All meal offerings begin with a handful being removed for the altar. (The rest of the grain is reserved for the priests to eat.) Today, we encounter a mishnah that tells us who is qualified to take that handful of flour — or rather, who is not:
Regarding the meal offering of a sinner and all meal offerings: If the one who removed their handful was a non-priest, an acute mourner, one who immersed that day, one lacking vestments, one who had not yet brought an atonement offering, one who did not wash his hands and feet, an uncircumcised priest, a ritually impure priest, or a priest who was sitting, standing upon vessels, or upon an animal, or upon the feet of another — it is unfit.
You have to be a priest to perform the ritual of taking a handful. But priests are disqualified if they have not completed their purification or atonement processes. They can also be disqualified because of life circumstances: acute mourning or lack of circumcision. And perfectly capable priests might still be disqualified to perform the meal offering if they do so in the wrong posture: sitting or standing on a pot, a platform, or even another living being.
The Gemara starts its interrogation of the mishnah by asking about the words that open it.
Why do I need it to teach: “Regarding the meal offering of a sinner and all other meal offerings?” Let it teach: “Regarding all meal offerings…”
It is a bit peculiar that the mishnah starts by singling out the meal offering of the sinner separately from the rest of the meal offerings. Since the ruling is the same regardless of whether it’s the meal offering of a sinner or someone else’s meal offering, why not just say “all meal offerings”?
The Gemara explains:
It was necessary in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Shimon. As it is taught in a beraita that Rabbi Shimon says: By right, the meal offering of a sinner should require oil and frankincense, so that the sinner will not profit. And why does it not require these? So that his offering will not be of superior quality …
Leviticus 5:11 states that someone who cannot afford even two doves for their sin offering can bring a meal offering instead. According to the Bible, this meal offering is different from all other meal offerings in that the sinner brings only plain flour, with no oil or frankincense. While Leviticus doesn’t explain why this meal offering omits those ingredients, we might guess that it has to do with the poverty of the one who brings it. Rabbi Shimon explains it differently: The offering of a sinner should not be mehudar, meaning beautified, or of superior quality. Removing these beautifying elements makes the offering intentionally mediocre. There is a concern that, in lacking the oil and frankincense, the sin offering will be too inexpensive — because sin should come at a cost. But for Rabbi Shimon, the requirement that the meal offering of a sinner be publicly inferior is so important that it overrides the concern about the sacrifice being too cheap.
You might have thought to say that since Rabbi Shimon says: “So that his offering will not be of superior quality,” when the handful is removed by one who is unfit, it should also be valid. Therefore, it teaches us (that even the sinner’s meal offering must be brought by a priest who is fit to do so).
If Rabbi Shimon is committed to the poor quality of the sinner’s meal offering, what could be more shoddy than having an unfit priest offer it? Why not shunt these poor sinners off to those priests who can’t do anything else? The rabbis read the mishnah’s explicit mention of the meal offering of the sinner as insisting that even according to Rabbi Shimon, this offering must be made by a qualified priest.
The meal offering of the sinner is brought by someone doubly marginalized, by poverty and by sin. When the mishnah is put in conversation with Rabbi Shimon, however, we see the rabbis insisting that even one at the intersection of these deficits is deserving — and indeed requires — the same level of ritual care as everyone else.
Read all of Menachot 6 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on January 17, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
