Daf Ditty Chagigah 2: Visual exceptions

https://www.zennioptical.com/blog/depth-perception-exactly/

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MISHNA: All are obligated on the three pilgrim Festivals in the mitzva of appearance, i.e., to
appear in the Temple as well as to sacrifice an offering, except for a deaf-mute, an imbecile, and
a minor; and a tumtum, and a hermaphrodite, and women, and slaves who are not
emancipated; and the lame, and the blind, and the sick, and the old, and one who is unable
to ascend to Jerusalem on his own legs.

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Who has the status of a minor with regard to this halakha? Any child who is unable to ride on
his father’s shoulders and ascend from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount; this is the statement
of Beit Shammai. And Beit Hillel say: Any child who is unable to hold his father’s hand and
ascend on foot from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount, as it is stated: “Three times [regalim]”
(Exodus 23:14). Since the term for feet is raglayim, Beit Hillel infer from here that the obligation
to ascend involves the use of one’s legs.

Beit Shammai say: The burnt-offering of appearance brought on a pilgrim Festival must be
worth at least two silver coins, and the Festival peace-offering must be worth at least one silver
ma’a coin. And Beit Hillel say: The burnt-offering of appearance must be worth at least one
silver ma’a and the Festival peace-offering at least two silver coins.

GEMARA: The Gemara asks: When the mishna states that all are obligated in the mitzva of
appearance in the Temple, the term: All, comes to add what in the mishna’s ruling? The Gemara
answers: It serves to add one who is half-slave half-freeman. The Gemara asks: And according
to the opinion of Ravina, who said: One who is half-slave half-freeman is exempt from the
appearance in the Temple, the term: All, comes to add what? The Gemara answers: It comes to
add one who was lame on the first day of the Festival and was unable to travel, and was healed
on the second day of the Festival. This man is obligated to appear before the end of the Festival.

The Gemara asks: This works out well according to the one who said that all seven days of the
Festival redress one another, i.e., the obligation to appear applies equally on all days of the
Festival. Consequently, one who was unable to travel on the first day may do so on the second
day. However, according to the one who said that the main obligation is on the first day and all
the remaining days merely redress the first day, and therefore one who was exempt from
appearing on the first day of the Festival remains exempt throughout the rest of the Festival, the
term: All, comes to add what? The Gemara answers: It comes to add one who is blind in one of
his eyes.

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The Gemara notes: And this is not in accordance with the opinion of this tanna, as it is taught
in a baraita that Yoḥanan ben Dehavai says in the name of Rabbi Yehuda: One who is blind
in one of his eyes is exempt from the mitzva of appearance, as it is stated:

,n‫ְזכוּ ְר‬-‫ ָכּל‬,‫ֵי ָרֶאה‬--‫ ַבָּשָּׁנה‬,‫שׁ ְפָּﬠִמים‬Z‫יז ָשׁ‬ 17 Three times in the year all thy males shall
.‫ ָהָאֹדן ְיהָוה‬,‫ְפֵּני‬-‫ֶאל‬ appear before the Lord GOD.
Ex 23:17

“Three occasions in the year all your males will appear [yera’e] before the Lord God”

Since there are no vowels in the text, this can be read as: All your males will see [yireh] the Lord
God. This teaches that in the same manner that one comes to see, so he comes to be seen: Just
as the usual way to see is with both one’s eyes, so too the obligation to be seen applies only to
one who comes with the sight of both his eyes. Therefore, one who is blind in one eye is not
obligated in the mitzva of appearance in the Temple.

Summary

Introduction1

Our mishnah delineates who is obligated to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem on the three festivals.
Exodus 23:17 says, “Three times a year all your male shall appear before the Sovereign, the Lord.”
Our mishnah elaborates on this verse.

All are obligated to appear [at the Temple], except a deaf person, an imbecile and a minor,
a person of unknown sex [tumtum], a hermaphrodite, women, unfreed slaves, a lame person,
a blind person, a sick person, an aged person, and one who is unable to go up on foot.

I will explain each category of persons exempted from making the pilgrimage one at a time. A
deaf person, an imbecile and a minor: These three people are usually lumped together because they
are not considered to have “awareness/intelligence” (daat).

1
https://www.sefaria.org/Chagigah.2a.1?lang=bi&p2=Mishnah_Chagigah.1.1&lang2=bi&w2=English%20Explanation%20of%2
0Mishnah&lang3=en

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They are exempt from all commandments, this one included. A person of unknown sex [tumtum],
a hermaphrodite, women: Exodus 23:17 says that only males are obligated.

The mishnah therefore exempts anyone whose sex as a male is not certain. A tumtum is a person
with neither male nor female genitalia. A hermaphrodite has both. Since neither is a certain male,
neither is obligated.

Unfreed slaves: Slaves are not obligated for any mitzvah from which a woman is exempt. A lame
person, a blind person, a sick person, an aged person, and one who is unable to go up on foot:
Except for the blind person, the other people in this list will have great difficulty in walking up to
the Temple Mount. Since the word for festival is “regel” which also means “leg,” these people are
exempt. The blind person is exempt because the Torah says that the mitzvah is “to be seen” there.
Since the blind person cannot see, he does not have to be seen.

Who is a minor? Whoever is unable to ride on his father’s shoulders and go up from
Jerusalem to the Temple Mount, the words of Bet Shammai. But Bet Hillel say: whoever is
unable to hold his father’s hand and go up from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount, as it is
said: “Three regalim” (Exodus 23:14).

Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai debate the age at which a minor is obligated to make the pilgrimage.
According to Bet Shammai, as long as the child can ride on his father’s shoulders he must go to
the Temple. Shammai (and his eponymous house) is generally strict when it comes to the
observance of commandments by children. For instance, Shammai made a sukkah for his infant
son, and he wanted the same son to fast on Yom Kippur.

For Shammai, as long as the child can physically perform the commandment, he must do so. Bet
Hillel holds that the child must be able to walk on his own. This is derived from the fact that the
Torah uses the word “regel” which also means leg. The Torah’s choice of this word, as opposed
to “Three pa’amim” (three times) implies that the child must be able to walk on his own.

On a perhaps deeper level, Bet Hillel holds that the mitzvah is for the person to go there on his
own, through the power of his own body. Having someone else carry one there is simply not a
fulfillment of the mitzvah.

Who Must Attend; Who's On the Outside2

Masechet Chagiga teaches us about ascending to and appearing at the Temple on the three
Festivals. We begin this exploration with a Mishna that explains three components of these tasks:
who should attend, who should not attend - with specific attention paid to minors, and the cost of
an appearance. That appearance is, our notes teach, a burnt offering.

2
http://dafyomibeginner.blogspot.com/2014/09/

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The first words of the Mishna tells us that all people are obligated in appearance (entering the
Temple and sacrificing an offering) except for a long list of people. In order: a deaf-mute, an
imbecile, and a minor; a tumtum and a hermaphrodite - androginos, and women, and slaves who
are not emancipated, and the lame, the blind, and the sick; and the old, and the one who is unable
to ascent on one's own legs.

Our notes remind us that 'tumtum' refers to a person whose genitals are indistinguishable as male
or female. 'Hermaphrodite' refers to a person who has both male and female genitals. It is
understood that a tumtum will 'become' clearly male or female later in life, and at that point in time
his/her obligations will follow those of her/his gender without prejudice. The normalcy of these
physical differences is telling; they are not connected to a discussion of sexual preference or
orientation. How progressive for a somthing that was conceived over two thousand years ago!

The Gemara jumps into a discussion of slaves and free men. Is a person obligated to appear if he
is half free and half slave? What if a person is blind in one eye and sighted in the other? In
answering these questions, the rabbis consider whether a half-slave/half-free man is allowed to
work when he wishes or not. And because a man who is half-slave is not allowed to marry, he
must be freed by his master. The mitzvah of procreation is more important than other mitzvot. The
rabbis consider whether the man who is blind in one eye can see; whether he can be seen in an
ordinary way. If not, then he is not obligated to appear.

The Gemara notes that the deaf-mute is linked with the imbecile and the minor. It suggests that
all three are not of "sound mind". They look at those who can speak but not hear; hear but not
speak. They look to sources including Psalms to understand what these experiences
mean. Ultimately the conversation is limited in this particular discussion. Sometimes I consider
looking through every reference in the Talmud to deafness, for example, to more fully understand
the rabbis' thinking. I want to grasp why they found certain normal physical attributes so
offensive.

Rav Avrohom Adler writes:3

Mishna

[Our Mishna delineates who is obligated to make the pilgrimage to Yerushalayim on the three
festivals. It is written: Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Master, Hashem.
Our Mishna elaborates on this verse. Maseches Chagigah discusses the mitzvah of re’iyah
observed on the three regalim – Pesach, Shavuos and Sukkos. Precisely what the Mishna is
3
http://dafnotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Chagigah_2.pdf

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referring to by ‘re’iyah’ - whether it simply means appearing in the courtyard of the Beis
HaMikdash or offering the korban olah, is the subject of debate amongst the Rishonim.]

All are obligated in the mitzvah of appearance (appearing in the Beis Hamikdash during the
festivals, and once there, he offers special sacrifices) except for a deaf-mute, a deranged person, a
minor, a tumtum (a person who has a thick membrane covering his genitals, and therefore his
gender is not known), an androgynous (a hermaphrodite – one that has both male and female
genitals), women and slaves who have not been freed; the lame, blind, sick, the elderly and one
who is unable to ascend by foot.

The Mishna asks: Who is regarded as a minor (that is exempt from this mitzvah)? It is anyone who
cannot ride on his father’s shoulders and ascend from Yerushalayim to the Temple Mount; these
are the words of Beis Shammai. Beis Hillel, however, say: Whoever is unable to hold their father’s
hand and ascend from Yerushalayim to the Temple Mount; for it is written: three pilgrimages
(regalim; which means ‘feet’ as well).

Beis Shammai says: The re’iyah (the olah offering which is brought) must be worth at least two
silver ma’os, and the chagigah (which is a shelamim sacrifice) must be worth at least one silver
ma’ah. Beis Hillel, however, say: The re’iyah must be worth at least one silver ma’ah, and the
chagigah must be worth at least two silver ma’os.

‘All’ is Coming to Include …. The Gemora asks: What does the Mishna mean to include when it
says ‘all’ are obligated in the mitzvah of appearance? The Gemora answers: It is meant to include
one who is half-slave and half-freeman (one who was owned by two masters and one of them frees
him). The Gemora notes that according, however, to Ravina, who holds that one who is a half-
slave and half-freeman is exempt from the obligation to appear, the word ‘all’ is meant to include
one who was lame on the first day of the festival (and therefore exempt from this mitzvah) and
became healthy again on the second day (he is obligated in the mitzvah then).

The Gemora asks: That would be correct according to the opinion that every day of the festival is
regarded as a substitute for each other (the obligation is to bring the sacrifices on the first day; if
he is unable to bring it then, there is an independent obligation on the next day). But according to
the opinion that they all regarded as a substitute for the first day (the other days are opportunities
to make reparation for the fact that the korban wasn’t offered on the designated day) what will ‘all’
come to include?

The Gemora answers: It will come to include a person who is blind in one of his eyes. The Gemora
notes that this answer is not in accordance with the following Tanna, for it was taught in a braisa:
Yochanan ben Dahavai said in the name of Rabbi Yehudah ben Teima: A person who is blind in
one eye is exempt from the mitzvah of re’iyah.

The Torah writes: All men shall see Hashem (during the pilgrimage festival); these words are
pronounced: All men shall be seen by Hashem. This teaches us: The same manner that Hashem
comes to see (the pronounced form) the people who come to the Beis Hamikdash with His two
eyes, so too, He comes to be seen (the written form) by the people with their two eyes.

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Alternatively, the expression ‘all’ is meant to include one who is a half-slave and half-freeman,
and as to the difficulty with Ravina’s opinion, this is not difficult at all, for the ruling that he is
exempt is in accordance with the initial ruling (of Beis Hillel), whereas our ruling (that he is
obligated) is in accordance with the later ruling, for it was taught in a Mishna: Someone who is
half-slave and half-free man (he was owned by two partners, and one of them emancipated him),
he serves his master for one day and then is free for one day (and so on); these are the words of
Beis Hillel.

Beis Shammai, however, says: You have created a solution for the master (for he does not lose out
through this division), but you have not solved anything for the slave. He may not marry a
slavewoman, for he is half-free. He cannot marry a free woman for he is half-slave. You cannot
say that such a person should refrain from marrying, for the world was created for the purpose of
propagation, as it is written: He did not create it to be desolate; He formed it to be inhabited.
Rather, to benefit the public (this slave), we force his master to make him a free man, and the slave
writes a document for his value (that he owes the master the rest of his value). Beis Hillel later
retracted and ruled in accordance with Beis Shammai.

Cheiresh – Deaf-mute

The Mishna had stated: All are obligated in the mitzvah of appearance except for a deaf-mute, a
deranged person and a minor. The Gemora notes: The Mishna taught the halachah regarding a
cheiresh (deaf-mute) who is similar to a deranged person and a minor. Just as a deranged person
and a minor are not mentally competent, so too the cheiresh is not mentally competent.

So the Mishna is teaching us that which was taught in a different Mishna: The cheiresh of which
the Sages speak about in all places (that he is one who is declared to be mentally incompetent) is
referring to one who cannot speak and cannot hear; but one who has the capacity to speak but
cannot hear, or one who hears but cannot speak, would be obligated (in this mitzvah of appearing
(in the Beis HaMikdash during the festivals).

This, the Gemora notes, corroborates that which was taught in a braisa: One who can speak but
cannot hear is called a cheiresh, and one who can hear but cannot speak is called an illeim, and
both are considered to be in possession of their faculties for all purposes. The Gemora asks: And
from where is it known that one who can speak but cannot hear is called a cheiresh, and one who
can hear but cannot speak is called an illeim? The Gemora answers: It is because it is written: But
I am like a deaf man (cheiresh), I do not hear, and like a mute (illeim) who doesn’t open his mouth.
Alternatively, it (the word ‘illeim’ is an acronym) is as people say: His speech was removed from
him.

