Menachot 51 - The Pancake Stops Here

Hey there, and welcome back to Take One, the podcast that brings you just one responsible

page of Talmud each day.

And on today's page, in the Khot 51, Theravais asks a great question.

Let's assume God forbid that the High Priest dies.

But they asked happens to the griddle cake offering.

He was supposed to sacrifice daily.

It sounds like kind of a minor, like super into it's a lot of a question, but it actually

has profound and super relevant consequences.

So here, let's have a listen to what the rabbis are asking.

If they did not appoint another High Priest in his stead, the Talmud asks, from whose property

was the griddle cake offering brought and sacrificed?

Rabbi Shimon says it is brought and sacrificed from the property of the community.

Rabbi Huda says it is brought and sacrificed from the property of the heirs of the High

Priest.

And for the duration of the period until a new High Priest was appointed, the griddle cake

offering was sacrificed as a complete 10th of an affine flower.

If we zoom out of our narrow halachic confines for a minute, the question at hand is this.

What really is leadership about or how should we think about our leaders is a leader, just

an ordinary person, which means that when he dies, his heirs take up all of his obligations

just as they would any other person or is the leader by ascending to the position.

By ascending to the position of leadership, somehow sanctified by it, seen no longer as

a mere mortal, but as the embodiment of his duties, which means that at the moment of

his passing, his debts and obligations are a matter for the public at large.

It won't surprise you at all to hear that the rabbis jump in and debate this idea fiercely.

As well they should, because leadership, our wise ancestors realized wasn't monolithic,

wasn't some function you could clearly define.

Here for example is the late great Rabbi Jonathan Sachs on leadership.

In Judaism he wrote, leadership is less a function than a field of tensions between different

roles, each with its own perspective and voice.

A musical form defined as the technique of combining two or more melodic lines in such

a way that they established a harmonic relationship while retaining their linear individuality.

It is this internal complexity that gives Jewish leadership its vigor, saving it from

entropy the loss of energy over time.

A men to that.

And we, sadly, live in a time in which leadership is at an all-time low.

Both because leaders, the world over, are reveling and divesting themselves of the quiet

dignity once associated with their office.

And also because voters, the world over, are eager to treat their leaders not with mutored

or even maybe begrudging respect, but with zealous venom mocking them and doing their best

to disrupt their lives and dismiss their contributions based on nothing deeper than shallow partisan

affiliations.

Long then, and just in time, comes our duff, our page of Talmud teaching us a better way

of being in the world.

Treat our leaders, the Talmud tells us, as both fallible humans and as embodying the

very elevated office they occupy, demand of them their dues, hold them to the same standards

you would have any other human being, but at the same time understand that as leaders,

there are no longer ordinary human beings, but parts of something much greater, something

we need to preserve and revere if our institutions are to keep and are polity to persevere.

If we can learn to show our leaders both criticism and charity, to give them the respect they

deserve while demanding the attention and care we require, only then do we have a chance

of building better, stronger and more sustainable communities.

This has been Take One.

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I hope we have made your day a little bit more Talmudic.