When offering sacrifices, sometimes an offering brought up to the altar might turn out to be unfit for one reason or another. What do the priests do with it? Do they bring it back down or do they carry on with the ritual and offer it up anyway?
This has been the subject of the current chapter of Tractate Zevachim. In the mishnah on Zevachim 83, we learned that certain types of sacrifices that are unfit can be sanctified simply by virtue of being placed on the holy altar. In the mishnah on yesterday’s daf, we learned more about which sacrifices fall into this category. We hear general pronouncements from rabbis about what should descend from the altar if it is deemed unfit and what doesn’t descend. But there’s one statement that’s a bit different:
Rabbi Hanina, the deputy high priest, says: My father would reject blemished animals from upon the altar.
Instead of making blanket statements about how particular types of sacrifices are treated, Rabbi Hanina shares the perspective of his father, who had an integral part in the Temple service. This statement jumps out at the rabbis as worth noting. On today’s daf, we read this:
What is Rabbi Hanina teaching us? If you wish, say he teaches us an incident. And if you wish, say: What is the meaning of the term “reject”? In a backhanded manner.
It’s a short statement, but it imparts two important points, each grounded in a specific word: incident and backhanded.
The first point is that Rabbi Hanina is bringing up a lived example of what the rabbis are discussing generally. By relating how this bit of Jewish law played out in real life, Rabbi Hanina helps shed light on the abstract debate by sharing his father’s practical experience as a priest in the Temple. This conversation harkens back to a debate back on Bava Batra 130b, where Rabbi Zerika argued that it’s more persuasive to base a legal ruling on principle rather than a specific practical case, while Rabbi Abba holds the opposite. While offering caveats, the Gemara concludes that a specific example drawn from a real-life practice is more convincing.
One might conclude that a practical example is even more compelling here. With the Temple destroyed and the rituals associated with it gone, the rabbis had no way of observing the priests at work. First-hand reports of which sacrifices descended and which did not would have been in short supply, so Rabbi Hanina’s father’s practice would have been especially influential in this debate, bolstering assertions based solely on a statement of a legal principle.
Some might find this reasoning unpersuasive and see Rabbi Hanina’s comment as unnecessary. After all, there are other rabbis who make the same point generally. For those in that camp, the Gemara offers a second interpretation: Rabbi Hanina’s father’s actions demonstrate his attempts to avoid shaming the person who brought the sacrifice. According to Rashi, rejecting animals in a backhanded manner means doing it in such a way as to avoid causing public shame. Rabbi Hanina’s seemingly offhanded remark is really an attempt to preserve someone’s dignity.
So take your pick of what you want to learn from this. You could go with the Gemara’s first point, that practical experience and learning is more persuasive than a general principle. Or if you prefer, you can learn that it’s important to shield someone from public embarrassment when their sacrifice is rejected.
Read all of Zevachim 85 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on December 8, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