Freeing a Partial Slave

The Mishna had stated: Someone who is half-slave and half-free man (he was owned by two
partners, and one of them emancipated him), he works for his master one day and for himself one
day; these are the words of Beis Hillel. Beis Shamai, however, says: You have created a solution
for the master (for he does not lose out through this division), but you have not solved anything
for the slave.

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He may not marry a slavewoman, for he is half-free. He cannot marry a free woman for he is half-
slave. If you will say that such a person should refrain from marrying, that cannot be, for the world
was created for the purpose of propagation, as it is written: He did not create it to be desolate; He
formed it to be inhabited. Rather, to benefit the public (this slave), we force his master to make
him a free man, and the slave writes a document for his value. Beis Hillel later retracted and ruled
in accordance with Beis Shamai.

The commentators ask: How can we force the master to free the slave? Isn’t there a prohibition
against emancipating a slave?

The Kli Chemdah answers this question based upon the Avudraham, who says that a woman is
exempt from mitzvos which have a time element to them, because she is pledged to her husband
at these times. So too, it can be said with respect to a halfslave half-free man. Since he is partially
a free man, he is obligated to observe all the mitzvos. Therefore, at the times where he is
responsible to serve his master, he cannot do so completely, for he is obligated in mitzvos.
Consequently, the master will anyway not be able to fulfill the mitzvah of working the slave
forever; therefore, there is no prohibition against freeing him.

Half Slave and Half Free

The braisa states: If someone is half slave and half free-man (he was jointly owned by two men,
and one of them set him free), he serves his master for one day and then is free for one day (and
so on). Beis Shammai says: You have fixed the problem for his master, but you have not solved
his own problem. He cannot marry a Canaanite slavewoman (as his free side is a freeman, who is
forbidden to marry a slavewoman) and he cannot marry a regular Jewish girl (who cannot be with
his slave half)! Should he simply not marry? The world was created to be populated, as the verse
says: The world was not created by G-d to be empty; it was created to be populated! Rather, we
force his master to free his other half as well, and we have the slave write for the master a document
stating that he owes the master the rest of his value. Beis Hillel retracted their opinion, and agreed
with Beis Shammai.

The Sfas Emes discusses the verdict regarding a halfslave and half free person that he must go
free, and the slave writes a document to the remaining partner for half of his value. This is because
the slave has no money. Essentially, by the first partner’s freeing his half, the second partner lost
his slave as well, as the law is that he must set him free. Can the second partner demand that the
first partner should take the bond from the slave, while the first partner should pay him the
monetary equivalent?

The Sfas Emes concludes that being that the damage is not direct, as it is only a consequence of
the first person’s action, Beis Din will not force the first owner to pay the second owner. [However,
it should be noted that usually indirect damage makes a person liable to pay according to
“Heavenly law (meaning what is viewed as right and wrong by Hashem),” despite the fact that
Beis Din will not make him pay. Accordingly, if the person freed his half of the slave knowing full
well that this would indirectly damage the second owner, he should compensate him to ensure
Heaven (Hashem) will not hold it against him.]

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 “See” the Shechinah

The mitzvah during the Shalosh Regalim is to be seen in the Beis HaMikdash in Yerushalayim.
Rashi teaches us that although the mitzvah is to be seen, when Bnei Yisrael go up to the Beis
HaMikdash during the festivals they achieve a special level of holiness which enables them, so to
speak, to “see” the Shechinah. This level of closeness is so unique, that it is a defining characteristic
of who Bnei Yisrael are.

This can be seen by the Chazal in Parshat Balak brought by Rashi (Chapter 22, Pasuk 28) which
describes the Jewish people as the “Umah HaChogeges Shalosh Regalim, the nation who
celebrates the three festivals. The ability of Bnei Yisrael to “see” the Shechinah affects us to such
an extent that it impacts on our choices in life. This can be seen in the first passuk in Re’ah, which
states: Re’eh Anochi Nosein Lifneichem Hayom Brachah U’Kelalah. We need to look at life from
the proper perspective in order to make the choice between life and death, between blessing and
curse.

This is why the mitzvah of going up to Yerushalayim on the Regalim defines Klal Yisrael; it gives
us a vision and perspective which enables us to lead a life connected to Hashem.

THE MEANING OF "RE'IYAH"

Rav Mordechai Kornfeld writes:4

The Mishnah lists the categories of people who are exempt from the obligation of
"Re'iyah." RASHI explains that "Re'iyah" refers to the obligation to appear in the Azarah during
the festival.

However, when the end of the Mishnah uses the word "Re'iyah," it clearly refers to the Korban
one brings (the Olas Re'iyah) when he comes to the Azarah during the festival. Why does Rashi
explain that the word "Re'iyah" in the beginning of the Mishnah refers to something different, to
the obligation to appear in the Azarah during the festival? Rashi should explain that it refers to the
obligation to bring a Korban Re'iyah on the festival. (TOSFOS DH ha'Kol)

The Mishnah continues and says that a minor (Katan) is not obligated in the Mitzvah of Re'iyah if
he is not mature enough to be carried on his father's shoulders from Yerushalayim to Har ha'Bayis
(according to Beis Shamai) or to ascend to Har ha'Bayis while holding his father's hand (according
to Beis Hillel). This implies that if he is old enough to walk (or ride, according to Beis Shamai),
he is obligated in Re'iyah even though he is only a minor. However, RASHI (DH Beis Shamai)
writes that only an adult is obligated to bring a Korban Re'iyah. Since a minor is not obligated by
the Torah to bring a Korban and cannot sanctify an animal as a Korban, there is also no Mitzvah
of Chinuch to have him bring a Korban Re'iyah. Any animal he would bring for a Korban Re'iyah
would violate the prohibition against bringing a non-sanctified animal into the Azarah.

4
https://www.dafyomi.co.il/chagigah/insites/cg-dt-002.htm

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For this reason, Rashi explains that the Mishnah's statement, "Everyone is obligated in Re'iyah,"
refers to the Mitzvah to appear in the Azarah (but not the Mitzvah to bring a Korban Re'iyah).
When the Mishnah continues and says that a minor who is old enough to go from Yerushalayim
to Har ha'Bayis is obligated, it means that he is obligated to appear in the Azarah -- but not to
bring a Korban. (This also appears to be the intention of Tosfos (end of DH Eizehu), who offers
an explanation for Rashi's words. See also TUREI EVEN to 6a, DH Eizehu, and MISHNEH
L'MELECH, Hilchos Chagigah 2:3.)

TOSFOS (DH Eizehu) disagrees with Rashi's explanation and says that a minor is obligated even
to bring a Korban Re'iyah because of Chinuch. (To fulfill this obligation of Chinuch, he brings a
Korban Nedavah on the following day (Chol ha'Mo'ed) and not on Yom Tov itself. Also, he does
not perform Semichah to the animal since a minor cannot do Semichah.)

Tosfos is consistent with his opinion expressed earlier (DH ha'Kol Chayavin) that when the
Mishnah mentions "Re'iyah," it refers to the Korban and not merely to the Mitzvah to appear in
the Azarah. Therefore, when the words of the Mishnah later imply that a minor who is old enough
to walk is obligated, it refers to the obligation to bring a Korban.

WALKING FROM YERUSHALAYIM TO HAR HA'BAYIS

The Mishnah states that according to Beis Shamai, a minor is exempt from the obligation of
Re'iyah if he is not old enough "to ride on his father's shoulders from Yerushalayim to Har
ha'Bayis." According to Beis Hillel, a minor is exempt if he is not old enough "to hold his father's
hand and walk from Yerushalayim to Har ha'Bayis."

RASHI (DH Shalosh) explains that if the child cannot walk by himself, he is exempt because had
he been an adult in the same state (unable to walk), he would have been exempt. The Mitzvah of
Chinuch applies to a child only when he would have been obligated in the Mitzvah had he been an
adult.
However, when the Mishnah says that an adult "who is unable to walk upon his feet" is
exempt, RASHI (DH u'Mi she'Eino) writes that he is exempt from the Mitzvah to appear in the
Azarah on the festival if he cannot walk "from Yerushalayim to the Azarah" (and not merely to
Har ha'Bayis). This is logical; the Mitzvah of "Aliyah l'Regel" requires that one go to the Azarah
and not merely to Har ha'Bayis, because the Azarah is considered "before Hash-m" (Shemos 23:17)
while Har ha'Bayis is not considered "before Hash-m" (Chagigah 7a).

Why, then, does the Mishnah say that a minor must be able to walk (or be carried) "from
Yerushalayim to Har ha'Bayis"? Since the Mitzvah is to go to the Azarah, the Mishnah should say
that the minor is obligated only if he is able to walk (or be carried) from Yerushalayim to
the Azarah and not merely to Har ha'Bayis. (TOSFOS YOM TOV)

(a) The TOSFOS YOM TOV answers that the most difficult part of Aliyah l'Regel is the ascent
from Yerushalayim to Har ha'Bayis. This ascent is a steep incline with no stairs. In contrast, the
ascent from Har ha'Bayis to the Azarah is an easy walk because there are stairs which lead to the

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Azarah (as the Mishnah describes in Midos 2:3). If the child is able to get to Har ha'Bayis, he
certainly is able to get to the Azarah.
(
b) RASHI later (4b, DH Mefanki) writes that in order to be obligated in the Mitzvah of Re'iyah, a
person must be able to ascend Har ha'Bayis without shoes, because one is prohibited to enter Har
ha'Bayis while wearing shoes (Berachos 54a). Accordingly, perhaps the Mishnah says that a minor
must be able to walk to "Har ha'Bayis" in order to allude to this unique Halachah which applies to
all of Har ha'Bayis and affects the age at which a minor is obligated in Aliyah l'Regel. Even though
the Mitzvah requires that he go to the Azarah, if he cannot walk without shoes he is exempt because
one may not enter Har ha'Bayis (to get to the Azarah) while wearing shoes.

According to Beis Shamai (who maintains that a minor is obligated in Re'iyah as long as he is old
enough to ride on his father's shoulders even though he is not old enough to walk to Har ha'Bayis),
the Mishnah mentions Har ha'Bayis to teach that the child is obligated only when his father is able
to walk without shoes as he carries his son on his shoulders.

(Even though another person could bring the child up to Har ha'Bayis if the father cannot go, the
obligation of Chinuch rests solely on the father's shoulders. It is not the child's obligation per se to
go up, as Rashi implies.)

(c) The OR SAME'ACH (Hilchos Beis ha'Bechirah 6:10) writes that the Yerushalmi implies that
the distance one must be able to walk in order to be obligated in Re'iyah is a set distance, and it is
not a relative distance which varies according to the place from which the person departs.
Accordingly, since the Azarah potentially can be extended to all parts of Har ha'Bayis (but not
beyond Har ha'Bayis, as the Rambam there implies), the distance which one must be able to walk
was established to be from Yerushalayim to Har ha'Bayis. The ability to walk this distance reflects
the level of maturity of the child and shows whether or not the obligation of Chinuch for this
Mitzvah applies to him. (However, the Or Same'ach points out that the Gemara later (6a) seems to
understand the Mishnah differently.)

IS A HALF-SLAVE OBLIGATED IN "RE'IYAH"?

The Gemara concludes that when the Mishnah states that "everyone is obligated in Re'iyah," its
intention is to include a person who is half-slave and half-free in the obligation of Re'iyah.

The Mishnah a few lines later lists "slaves who are not free" among those who are exempt from
Re'iyah. Ravina infers from the extra words "who are not free" that the Mishnah refers to a person
who is half-slave and half-free.

How can the Mishnah first teach that a half-slave is obligated in Re'iyah, and then teach that a half-
slave is exempt from Re'iyah? The Gemara answers that one statement of the Mishnah was taught
according to the "Mishnah Rishonah," the earlier ruling that a half-slave serves his master for one
day and is free the next day. The other statement of the Mishnah was said according to the
"Mishnah Acharonah," the later ruling which retracted the first ruling and stated that the master is

12
obligated to free his half-slave. Which part of the Mishnah expresses the ruling of the Mishnah
Rishonah, and which part of the Mishnah expresses the Mishnah Acharonah?

(a) RASHI, TOSFOS, and most Rishonim explain that the statement of the Mishnah that a half-
slave is exempt from Re'iyah follows the Mishnah Rishonah which stated that a half-slave remains
a slave (and serves his master half of the time). A half-slave is exempt according to the Mishnah
Rishonah because he retains the status of a slave.

The statement at the beginning of the Mishnah, which teaches that a half-slave is obligated in
Re'iyah, follows the Mishnah Acharonah which stated that the master is obligated to free his half-
slave. Consequently, the half-slave is considered to be free now and thus is obligated in Re'iyah.
Although the Gemara in Gitin (42b) does not answer its question of whether a half-slave (according
to the Mishnah Acharonah) is considered the legal property of the master (and may eat Terumah
if the master is a Kohen), that question applies only insofar as a Kinyan, legal ownership, is
concerned. The legal ownership of the half-slave does not affect the Halachah with regard to
Re'iyah; the obligation of Re'iyah depends on whether or not the person has any master over him
other than Hash-m. As far as the obligation of Re'iyah is concerned, the half-slave is considered to
have no other master over him since his former master is obligated to release him and cannot tell
him what to do.

According to this explanation, however, the order of the Mishnah is not chronologically accurate.
The beginning of the Mishnah expresses the Halachah according to the Mishnah Acharonah, while
the later part of the Mishnah expresses the Halachah according to the Mishnah Rishonah.

(b) The RAMBAM explains that the beginning of the Mishnah follows the Mishnah Rishonah.
According to the Mishnah Rishonah, a half-slave is obligated in Re'iyah since the master
is not obligated to set him free (the reasoning behind this is explained below). The second part of
the Mishnah follows the Mishnah Acharonah. Since, according to the Mishnah Acharonah, the
master is required to free the half-slave, the half-slave is not obligated in Re'iyah.

What is the logic behind the Rambam's explanation? Why is there more reason to obligate the half-
slave in Re'iyah if the master does not have to free him?

1. The KESEF MISHNEH (Hilchos Korban Pesach 2:13) explains that according to the Mishnah
Rishonah, since the half-slave remains in that state (as the master is not required to free him), the
Chachamim negotiated a compromise for him so that his days are split between serving the master
and serving himself. As a result of this compromise, every other day -- when the servant serves
himself -- he is considered a completely free man and is not subjugated to his master at all.
Therefore, he is obligated in the Mitzvah of Re'iyah.

