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

Huh? Did I just call a duff of the Talmud mediocre? It's not, of course, but the idea it explores is, well, all about the majesty of

mediocrity. The rabbis repeat and discuss at length the prohibition from Leviticus instructing us that two things may not be brought as meal offerings.

No seor or leaven and no dvash or honey, which at first glance is very strange.

Levin we can somehow understand, you know, Passover and everything.

But honey had a lesser mind, like my own, been in charge of arranging the sacrifices in the

temple. Honey would have been my first go-to. It's sweet, it's viscous, it's gorgeous, it smells great,

it tastes amazing, so why not burn it right up on the altar? The Ramban, our beloved

Mahmanides, taking the historical view, noted that leaven and honey were precisely the offerings

that pagans burnt on their vile altars,

which means that we Jews had to take a radically different approach to differentiate ourselves.

Other rabbis took the culinary path and argued that since we were obligated to add salt to all sacrifices, it made sense that honey

was verboten as honey and salt, you don't really have to be a chef to understand that,

they don't really exactly mix nicely together. But as a late, great Rabbi Adin Steins also

explained, there is an even deeper reasoning here. And it comes to us courtesy of

Sefer Ha Chinuch, the 13th century composition written by an unknown author in order to teach

children all 613 commandments. The Torah, Ravadine Steinsals wrote, did not want sacrifices, brought from powerful elements that affect others.

Se'or causes leavening.

Honey changes the flavor of whatever it's mixed with.

It's just, Safferah Achinou concluded, just like creation itself.

God mixed the attribute of justice and the attribute of mercy to create a situation

of normalcy in the world. In other words, we deliberately want our offerings not to be too sweet,

...