Page:New Edition of the Babylonian Talmud (Rodkinson) Volume 6.pdf/49

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TRACT YOMAH (DAY OF ATONEMENT).
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a balcony and an attic over it, where priests were watching (the Temple) above, and the Levites beneath. Inside was the Choyl (a round walled and roofed place, in the Temple). The other was the Gate of Sacrifices. The third was the Gate of the Heating House, and we have learned in another Boraitha that on that day the high-priest took five legal bathings, and ten times sanctified his hands and feet from the laver. [See Ex. xxx. 18.] Both the bathing and the sanctifications he performed on the roof of the chamber of Parva, in the sanctuary, except the first one, which he did not take in the sanctuary, but near the Gate of Water. The bath-house was on one side of his chamber, only I don’t know whether the Chamber of Palhedrin was in the north and that of Abtinas in the south, or vice versa.

"Thou art our delegate." Shall we assume that in this Mishna is found an objection to R. Huna b. R. Joshua, who said that the priests are delegates of the Merciful One (not of Beth Din)? If they were our delegates, then are there things which we ourselves may not do, and our delegates may (as in the case with the priests)? They did not say to the high-priest that he is their delegate, but that they conjured him to act according to their opinion and to that of Beth Din.

"He wept, and they wept." We wept for being suspected of being a Sadducee, and they wept because they probably suspected an innocent man, as R. Joshua b. Levi said: "He who suspects an upright man is smitten by God in his body." (See Sabbath, p. 191.) Why had he to be conjured? It was feared lest he prepare the incense on the censer outside of the Holy of Holies, and then enter with the censer, as did the Sadducees. The rabbis taught: It happened to one Sadducee, who prepared outside, and entered the Holy of Holies with it, when he came out, he was rejoicing greatly. When his father met him, he said to him: My son, though we are Sadducees, yet we must fear the Pharisees. He replied: All my years I was anxious to fulfil the verse [Lev. xvi. 2], "For in the cloud will I appear upon the mercy seat," and I said to myself, When will come the day when I might do it? And to-day, when I have had opportunity, should I not have done it? It was said, it did not take long before he died, and lay amidst rubbish, and worms crept out of his nose.

"Zechariah b. Kabutal," etc. R. Hanan b. Rabha taught to Hiya the son of Rabh in the presence of Rabh: Said R. Zechariah b. Kavutal: Rabh made to him a sign with the hand that he