In contrast, according to the Mishnah Acharonah which requires the master to free his half-slave,
the Chachamim had no reason to make a compromise for him. Since he is going to be freed he
retains the status of a slave until he is freed. Therefore, before he is actually freed there is no time
at which he is not subjugated to his master, and thus he is exempt from the Mitzvah of Re'iyah.

13
2. Although the answer of the Kesef Mishneh addresses the rulings of the Rambam in the Mishneh
Torah (Hilchos Korban Pesach loc. cit., and Hilchos Chagigah 2:1), the wording of the Rambam
in Perush ha'Mishnayos (Pesachim 8:1) seems to contradict this approach. The Rambam there
writes that according to the Mishnah Acharonah (which requires the master to free his half-slave),
since the Chachamim do not permit him to remain a half-slave and thus his freedom is imminent,
they do not permit him to eat the Korban Pesach or to bring the Korban Re'iyah until he is freed
completely.

The Rambam there implies that the reason why the half-slave is not obligated to bring a Korban is
because the master must free him. According to the Kesef Mishneh's approach, however, the half-
slave's exemption is not related to the fact that the master must free him, but rather he is exempt
because he retains the official status of a slave.

The KESEF MISHNEH (loc. cit.) suggests that perhaps the Rambam's explanation is based on a
different line of reasoning. In truth, a half-slave is obligated mid'Oraisa to bring the Korban
Re'iyah, because his half which is not a slave has no master other than Hash-m. However, the
Chachamim decreed that he is exempt and may not bring the Korban (which they are empowered
to do, since it is "Shev v'Al Ta'aseh") in order to provide an incentive for him to seek his freedom.
(According to this explanation, it is the slave who needs to be encouraged to be freed. The slave
often prefers to remain enslaved and have someone else provide him with all of his needs.
Therefore, the Chachamim gave the slave an incentive to seek his freedom by decreeing that he
may not bring his Korban Re'iyah or Korban Pesach until he becomes completely free. On the
other hand, the Chachamim did not force the master to free the half-slave because the slave himself
is able to force the master to free him by bringing him to Beis Din whenever he chooses.)

3. RABEINU AVRAHAM BEN HA'RAMBAM (cited by the Kesef Mishneh) suggests an

answer which explains not only the logic behind the Rambam's understanding of the Gemara, but
which also reconciles the Rambam's explanation in Perush ha'Mishnayos with his explanation in
Mishneh Torah.

In truth, a half-slave is exempt mid'Oraisa from the Mitzvah to bring a Korban Re'iyah and the
Mitzvah to bring a Korban Pesach. Thus, even if the master is obligated to free him (the Mishnah
Acharonah), he is exempt because he is still a slave.

However, according to the Mishnah Rishonah, which stated that a half-slave remains in that state
indefinitely, since his state is a permanent one the Chachamim instituted that he may bring the
Korban Re'iyah and Korban Pesach.

This answer is difficult to understand. How could the Chachamim require that a person bring a
Korban when the Torah exempts him? According to the Torah, the animal is not sanctified, and
such an animal may not be brought into the Azarah. (LECHEM MISHNEH, Hilchos Chagigah
2:1)

The Lechem Mishneh explains that Rabeinu Avraham means that the Chachamim utilized their
authority of "Hefker Beis Din Hefker" and proclaimed the half of the person owned by the master
to be ownerless in order to obligate the person in the Mitzvah. However, they did not dissolve the

14
master's partial ownership of the person with regard to his obligation to serve his master. Thus, he
still must obey his master (on the day which he serves his master) and do whatever his master tells
him to do. In that respect, he is still a slave. The Chachamim made him free only with regard to
the obligation to bring Korbanos which require him to be free.

THE STATUS OF A PERSON WHO IS HALF-SLAVE, HALF-

FREE

The Gemara quotes the Mishnah in Gitin (41a) which discusses the status of a person who is half-
slave and half-free ("Chatzyo Eved v'Chatzyo Ben Chorin"). Beis Hillel originally ruled that the
slave is to work for his master half of the time and for himself half of the time (he alternates days
for whom he works).

Although this arrangement suits the dual monetary ownership of the slave, it does not resolve the
dilemma posed to the slave's nuptial status: a half-slave, half-free man cannot marry any woman;
he cannot marry a Shifchah (maidservant) because of the half-free part of him, and he cannot marry
a free Jewess because of the half-slave part of him. For this reason, Beis Shamai disagrees with
Beis Hillel and requires that the master free his portion of the slave in order to enable the slave to
fulfill the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah.

The Mishnah relates that Beis Hillel retracted his original opinion and accepted the ruling of Beis
Shamai.

When the Mishnah says that the slave is obligated to fulfill the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah, which
part of him is obligated? Is only the part of him that is free obligated, or is even the part of him
that is a slave obligated to fulfill Piryah v'Rivyah (see Insights to Gitin 41:4 for why a slave may
have an obligation of Piryah v'Rivyah)?

In order to answer this question, it is necessary to examine the source for the Mitzvah of Piryah
v'Rivyah. Two verses refer to the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah. The first verse states, "Peru u'Revu"
-- "Be fruitful and multiply" (Bereishis 1:28). The second verse states, "He did not create it in vain;
He fashioned it to be inhabited (la'Sheves)" (Yeshayah 45:18). This is the verse quoted by the
Mishnah in Gitin.

The RIVAM (quoted by TOSFOS DH Lo) maintains that the two halves of the person who is a
half-slave have two separate obligations. The free part of him is obligated to fulfill the basic
Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah, while the slave part of him is obligated only to fulfill "la'Sheves."
(The free part of him certainly is obligated to fulfill that element as well. The difference is that the
slave part of him is only obligated to fulfill the concept of "la'Sheves" but not the actual Mitzvah
of Piryah v'Rivyah.)

The Rivam adduces support from the wording of the Mishnah. If the reason why the master must
free the half-slave is to enable him to fulfill the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah, why does the Mishnah
not quote the verse in Bereishis which is the source for the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah? It must
be that the Mishnah prefers to quote a verse which is relevant to both parts of the half-slave, half-

15
free person. Since a slave is not obligated to fulfill the Mitzvah of "Peru u'Revu," the Mishnah
cites the verse of "la'Sheves."

TOSFOS here (2b, DH Lo) disagrees with the Rivam. He asserts that a Jewish slave is obligated
to fulfill the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah. Tosfos infers from the wording of the Mishnah, "[Lo
Nivra ha'Olam Ela] l'Piryah v'Rivyah," that the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah applies even to the
part of the person which is a slave.

How, though, does Tosfos refute the proof of the Rivam? Tosfos explains that the Mishnah cites
the verse of "la'Sheves" because that verse teaches the great importance of the Mitzvah when it
says that the Mitzvah of Piryah v'Rivyah is one of the primary purposes of Hash-m's creation of
the world.

Steinzaltz (OBM) writes:5

Who is obligated in the three pilgrimage holidays of Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot?
In several places (see, for example, Devarim 16:16) the Torah commands all Jewish males to
participate in this mitzvah. The first Mishnah in the Masechet lists the people who are not
obligated. Specifically:

• people who are mentally deficient (in Talmudic terms, someone who is deaf, an imbecile
or a child),
• people who are not male (this includes not only women, but also people of uncertain
gender)
• people who cannot make the trip, like a sick or aged person, or someone who “cannot go
up on his legs.”

The cases of uncertain gender are the situations of a tumtum and an androgenus who are not
obligated to participate in aliya la-regel. Both of these groups are people whose gender is unclear,
the tumtum because we cannot tell whether it is a man or a woman, and the androgenus who shows
both male and female sexual organs.

How to interpret the case of “someone who cannot go up on his legs” is the subject of some debate
among the rishonim. Rashi presents it as a case where the individual cannot walk from Jerusalem
to the Temple Mount. Tosafot point out that Rashi is offering the most radical case; a person who
cannot make it from his own town to Jerusalem would certainly fall into this category, as well.

The Rambam claims that this exemption in the Gemara refers to someone who is uniquely
sensitive and never walks anywhere. Others suggest that this refers to someone who cannot walk
around barefoot, since wearing shoes into the Temple is forbidden.

Finally, Tosafot point out that the list in the Mishnah is not exhaustive. There are additional cases
where an individual’s personal situation or even his profession may free him from the obligation
to travel to Jerusalem.

5
https://www.ou.org/life/torah/masechet_hagigah_25/

16
Our Massechta deals with the various offerings brought as one arrives on his pilgrimage to
Yerushalayim for the festival.6

The olah is discussed in the first Mishnah, and a Chagiga offering, as well as a simcha offering, is
discussed later. Rambam rules (Hilchos Yom Tov 6:18) that in order to fulfill the mitzvah of
simcha on Yom Tov a man should eat meat and drink wine.

Beis Yosef (O.C. 529) questions Rambam from the information in the Baraisa (Pesachim 109a)
which seems to say that in our days when we no longer have the Beis HaMikdash simcha is only
achieved with the drinking of wine and there is no need for meat.

(Beitza 2:5) explains that when the Baraisa says that in our days simcha is fulfilled
with wine it does not mean to exclude meat from the menu. Rather, it means that if we would have
a Beis HaMikdash it would be adequate to partake of the meat from the Shelamim offering and
one’s simcha would be complete.

In our days, however, it is not enough to eat meat, which is still a source of simcha, but it must be
supplemented with wine as well. R’ Yoel Sirkis, the Bach, uses a different approach to explain
Rambam. Certainly the main source of one’s Simchas Yom Tov is to have the meal of a shelamim.
Yet this simcha is composed of two elements.

One aspect of the simcha is bringing an offering to Hashem while the other is the eating of meat.
Drinking wine, however, has within it the one component featured in the verse (Tehillim 104:15)
“Wine gladdens the heart of man.”

When there is no Beis HaMikdash the wine remains a true source of simcha while the meat is not
a main source of simcha (without being from a korban). The Baraisa therefore acknowledges bothe
meat and wine as sources of simcha and this is the ruling of Rambam.

Sefer sidesteps the issue altogether as he understands that Rambam did not mean that
both meat and wine would ever provide simcha under the same conditions. Instead, he explains
that Rambam means that simcha can be achieved in different times and manners. During the time
of the Beis HaMikdash meat was most effective. Nowadays simcha is attained via wine.

6
https://www.dafdigest.org/masechtos/Chagiga%20002.pdf

17
Beis Hillel says that [the definition of a child that is exempt from the mitzvah of ‫ ראיה‬is one who
cannot hold his father’s hand and ascend from Yerushalayim to Har Habayis.

Rabbeinu Yisroel Isserlin (1), the Terumas Hadeshen, was asked whether a child who did not have
a father was obligated to eat and sleep in the sukkah. The thrust of the question was whether a
mother is obligated in the chinuch – education in mitzvos—of her son.

Terumas Hadeshen begins his analysis of this issue by citing the opinion of one of the Ba’alei
Tosafos (2) who maintains that only fathers are obligated to teach their children how to perform
mitzvos. He then proceeds to cite the opinion of Rabbeinu Eliezer of Metz (3) who seemingly
maintains that the mitzvah of chinuch is not limited to the father and even the child’s mother is
obligated to train her sons to perform mitzvos.

Rav Avrohom Gombiner (4), the Magen Avrohom, rules in accordance with the position that limits
the mitzvah of chinuch to the father. The basis of his position is the Gemara in Nazir (5) which
states, according to Reish Lakish, that the mitzvah of chinuch is incumbent only on the father.

Rav Chaim Yosef Dovid Azulai (6), the Gaon Chida, also writes that although Terumas Hadeshen
was uncertain about which position to follow, the majority of Rishonim hold that the mitzvah of
chinuch is limited to the father; therefore that is the opinion to follow.

Chikrei Lev (7) initially cites Rashi’s comment to the Mishnah as support for the position that
mothers are obligated in the mitzvah of chinuch. Rashi (8) writes that although a child that is old
enough to hold his father’s hand is not Biblically obligated in the mitzvah of re’iyah, nevertheless
the Chachamim imposed an obligation on his father and mother to train him in mitzvos.

This would seemingly align Rashi with those who maintain that mothers are obligated in the
mitzvah of chinuch. Chikrei Lev, however, refutes this proof and offers alternative interpretations
of Rashi’s comment that do not indicate conclusively that Rashi obligates women in the mitzvah
of chinuch.

18
There lived in Gur a certain man who literally could not make ends meet. Today this means
someone who can’t pay his bills, but over a hundred years ago in the “old country” it meant
someone who couldn’t get enough food to feed his family. This person who lived in Gur didn’t
have enough money for food, and he certainly didn’t have enough to pay his landlord for the little
room he shared with his family.

The landlord was furious and warned his tenant that if he didn’t pay up soon he would evict him.
The poor man ran to the Chiddushei HaRim, zt”l, and tearfully told him about his landlord’s
ultimatum. The Rav quickly summoned the homeowner. In those days, a person who defied the
Rav could be placed in cherem. This often meant that his fellow Jews wouldn’t associate with him
until he repented his sin.

When Jewish communities were still so tightly knit, being made an outcast was unthinkable. When
the wealthy man appeared before the Chiddushei HaRim, he said, “Do not evict your tenant even
though he hasn’t paid his rent. You can afford to wait, but he has got no money for food!” ”But
Rebbe,” pleaded the homeowner, “why should I have to support this man in my house and defer
his rent until he will be able to pay?

Everyone knows he is unlikely to become solvent. Why shouldn’t the whole community have to
shoulder the burden of this man’s rent? If the Rebbe would only say the word, people would surely
be willing to cover his costs!”

“Actually, we see from the Gemara in Chagigah 2b that the burden is yours.” answered the Rav.
”In Chagigah 2b we find that one who is partial owner of a slave who has already bought half of
his freedom must free his half-slave, who will write a promissory note to his master for the loss.
Why doesn’t it say that we pay the owner with charity funds instead of forcing the owner to accept
a potentially worthless promissory note?

