanctuary. They were burned each Shabbat, when the loaves were changed. The chavitin were daily, but they were one man's offering. The Kohen Gadol (high priest) brought a measure of flour baked on a griddle, half of it in the morning and half in the afternoon.

The last line is a play on words

The list ends with a verse you said in the ash-removal passage: the kohen arranges the burnt offering on the fire "and burns on it the fat of the shelamim," the peace offerings. The Gemara hears a second word inside shelamim: hashlem, complete. "On it" means on top of the morning lamb. Rashi: after the morning offering he adds and completes all the others, and not after the afternoon one. So the two daily lambs open and close the day. The Gemara names an offering that came later still: the Pesach offering.

What the law books say about it

The Tur (a code of Jewish law, Spain, 1300s) writes that after the daily offering passage it is "good to say" this list, and copies it out in full. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the first Chabad Rebbe, died 1812) calls it something "some have the custom" to say. The Biur Halacha (notes by the author of the Mishnah Berurah, a central commentary on daily Jewish law, about 1900) names this passage and says it is a mitzvah to see that you understand what you are saying.

Where do you even start?

Fix what is wrong with you first, or reach higher first? Rabbi Natan of Breslov (the main student of the Chassidic master Rebbe Nachman) says people do not know where to begin. Sorting good from bad takes strength they do not have yet. Climbing fails too, since nothing is sorted yet. So you skip between the two. His example is this list. Look closely, he writes, and it seems out of order. The kohanim work outside, inside, then outside again. Even the menorah is done in two parts. As in the Temple, he says, so in every person and at every time.

וּכְמוֹ שֶׁהוּא בַּעֲבוֹדַת הַבֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ כֵּן הוּא בְּכָל אָדָם וּבְכָל זְמַן.

Lightning first. Order second.

Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, who died in 1935) opens his comments on this list with a surprise: order comes second. First comes something that is above all order. He compares it to lightning. It flashes, it runs out and back, it skips and jumps. Then the light gets weaker. That is where order comes in. Holiness that comes in order, he writes, is what keeps worlds standing. It stops the slide and holds up whatever is ready to fall. Now count how many times this list says "comes before."

והמערכה מסתדרת, והקדושה בסדרה מקימת העולמים, ומונעת את הירידה, בסמכה בכחה את מה שמוכשר לפול ע"י התמעטות האורה.

Be there by the incense

Why does the incense come between the blood and the limbs? The Maor VaShemesh (Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Epstein of Krakow, a Chassidic master who died in 1823) starts with a problem: whoever leads a group in prayer gets hit by everyone's stray thoughts. One of his teachers advised: get everyone there by the offering passages, because at the incense the leader can tie them together. The kohen, he suggests, did the same. Everyone had a share in the offering, so before burning the limbs he used the incense to tie everyone's thoughts together.

ולכן היה מקטיר הקטורת תחילה והיה מקשר בעת הקטורת כל מחשבות הציבור כי לכולם חלק בקרבנות הציבור

Why the lamps are split in two

The kohen cleaned five menorah lamps, stopped for the daily offering's blood, then did the last two. Why the break? The Ohev Yisrael (Rabbi Avraham Yehoshua Heschel of Apta, a Chassidic master who died in 1825) reads the five as separate powers and the last two as what joins them and receives from them. The blood in between is what comes from below: the Jewish people's good deeds and their giving themselves to God. That, he says, ties it together. Today, he adds, you do it by giving God your whole heart and watching the details of what you do.

ע"כ הפסיק ביניהם בדם התמיד. שהוא בסוד אתערותא דלתתא. הקרבת מעשיהם הטובים של נשמות ישראל ומס"נ לה' באמת. ועי"ז נתקשרו כל המדות

If only we knew the rest

Rabbeinu Bachya (a Torah commentator in Spain around 1300) reads the first steps of this list as a model of what exists, from the top down. The first fire stands for what he calls "the whole structure." The second fire is the angels. The two logs are the heavens, which one view in the Gemara counts as two. Clearing the ash from the inner altar is the world down here. Then he stops. "If only we knew" the rest, he writes, and what each step hints at. His reason: no job in the Temple was a small one. Each was a picture of something above.

