Our first foray into Leviticus! This one primarily covered the various rules for sacrifices (burnt, meal, peace, and sin offerings), as well as some of our first discussions of jewish concepts of cleanliness as well as laws concerning curses and deceiving people when you promise them payment. Lots of this one was concerned with logistics, and there's a lot of repetition at the start; my thinking is that this is partially an artifact of the Torah having originally been an oral tradition. We had a lot to say around some of the logistics, as well as the nature of peace offerings "bringing peace into the world", the gendering of various sacrificial animals, sin offerings and the sins of collectives, and whether or not one eats the frankincense with a meal offering1. We also now know a recommended technique for removing a pigeon's head with our bare hands, thanks to the sages2. We also discussed how the usual english terms, cleanliness and uncleanliness, do a poor job of translating what's being discussed, which is more of a value-neutral quality of being empty or filled respectively of a certain quality of worldliness and how it's necessary to engage with sacred activities sorta on the same level.
Not many excerpts today! Wasn't feeling it and a lot of it was more technical stuff. That said,
Ramban on why turtledoves and pigeons were allowable sacrifices, but not, for example, chickens:
Also this one from Ibn Ezra is funny to me; this is about how the fat of sacrifices belongs to G-d, but the phrasing on this is so funny. G-d loves a fat girl who's full of blood.
anyways,

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don't eat the frankincense with meal offering. there was an extended discussion of how the priest would pick up a handful of flour and oil without picking up too much or too little, while also avoiding any added salt or frankincense.
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turns out you can just sorta pop them off??? we weren't ready for that one.