We see from this that Hashem wants the master to wait, and not that his burden should be borne
by the community! You have been sent this man from heaven, so his burden is on you!”

To See and be Seen

Rachel Scheinerman writes:7

Welcome to Tractate Chagigah — the final tractate in Seder Moed, the order of the Talmud that
deals with holidays. We began Moed with Tractates Shabbat and Eruvin which, in keeping with
Shabbat’s status as the most significant Jewish holiday, merited by far the largest discussion. We

7
Myjewishlearning.com

19
now conclude with a much quicker journey through the laws that apply to the three pilgrimage
festivals of Passover, Shavuotand Sukkot.

While it is true that we already explored laws specific to Passover (those of purging leaven and
bringing the paschal offering) in Tractate Pesachim, as well as laws specific to Sukkot (namely,
building the sukkah) in Tractate Sukkah, Chagigah — literally, festival offering — discusses the
laws that apply to all three pilgrimage festivals: the obligation to appear in Jerusalem, to enter the
Temple in a state of purity, to bring certain festival offerings and to rejoice.

The opening mishnah of this tractate explains who is obligated to appear in Jerusalem at the
Temple to make this offering: able-bodied and free adult Jewish men. Most others are exempt from
showing up. The rabbis make us a helpful list:

All are obligated to appear (in the Temple on pilgrimage festivals and make a sacrifice) except
for a deaf-mute, an imbecile, and a minor; and a tumtum, and an androgynos; and women,
and slaves who are not emancipated; and the lame, the blind, and the sick, and the old, and one
who is unable to ascend to Jerusalem on his own legs.

The Gemara understands the opening word of the mishnah — all — to include some category of
people beyond healthy free men in the obligation to ascend to Jerusalem. But who could these
people be? That’s the primary question on today’s page.

Perhaps, the Gemara suggests, it is the person who is half slave and half free (a mind-bending
situation that arises when two people own a slave and one person relinquishes ownership)? This is
rejected on the strength of a tradition from Ravina that a half slave is not obligated in festival
offerings.

Perhaps then it is the person who is lame on the first day of the festival but heals quickly and is
able to arrive in time for the end of the festival? This answer too does not satisfy those who think
that festival offerings are properly offered only on the first day.

Trying again, the Gemara gives a third option: someone who is blind in only one eye. Perhaps this
is the person who, while not strictly an able-bodied free man, is nonetheless required to appear at
the Temple, sacrifices in hand, on the festival? Well, perhaps not:

And this is not in accordance with the opinion of Yohanan ben Dehavai who says in the name
of Rabbi Yehuda: One who is blind in one of his eyes is exempt from the mitzvah of appearance,
as it is stated: “Three times a year all your males will appear (yera’e) before the Lord
God” (Exodus 23:17). Read instead: “All your males will see (yireh) the Lord God.” This
teaches that in the same manner that one comes to see, so he comes to be seen: Just as the usual
way to see is with both one’s eyes, so too the obligation to be seen applies only to one who comes
with the sight of both his eyes.

Yohanan ben Dehavai brings us a midrashic reading of the signal commandment of this
tractate: Three times a year all your males will appear before the Lord God (Exodus 23:17). If we
change the vowels on the word appear (literally, “be seen”), we can make it read “see.” Three

20
times a year males will see the Lord God. This midrash suggests that Jews come to Jerusalem on
the festivals to fully encounter God — to see and be seen. To borrow the language of 20th century
Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, the pilgrimage festivals are the moment for Israel and God to
have an I-Thou encounter.

The rest of Yohanan ben Dahavai’s interpretation is weak. He goes on to say that just as seeing
requires two eyes, being seen also requires one to have two working eyes (both points seem
obviously wrong). And the Gemara quickly brushes away this whole case anyway, pointing out
that there is another independent rabbinic tradition that those who are blind in one eye are exempt
from the pilgrimage. The discussion returns to the possibility that half slaves are the ones obligated
to make the trip. Nevertheless, I love this midrash for the way it frames this tractate — conceiving
the festivals as an opportunity for Israel to encounter God fully, to see and be seen.

This tractate famously features some rabbinic notes on the most esoteric mystical teachings —
those that were considered too dangerous for the general public. These include speculations about
the cosmos — what came before creation (maaseh breishit) and what is found in the heavens
(maaseh merkavah). The latter is really about human beings striving to catch a glimpse of the
divine. As we will learn, the rabbis considered such intimate knowledge of God and the world to
be dangerous. Not only being seen by God, it seems, but really seeing God, may be the ultimate
expression of the festivals. But at the same time, it is risky business.

Rabbi Johnny Solomon writes:8

The first daf of Massechet Chagigah (2a) focusses on the mitzvah of ‫ראייה‬, meaning the ‘appearing’
and ‘being seen’ at the Temple for the ‫( שלוש רגלים‬i.e. the three pilgrim festivals of Pesach, Shavuot
& Sukkot). However, seemingly due to the significant time, cost and effort that it took to fulfil this
requirement in order to physically come to Jerusalem thrice yearly, the Mishna and subsequent
Gemara list those individuals who are not obligated to fulfil this duty.

Before proceeding, it is essential to note that each case discussed in our daf deserves further
consideration and discussion. However, I have chosen to focus my attention on the statement in
the Mishna that a ‫ סומא‬- meaning someone who is blind (in both eyes) - is exempt from fulfilling
this duty, as well as the subsequent debate in the Gemara whether someone who is blind in just
one eye is obligated or exempt from fulfilling this duty.

Significantly, the first answer given to this question is that such a person is, in fact, obligated to
fulfil the mitzvah of ‫‘( ראייה‬appearing’). However, a second answer from Yochanan ben Dahavi
quoting Rav Yehuda is then offered which states that someone who is blind in one eye is also
exempt from this mitzvah, and it is the justification of this particular ruling - which, it should be
noted, is the law as codified by the Rambam (see Hilchot Chagigah 2:1) - that I would like to
discuss.

8
www.rabbijohnnysolomon.com

21
Basing himself on the ability to read the word ‫( ֵיָרֶאה‬Shemot 34:23) in two different ways – namely
both ‘you shall be seen’, as well as, ‘you shall see’ - Rav Yehuda concludes that ‫כדרך בא לראות כך‬
‫בא ליראות‬, which is explained by Rashi to mean that: ‘the way that [God] sees [those who come to
the Temple] is the way that [those who come to the Temple] see [God]’, and therefore, ‫מה לראות‬
‫‘ – בשתי עיניו אף ליראות בשתי עיניו‬just as [God] ‘sees’ with ‘two eyes’, so too He must be ‘seen’ [by
those who come to the Temple] with two eyes.’

However, Rabbeinu Tam (see Tosfot‫ ) ד''ה יראה‬disagrees with his grandfather’s interpretation of
these words which imply that God is only ‘seen’ in the Temple. Instead, he explains Rav Yehuda’s
teaching to mean that just as someone (ideally) sees with two eyes, so too, only such people are
obligated to appear in the Temple and be seen there by God’s ‘two eyes’.

Interestingly, it should be noted that Rav Yosef Shaul Natanson (1808-1875) explains in his
‘Divrei Shaul’ that embedded in Tosfot’s explanation is a deep philosophical idea – one which is
also addressed by the Rambam (in his Moreh Nevuchim) and by Rav Yitzchak Arama (in his
Akeidat Yitzchak) - that what we see and understand of God’s ways is based on the skills we hone
and the efforts we make in seeing and understanding God’s ways, and by explaining this Gemara
this way, Rav Natanson takes our Gemara from talking about physical sight to spiritual sight.

Having explained all this I would like to return to Rashi’s explanation of Rav Yehuda’s teaching
while also reverting back to the context of the original verse in Shemot 34:23 found at the end of
Parshat Ki Tissa, because just one chapter before this command of ‫( ֵיָרֶאה‬appearing/being seen) we
read of the exchange where God explains to Moshe that ‫– ל ֹא תוַּכל ִל ְרֹאת ֶאת ָפָּני ִכּי ל ֹא ִי ְרַא ִני ָהָאָדם ָוָחי‬
‘you cannot see My face, for no one can see Me and live’ (Shemot 33:20) – which of course then
leads us to ask how a teaching about ‘seeing’ God can be derived from a verse which appears just
a chapter after an explicit verse stating that we cannot see God?

The answer, I believe, relates to the opportunity, as well as challenges, of having a physical place
to encounter God which formerly was the Mishkan and which then became the Beit HaMikdash,
because the very notion of considering such as place as one where God is more ‘seen’ can – at
least in some ways - conflict with our core understanding of God (nb. you may recall Rashi’s
approach that the Mishkan was a response to the building of the Egel HaZahav).

Given this, what I believe we find in today’s daf is a certain parallelism between the limitations
we place on God and the limitations we place on people whereby, by conceiving God as being
visible, we limit those whom we obligate to see Him, while in contrast as pointed out by Rav
Natanson, if we emphasise the notion that God cannot be seen, we also maximise the number of
those who can – at least in a spiritual capacity – see and encounter God.

22
 Village Celebrations by David The Younger Teniers

Celebration and joy

Mark Kerzner writes:9

As we saw in many places, the Holidays (Passover, Shavuot and Succot) are for celebration and
enjoyment. This is actually an obligation: one must make merry. One of the ways of doing so is
by bringing the "celebration" sacrifice (chagigah) and eating the meat.

More specifically, one must come to the Temple during a Holiday. Having come, one should bring
a sacrifice, because the Torah said, "Do not appear before Me empty-handed." But who is this
"one?" In other words, who is obligated to visit the Temple and bring the sacrifice?

All males are obligated to go the Temple, following the commandment of "Three times a year
every male must appear before God, the Master of the Universe." Women and minors do not have
to go. Also not included are people of undetermined sex (tumtum), hermaphrodite, a deaf-mute,
deranged, and one who physically can't walk up the Temple Mount.

9
https://talmudilluminated.com/chagigah/chagigah2.html

23
Why does the rule start with "All males," if later it gives all the details? - This is to silently include
an additional class of people, half-free and half-slave. We have discussed this special situation
before: such a person cannot marry a slave woman because he is free, but cannot marry a free
woman, because he is a slave. He does not have to visit the Temple either. However, the Sages
later establishes that the court should force the slave's master to free the half-slave part.

Some Opening Thoughts on Masechet Chagigah

Rabbi Jay Kelman writes:10

The mitzvah of aliyah laregel--going up to Jerusalem on Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot--was a

central feature of these holidays of national celebration. While we now have the ability to come to
Jerusalem for Yom Tov, and many do just that, we can no longer bring the festive sacrifices
associated with each holiday. It is this mitzvah of that opens Masechet Chagigah.
Like so much of the Talmud, this discussion focused on Jewish law as it is meant to be, not as it
was truncated in practice. Thus in Seder Moed-- and Masechet Chagigah is the last tractate of
Moed-- we discuss in great detail the pascal sacrifice, the elaborate Temple service of Yom Kippur,
the collection of the half-shekel tax, and the water libations on Sukkot, to name a few. Our Sages
discussed, debated, and analyzed Jewish law, seeing beyond the reality of their own time.
Interestingly, the only medieval legal code that incorporates the "non-practical" aspects of Jewish
law is the Rambam, as all other codes only discussed those laws which were applicable in their

10
https://torahinmotion.org/discussions-and-blogs/some-opening-thoughts-on-masechet-chagigah

24
own time. It is thanks to the Rambam that we have a better grasp on some the issues of Jewish law
that have now become applicable in the land of Israel.
One of the hallmarks of Jewish teaching is our fundamental belief that every Jew should have
access to its teaching. The notion of a class of elites who possessed and controlled knowledge was
anathema to our Sages. G-d made His covenant with "your leaders, your elders, all the people of
Israel--your children, your wives, the convert in your midst, from your wood cutters to your water
drawers" (Devarim 29:9-10). Yet at the same time, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, and
there were topics that could only be studied privately or not at all. "One does not expound on
sexual matters if there are three, and does not study Creation with two, nor the chariots even with
one, unless they are exceptionally wise and understand on their own"[1] (Chagigah 11b). There
are some areas better left unstudied. The fact that of the four rabbinic giants who studied esoteric
material, only Rabbi Akiva "entered in peace and came out in peace" (Chagigah 14b) gave our
Sages reason for pause. Throughout Jewish history, debates have raged as to the appropriateness
of studying subjects such as philosophy, mysticism, and even secular studies of a general nature.
Interestingly, this is followed by what is the first recorded debate in rabbinic literature. The issue
was the technical issue of semicha, of whether it was permissible to lean on an animal on Yom
Tov. Many private korbanot required that the owner press his hands on the animal, and a long
debate ensued as to whether this leaning was permitted on Yom Tov. This debate raged for five
generations, effectively up until the destruction of the Temple.
The last half of the masechet deals with the laws of purity and impurity, especially as it related to
the masses of Jews who would come to the Temple for the holidays. How could one be certain that
they were careful regarding the laws of purity? Those who were impure were forbidden entry to
the Temple or the eating of sacrificial meat. The truth is, one could not be certain they were pure
and undoubtedly, many who entered the Temple were impure. Yet, during festival time, all were
given the benefit of the doubt that they had prepared properly, and it was assumed that all were
pure. All the Temple vessels could thus be used without fear that they had become impure.
Yet, once the festival ended, these assumptions were no longer considered valid, and those very
same vessels that we assumed were pure during the festival now carried the presumption of being
impure, and had to be purified. While this lacks a certain degree of consistency, this "compromise"
was a way of allowing unity of the people over the festivals while maintaining the integrity of the
Temple vessels. A difficult, perhaps impossible, peg to square, but a most necessary one.

[1] The exact definition of these categories is, of course, much debated.

25
 WHY WE ARE IN AWE

Yonoson Rosenblum writes:11

No quality so draws people as anivus (modesty). I’m not speaking about the modesty of someone
like the gentleman once described by Winston Churchill as “a modest man who had a great deal
to be modest about.” Rather I’m talking about those whose essential modesty remains unaffected
by their natural gifts or their significant accomplishments particularly great talmidei chachamim.
Genuine anivus contains the greatest power of hashpaah (influence). In the presence of
an anav (modest person) one feels elevated and filled with a desire to be more like him. Words

11
https://mishpacha.com/why-we-are-in-awe/

26
that lack all trace of a personal agenda encounter less resistance. The more unthinkable it is that a
person would ever praise himself or do anything to call attention to himself the more others are
eager to praise him in fulfillment of Chazal’s statement: “One who flees from kavod kavod pursues
him.”

