Q&A: Tractate Yoma
Tractate Yoma
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi!
A very long time ago I studied Tractate Yoma.
I studied two chapters and came to the conclusion that only the eighth chapter is relevant.
I’m not interested in the High Priest’s service and other such theoretical topics. Am I missing something?
Answer
It depends what you mean by the word “relevant.” Relevant in practice? Does it teach me important things? Does it have the value of Torah study? Only regarding the first question are you right, and even that is only superficially. Jewish law requires modes of thinking, proofs, and analogies drawn from passages that may be hypothetical and very far from the issue under discussion. Therefore, passages about the Yom Kippur service can certainly shed light on practical halakhic questions. In this regard there is even a very well-known example (and there are many others): in Or Sameach, he rules that a sick person who eats on Yom Kippur does not recite kiddush, and his proof is from Maimonides in the laws of the Yom Kippur service, where he wrote that when Yom Kippur falls on the Sabbath, the additional Sabbath offerings are also offered by the High Priest. Of course, the passage in Yoma 13 about the High Priest’s wives also has many halakhic and conceptual implications.
Discussion on Answer
I already answered that. What are you asking now? I explained that Torah study has value even if it is not practical. And I explained that studying any passage is practical. Do you want criteria for what? There are no criteria. You need to study everything.
By the word relevant I mean relevant to practical Jewish law. There is no Temple, and I’m not a priest, so I don’t know why it matters that a week before Yom Kippur they bring the High Priest another wife. What matters to me in practice is that it’s forbidden to eat and drink and put on perfume. Of course I won’t skip it entirely; the only thing I skip is aggadic passages (I didn’t see any supreme wisdom in the fact that a student of Rabbi Hiyya slept with a non-Jewish woman and had tzitzit, and then somehow they got married from that and she converted—Menachot 44a). If you have arguments about what I’m missing, or where it really is worth putting the emphasis—because from what I saw, at least the Rif and the Rosh wrote commentary only on chapter 8.
Thank you for your time.