Back on Menachot 6, Rabbi Shimon explained that the Torah prohibits adding oil to the meal offering of a sinner because the sinner’s offering must be publicly mediocre. On today’s daf, the Talmud considers the implications of this ruling for the priest doing the offering.
Rabbi Ila says: You do not have a meal offering whose removal of the handful is more difficult than that of the meal offering of a sinner.
Rabbi Ila recognizes that this meal offering is the most difficult meal offering to properly present to the altar. Why? If the sinner’s minchah is just a dish of dry flour, the priest will struggle to pick up the requisite handful without dropping any flour. And if some flour escapes from his hand, then he isn’t offering the complete measure of the handful and the offering is invalid.
Rav Yitzhak bar Avdimi says: He may knead the meal offering of a sinner in water, and it is fit.
Rav Yitzhak bar Avdimi suggests adding some water to the meal offering so the flour binds together and it is easier to grab a handful. After all, Leviticus 5:11 only prohibits adding frankincense and oil to the sinner’s meal offering — not water. Initially, the debate seems to be about whether the priest can add water to the meal offering of a sinner. But the Talmud next offers a different take on their disagreement:
Let us say they disagree about this: One sage holds that one measures as they are, and one sage holds that one measures as they were.
The anonymous voice of the Talmud suggests that the debate is not over whether it’s OK to add water to a sinner’s minchah, but rather, over how to measure the volume of that meal offering. Should it be measured before the water is added, when it is just raw flour, or after water has been added to it?
According to this understanding, Rabbi Ila thinks that the volume must be measured before anything else is added to the flour, which means that the priest is grabbing a handful of loose flour with his thumb and pinky. Rav Yitzhak bar Avdimi, on the other hand, thinks that the volume of a meal offering is measured after other ingredients are added, so the priest grabs a handful of dough instead. The stakes are thus not only about which meal offering is the most difficult, but how to ensure that the meal offering of the sinner is valid at all.
Regardless, the Talmud disagrees with this reconstruction of the debate as well, rooting it instead in a difference of interpretation of Leviticus 7:10, which states “And every meal offering, mixed with oil, or dry.”
No, as everyone agrees that one measures as they are. And it is with regard to this that they disagree: One sage holds: What is the meaning of “dry”? Dry of oil. And one sage holds: dry of all substances.
According to this reconstruction, Rabbi Ila reads Leviticus 7:10 as saying that this meal offering must be dry of any liquid when it is measured. Rabbi Yitzhak bar Avdimi insists it only means dry of oil — but water can be mixed in before measuring.
While the Talmud reconstructs the debate over dueling legal principles, let’s back up. The whole discussion was originally kicked off by Rabbi Ila noting the priest’s difficulty in offering the sinner’s meal offering. According to his read of the situation, an individual’s sin has negative effects not only on the sinner, but also on those around the sinner, who have to work harder to bring the sinner back into the community of the righteous. Rabbi Yitzhak bar Avdimi, on the other hand, thinks that accommodations can be made (adding water to the flour) so that the sin affects only the sinner.
Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah, follows the position of Rabbi Yitzhak bar Avdimi, and allows water to be mixed into the flour, suggesting that the priest can remain unaffected by the sins of the offerer. And while that may be true on a ritual level, as anyone who has lived in community knows, one person’s behavior can, and often does, have harmful effects beyond their own life. To live in community is therefore to be accountable to one another, recognizing that our conduct always affects those around us, sometimes in ways we cannot calculate.
Read all of Menachot 54 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 6, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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