Hey there, and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one large page of Talmud each day.

Why large?

Because in today's page, Menachah 23, size really

does matter or ratio does. Listen, the rabbis are discussing a case in which two meal offerings

get all mixed up before the comets, that fistful of flour, is separated and sacrificed. In that case, they ruled, the offerings are both valid,

as long as you can take a comets from each one separately somehow.

If there's enough separateness and you could just grab a handful of each, that is okay.

But if they were so thoroughly mixed up together that you can no longer tell them apart and remove a comets from each, then they are not valid.

Which lead the rabbis to ask another similar, fascinating, related question. Have a listen.

The Gamara suggests another proof from a baraita. Come and hear, in the case of matza, that one seasoned seasoned with black cumin with sesame or with any type of spice

it is fit to be eaten during the festival of passover as it is considered matzah but it is called

seasoned matzah comments it enters your mind to explain that this is a case where there were more

spices than the Mata itself. In other words, if your Mata dough was mixed up with all sorts of

delicious spices, no worries. It's still Mata, just spicy Mata, spiced up Mata. Unless, of course,

you get to a point where there are more spices than there is matza dough,

at which point, that's not a matza and we have a problem.

If you think this is a remote, archaic, and strictly halakhic problem, think again,

because the question of ratio when it comes to our baked goods, particularly our beloved bagels, is a very real one. Before we get to it, a short

history of everyone's favorite breakfast baked goods. Originally, when they were schlepped over

from the old country to the new world, bagels were little guys, two ounces or so of dense

doughy goodness. But everything is larger than

life in America, of course, which is why in just one short century, the bagel mushroomed in size,

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