• Menachot(meal offerings) whose service is performed with the wrong intention
• The dissenting position of Rabbi Shimon and the challenges to it
• Sacrifices whose purpose is to qualify one for entering the Sanctuary
• The wrong person or wrong position which can disqualify a mincha
• Why the sinner's mincha is so bare
• Left-handed service in the mincha offering
• The effort of the Sage Avimi to regain lost knowledge
• The daily minchat chavitin of the kohen gadol
• Eating sacrificial meat in the heichal
• Which sacred vessels sanctify their contents

Shelter in the Sanctuary

• Menachot 7b

The meat of kodshei kodshim (olah, chattat and asham) sacrifices, as well as the remnants of a mincha offering, must be eaten by kohanim within the precincts of the azarah courtyard of the Beit Hamikdash. Does this preclude their doing so within the heichal, whose sanctity is on a higher level? Such a question could arise in the event that enemies were bombarding the besieged open azarah and shelter could be found only in the covered heichal.

The ruling of Rabbi Yehuda ben Beseira is that in such circumstances the kohanim could eat these sacred foods in the heichal and it would not be considered that they rendered them unfit by removing them from the prescribed area of consumption.

Tosefot (Zevachim 29a) cites this ruling as a challenge to the statement of Rashi (Zevachim63a) that there was no consumption of sacrificial meat in the heichal. It is interesting to note the difference between Rashi's explanation of the above-mentioned danger to the kohanim in Mesechta Zevachim and in Mesechta Menachot. In the former he describes it (Zevachim 63a) as bombardment from "arrows and catapult boulders" while in our gemara it is described as exposure to "spears and bows". The gemara does not report that such a situation ever developed, so that the nature of the danger remains only a theoretical one.

What the Sages Say

"The mincha offered by the sinner is not treated with oil and frankincense because he does not deserve to have it adorned."

• Rabbi Shimon - Menachot 6a

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