The mishnah on today’s daf describes the sacrifices in which it is necessary to perform semichah — placing one’s hands on the head of an animal before it is offered. The laying of hands is a somewhat esoteric ritual whose explicit purpose is never fully described in the Torah or even really by the rabbis. Talmudic discussions suggest that it might be a process of transferring one’s identity and guilt for one’s sins onto the sacrifice. This transference, presumably, helps solidify the atonement the sacrifice induces.
The other context in which semichah comes up in the Torah, and the one with which modern Jews are often more familiar, is the transmission of leadership. In the Numbers 17:18–24, God instructs Moses to transfer his authority to his successor, Joshua, by semichah. When Moses lays his hands on Joshua’s head, the latter is “filled with a spirit of wisdom” (Deuteronomy 34:9). This becomes the model for transferring rabbinic leadership from one generation to the next — what we now call rabbinic ordination (in Hebrew, it is likewise called semichah). Both contexts — sacrifice and the transmission of leadership — suggest a transfer of traits if not identity writ large.
Returning to our mishnah, here we learn which types of sacrifices require semichah:
None of the communal offerings require semichah except the bull that is offered for (a transgression by the community) of any of the commandments, and the scapegoat.
Rabbi Shimon says: Also the goat offered for (the communal sin) of idol worship.
All the offerings of an individual require semichah except the first-born offering, the animal tithe offering and the paschal offering.
In general, the mishnah tells us, communal sacrifices do not require semichah and individual sacrifices do. This idea seems to be based both on close readings of the Torah’s text, where semichah is prescribed explicitly for some sacrifices and not for others, and the idea that semichah is about individual responsibility and atonement. However, there are exceptions to the general rule. Much of the Gemara on this mishnah works to reconcile this framework with beraitot on the same subject. We’ll look at one example.
Leviticus 3 gives instructions for individual shelamim (peace or well-being) offerings — the paradigmatic case of sacrifices requiring semichah. The Torah uses the word korbano (“his offering”) seven times in that passage. Toward the end of the discussion, the Gemara brings a beraita that highlights three of these instances to derive the three exceptional sacrifices listed in the mishnah:
“His offering” — but not the firstborn offering … “His offering” — but not the animal tithe offering … “His offering” — but not the paschal offering …
According to the interpretive logic of this beraita, each instance of the Torah repeating “his offering,” serves to emphasize that it is this sacrifice (the shelamim) that requires semichah, and not those other types of sacrifices (firstborn, tithe and paschal offering).
The Gemara challenges this prooftext for the mishnah and brings a different reading of the cascade of korbanos:
“His offering” — but not an offering of another person. “His offering” — but not an offering of a gentile. “His offering” — to include all the owners of a (jointly owned) offering in the requirement of semichah.
In this version of the beraita, the repeated use of korbano excludes very different would-be hand-layers. We learn that one can only do semichah on their own sacrifice. We also learn that even though non-Jews could bring sacrifices to the Temple, they cannot lay their hands on those sacrifices. And we also learn that when a person goes in on an “individual” offering with a group (still not considered a communal sacrifice), each person has their own separate obligation of semichah on the animal. The midrash emphasizes the individual nature of the sacrifice by requiring semichah for each participant, rather than calling for one person to do it on behalf of the group.
In the end, rabbinic law codifies all six of these derived rules about semichah. On tomorrow’s daf, we will see what other exceptions the rabbis learn for this ritual category.
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