
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


On today's pages, Menachot 75 and 76, the Talmud gets precise about how oil is mixed into loaves and smeared onto wafers for the meal offering — and one small detail stops us cold: the priest was instructed to smear the oil across the wafer in the shape of the Greek letter chi, essentially drawing a large X with his fingers. It raises a question about whether Jewish observance is really as rule-bound and mechanical as we sometimes assume. Can a single stroke of oil on a cracker be an act of genuine creative expression? Listen and find out.
By Tablet Magazine4.8
541541 ratings
On today's pages, Menachot 75 and 76, the Talmud gets precise about how oil is mixed into loaves and smeared onto wafers for the meal offering — and one small detail stops us cold: the priest was instructed to smear the oil across the wafer in the shape of the Greek letter chi, essentially drawing a large X with his fingers. It raises a question about whether Jewish observance is really as rule-bound and mechanical as we sometimes assume. Can a single stroke of oil on a cracker be an act of genuine creative expression? Listen and find out.

557 Listeners

1,462 Listeners

41 Listeners

653 Listeners

987 Listeners

158 Listeners

198 Listeners

57 Listeners

477 Listeners

1,223 Listeners

3,333 Listeners

1,097 Listeners

37 Listeners

83 Listeners

304 Listeners

217 Listeners

523 Listeners

233 Listeners

38 Listeners

450 Listeners

112 Listeners

15 Listeners

147 Listeners

115 Listeners

355 Listeners

99 Listeners

19 Listeners

11 Listeners

0 Listeners

11 Listeners

936 Listeners

150 Listeners