Zevachim 2

Welcome to Tractate Zevachim, which is all about sacrifices. Let’s jump right into the first lines of the opening mishnah.

All slaughtered offerings that were slaughtered not for their own sake are fit, however they do not satisfy the obligation of the owner — except for the paschal offering and the sin offering. The paschal offering (is unfit only when sacrificed not for its sake) at its appointed time, while the sin offering is unfit any time (that it is sacrificed not for its sake).

If the Talmud were a textbook on sacrifice, we might reasonably expect this new tractate to supply basic information: What animals are sacrificed and for what purposes? When is the proper time to make those sacrifices? What is the correct procedure for executing the sacrifice (apologies for the terrible pun)? What parts of the slaughtered animal are eaten, by whom and where?

But the Talmud skips all that — for now. As a book for legal experts, it assumes we know the basic information, much of which is found in the Hebrew Bible. Instead, the Talmud jumps straight into problem-solving sacrificial errors. This mishnah tells us what we should do if we have an animal that was originally supposed to be, say, an olah (a burnt offering) and instead was slaughtered by someone who thought they were handling a shelamim (a peace offering). There are now two questions: Is the sacrifice fit? In other words, can we proceed to offer it on the altar? And does it fulfill the original purpose for which it was intended?

In most cases, the answer to the first question is yes and the answer to the second question is no. Although the person slaughtering the animal misunderstood what they were supposed to be slaughtering, that doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t continue with the sacrifice and move its parts on to the altar. But the sacrifice no longer functions in the way it was meant to. This means the person who brought the sacrifice has to go back and get another animal to fulfill the original purpose. We should note here that this applies in cases of true error. One who intentionally offers a sacrifice for the wrong purpose renders it unfit.

The exceptions to this rule, says the mishnah, are the paschal offering and the sin offering. The former is a once-a-year sacrifice offered on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, which we studied in detail back in Tractate Pesachim. And the latter is an offering brought in atonement for certain unintentional sins. 

This is the Talmud, of course, so don’t get too comfortable with this rule. Let’s continue reading the mishnah:

Rabbi Eliezer says: The guilt offering too (is unfit when sacrificed not for its sake).

Rabbi Eliezer says that like the sin offering, the guilt offering is unfit when sacrificed for the wrong purpose.There are two kinds of offerings that atone for transgressions, and it makes sense that the same rules apply to them. 

Now we have a third opinion.

Yosei ben Honi says: Other offerings that are slaughtered for the sake of a paschal offering and for the sake of a sin offering are unfit.

Not only are animals designated to be a paschal offering or sin offering unfit if they are offered with the wrong purpose in mind, says Rabbi Yosei, the reverse is also true: Offering the wrong animal as a sin offering or paschal offering renders that animal unfit.

Can anyone give us a general principle for what’s going on here? Enter the last line of the mishnah:

Shimon, brother of Azarya, says: With regard to all offerings, if one slaughtered them for the sake of an offering whose level of sanctity is greater than theirs, they are fit. If one slaughtered them for the sake of an offering whose level of sanctity is less than theirs, they are unfit.

From this last line of the mishnah, we learn that not all offerings have the same level of sanctity. If you accidentally “level up” an animal by offering it as something that has a greater level of sanctity, you do not render it unfit. But if you “level down” your animal with your mistake, you render it unfit.

We haven’t even broken into the Gemara yet and already we can see this will be a complex discussion — hundreds of pages, in fact, which in Daf Yomi time means over a year of study. So before we plow on, we might reasonably ask: Why did the rabbis care about elaborating a sacrificial system that was already gone in their day? Perhaps because they hoped it would come back and they would be ready to hit the ground running when the Temple was rebuilt. Others have suggested that the rabbis did not expect the Temple to be rebuilt and they saw the act of studying these laws as a religious exercise with intrinsic sacred value. That explanation might accord better with those of us who have no expectation of the Temple’s imminent return. That is the challenge for all of us, in fact: to turn this learning into a sacred exercise.

Read all of Zevachim 2 on Sefaria.

This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on September 16, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.