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

And today's pages, Menachot 61 and 62,

deliver a stunning masterclass on how to be religious. Like all lessons worth learning,

this one too unfurls slowly and is well worth every drop of our attention. So let's begin.

The Mishnah teaches that the two loaves and the two lambs are waved in the following manner. The priest places his two hands below the lambs,

extends them to each of the four directions, and brings them back, then raises and lowers them.

That's the act known as

Snufa, holding up the sacrifices in the air and waving them in all directions before

raising and lowering them. It's appealing and very cinematic. We can almost imagine

the priest all dressed in white, holding up those lambs and these loaves, hoisting them in the air for all to see

before waving them about dramatically. But why, pray tell, all the dramatic waving? Today's

duff gives us not one, but three divergent explanations. Rabbi Chiabar Abba says that

Rabbi Ohhan says,

He extends the lambs and brings them back in order to dedicate them to he to whom the four directions belong.

He raises and lowers them in order to dedicate them to he, to whom the heavens and the earth belong.

Makes sense. God after all is the creator of all things.

So what better way to acknowledge his omnipresence and omnipotence

than pointing our offerings in all directions to suggest that we understand full well,

that God is here, there, and truly everywhere?

It's a simple, elegant, and soulful explanation,

so we're a bit surprised to learn that while the rabbis in Babylonia seemingly endorsed this beautiful and spiritual notion,

their colleagues over in the land of Israel had a radically different take.

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