Hey there, and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one beautiful page of Talmud each day, and today's page Menachot 108 we learn a basic

principle. Here goes. The first clause of the Mishnah teaches us that if one says one of my

lambs is consecrated and he has two lambs, the larger one is consecrated. The Gamara infers, apparently

one who consecrates, consecrates generously.

The Hebrew and the Mishnah is gorgeous.

Makdish, be aeneh Afha, Makdish.

He who consecrates, consecrates, be aeneyafah,

or with a beautiful, generous, giving eye.

It's one of my personal favorite principles about Yiddishkind.

Though the rabbis follow this up on today's page of Talmud with the discussion of whether or not

this principle always holds most agree that it does. If you are going to offer an animal for sacrifice,

make it the biggest, the most precious, the most beautiful one you own. And the same logic

applies to all of us in every aspect of our lives. It lives in the spirit of Hidur mitzvah, or the

exhortation to not only fulfill the Mitzvot the commandments, but to make each Mitzvah as mehuder it,

as special, as precious, as beautiful as we can.

What do we mean by that?

Allow me an example from my own home.

Each Friday morning, I think about three or four hours to prepare a host of salads my family and I only enjoy on Shabbat.

There's matbucha, the spicy tomato and pepper salad,

a recipe handed down by our dear friend Natalie, or Bashwaya, a grilled vegetable salad beloved

by Tunisian Jews, or a fiery hot Moroccan carrot salad with chrisa. These salads take a lot of what my grandmother would

call pachkarai, a lot of busy work, peeling and dicing and grilling and mincing and minding things

...