In our attraction to anivus we are reflecting HaKadosh Baruch Hu himself. The highest praise that
the Torah can give to Moshe Rabbeinu is to describe him as anav meod (exceedingly
humble) (Bamidbar12:3). And the Gemara in Nedarim(38a) says that “the Divine Presence rests
only on one who is heroic rich smart and humble.” Rabbi Chaim Volozhin asks in Ruach
Chaim (4:1) why should only those who are strong rich and smart be capable of receiving the
Divine Presence? These are all qualities that are to a very large extent innate and decreed prior to
birth. They do not necessarily reflect a person’s effort or the degree to which he has maximized
his potential.

Rav Chaim gives an astounding answer: In truth there is only one requirement for receiving the
Divine Presence — humility. The other three are merely means of measuring the degree of humility
as if to say even were he rich or brilliant or a possessor of great physical strength his humility
would remain fully intact.

And that is what the Mishnah in Pirkei Avos is telling us: “Who is wise? One who learns from
every man.” In other words one who realizes that no matter how bright he may be there are still
things that someone much less gifted can teach him retains the requisite humility. “Who is a mighty
man? One who conquers his desires.” The strong man who recognizes that his strength is as
nothing compared to one who maintains control of his desires shows his essential anivus.

What is the essence of anivus that vests those who possess it with such power? The anav never
measures himself vis-à-vis anyone else but only against the potential with which Hashem
favored him. The Chazon Ish surely knew that there were few who pushed themselves to overcome
tiredness and physical weakness as he did. But that did not make him great in his eyes. He probably
told himself something along the lines of: “Anyone capable of deriving the same geshmak in
learning that I do would be able to drive himself as hard or even harder.”

Because he does not measure himself against anyone else no one else can threaten
the anav. Someone else’s success can take nothing away from him because it is irrelevant. He is
no man’s competitor. And because he is not threatened by others and therefore does not erect
barriers between himself and others neither does he threaten anyone else. That lack of boundaries
allows him to expand and encompass others within his ambit. His “I” includes a multitude of others
because others can never become enemies whom one must fear.

A second source of the attraction of a great talmid chacham who retains his humility is that he is
the purest embodiment of the Torah itself. The Torah shines forth from him. Such talmidei
chachamin are enveloped in a glow; their smile casts light in all directions. Two weeks ago we
read of Korach’s rebellion. Had Korach’s claim — “all the People are holy” — been totally without
foundation then the Torah would not have included it. And had he not been a wise man he would
have been unworthy to have been a bar plugta of Moshe Rabbeinu.

27
So what misled him? His eye say Chazal: He saw that he would have great offspring and therefore
reasoned that he would prevail. Chassidic masters explain the betrayal by his eye (singular) with
reference to a din brought in Chagigah(2a): One who is blind in one eye is absolved of the
obligation of aliyas haregel (coming up to Jerusalem for the three pilgramage festivals).

Every person the chassidic masters explain requires two eyes. The first is for perceiving the glory
of Hashem; the second is for reflecting on one’s own insignificance in relation to Hashem. The
greater the infusion of wisdom — the first eye the greater should be one’s humility — the second
eye. But if the wisdom from recognizing Hashem’s glory is not balanced by the corrective of the
second eye — the recognition of one’s lowliness — it would be better that the person not come to
Jerusalem at all and experience Hashem’s glory. Korach’s single eye betrayed him by causing him
to take pride in his wisdom alone without any counterbalancing humility.

By diminishing himself the anav creates more and more room for the Torah to enter him and
permeate his entire being. And when that happens the Torah shines forth. Korach’s lack of humility
rendered him unfit for the transmission of the Torah. That could only come through Moshe
Rabbeinu who was the most modest of all men.

“How foolish are those who stand before a sefer Torah but not before a great Torah
scholar” (Makkos22b) The great talmid chacham who has made himself a pure vessel for receipt
of the Torah is a walking sefer Torah. That is the awe we experience in his presence.

Admitting We Don’t Know

Rabbi Noach Orlowek offered me a good piece of advice recently: Neither a rav nor a doctor has
to be the greatest expert in the world as long as he possesses one quality: the ability to say, “I don’t
know.”

That piece of advice put me in mind of a story I heard recently from Rav Michel Shurkin. The
story of the miraculous flight of the Mirrer Yeshivah across the former USSR to Japan and from
there to Shanghai is well-known. Less well-known is the sharp debate that went on in Mirrer
Yeshivah before the yeshivah set forth. That debate pitted perhaps the two most
renowned yeshivah bochurim in prewar Europe against each other. Rav Leib Mallin argued for
attempting to use the visas that had been obtained through various righteous gentiles acting as
counsels in Kovno. Against him Rav Yonah Karpilov Hy”d the Yonas Elem argued that Stalin was
a brutal murderer and an anti-Semite and they would end up spending the rest of their lives in a
Soviet gulag at best.

The two giants presented their arguments to the Brisker Rav expecting him to render a decision.
So compelling had each proponent been however that the Brisker Rav could only respond: “I don’t
know.”

That “I don’t know” Rabbi Shurkin commented to me is as impressive as many of the stories of
the Brisker Rav’s uncanny insights.

28
But if the Brisker Rav felt he had no choice even in a situation of life and death for hundreds but
to admit that he had no clarity how much more must we be careful never to pretend to have greater
insight or knowledge than we do!

Leave it to the Experts

At the heart of global warming alarmism is the claim that the impending catastrophe is so great
that we can no longer rely on normal democratic processes and must turn matters over to experts.
The experience of Europe however suggests that expert rule comes at a high cost.

European Union law mandates that countries cut the carbon dioxide emissions to 80 percent of
their 1990 levels by 2020. The cost of doing so according to a 2010 study of the European
Commission will be over $66 billion dollars a year in increased energy prices. The United
Kingdom for instance is building an offshore wind farm that is projected to cost $140 billion dollars
— 20 times what it would have cost to produce the same amount of energy by conventional
sources. By 2016 according to a government commissioned report 43 percent of households in
England may be spending more than 10 percent of their income on energy bills.

A 2009 Spanish study found that energy prices are 17 percent above the European average due in
large part to a fivefold jump in the amount subsidies for renewables. The same study estimated
that the above average fuel prices cost Spain 110000 jobs.

Fritz Vahrenholt a former hero of the German environmental movement accused the movement of
“destroying the foundations of our prosperity” by threatening the existence of the German
automotive industry along with the steel copper and chemical sectors because of rising energy
costs.

All Europe’s self-inflicted costs will likely have no net impact on emissions. The jobs shipped
from Europe’s energy-intensive industries will go instead to workers in developing countries that
have consistently refused to commit to CO2 reduction quotas.

Furthermore European subsidies of renewable energy and taxes on hydrocarbon energy sources
have failed to reduce C02 emissions. But ironically the widespread use of fracking in the United
States has dramatically increased the supply of natural gas — the cleanest hydrocarbon energy
source. As a consequence the US is on track to cut its CO2 emissions 17 percent below the 2005
levels by 2020 according to the environmentalist National Resource Council website. And all this
despite Congress’s refusal to pass any of the hydrocarbon reductions schemes hatched by
environmentalists.

The Europeans however are apparently not interested in cheap and plentiful hydrocarbon energy
sources even if they are low in carbon dioxide emissions. Europe has huge shale gas resources of
the type exploited by fracking and yet Germany has imposed a moratorium on shale gas
exploration.

Common sense is apparently not an expert virtue.

29
 Seeing and Being Seen – Creating Community
Steven Morgen writes:12

It is good to see you all here this morning. And it’s good to be seen by you, including those of
you whom I can’t see myself because you are watching at home.
Seeing. And being seen. It is a very human need.

Now, of course, I know that there are some people who cannot see. And for them I would translate
the verb “seeing” to one or more of the other human senses that they use to recognize the presence
of another human being. But I want to talk about “seeing” this morning because that is the word
our Torah portion this morning almost literally begins and ends with.

12
https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/seeing-and-being-seen-creating-community/

30
The portion opens with Moses saying to the Israelites,

And the portion ends with one of the five times[i] that the holidays of the Jewish Calendar are
listed. It concludes the list of festivals with these words:

I want to talk about this last use of the word “seeing” first.

Three times a year – on the pilgrimage festivals – the Israelites were to make a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem to be seen by God at the Temple. And the Talmud [Hagiga 2a and 4b] suggests a
playful second meaning. Because, as we know, the Hebrew in the Torah has no vowels, the words
can change meaning if we supply different vowels. The word we read as “to be seen” by God,
can also be read as “they will see God” if the vowels are changed. And so, the Talmud suggests,
one used to go to the Temple not just to be seen by God, but also to see God, to have an encounter
with God.

Of course, we don’t believe that God can literally be seen. “No one can see Me and live” God tells
Moses. (Exodus 33:20) But you can imagine the awesome experience our ancestors had when they
went up to the Temple Mount and stood in the grand courtyard with all its awesome furnishings,
and saw the crowds of people coming to worship, and heard the Levite choir singing Psalms to the
accompaniment of the Levite orchestra. They would be bringing a gift to God to say “thank you”
for being alive, for the harvest, for friends and family, or for whatever other reasons. What an
awesome experience our ancestors must have felt. And no doubt they felt God’s presence there
with them. “Seeing,” let’s say, with a spiritual camera lens that captures transcendent waves of
luminescence.

31
So, our ancestors would gather at the Temple to see God and to be seen by God.
We all want to be seen. To be really seen. For exactly who we are, just as we are. To be understood.
To be appreciated. To be recognized.

Not just superficially. Not based on the color of our hair or our eyes, or our skin, or our age. Not
for the clothes we are wearing. Not for how much money we have – or don’t have – or the size of
our house, or the type of car we drive. We want to be seen and understood and appreciated for
who we are inside.

The Haftarah that we will read on Rosh Hashanah tells the story of a woman named Hannah who
was childless and desperately wanted to have a child. So she went to the shrine dedicated to God
in the town of Shiloh and prayed there. She prayed her heart out to God. But though her lips were
moving, she did not pray out loud. And the prophet Eli looked at her and thought she was a crazy
woman talking to herself. “No,” she told him. “I am not crazy. I am desperate and praying to God
from my heart.” And that’s when Eli the prophet saw Hannah for who she really was. He realized
his superficial judgment of her, based on her appearance, was in error. Hannah was seen by Eli.
And she was seen by God. And God granted her a child who became the great prophet Samuel.

Our ancestors came to the Temple to be seen by God. God, of course, can see through the veneer,
the outside appearance, right to our soul. That’s what they came for. And they also came to get a
glimpse of God’s presence in their lives and in the world. To sense that “yes” there really is a
Creator, and the world is not just a random, chaotic mess. There is meaning and order and purpose.
And our Creator has charged us with a purpose in life. And our task is to discover that purpose and
fulfill it.
To see and to be seen by our Creator.
But also, to see and be seen by each other. At the very beginning of Genesis we are told that
humanity is created in the image of our Creator. In seeing each other we are witnessing, in some

32
sense, God’s presence in our encounter with each other. And thousands and thousands of Israelites
crowded onto the Temple mount for the holidays. A throbbing multitude of God’s images. And
hopefully, we would be seen, really seen, by at least a few of them. At least a few encounters
would entail a mutual exchange of appreciation, affection, and perhaps even love. Maybe seeing a
friend or a relative that you hadn’t seen for a long time.
Seeing and being seen. A fundamental human need.

Now, let’s consider the word “seeing” as it appears at the beginning of our Torah portion. “See,
this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing if you obey the commandments of the LORD,
… and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD.”

At first, we modern Jews might reasonably ask: is this really how the world works? If I follow the
rules, will I really be rewarded but if I break the rules, will I really be punished? That certainly
does not appear to be the world we know.

But let’s look at the rules Moses goes on to describe:

First, destroy all the idols and false gods that you see. Do we still idolize some things, or some
people today? If so, we are commanded to stop that. Only God, who Created a beautiful world,
and demands of us that we preserve and protect it. Only God, who commands us to love our
neighbor as ourselves. Only God, deserves our unwavering loyalty.

Second, worship God only in the place that God will choose. Of course, in Biblical times this
meant the Temple in Jerusalem. But since the Temple was destroyed we have gathered in
synagogues. But even then, worship is not restricted only to synagogues, only to these buildings.
The buildings are not inherently sacred, they are holy only when we feel God’s presence in them.
And, as our ancestor Jacob realized the night he ran away from home and slept on a rock, the place
he slept turned out to be holy because he felt God’s presence there. Nothing special, really, about

33
that place. Any place can be holy when you experience God’s presence there. It becomes a place
that God has chosen. (The Temple Mount has, of course, remained a special sacred place for Jews
for thousands of years. But in the absence of being able to go there in person, we have found
holiness in places all around the world.)

Third, do not follow after false prophets. Prophets who tell you to break the commandments.
Prophets who tell you it is OK to lie, to cheat, to steal, to treat other human beings disrespectfully,
perhaps because of their race or their religion or their gender. Moses even warns the Israelites
against doing this if your friends or relatives tell you it’s okay to do it. It’s not okay to follow false
prophets. Even if all your friends or family are doing so.
And finally, if there are poor people in your society – it is your responsibility to help them. Don’t
abandon them.

To review: Destroy the false gods you might be tempted to worship. Worship God in a holy space.
Do not follow false prophets who turn you away from doing what is right. And take care of the
poor among you.

What do all these things have in common? What do they have in common with the conclusion of
our Torah portion where the verb “to see” is used again?

If we follow these rules, we will create a society that cares for each other. We will support those
in need. We will comfort those who are distraught. We will find ways to help those who have lost
their jobs, who can’t pay their rent, or put food on their tables.

If we follow these rules, we will experience God’s presence in our lives, especially in the holy
spaces that we create for that purpose. But we can also experience God’s presence in our everyday
activities if we – like our ancestor Jacob – can wake up each morning and say: “Surely God is in
this place and I did not know it.” (Genesis 28:16) We can even experience God’s presence from

34
our homes, connecting with each other over the internet to pray to together. Creating a virtual
“holy space” through technology.

