The current chapter of Zevachim is concerned with how we deal with the side effects of sacrifices. Once you’ve completed a sacrifice, how do you clean the vessels that came in contact with it? Underlying these discussions is the idea that even after a sacrifice is completed, the blood and meat remain ritually charged substances, ones whose clean-up requires careful ritual steps.
The mishnah toward the end of yesterday’s daf moved us from a discussion of blood-spattered clothes and objects to that of vessels that were used for cooking sacrifices. It also expands from laws about the sin offering in particular to laws applying to all sacrifices. The extensive discussion about cooking vessels makes this latter part of the chapter a rich source for laws about keeping kosher, particularly the laws of kashering dishes.
The mishnah anchoring our discussion begins:
Whether one boiled in it or poured boiling (sacrificial flesh) into it, whether that of most sacred sacrifices or lesser sacrifices, (the vessel) requires scouring and rinsing. Rabbi Shimon says: Lesser sacrifices do not require scouring and rinsing.
The laws in this chapter are all based on verses in Leviticus that describe the different cleansing procedures for ceramic and copper vessels used to cook sin offerings. Based on this, this mishnah seems to be talking about copper vessels, whose cleansing procedure involves scouring and rinsing. If it were dealing with earthenware, then according to Leviticus, the procedure would be to simply break the vessel after a single use. Earthenware is seemingly unable to be properly cleansed and, in the ancient world, was cheaper and more disposable than metal.
The first opinion in the mishnah states that a copper vessel used to cook or even hold the boiling hot flesh of any kind of sacrifice triggers this cleaning requirement. Rabbi Shimon disagrees and claims that this only applies to sacrifices of the highest sanctity, like the sin offering.
The Gemara’s initial questions about this mishnah relate to its addition of a vessel that had boiling sacrificial flesh poured into it. The biblical verses only referred to vessels in which the sacrifice was actually boiled. This prompts the rabbis to explore the underlying reason for this law: Is the relevant part of cooking a sacrifice in a pot the absorption of flavor through heat or the act of cooking itself? The Gemara generally comes down on the side of flavor absorption, but applying this logic back to the Torah raises some additional questions.
In this discussion about how to deal with cooking vessels, a question is raised about whether an oven that was smeared with animal fat can ever be sufficiently cleansed to remove its meat status. This brings ceramic materials back into the discussion, which seem to be the default material for ovens. Despite the fact that the Torah’s instructions vis a vis earthenware are relatively straightforward, the rabbis use logic to probe different dimensions of this question. Through logical reasoning, they land on the idea that ceramic actually can be properly cleansed, it’s just a question of applying the correct amount of heat. They theorize that one way this could be done is returning earthenware vessels to a kiln, which provides even and high heat.
Armed with this new logical framework, the Gemara asks a follow-up question:
But pots in the Temple, why does the Merciful One state they should be broken? Let us return them to the kilns!
If the concern with earthenware vessels used for sacrifices is flavor absorption, and flavor absorption can be reversed with the heat of a kiln, why does the Torah require that they be broken? They should just be put in the kiln! This question only makes sense once the Gemara has decided that 1) the relevant part of cooking a sacrifice in these pots is flavor absorption, not the act of cooking itself, and 2) this flavor absorption is actually able to be reversed by applying a sufficiently even and high amount of heat — we only mandate breaking the pots because this process is usually logistically inconvenient. In essence, the Gemara has created a new textual problem that didn’t exist before. The rabbis attempt a resolution:
Rabbi Zeira said: Because kilns are not built in Jerusalem.
To reconcile the Gemara’s logic with the Torah’s established law, Rabbi Zeira cites a beraita which states that Jerusalem had a special ordinance that forbids the building of kilns to prevent excess smoke. So what then was done with all the shards of broken earthenware vessels resulting from these laws — did they just let them pile up in the Temple courtyard? The Gemara responds with a delightful tradition that the shards of these vessels were magically absorbed into the ground of the Temple. The discussion continues, but we can see from just this section a fascinating example of how the rabbis struggled to balance innovative logical arguments with the textual traditions they felt obligated to preserve.
Read all of Zevachim 96 on Sefaria.
This piece originally appeared in a My Jewish Learning Daf Yomi email newsletter sent on December 19, 2025. If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, sign up here.
