What’s a sacrifice without wine? There’s a technical answer, found in a mishnah on yesterday’s daf:
All offerings, whether communal or individual, require libations, except for the firstborn offering, the animal tithe offering, the paschal offering, the sin offering and the guilt offering. But the sin offering of a person with tzaraat and his guilt offering do require libations.
The rabbis were willing to accept that most sin-related sacrifices should not have libations. In the Jerusalem Talmud (Sotah 2:1), Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai explains:
Why did they say that no purification or reparation sacrifices need wine offerings? So that the sacrifice of a sinner should not be magnificent.
Joy is associated with pouring wine, which is therefore not apt for sacrifices of atonement. But that doesn’t explain why other sacrifices lack a libation. Indeed, today’s daf is replete with rabbis not only trying to explain the Mishnah’s terse determination of which sacrifices have libations, but also actively proposing exceptions to its rule. Let’s look at two examples from the discussion, starting with the high priest’s sacrifice on Yom Kippur.
Leviticus 16 describes the Yom Kippur ritual in great detail, but there is no explicit mention of a libation. Nonetheless, the Talmud asserts:
(It is stated concerning libations): “Or for a ram, you shall prepare a meal offering of two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour, mixed with one-third of a hin of oil” (Numbers 15:6–7). The details of the meal offering brought with a ram are also mentioned elsewhere: “And two-tenths of fine flour for a meal offering, mixed with oil, for the one ram” (Numbers 28:12).
Why do I need the verse here to state this? Rav Sheshet says: This verse serves to include the ram of Aaron.
The Talmud’s anonymous voice asks rhetorically if there is a purpose to the Hebrew word la’ayil (literally “for the ram”), which appears in Numbers 15:6 before mentioning libations and in Numbers 28:14, which enumerates the sacrifices and their libations offered at the beginning of a new month. Rav Sheshet suggests the reason is to include the ram of Aaron — that is, the ram of the high priest. (This requires some mental gymnastics that construes Yom Kippur, which falls on the tenth of Tishrei, as a new moon holiday.)
This method of rabbinic reading — finding a term that appears in multiple verses and declaring that we can gain insight by reading those disparate verses as if they speak directly to one another — is called gezerah shavah, literally “an equal decree.” It is the magic of gezerah shavah that gives the high priest a libation on Yom Kippur.
Further down the daf, the rabbis do it again. This time, they turned their attention to the case of a woman who has recently given birth. Leviticus 12:6 tells us that, after some time has passed, she will have to offer a sacrifice. However, the biblical text mentions no libations. Yet Abaye says:
(The requirement to bring libations with the) burnt offering of a woman who gave birth is derived from the end of that verse.
What’s at the end of the verse? Abaye appears to be pointing us to the word le’olah (“as a burnt offering”) that appears in Leviticus 12:16 (about post-partum offerings) as well as Numbers 6:14 (amidst material about libations). Gezerah shavah does it again; now the new mother also gets wine.
At this point, thanks to talmudic logic, we have a high priest and a new mother each offering private sacrifices accompanied by libations that are not explicitly mentioned in the Torah. But now the rabbis can’t shake the feeling that there should be something more extravagant about the libations of the high priest on Yom Kippur. After all, he is responsible not only for himself but also the whole priestly class, the whole levitical tribe and indeed the entire people of Israel. Wondering what might be unique at this point about the high priest’s sacrificial rite on Yom Kippur, the Talmud asks:
In what way is it different from the burnt offering of a woman who gave birth?
The Talmud begins to propose answers to this question but then falters. It ultimately fails to distinguish between the wine offering of the new mother and the high priest. Their libation is the same. It is true that he might be responsible for the entire people, and she for only one, but perhaps we are meant to understand that his responsibility for everyone is no more intimate or significant than hers in bearing and rearing a single child. The technical significance of offerings and their accompanying libations might feel abstract to modern readers. Yet for the sages of the Talmud, discovering which sacrifices required libations was revelatory and, ultimately, a societal equalizer.
Read all of Menachot 91 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on April 12, 2026. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
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