One of the essential Shavuot sacrifices consists of two sheeps offered with two loaves of bread. While these two components are connected, they’re not fully interdependent. In a mishnah on yesterday’s daf, Rabbi Akiva ruled that if the sheep were to be lost, the loaves can be sacrificed without the sheep, but the sheep cannot be sacrificed without the loaves. According to Rabbi Shimon ben Nannas, the inverse is true: Sheep without loaves is acceptable, loaves without sheep is not.
Without deciding between those two positions, on today’s daf Rabbi Yohanan raises an important caveat:
Everyone concedes that if they became bound to each other, the lost item prevents fulfillment of the mitzvah with the other. And what is it that establishes their bond? It is the slaughter.
Everyone seems to agree that if you begin the ritual process with both sheep and loaves, and subsequently lose either the sheep or the loaves, you may not continue. What constitutes beginning the process? For Rabbi Yohanan, it is the moment the sheep are slaughtered. But this too is contested:
Ulla said that the sages in the West raise a dilemma: Does waving establish a bond, or does it not establish a bond?
In the land of Israel, the rabbis consider that perhaps the sheep and loaves were bonded even before slaughter, at the moment the offering was waved. If you’re having difficulty envisioning what it looks like to wave an offering of sheep and bread together, the mishnah in the next chapter clarifies:
How does one perform this waving? He places the two loaves on top of the two lambs and places his two hands below the loaves and the lambs, extends and brings them back, then raises and lowers them, as it is stated with regard to the waving of the ram of the inauguration of the priests: “Which is waved, and which is heaved up.” (Exodus 29:27)
The priest, who must be strong and dexterous for this maneuver, stacks the loaves on top of the lambs, puts one hand under each lamb, and then extends the offering bundles all four horizontal directions, then up, then down. This is precisely what we do when shaking the lulav on Sukkot: wave it in front of us, to the right, behind us, to the left, up, down. While waving sheep stacked with loaves might be a more physically complex move, the choreography is essentially the same.The Gemara points out that Ulla’s stated dilemma is apparently not an unresolved question:
Resolve it from the statement of Rabbi Yohanan, as Rabbi Yohanan says that the slaughter of the sheep establishes a bond between the sheep and the loaves. One can conclude by inference that waving does not establish a bond.
Rabbi Yohanan, who is in fact a sage of the West, has already stated that slaughter forms the bond between the sheep and the loaves. Since the waving precedes this step, it must be that he — and presumably his fellow sages — conclude that the waving does not establish this bond. Why, then, did Ulla frame this as an open question among the sages of the land of Israel?
With regard to the statement of Rabbi Yohanan itself, Ulla raises the dilemma: Is it obvious to Rabbi Yohanan that slaughter establishes a bond between them, but waving does not establish a bond between them? Or perhaps it is obvious to him that slaughter establishes a bond, but he is uncertain as to whether or not waving establishes a bond? The question shall stand unresolved.
We had initially read Rabbi Yohanan’s statement as a declaration that the earliest possible step at which a bond is formed between the sheep and loaves is the act of slaughter. However, the Gemara points out that this may just be the earliest step he knows forms such a bond, and with regard to waving he’s unclear.
The Gemara is uncertain which interpretation of Rabbi Yohanan is correct, so the dilemma stands unresolved. Funnily and somewhat confusingly, there are multiple layers of uncertainty here: The Gemara is uncertain as to whether Rabbi Yohanan is uncertain. In turn, we’re left with uncertainty both about the halakhah and the manner in which it was taught.
Read all of Menachot 46 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on February 26, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
