Today we return to Leviticus! The open is a bit slow with further recounting of the first sacrifices, as well as the first appearance of the priestly blessing, but quickly goes a bit off the rails as Aaron and his sons immediately make several errors. It's been nine days and they already have a body count. This is followed by the section discussing clean and unclean animals, and what is and is not permissible to eat. We had a lot of discussion about the two sons of Aaron who were struck dead when they offered "alien fire" to G-d; commentaries have a number of thoughts on what their specific sins actually were since it's unclear in the actual text. We also had a lot of thoughts on taxonomy and the identification of various animals, as well as a foray into duck phylogeny as we learned that swans and geese are kinds of duck, and were left pondering what kind of bugs we could get away with eating. We continue to come back to the fairly specific connotations of cleanliness as previously discussed, as well as some comments from the sages that cleanliness rules regarding corpses are mostly relevant to priests rather than laypeople outside the handful of holidays where they had an obligation to cleanliness.

Moses bringing real "if a dude killed another dude on the moon" energy here, ngl. There's commentary suggesting he found this comforting, but on a first read it really feels like Moses failed to read the room. Rashi wants us to know that you can't put a sage to death for drinking a little while rendering decisions

Big highlight in the kosher and cleanliness laws where all the sages pivoted to giving us bird facts and subtweeting each other's bird facts Fun feature of the sages' bird facts power hour is that we learned some of the decisions that got made that led to the sages trying to convince us that chickens don't crave violence and meat, as we aren't actually given any ways to tell whether a bird is clean or not, simply a list of birds to not eat.

And here, in a more inexplicable moment, Rashi argues that it's fine to eat a bug if it naturally has five feet, a biological impossibility.

chat thinks rashi wanted cover to not have to eat bugs despite the text being surprisingly inclusive when it comes to bugs that jump good.

We return to Leviticus and open with the first sacrifices, only to immediately experience a carnival of errors, much as is common with people. This is the portion in which two of Aaron's sons die while offering "alien fire" at the Tabernacle, as well as some errors regarding one of the goat sacrifices¹. After this concludes, we dig into the core precepts of kosher law regarding clean and unclean animals.

As you may imagine, once again we dug into questions regarding the deaths of Abihu and Nadab, focusing more on Aaron's reaction to it all and how to square the circle of 1) how it is unclear what their precise error actually was, 2) Moses and the text appear to treat them as righteous and their deaths as something sanctifying, and 3) they did still very much die for doing something they shouldn't have and this is very upsetting for all involved. Lots considered around the particular circumstances of how the priests were allowed to mourn, as well as how destruction in direct proximity to G-d's Presence begins to lose some moral character and become more of a consequence of natural law, and how it fits into their ongoing relationship with the Israelites.

All in all it wasn't the greatest start to things, but that's what life is like.

We also dug into the discussion of clean and unclean animals, starting with the question of "why does the translated text use the term abomination here?" It's a very loaded word, and it turns out to (at least in the case of kosher law) be more or less a word for things that are ritually impure absent a lot of the moral aspect we typically imply with the word. We also talked a lot about bird taxonomy, what constitutes a predator or bird of prey, and Mary Douglas made a surprise appearance in the Robert Alter translation's notes in the discussion for the rationale behind what made an animal clean or unclean. Mary proposed that it served a taxonomic function, drawing lines between organisms that existed in orderly categories versus organisms which did not fit cleanly into categorization or otherwise troubled existing taxa; Robert did not find this very convincing in the case of land animals, but in the case of sea creatures, insects, and other crawling things he saw a compelling case for how the ocean in particular contains everything from fish² to various ambiguous slimes, tentacled things, and inchoate oozes³. There was also a lengthy digression into the transmission of uncleanness between vessels and how uncleanness is partitioned by the sages into primary and secondary sources of varying degrees, that also tied into the actual argument behind the famed oven of akhnai story.

Anyways:

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1. there were three that day according to the sages- this one was a sin offering on the new moon

2. a prototypical and iconic kind of ocean guy

3. classic examples of ocean guys that are a bit fucked up with it

Today we return to Leviticus! The open is a bit slow with further recounting of the first sacrifices, as well as the first appearance of the priestly blessing, but quickly goes a bit off the rails as Aaron and his sons immediately make several errors. It's been nine days and they already have a body count. This is followed by the section discussing clean and unclean animals, and what is and is not permissible to eat. We had a lot of discussion about the two sons of Aaron who were struck dead when they offered "alien fire" to G-d; commentaries have a number of thoughts on what their specific sins actually were since it's unclear in the actual text. We also had a lot of thoughts on taxonomy and the identification of various animals, as well as a foray into duck phylogeny as we learned that swans and geese are kinds of duck, and were left pondering what kind of bugs we could get away with eating. We continue to come back to the fairly specific connotations of cleanliness as previously discussed, as well as some comments from the sages that cleanliness rules regarding corpses are mostly relevant to priests rather than laypeople outside the handful of holidays where they had an obligation to cleanliness.

Moses bringing real "if a dude killed another dude on the moon" energy here, ngl. There's commentary suggesting he found this comforting, but on a first read it really feels like Moses failed to read the room. Rashi wants us to know that you can't put a sage to death for drinking a little while rendering decisions

Big highlight in the kosher and cleanliness laws where all the sages pivoted to giving us bird facts and subtweeting each other's bird facts Fun feature of the sages' bird facts power hour is that we learned some of the decisions that got made that led to the sages trying to convince us that chickens don't crave violence and meat, as we aren't actually given any ways to tell whether a bird is clean or not, simply a list of birds to not eat.

And here, in a more inexplicable moment, Rashi argues that it's fine to eat a bug if it naturally has five feet, a biological impossibility.

chat thinks rashi wanted cover to not have to eat bugs despite the text being surprisingly inclusive when it comes to bugs that jump good.