If we follow the rules Moses gave us, we will not be led astray to do harm to others, to be
thoughtless and cruel, to promote prejudice and bigotry against others. But rather, we will work
together to foster kindness and compassion, justice and equity in our city, in our State and in our
country.

What we cannot do right now, at least not safely, is gather here together in large numbers in the
sacred space we call Beth Yeshurun, in this building. It is good to see those of you who are here
this morning, and I wish I could see all of you watching at home.

To see and to be seen is such a powerful human desire. But we will one day return to our building.
The prophets promised a return from the Babylonian Exile, a return to our home in Israel. And we
did indeed return from that Exile. And we returned again to our homeland in the 20th Century. And
so too we will return to our home here in Beth Yeshurun.

But in the meantime, even though we cannot see and be seen together in this space right now, we
can at least connect with each other through modern technology, such as this Livestreamed service.
Thank God we live in this generation when such technology exists.

Even though we cannot be together physically – and especially since we cannot be together
physically – we yearn to reach out with whatever means we have available and connect with each
other. At times like this, “community” is even more important. More important for our emotional,
our spiritual, and our mental health.

35
Congregation Beth Yeshurun is our spiritual home. But it’s not about the building. It’s about us.
It’s about helping each other in times of need. It’s about organizing to help others in Houston. It’s
about enriching our lives with Jewish wisdom. It’s about connecting to God. It’s about connecting
with each other. It is about seeing, and being seen.

[i] Exodus 23, Exodus 34, Leviticus 23, Numbers 28-29, Deuteronomy 16

The Cow That Laid an Egg (!)

Korban Chagigah from the Torah to the Seder Plate

Prof. Rabbi Robert Harris writes:13

Arrive at morning synagogue services at their very beginning (!) and you are likely to recognize
the following lines that are recited just before the early Kaddish deRabbanan:

13
https://www.thetorah.com/article/korban-chagigah-from-the-torah-to-the-seder-plate

36
These are the concluding words from The Thirteen Rules for the Interpretation of Torah of the
School of R. Ishmael, taken from the introduction to the Sifra, and they address a typical
circumstance that occurs both with regard to narrative and legal passages in the Torah.

The Paschal Sacrifice: The Contradiction between Deuteronomy and Exodus

One pre-rabbinic example of a verse that solves a contradiction between two verses is illustrated
in the book of Chronicles, which famously resolves contradictions between the Passover sacrifice
rules in Parashat Re’eh in Deuteronomy and those of Parashat Bo in Exodus. Deuteronomy 16:1-
7 reads:[1]

This pericope presents the law of the biblical Passover, a ritual whose observance God had
ostensibly commanded earlier in the Torah (Exodus 12:1-9).

37
The two texts contradict in a number of ways:[2]

• Exodus prescribes a Passover ritual that takes place around the full moon (12:6);
Deuteronomy, on the New Moon (16:1).[3]

• Exodus has the ritual near the officiant’s own home (12:3); Deuteronomy at a central
location (the Temple) and not at one’s home (16:2, 5, 7).

• Exodus features a lamb or goat that is “wholly roasted,” boiling being explicitly prohibited
(12:8); Deuteronomy states that the meat should boiled.[4]

• Exodus specifies a lamb or a goat (12:5), whereas Deuteronomy offers a choice, either
“from the flock (=sheep or goat) or the herd (=cattle)” (16:2).[5]

I will focus on the last two contradictions, which actually work in tandem in this piece.

Chronicles’ Two Pronged Solution

Boiled with Fire

In its retelling of the great Passover of Josiah,[6] Chronicles writes the following:

38
 .

Looking at the strange expression “boiled in fire,” scholars have long noted that the author of
Chronicles is trying to solve the contradiction between the law in Exodus and that in Deuteronomy.
However, this this does not seem to be the author’s main solution. If anything, it reads like an
extra, “back-up” solution. Chronicles’ main solution to the problem of the Exodus-Deuteronomy
contradiction is that the verse about boiling in Deuteronomy does not refer to the Passover sacrifice
at all, but to a generic festival sacrifice (‫)קדשים‬, probably a reference to a ‫שלמים‬. According to this
text, the Passover sacrifice was to be roasted and ‫ קדשים‬to be boiled. This same division between
two sacrifices serves double duty since it appears to solve another contradiction. The Passover can
only be a sheep or a goat from the flock (as per Exodus), but the ‫ קדשים‬may be a cow (as per
Deuteronomy).[7]

The text in Chronicles is the earliest evidence we have of Jews attempting to reconcile the
contradiction between the provision of Exodus and Deuteronomy. Since Chronicles has been
canonized, this “inner biblical” interpretation illustrates the rabbinic hermeneutic rule with which
we began: two verses contradict one another, and a third comes to reconcile between them![8]

39
The Two Sacrifices Interpretation and the Mishna’s Seder Plate

Early rabbinic writings already recognize two distinct Passover sacrifices.[9] For example,
the Mekhilta, based on a midrashic reading of Exodus 12:14, assumes that a special holiday
sacrifice called the chagigah must be brought every day.[10]Ostensibly, this sacrifice would have
been eaten at the Pesach meal on the night of the 15th. Although early medieval sources identified
the ‫ קדשים‬in Chronicles with the chagigah,[11] the Mekhilta itself assumes that it is a reference to
the Pesach.[12]

The issue of the two sacrifices eaten during the Pesach meal is discussed in the Talmud’s
interpretation of the Mishna about the “Seder Plate,” (Pesachim 10:3),[13] which prescribes two
kinds of cooked food:

The simple meaning of the Mishna is that two cooked foods should be eaten since this is the
minimal fare for a festive holiday meal. However, Rav Yosef states that these two cooked foods
commemorate the dual sacrifices for the day (b Pesachim114b):

40
Hizkiya seems to understand the Mishna in its simple sense, and deals with the question of whether
a combined dish (fish with egg) counts as one or two (the question comes up in m.Beitzah 2:1
regarding eruv tavshilin). Rav Yosef, followed by Ravina, understood the two cooked foods as
representative. Further, Ravina’s adaptation of R. Yosef’s prescription anticipates our own custom
of including a “shankbone” on the Seder plate to retain some minimal adherence to the provisions
of Exodus for roasted meat.

In theory, if we were to follow Rav Yosef/Ravina, we should have two pieces of meat; one roasted
and one boiled. But that isn’t what we do.

The Loss of the Boiled Meat for the Seder Plate

Despite the ruling of Maimonides that mandated R. Yosef’s practice,[15] nearly universal practice
today follows the ruling of the Shulchan Arukh (473:4) that stipulated as follows:

41
Thus, in lieu of R. Yosef’s insistence on “two kinds of meat (one roasted and the other boiled)” R.
Yosef Karo states that we use an egg for the second dish. Where did the egg come from? It isn’t
from Hezkiyah, since he wasn’t suggesting using an egg, merely mentioning fish with egg as an
example. Although it is true that the custom has great pedigree—Sa’adiah Gaon suggests an egg—
this still begs the question of where the custom comes from. Moreover, the problem for us is even
greater than for Rav Karo—his custom maintains the veneer of chagigah by boiling the egg, but
the predominant custom today is to roast the egg. In contemporary practice, the egg, not its manner
of preparation, has become key.

The Egg as a Springtime Ritual

It seems to me that the egg tradition—roasting the egg as well as eating boiled eggs as a first course
of the Seder meal—is not connected to the two cooked foods Mishnah, and that Jewish legal
tradition has not preserved an accurate memory for why this custom exists.[16] Instead, it seems
likely to me that the custom of incorporating eggs in various ways into the Seder is a spring rite,
just as karpas as a green vegetable seems to be. A look at springtime rituals in religions world-
wide shows that the Passover egg stems from the same rites of spring that have led Christians,
Muslims, Zoroastrians and members of other religious faith traditions to use eggs in their spring
festival rituals (think of the Easter egg hunt).[17]

42
Be that as it may, after some reinterpretation by the rabbis, the roasted egg on the Seder plate has
come to represent the second of the two “cooked foods” prescribed by the Mishna, and so takes on
the representation of the chagigah sacrifice — itself, which, as we have seen, is the rabbinic
descendent of the Deuteronomic 16:2 bovine Passover sacrifice. And thus, (finally!) the title of
this essay, “the cow that laid an egg,” although it took a gestation of over one-thousand years!

Footnotes

1. I present the Passover ritual in Deuteronomy mainly because it is from this week’s parasha. However, many scholars

consider it to be earlier than the similar law in Exodus, which is generally attributed to the Priestly source. There is a

long debate in modern scholarship about the Documentary Hypothesis about which of these two sources is earlier; the

details of this debate do not concern us here. It is possible or even likely that underlying P in Exodus 12 the Torah retains

vestiges of an earlier version of the Passover ritual (earlier, at any rate, than the 8th-into-the-7th century traditions that

resulted in D). See, for example, William Propp’s presentation in his Anchor Bible commentary, which treats the Exodus

ritual as a conflation of P and (a presumably much earlier) E; William Henry Propp, Exodus 1-18 : A New Translation

With Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 373-382.

2. Although it is possible to dismiss the contradictions by suggesting that Exodus is only a reference to what the Israelites

did in Egypt, and that, although they are told to keep “this ritual” for all time (v. 24), that doesn’t necessarily mean all

the details (like how they are dressed, how it is cooked, etc.), nevertheless, it is reasonable to read the Exodus text as

prescriptive.

3. Biblical Hebrew ‫חודש‬, chodesh, frequently means “New Moon” (i.e., Rosh Hodesh); see, e.g., Rashi at Exodus 19:1.

4. Sacrificial meat that would be consumed would be boiled in a pot (Leviticus 6:21; see 1 Sam 2:13-14). In the Bible, the

root ‫ל‬-‫ש‬-‫ ב‬always refers to boiling, never to generic cooking, as in modern Hebrew.

5. It is true that later Jewish tradition construes this differently than I have presented it (see, e.g., Rashi, ad. loc.); we shall

return to this distinction, below.

6. I say retelling, because the same story appears in the earlier work, Kings (2Kings 23). In that work, however, the

description of the Passover sacrifice hews closely to that of Deuteronomy exclusively. This is expected, since 2Kings is

part of the Deuteronomistic history, which does not recognize P.

43
7. Jeffrey H. Tigay, in his commentary on Deuteronomy 16:2 (p. 153), summarizes the issue nicely: “According to Exodus

12:3–5 and 21, the pesah offering was brought only from the flock… The present verse, which permits bovines as well,

is inconsistent with that. Halakhic exegesis resolved the conflict in favor of Exodus, limiting the pesah offering to sheep

and goats and taking the large cattle of our verse as referring to extra offerings in honor of the festival.”

8. On inner biblical interpretation, see Michael A. Fishbane, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel (Oxford, New York:

Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1988).

9. The tenth chapter of Mishna Pesahim contains the earliest rabbinic rules for the Seder; see Baruch M. Bokser, The

Origins of the Seder: The Passover Rite and Early Rabbinic Judaism(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).

10.

‫מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל בא – מסכתא דפסחא פרשה ז‬

11. See, for example, the 12th century Italian commentary of Menechem ben Salomon (Sekhel Tov):

,‫שכל טוב )בובר( שמות פרשת בא פרק יב‬

12.

‫מכילתא דרבי ישמעאל בא – מסכתא דפסחא פרשה‬

‫ו‬

:‫ ר’ אומר מקולס‬.‫ ראשו על כרעיו ועל קרבו תוך ובר דברי ר’ עקיבא‬:’‫וגו‬

13. There was no seder plate in the sense we have it now during this period.

14. See Rashbam’s comment, ad. loc., and Tosafot, s.v. ‫שני מיני בשר‬.

44
15. See Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Law of Hametz and Matzah (8:1). But cf. Maggid Mishneh and Hagahot

Maimonithere.

16. And I am skeptical, as well, that the gloss of R. Moshe Isserles (on Shulchan Arukh 476:2) preserves anything more

than a farfetched and after-the-fact justification of a practice whose origins he really does not understand:

In some places, they are accustomed to eat eggs, in remembrance for the mourning [over the destruction of the

Temple]. The reason for this seems to me to be that [the day of] Tisha B’av is [calendrically] determined by [the date

of] Passover Eve. Moreover, it is a remembrance of the destruction of the Temple, in which Passover sacrifices were

offered.

17. See, e.g., David Adams Leeming, “Easter,” in The Oxford Companion to World Mythology (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2005), 111. A variety of popular presentations of legends and practices may be found

at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg. These customs may, in fact, be of even more ancient provenance than is

usually assumed. See the interview, entitled “Egg Cetera #6: Hunting for the world’s oldest decorated eggs,” with

University of Cambridge archaeologist Brian Stewart, at: http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/egg-cetera-6-hunting-

for-the-world’s-oldest-decorated-eggs

45
 Take a second and try this, close an eye and then stick out your index fingers and
point them at each other. Start about six inches apart and bring them together
quickly until the touch. Did you line up perfectly? Chances are you missed by a
little. Now try it with both eyes open.

Depth Perception vs. Binocular Vision

Dodge Perry writes:14

Go ahead, I will wait

It is much easier to have your two fingers align squarely with both eye open.This is
because you have binocular vision; it provides us the ability to discriminate

14
https://www.novavisioncenter.com/blog/depth-perception-vs-binocular-vision/

46
small changes in distance when using two eyes. It goes away when we close an
eye. It works using the idea of “normal” double vision.

Now I want you to look out your window off in the distance, there is probably a car
and a building. Which one is closer to you? Now close an eye, is it more difficult
to tell?

It shouldn’t be.

At distances greater than arm’s length we really do not use binocular vision. We can
judge depth with one eye or both eyes equally.

Depth perception means the ability to determine what is closer to us, but the
tools we use to do this vary. Up close the most important one is binocular
vision. At distance binocular vision really is not useful, we use other tools there
including shadowing, lighting, and obstruction (meaning if a car blocks our view
of a house, we know the car is closer).