ומי יתן והיינו יודעין שאר הענינים שהזכיר בברייתא ההיא איך היה הסדר בהם ומה ענינם ועל מה ירמוז כל אחד ואחד, כי אין לך עבודה קלה בכל העבודות כלן הנעשות בבית המקדש שלא יהיה לה עיקר גדול

Do I have to say it?

It is a custom, not an obligation. The Tur (a law code from the 1300s) calls it "good to say" after the daily offering. The Rema (Rabbi Moshe Isserles, who added Ashkenazi practice to the Shulchan Aruch, the main code of Jewish law) records that "some say" it. By the time of the Mishnah Berurah (a commentary on daily law, around 1900), the custom had spread to say it every day. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed): besides the daily offering, these passages are good to say, not required.

I can't follow half of these words. Does saying it count?

The Mishnah Berurah asks for more. Whoever knows how to learn, he writes, has a mitzvah to study this passage in the Gemara, in order to understand what is being said. Then the saying counts in place of the burning on the altar. He quotes earlier books: when the Gemara speaks of someone who "engages in" an offering passage, it means working to understand it, "not saying the words alone." His longer notes, the Biur Halacha, say it again about this list by name. The Eilu Devarim passage has more on this.

The list says "following Abba Shaul." Did anyone disagree?

Yes. Abba Shaul is a sage quoted in the Mishnah (the first written collection of the oral law). The Gemara sets his view beside the other Sages'. He has the kohen (priest) tend all seven lamps of the menorah and then burn the incense. They put the incense between the first five lamps and the last two. The Rambam (Maimonides, 1100s) rules like the Sages: the blood of the daily offering, five lamps, the incense, then two lamps. So this list is one view of the morning, and the Rambam's code has another.

My friend says "Abaye hu havah mesader." Why the extra word?

To keep two words apart. Abaye ends with the letter yud, and havah is spelled hei, vav, hei. Run together, it looks like reading God's four-letter Name as it is written. So the Ben Ish Chai (a law book by Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad, late 1800s) calls it fitting to add hu, "he," in between. The Kaf HaChaim (a Sephardic law commentary, early 1900s) prefers to drop havah, as the Gemara and the Tur do, or to say mesader havah. Siddur Sefard keeps havah. One Sephardic siddur prints "pause a little" after Abaye.

Why does "comes before" drop out halfway through?

In Siddur Sefard every step is spelled out up to "the incense comes before the limbs." Then the list turns to shorthand. The Gemara's text switches at the same spot. Sha'ar HaKavanot (the prayer teachings of the Arizal, Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Kabbalist of Tzfat) says there is no need to insist on the word from the incense on, until the last step. There it must be said: "and the bowls of frankincense come before the afternoon offering." Sha'arei Teshuvah (a digest printed with the Shulchan Aruch) quotes this.

Does the order I do mitzvot in matter today?

Why does the kohen clear the inner altar before the lamps? Abaye: I have the tradition, not the reason. The sage Rava, citing the sage Reish Lakish: do not pass by a mitzvah, and he reaches the altar first. The Shulchan Aruch applies it to a tallit bag: tefillin do not go on top, or you meet them first and must put them on before the tallit. The Mishnah Berurah cites this Gemara for tefillin in a nearer room. The Shulchan Aruch HaRav (the first Chabad Rebbe's code): tefillin still in their bag do not count.

Is it said on Shabbat? Before Mincha?

On Shabbat and holidays the Sefard prayer books print it in the morning as usual. The list even has a step for those days. On "the additional offerings," Rashi (the classic Gemara commentator) notes: "if it is Shabbat." Before Mincha, the afternoon prayer, it is not printed. Siddur Sefard has the daily offering and the incense again there, then goes straight to Ana BeKoach, the prayer that follows this list in the morning. The Kaf HaChaim's order for Mincha has no list either. Neither says why.