One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
פְּסוּלֵי הַמּוּקְדָּשִׁין
Sacrifices Rendered Unfit 5–7
Sefer Avodah · What becomes of holiness that cannot reach the altar - leftover funds, hopeless mixtures, and doves spoiled in the service
10,000
One holy animal in a myriad, still not nullified
100
Pure pieces that annul one impure slice
2
Signs melikah must sever - windpipe and gullet
1
Fingernail for melikah, never a knife
PM 5Leftover and lost consecration
- Nowhere to go, so set apart. Money set aside for a sin-offering whose owner died, or found only after atonement was reached, is cast into the Salt Sea, where no one may benefit from it. (5:1)
- Combine, then redirect. When lost funds and replacement funds are both recovered, they are pooled to buy the offering, and whatever remains is used for freewill offerings. (5:2-3)
- Error does not consecrate. Money or an animal set aside for an obligation that turns out not to exist stays ordinary, for a consecration made in error is not binding. (5:6)
- Holiness rides down the ladder. One who set aside funds for an animal and became poor may transfer the sanctity onto a bird, and a bird's funds down onto a tenth-ephah meal-offering. (5:9-10)
RememberNothing consecrated is ever discarded - it is set beyond reach, redirected upward, or carried gently down the ladder.
PM 6Intermingled offerings
- A living thing is never lost in a crowd. A death-bound animal mixed into a herd, even one in ten thousand, consigns them all to death, for living animals are never insignificant in a mixture. (6:1)
- Do not disqualify a sacrifice. Sacred animals mixed with ordinary ones of the same type are all offered; two different sacred types are not offered together, lest one be forced into a status that ruins it. (6:3, 6:5)
- Guard every privilege. We do not reduce a sacrifice's eating-time, its eligible eaters, or its place, so mixed animals pasture until blemished and are redeemed at the value of the choicest. (6:6, 6:8)
- The found animal. An animal found near Jerusalem is judged by age and sex - a yearling female is confined to die lest it be a sin-offering, a two-year-old male has no remedy lest it be a guilt-offering. (6:18)
RememberA living thing is never nullified - the one in ten thousand still counts, and is never permanently disqualified.
PM 7Melikah and the courtyard line
- Failed, but not a carcass. Melikah by an unfit person, at night, or with a knife is invalid, yet the dove is still not a nevelah that conveys the impurity of an unslaughtered bird. (7:1)
- The dividing principle. A disqualification arising after the dove entered the Courtyard invalidates it but does not make it a nevelah; a defect present beforehand makes it a nevelah in every respect. (7:2)
- Where holiness never rested. A dove fundamentally unfit - worshiped, a harlot's fee, or maimed - becomes a nevelah and defiles when swallowed, because the sanctity of a sacrifice never fell upon it. (7:4)
- Right blood, right place. A bird sin-offering's blood belongs on the lower altar and a burnt-offering's on the upper; wrong place, manner, or intent disqualifies, yet none of these becomes a nevelah. (7:5, 7:9)
RememberA holy thing that fails is not the same as a thing that was never holy - what entered the Courtyard never falls all the way down.