Binocular vision requires two well aligned, well seeing eyes. Therefore individuals
with eyeturns (strabismus) or large amount of amblyopia in one eye will not
develop binocular vision (without treatment). However these individuals will still
have depth perception but up close they may find it more difficult to thread a needle
or cap a pen.The other common drawback is they will not appreciate 3-D movies
such as Avatar or Alice in Wonderland.

To sum up, if you lack binocular vision it does not mean you don’t have depth
perception. You can still judge depth, but judging small distances up close will
be more difficult.

47
 BINOCULAR VISION AND SEEING GOD

BINOCULAR VISION AND DIPLOPIA: Visual Cues and Seeing God. 15

‘Since I left you mine eye is in my mind

And that which governs me to go about
Doth part his function and is partly blind
The last line confirms this concept
‘My most true mind thus makes mine eye untrue

15
https://drungar.com/essays-on-healing/2011/3/24/binocular-vision-and-seeing-god.html

48
 Shakespeare: Sonnet 113

DEMETRIUS ‘These things seem small and undistinguishable

Like far-off mountains turned into clouds
HERMIA: Methinks I see these things with parted eye
When everything seems double

A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act IV Scene I 92–5

Hughlings Jackson coined the term mental diplopia to

describe in the dreamy state of partial complex seizures:
‘The patient recognised his recollections as different
from normal memorie, being much more vivid and
more “satisfactory” but, at the same time was dimly
aware of their fictitious character, indicating some preservation
of consciousness, thus resulting in the mental
diplopia” characteristic of the dreamy state.

Jackson HJ: Brain 1888 11:179–207

Definition: Binocular: adj.: the simultaneous use of both eyes, two-eyed or two-
sights.

That’s just the beginning of the story. When most people hear the word ‘binocular’
they envision a compact, hand-held, two eyepiece telescope used to watch birds, or
whales or whatever. Magnifying and viewing distant objects as if you 85;ve been
transported there is the function of this optical device. The optical and vision related
binocular has a more involved functional definition.

49
 Stereoscopic imaging and depth perception

Binocular vision requires two views of an object, each seen from a slightly different
angle (parallax) combined to form a three dimensional (stereoscopic) (3-D)
presentation of that visible space. Our eye s are placed some distance apart, with a
divider (the nose) in between, creating the ability to observe two separate images. Our
brain combines these images to create a stereoscopic, three dimensional reference.
When referring to the human vision system, we call this fused, simultaneous binocular
vision. The perception is that of an object-oriented spatially real image.

Recently a team of researchers from the University of Rochester, led by Greg

DeAngelis, have fleshed out yet another mechanism of depth perception independent
of binocular disparity (published this week in the journal Nature). DeAngelis is quoted
as saying: 16

It looks as though in this area of the brain; the neurons are combining visual cues and
non-visual cues to come up with a unique way to determine depth.

This newly discovered method is unique in the interesting way it combines non-visual
information to create depth perception. It was previously discovered that the vestibular
system may be involved in depth perception. This new study both confirms this and
maps out the actual brain areas involved.

16
https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/monocular-depth-perception/

50
Depth perception in humans and other animals can be based on binocular vision, in
which the brain compares images from each eye. We can also judge depth with one
eye, but how the brain processes the many different cues available for monocular
perception of depth is not known. A possible explanation for one cue has now been
found. The neurons in the middle temporal area of the brain, as well as representing
retinal motion, can combine visual information and physical movement to extract depth
information from motion parallax, a powerful depth cue that we experience when
viewing the scenery from the window of a moving train — objects on the horizon move
slowly while the scene close to the train flashes by.

Perception of depth is a fundamental challenge for the visual system, particularly for
observers moving through their environment. The brain makes use of multiple visual
cues to reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of a scene. One potent cue, motion
parallax, frequently arises during translation of the observer because the images of
objects at different distances move across the retina with different velocities. Human
psychophysical studies have demonstrated that motion parallax can be a powerful
depth cue 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and motion parallax seems to be heavily exploited by animal
species that lack highly developed binocular vision 6, 7, 8.

However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that underlie this capacity. Here
we show, by using a virtual-reality system to translate macaque monkeys (Macaca
mulatta) while they viewed motion parallax displays that simulated objects at different
depths, that many neurons in the middle temporal area (area MT) signal the sign of
depth (near versus far) from motion parallax in the absence of other depth cues. To
achieve this, neurons must combine visual motion with extra-retinal (non-visual)
signals related to the animal's movement.

Our findings suggest a new neural substrate for depth perception and demonstrate a
robust interaction of visual and non-visual cues in area MT. Combined with previous
studies that implicate area MT in depth perception based on binocular disparities our
results suggest that area MT contains a more general representation of three-
dimensional space that makes use of multiple cues.

51
The optic nerve connects the retina to the visual cortex in the back of the brain.
Increased intracranial pressure, tumours, and increased vascular pressure in the eye are
possible mechanisms by which the optic nerve can become damaged, impairing vision

Diplopia occurs when the visual axes become misaligned, causing the image of an
object to fall on non-corresponding areas of the retina of each eye. This causes the
perception of two images instead of one.

52
Diplopia causes the person to see double images instead of a single image. Binocular
vision gives us for the main part depth perception and peripheral vision.

This neurological introduction will inform the way we read the follow enigmatic text
in our daf regarding the Biblical command to appear before the Lord in the Temple
in Jerusalem.

Deut. 16:16

The Text in Exodus states as follows:

Shemot 23:17

Chazal interpreted the keri and the ketiv – the way the word is read and the way it is
written – of the word yera'e as follows:

Yir'e – Yera'e: As he comes to see, so he comes to be seen. (Talmud Chagiga 2a)

And Rashi explains:

The basis for this – and apparently the basis for the aforementioned derasha in Chagiga
– is what is stated in the Akeida story:

53
 Bereishit 22:14

Avraham's intention in calling the place Ad-onai Yir'e was "God will choose this
place," as the Torah states:

Devarim 12:5

According to this, it is possible that the objective of the mitzva of making a pilgrimage
is to be appear before God three times a year in order to be chosen by Him anew, that
is, in order that He reconfirm His choosing of us.

Of great interest to me is why is a blind person in one eye exempt from this most
important commandment to appear before the Lord in the Holy Temple?

Talmud Chagigah 4a:

It appears that just as God has two eyes so we must appear with two eyes! What does
this gross anthropomorphism mean to teach us? And why exclude those unfortunates
who suffered the loss of one of their eyes?

Clearly our excursus into neurology exposed the benefit of binocular vision. Depth
perception and peripheral field vision allows for the organism or see beyond the facts
and into the truth. Depth perception refuses to allow a cursory and surface level of

54
reading. It allows for deep penetrating vision as well as the side glance and periphery.
Things passing on the sides of vision can be seen whereas ordinarily missed.
In seeing this way we are being told that to see God and be seen by god requires this
kind of depth perception and peripheral filed. In turn God sees us in the same way
overlooking our surface flaws and deep into the soul of every devotee.

We are also being taught that often seeing God can only be accomplished by a glance
in the periphery never head on. Man cannot see the divine head on, like the sun.

However a glance is possible from the periphery, seeing the passing of the Divine in
our lives is possible as did Moses in the cleft of the rock

Exodus 33:18

In our lives we see His presence only in the periphery in the past and in the most
unexpected places. Reb Nachman had already taught this when claiming that the divine
must hide in unexpected places and times so that the forces of the Other Side will
remain unaware.

When it comes to pathological vision the reverse is true as we shall discover in another
pericope in Genesis where we are told of the two trees in the Garden of Eden:

Diplopia in the Garden of Eden

Gen 2:9

The text is quite ambiguous as to the exact nature of what was in the middle of the
garden.

55
 Gen 2:16

The command is quite clear the difference between the two tress is clear and the
identification of the proscribed tree is clear.

Gen 3:1

The woman knew which of the trees was prohibited but the narrator does not identify
which of the two trees was prohibited.

The Beis Yaakov of Radzin suggests there was only one tree in the midst of the garden.
There can only be one tree in the midpoint of a circle.

From man’s perspective there are two trees because he suffers from spiritual diplopia.
This double vision splits reality into life and knowledge, forever cursing him to suffer
the either/or effect of experiencing versus knowing. The Hebrew word for inner
experience is daas meaning to know from the inside as in Biblical knowing or marital
relations. After tasting the fruit of the forbidden tree man was condemned to split
between experiential knowledge in the body and intellectual knowledge in the mind.
This affects all areas of life where at some point there is always a split and a disconnect
between the reality as perceived and the reality as experienced.

The story from the Garden points to the pathological disorder of diplopia whereas the
story of the temple offering reveals the need for two eyes and depth perception.
I think these two stories mirror each other.

In the appearance with binocular vision we are being asked to see beyond the facts and
the literal reading to a depth perception of truth, beyond the facts and into the truth. (I
claim that nigleh is factual talmud is concerned with facts whereas the secrets of Torah
or nistar is about truth)

56
In our failure to integrate experience and knowledge we tend to split reality and never
become aware of life in the body, somatically because of this flaw.

Embodiment is most fully experienced in daas the intimate experience of another. After
the sin Adam supposedly was separate from his wife for 130 years and returning his
daas was flawed. Rashi comments on the verse “and Adam knew his wife again (od)
and they bore a son…” (Gen 4:25) the meaning of the word again is to teach you that
he added desire upon desire. The very knowing her again was different. This kind of
knowing caused him to intellectualize the intimacy so that it became pornographic in
his mind. The splitting between body and mind, between actual somatic experience of
intimacy and the obsessional images that could not leave him was now complete.

To be seen by God in the Temple required binocular vision so that He too could see
beyond our facts and the truth of us. Our flaw in splitting between the two trees in the
garden, our spiritual diplopia reflected the very splitting of our souls into the discursive
and the experiential. There could only be one tree in the middle of the garden, the tree
of life. The other tree comes with splitting between good and evil and between the
whole notion of morality and life itself. The Beis Yakov concludes that once man has
refined himself the two combine:

This spiritual diplopia is the very foundation of man’s expulsion from the garden and
our current alienation from our true selves.

The healing is in the spiritual practices devoted to resolving the split between the heart
and the mind, Torah and tefillah as outlined by the Hassidic Masters.

57
 Univision: Seeing Ourselves and the World As One

An Elder’s Lifelong Double Vision Finally Finds Its Focus in Learning to Gaze Instead of
Grasping for Clarity

Mark Sommer writes:17

From my earliest memories I recall seeing two moons at once. When I was just six years old the

optometrist prescribed glasses for me to correct my newly discovered near-sightedness.

“How long will I have to wear these?” I asked my mother, feeling like I’d just been thrown in jail.

“For the rest of your life,” she pronounced with a grimly pleased finality, condemning me to the

same life sentence she had served behind glasses. Only many years later did I discover that my

myopia may have been due less to genetics than to the blurring effects of panic as I squinted to see

the blackboard at a school I was made to attend two years too soon. For the next six decades I wore

17
https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/univision-witnessing-ourselves-and-the-world-as-one-423106a66ec4

58
glasses that corrected solely for nearsightedness while in fifty-five annual vision tests a deeper

optical dysfunction went undetected. Not till I was in my mid-sixties did an alert optometrist’s

assistant diagnose me with binocular diplopia — double vision. Once it was discovered, an

attempted surgery made the condition still worse. The resulting vision left me feeling upside down

in an altogether new and still more distressing way. But the solution turned out to be surprisingly

simple — prismatic lenses that correct for both myopia and diplopia.

So it’s with a certain irony that I find my eyesight, now finally corrected, becoming the path to a
deeper kind of vision. Double vision as I knew it for nearly my whole adult life not only made it

challenging to catch a ball since I didn’t know which of two to aim for. It disabled my ability to see

in three dimensions. Instead I saw two two-dimensional realities laid one over the other — in my

case the dominant image generated by the right eye and the recessive left image fainter and

positioned halfway below and to the right. So the world I still see without corrective lenses is not

only flat screen but split-screen. It makes driving especially challenging. Late at night driving down

a four-lane highway through deep woods I saw two highways at once. Fortunately, I eventually

figured out that if I was on the right side of the first of the two highways I’d be on the right side of

the second. More crucially yet, experiencing a flat screen, split-screen reality made me feel

altogether separate from everything “out there.” There was “I” and there was “other” or everything
else. Whatever way I looked at it I was unable to perceive myself surrounded by and belonging to

a wider world.

Beyond finally receiving a proper eyeglass prescription in my mid-sixties, two events have ushered

me into a fully three-dimensional world. The first was an assault and beating four years ago in a

San Francisco subway station. An unseen assailant struck me with lethal force in that very place on

my forehead right between and slightly above the eyes known to mystics as “the third eye.” I was

rushed by ambulance to a hospital, where I received a brain scan that indicated I had experienced

59
traumatic brain injury (TMI). “We don’t know yet how serious it will be,” the emergency room

doctor told me. “Time will tell.”

Time did tell, and to my enduring surprise and relief it appears to have knocked some sense into

me. I’ve come to feel that in wielding his fist or my trekking pole (which shattered in pieces with

the force of the blow), my assailant was actually waving some kind of wand. Whatever the case

may be, it appears to have opened up that third eye to give me access to deeper states of

consciousness that have continued to reveal themselves in the years since.

The second event occurred just a few months ago in the form of an extensive encounter with a

mountain lion — not the kind of fleeting glimpse that with (mixed) luck one might experience on a

backcountry trail but a full 15–20 minutes in silent communion. I was kayaking in the burnished

light of late afternoon on a remote Pacific coast lagoon ten feet from shore when I noticed something

moving. Her coloration so perfectly matched the tawny grasses and rocks through which she was

moving that at first I didn’t realize what I was looking at. Then, to my astonishment, I noticed that

she was a female mountain lion, moving with feline grace and infinite precision by the water’s edge.

I stopped paddling and simply watched. She ignored me altogether.

60
 A puma’s primal gaze

After ten or fifteen minutes she slipped into the undergrowth and I thought I’d lost her. But then

fifteen feet or so up the cliffside she reappeared. This time she turned in my direction. With eyes

set farther apart than we humans she gazed at me, eyes alternating between wide open and altogether

closed for several seconds at a time. Her gaze was calm, steady and seemingly all-encompassing.

