On Oct. 1, 2025, San Diego Padres pitcher Mason Miller broke the record for the fastest pitch ever delivered in a Major League Baseball post-season. Miller threw a 104.5 mile-per-hour fastball to strike out Cubs catcher Carson Kelly in the bottom of the seventh inning on the way to a Padres shutout in game two of the National League Wild Card series.
While only an elite athlete like Miller is capable of such a stellar feat, the priests’ duties in the Temple also called for a strong arm. The Torah describes how, following the slaughter, burning and draining of a bird’s blood for a burnt offering, the priest was instructed to “remove its crop with its feathers, and cast it beside the altar on the east part, by the place of the ashes.” (Leviticus 1:16) In other words, he had to throw the feathers and the crop — the pouch in a bird’s neck that stores extra food — from the altar to the ash pile. Today, the Gemara asks why burnt offerings of birds are meant to performed at the southeastern corner of the altar:
Rabbi Yohanan says: Because it is the closest to the place of the ashes.
That’s logical, since performing the sacrifice close to the ash pile streamlines the operation. But what happens when sacrificial traffic is heavy and an alternate location must be found? Then, the priests have to pivot to throwing the bird remains all the way to the southwest corner of the altar, a considerable distance.
Rabbi Yohanan says: Come and see how great was the strength of the priests, as you have no parts of birds lighter than the crop and feathers, and there were times when the priest would toss them more than thirty cubits.
A bird’s crop and feathers weigh about 50 grams (1.7 oz.), one-third the weight of a baseball. A cubit is about 18 inches, so throwing the remains across the breadth of the altar would be like tossing a slice of bread 45 feet or so. How were the priests able to accomplish it?
Rabbi Zev Reichman, writing on today’s daf, asks whether the ability to throw these literally featherweight items was a miracle or if it was a result of training to be a priest, and what we might learn from either possibility. If it’s a miracle, he suggests, priests fulfilling the sacrificial service are divinely endowed with the physical ability to do so. If it’s a result of years of training, do we simply learn that the priests are dedicated, hard workers? Or might there be something else?
Reichman answers by relating a story about the Chofetz Chaim (Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan, the influential 19th century Lithuanian rabbi best known for his foundational writing on the sins of evil speech), who was himself a priest. Apparently, Rabbi Kagan was constantly in training for the priesthood, so that if the messianic age — for which traditional Jews pray daily — should arrive, he would have the skills to serve in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. While Rabbi Kagan would reportedly run up ramps and chase after wagons to build up his stamina, might others train to throw light objects long distances? Perhaps.
But I think this conversation teaches us something more — in order to do hard, nearly impossible things, we need both training and a touch of the divine. When asked if the record-breaking pitch was the best he ever threw, Miller told a reporter: “It’s the best fastball [I’d ever thrown]. Sometimes everything syncs up and the execution is perfect.” Applied to the study of Talmud, particularly when learning challenging tractates like Zevachim, dedicating extra time to deepen our understanding of the text — training, if you will — certainly helps us improve. And sometimes, when everything syncs up, we might even catch a flash of new inspiration.
Read all of Zevachim 64 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on November 17, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
