Menachot 63

My grandmother-in-law made a famous sponge cake. Sadly, she passed away before I ever got to eat one. But legend has it that Sylvia Weiss’ delicious sponge cakes exceeded the height of several seven-layer cakes stacked one on top of the other — regularly towering over the adults seated around the table. 

Although we have Sylvia’s cookbook on our bookshelf, no member of our family can figure out how she made that cake. We understand the words printed on the page and the notes she wrote in the margin, but we don’t know exactly what she did to make this cake rise to such lofty heights.

Similarly, the rabbis looked back on the imprecise recipes in the Book of Leviticus with great intrigue. This priestly manual left behind the evidence of an organized system for preparing and offering sacrifices. However, the rabbis struggled to make sense of the instructions. When one rabbi thought he had figured out a recipe’s instruments or measurements or methods, another sage would almost invariably offer a counter interpretation.

Leviticus 7:9 discusses preparing the mincha (meal offering) in an oven, but two other options are mentioned: a marcheshet, sometimes translated as a pan, and a machavat, sometimes translated as a griddle. The rabbinic sages debated the meaning of these words because detailed memories of the Temple service had faded. But the rabbis still had the priests’ cookbooks: Leviticus, bits of Exodus, Numbers and Ezekiel. They had no Temple in which to try out the recipes, but to let go of whatever knowledge they held about those recipes would have been sacrilege. Not to at least try to make sense of them would have been tantamount to abandoning Jewish religion.

Menachot 63 begins by citing from the Mishnah, edited some five generations after the last time a priest offered a sacrifice in the Temple:

One who takes a vow to bring a meal offering to the Temple and says: “It is incumbent upon me to bring a meal offering prepared in a machavat,” may not bring one prepared in a marcheshet. Similarly, if he says: “It is incumbent upon me to bring a meal offering prepared in a marcheshet,” he may not bring one prepared in a machavat. 

Although the rabbis know that these two cooking implements are distinct from one another, not all rabbis could remember what the difference was. Rabbi Yose HaGelili offers:

A marcheshet has a cover, whereas a machavat does not have a cover.

Rabbi Hanina ben Gamliel asserts something a little different:

A marcheshet is deep, and due to the large amount of oil, its product is soft because it moves about (rochashin). A machavat is flat, as the sides of the pan are level with the pan, and due to the small amount of oil, its product is hard.

According to Rabbi Hanina, only one of the pans is suitable for deep frying. While not identical, it’s not inconsistent with Rabbi Yose’s assertion that the marcheshet (the one he describes as deeper) is the one that comes with a cover. As the Talmud proceeds, the sages highlight some further details from Beit Hillel which also track with these descriptions.

In a book to which disagreement is foundational, the overwhelming lack of dissent expressed among these sages-cum-cooks is conspicuous — which is perhaps why the Talmud also highlights Beit Shammai’s fundamental suspicion of all previous descriptions:

Beit Shammai say: With regard to one who says: It is incumbent upon me to bring a marcheshet … in such a case the money for the meal offering should be placed in a safe place until the prophet Elijah comes.

Beit Shammai are uncertain with regard to the source of the terms marcheshet and machavat, whether the offerings are called these names due to the specific vessel in which each meal offering is prepared, or whether they are called these names due to the manner of their preparation.

Rabbi Yose, Rabbi Hanina and Beit Hillel can wax nostalgic about the marcheshet and the machavat, but Beit Shammai assert they honestly have no idea what the first one is. Beit Shammai therefore argues that any vow to make something with the marcheshet (and likely the machavat) cannot be fulfilled unless Elijah the prophet shows up in our kitchen, teaching us how to resurrect this forsaken recipe. Beit Shammai is correct that we cannot fully restore a vanished past. Yet the Talmud comes to agree with Beit Hillel: Even if there is no place to put it into practice, we have the knowledge, wherewithal and passion to reconstruct the details of the Temple cult.

It may be that Grandma Weiss’ sponge cake may never be baked again, but my family has not yet given up on experimenting with her recipes.

Read all of Menachot 63 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on March 15, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.