She evinced no startled or predatory impulse. Eventually, in her own time, she turned slowly away

and disappeared again, this time for good.

I’ve encountered wild creatures before while living in the woods for two decades — bears,

rattlesnakes, foxes— but always either glimpsing them from afar or fleetingly up close as each of

us sought an escape route. With this cougar it was different. In retrospect it seems to me that in her

placid gaze she bestowed on me what Buddhists call a “dharma transmission” — an ineffable

passing of wisdom and insight that leaves one’s perception of the world forever changed. The lion’s

transfixing gaze left me wondering what wild creatures see when they watch the world around them.

61
How encompassing is their view and how quickly can they refocus on an object of special interest?

Do they possess panoramic awareness? Can they see everything in their viewshed at once?

With such questions in mind, a few months ago I began to modify the morning meditation I’ve been

practicing for the past half century. Till recently I’ve meditated either with eyes closed or partially

open and cast down at a 45-degree angle with a focus midway between my eyes and the object,

usually a blank wall. Now, inspired by my dharma encounter with the mountain lion, I continue to

follow my breath as an anchoring practice and instead of facing a wall I gaze at a longer horizon,
eyes cast slightly downward without focusing on any specific object. Instead I retract my focus to

the middle distance and let my eyes rest there. Then, without moving my eyes I place my mind’s

attention on my full field of vision, which for most of us is about 180 degrees. To stretch the range

of my perspective I spread my attention to consciously include everything out to the periphery of

my vision. I turn my mind but not my eyes to the left edge, then the right, upward and then down,

and near to far. As I move my mind from the center towards the periphery the detail I detect

diminishes exponentially till I’m only vaguely aware of what’s happening at the edges of my

viewshed. Yet this kind of vision is crucial to sensing the broader context and gaining an accurate

perspective on the whole.

Cultivating Panoramic Awareness

The world I’ve been discovering since starting to practice this kind of panoramic awareness is both

vaster and more vivid than anything I’ve ever experienced other than in the psychedelic journeys

of my well-spent youth. But unlike drugs, this mode of perception is firmly grounded in a shared

reality and a heightened sense of belonging to and in the world I’m watching. We moderns largely

ignore everything in the penumbra of our peripheral vision. The pace at which we live our lives,

our fixation on the narrow-gauge range of digital devices, our addiction to hyper-stimulating

experiences and our obsessive habits of mind make for tunnel vision. When riveted on our screens

62
we even forget to blink, which is essential to clear vision. Both TV and action films blink for us

sixty times a second in the staccato rhythm of a strobe light. They bombard our minds with shifting

images every few seconds. Struggling to process the images and information coming at us at warp

speed we hardly have time to notice anything beyond our laser focus on what’s right in front of us.

We thus lose the broader perspective that enables us to anticipate both dangers and opportunities

and thus make wise decisions.

Is it possible to cultivate both close focus and panoramic awareness?

Spotlight vs. Lantern Awareness

63
Neuroscientist Alison Gopnik and and computer scientist Alvy Ray Smith describe two different

kinds of perception they believe differentiate adults from infants — spotlight and lantern. “As we

know more, we see less,” they write. In their view, infants and children perceive the world through

an uncritical, open awareness relatively free of exclusionary categories. With lantern consciousness,

writes Gopnik, “you are vividly aware of everything without being focused on any one thing in

particular. There is a kind of exaltation and a peculiar kind of happiness that goes with these

experiences.” But as we become acculturated and educated to make distinctions (and in the process

develop biases), our awareness narrows. The hyper-specialization of our economy narrows our
perception of options and opportunities, funneling us into jobs with little room for exploration,

growth and personal expression. We adults learn to specialize to the degree that we know a great

deal about just a few things and very little about most others. Spotlights fix one’s attention on one

object at a time and leave most everything else in the shadows. Lanterns spread a pool of light

across a broader field of vision.

Today, however, our metaphorical spotlights have been honed to a laser-like beam in a still

narrower and more piercing range of focus while lanterns have been supplanted by floodlights

eliminating the shadows that delineate the three-dimensional nature of our world. This harsh,

narrow focus reflects the obsessive nature of our adult consciousness and creates an addictive
relationship to the objects of our attention. Its ramifications extend to every dimension of our lives,

including our family and love relationships, our politics and celebrity culture, even our perspective

on ourselves.

There is surely a functional purpose in being able to focus intensively on one task or object — our

data-driven economy and culture depend on it — but it is too often stripped of the broader context

that enables us to put it in proper perspective. As cultures both west and east become ever more

fixated on profit-driven tech innovation, we make ever less room in our lives to consider the best

uses for the devices we invent. Lacking the context to evaluate the likely impacts of our innovations

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we end up making choices that while profitable for those who own them are highly destructive of

our collective well-being. There is no better example of this tragic misuse of our cleverness than

the perverse directions taken by social media that in the process of developing new forms of

communication and convenience have spawned hate and distrust that now threaten democracy,

civility and life itself.

Is it possible as an adult to regain the open awareness and wide-eyed wonder one instinctively knew

as a young child without losing the elder’s hard-earned discipline of steady focus and concentrated
intelligence? As a young man I studied Zen Buddhism with Shunryu Suzuki-roshi and his followers

in the Soto tradition that sprouted in the fertile soil of bohemian San Francisco during the Sixties.

The “zen mind” he sought to cultivate in us was not an esoteric doctrine but an open, non-

judgmental awareness he called “beginner’s mind (shoshin)” or “original mind.” In the beginner’s

mind there are many possibilities, he said, but in the expert’s there are few. “If you can keep

beginner’s mind forever, you are Buddha.”

In other words, the highest attainment of enlightenment is not mastery of doctrinal minutiae, an

erudite footnote to add to the vast knowledge base of a field of study, but a capacity to see, sense

and experience life whole in such a way that we are not separate from it but integral to all that is.

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Beginner’s mind enables one to see and experience everything afresh each time we turn to it, to be

startled into wakefulness by its vividness and immediacy. It’s a form of higher naivete propelled by

boundless curiosity and creativity, a perpetual capacity to rediscover as if for the first time. It’s the

inclination to ask the big questions without insisting on final answers, knowing there are none. It’s

this openness of heart and mind that enables one to combine mature expertise with childlike wonder.

And it’s this blending of two complementary forms of intelligence, employing both the left and

right hemispheres of the brain in balance, that enables us to witness the world with the full

dimensionality that makes for a fulfilling life.

Linger Longer: Living in the Timeless Zone

It is not inevitable that consciousness narrows with age. Those of us of a certain vintage (in my case

75) are given a rare opportunity to broaden back out to panoramic awareness after a lifetime of

pressing responsibilities that kept us narrowly on task. We finally find the chance to linger

longer, taking the time to gaze at the world at our ease and contemplate our place in it. Wonder,

awe, appreciation and gratitude move to front and center and busyness to the periphery. We enter

the “timeless zone” where we’re less driven by clocks and more by curiosity. Liberated at last from

the imperative to perform, we experience a spaciousness that is the essence of true freedom. Instead

of conventional retirement with its early bird specials and miniature golf links, we can choose

reopening to the boundless wonder years of early childhood before school and work narrowed our

options and imaginations. But to the innocence of childhood we can add the wisdom of experience

and open more deliberately to a wider, deeper awareness and appreciation. Consciousness can

indeed broaden with age.

With a practice of contemplative gazing the double vision that causes us to see ourselves as

fundamentally distinct from everything else finally begins to dissolve into a seamless, indivisible

unity, a kind of univision. We experience ourselves, both our bodies and our minds, no longer as

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separate entities but as one and the same as all else in the universe. This is not the loss we fear it to

be, not the disappearance of self that we fight so desperately to avoid, but a blessed reunion with

the larger universe. We retain our idiosyncratic personalities just as every other living thing remains

unique, but we are no longer obsessed with insisting on our specialness. We give up the futile

struggle to assert our paramount self-importance in return for a more secure sense of belonging with

and to everyone and everything else.

Yet paradoxically we continue to operate in this world as if we are sovereign beings — and must
do so in order to maintain our unique roles in the grand dance of creation. In my own experience,

in the wake of my recent discoveries life continues to present its familiar challenges based on having

to take care of the business of maintaining an individual identity, tending a body that is constantly

demanding my attention and addressing its unavoidable needs. Despite our widened awareness our

minds continue to wrestle with thoughts, feelings and emotions that seem specifically addressed to

our personal selves. The world we witness as one is not suddenly transformed into a continuous

spectacle of beauty and glory.

Wall mural in San Francisco’s seedy Tenderloin district

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We Here Now

Where we saw ugliness and suffering before, we still see it, now with a startling clarity and detail.

But we no longer see it as separate from us. It’s our world now, not just our personal selves but all

of us, human and otherwise. It’s simply home, with all the complexities that accompany family and

neighborhood, yet with a deeper sense of belonging than we’ve ever before experienced. Empathy

and compassion are no longer intellectual and spiritual commitments alone but real felt sources of

mutual recognition. Everything from birds to water to rocks bears the same familial relation to one

another that we in our smaller selves experience in identifying with our hands, faces, minds and
hearts. This visceral sense of indivisible unity relieves the most anguished of human emotions —

isolation and loneliness — as we come to our senses and realize we are not only not alone in this

vast universe. We are all one. Half a century ago Ram Dass wrote a book and coined the gentle

commandment that launched a generation of spiritual seekers on a lifelong quest: “Be here now.”

Today, when we find ourselves more divided than ever before at just the moment when we most

need to act together, we must urgently cultivate a new depth of awareness : “We Here Now.”

With the practice of contemplative gazing both inward and out, we discover a profound sense of

fulfillment in seeing and experiencing our indivisible unity with all else that is. There is no longer

any “they” there, no “other” to fear and hate, just “us here,” we humans together with the rest of
nature, animate and inanimate, supporting and being supported by one another. “We” replaces “me”

as the center of this boundless universe, and that center is everywhere within and all around us.

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 A portion of mouse visual cortex shows the binocular region in green.
Chandelier cells are red in this image. Chandelier cells are clearly less
plentiful in the binocular zone

BRAIN CLEARS THE WAY FOR BINOCULAR VISION EVEN

BEFORE EYES ARE OPEN
Selective pruning of key brain connections brings two-eyed vision into
focus

KARL LEIF BATES WRITES:18

DURHAM, N.C. 2020– To prepare the brain for binocular vision and depth perception, first
you have to take out some of the chandeliers.

That’s the takeaway from a group of neurobiologists who studied the development of binocular
vision in the mouse brain. They discovered that chandelier cells, so-named because they have
many long extensions that control the firing of hundreds of excitatory pyramidal neurons and
resemble a chandelier light fixture, are selectively removed from the developing mouse visual
cortex even before the animal’s eyes are open by a process of programmed cell death called
apoptosis.

18
https://today.duke.edu/2020/12/brain-clears-way-binocular-vision-even-eyes-are-open

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This pruning of about half of the chandelier cells in the second week of development probably
clears a path for certain pyramidal neurons to be more active, since chandeliers tend to have a
dampening effect on their excitability, explained Josh Huang, a professor of neurobiology in the
Duke University School of Medicine. He led this research at his previous position in Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, spearheaded by postdoctoral fellow Bor-Shuen Wang. The
findings appear Dec. 7 in the journal Neuron.

“Binocular vision requires fast communication between the two visual hemispheres that receive
information in the center visual field,” Huang said. “What we think is that to allow that to happen,
the area that mediates this fast communication needs to have reduced inhibition,” accomplished
via fewer inhibitory chandelier cells.

The binocular vision enjoyed by mammals like mice and humans is a collaboration of the physical
abilities of the eyes and the interpretative abilities of the brain, Huang said. “Many animals (such
as a lizard) can see with both eyes, but their processing of visual information from each eye is
largely separate. Only in most mammals is there a central part of the visual world that is seen by
both eyes and it is the brain that has to combine the left and right visual images into a coherent
single perception.”

Some of the binocular system is laid down by genetic instructions that build the structures of the
visual pathways, but the finer visual circuits are shaped by visual experience.

“The whole process of brain development is a continuous process in which genetic information
plays a major role in constructing larger scaffold of the brain network,” Huang said. “But later,
there are learning- and experience-dependent processes that begin to customize many of the details
of the brain circuits for each individual. The phenomenon we’re talking about is right at the
juncture between the genetic-instructed and use-dependent mechanisms,” Huang said.

Adding to the complexity, the brain processes binocular vision in two different and coordinated
ways, Huang said. As signals travel from the left and right retina to the thalamus, some signals
cross to the other side of the brain, and others don’t, but they converge in the visual cortex, thereby
contributing to binocular vision. The second path is that the left and right visual cortexes, receiving
information from the retina, communicate through callosal neurons via the corpus callosum, a
connection between brain hemispheres. That further sharpens binocular vision.

In that second week after birth and before their eyes open, the retinas of the developing mouse
generate waves of activity that help organize the visual cortex by reducing the density of the
inhibitory chandelier cells. This is achieved by instructing the callosal neurons to literally kill half
of the chandelier cells. The researchers showed that blocking those retinal inputs prevented
chandelier cell pruning in the visual cortex.

When they experimentally prevented the chandelier pruning in some mice, those mice flunked a
3D visual perception test, but otherwise seemed to see and behave normally. To confirm that the
chandelier pruning is driven by retinal activity without any visual input, pups were raised in
complete darkness. And the chandelier pruning still happened.

“Most likely, that killing of chandelier cells by callosal neurons is not random but is a step of
proper binocular circuit assembly,” Huang said. As young chandelier cells begin to form

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connections, those that form the “wrong connections” that may slow down the callosal pathway
are likely to be selectively killed, while others that contribute to other aspects of visual processing
are preserved. When pruning was blocked, a significant portion of the remaining chandelier cells
appeared stunted. Those, he thinks, are the ones that would have been pruned.
CITATION: “Retinal and Callosal Activity-Dependent Chandelier Cell Elimination Shapes Binocularity in Primary Visual
Cortex,” Bor-Shuen Wang, Maria Sol Bernardez Sarria, An Xu, Miao He, Nazia M. Alam, Glen T. Prusky, Michael C. Crair, Z.
Josh Huang. Neuron, Dec. 7, 2020. DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2020.11.004

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