Shabbat Chol haMo’ed Pesach 5786 – 04/04/2026
Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.
The day before Passover is and always was a very busy day. In times when the Temple stood Jerusalem was crowded with pilgrims, all bringing a goat or a lamb for the Paschal offering and the Temple was busy making the offerings so the people could take their sacrifices to wherever they were staying in Jerusalem and roast them over the fire, to eat them at the Seder (they were in Israel, so only 1 Seder). Nowadays we are busy cleaning and scrubbing, kashering the counters, pots and pans and silverware, and searching for, and then burning, chametz.
There is another tradition that applies to the day before Passover, and that is the Fast of the Firstborn. The final plague that finally broke Pharaoh’s pride and arrogance was the killing of the firstborn of all of Egypt, while the Jewish firstborns were spared. In order to “deserve” this deliverance generation after generation, the day is set aside as a day of fasting and repentance, similar to the Fast of Esther, which comes on the day before Purim, the day of all Israel’s deliverance.
There is a significant difference between the Fast of Esther and the Fast of the Firstborn. On the Fast of Esther, everyone fasts (barring a medical condition that prevents it). On the Fast of the Firstborn, of course only firstborn sons are obligated to fast, but more importantly – there is a way to avoid the fast altogether. This fast is one that can be overridden by a se’udat mitzvah – a mitzvah-feast. Traditionally, the feast that is chosen is a siyyum, completion, of a Talmudic tractate. Since I was in the middle of learning the 5 small tractates at the end of the Talmud, I volunteered to do this at my synagogue. I picked the tractate Kinim.
Kinim means “nests.” (There is another “kinim” that occurs in the Seder when we enumerate the plagues, and means “lice.” It is spelled differently in Hebrew.) The nests in question are pairs of birds that are required to be brought as sacrifices in various circumstances. In general one of the birds is a sin offering and the other is a burnt offering (olah = elevation offering). Now in the case of animal sacrifices, the requirements leave very little doubt as to what each one is. For example, an elevation offering must be a male bull, sheep or goat, while a sin offering must, in most cases, be a female goat. Not so in the case of birds – for one, in the case of the birds that may be used for a sacrifice, there is no way to tell the gender, unless you happen to see them mating (unlike species that show sexual dimorphism, like the cardinal or the peacock). In other words, it is easy for the sacrifices to get mixed up.
In addition, there were generally quite a number of people bringing bird offerings at any time. Women who have recently given birth bring bird offerings, people who have had unusual genital discharges bring birds, as do some poor people who breach the laws of ritual purity in the Temple. And here is the salient point: All these birds look the same, and they all have wings. This is a perfect formula for the birds flying around and getting mixed up. Now to bring it back to our siyyum, a large part of Tractate Kinim deals with how to handle those inevitable mix-ups.
Now when a physicist hears “mix-ups” he thinks “entropy.” What is entropy? Popularly, it is disorder; technically, it is lack of information or knowledge. Mixing, by blurring boundaries, always increases entropy. For example, suppose I have a flask of red water and another, identical flask of blue water. I can tell the two flasks apart. Now suppose I mix the water from the two flasks in another container, and pour the mixture back into the two flasks. Now I have two identical flasks with purple water. I can no longer tell them apart – I have lost information and the entropy has increased. To try to restore the original situation would require energy and intelligence – some way of separating the red dye from the blue dye. I’m no chemist, so I don’t know how to do it, but the laws of thermodynamics require an input of energy and intelligence to reverse the increase in entropy. A closed system inevitably increases in entropy. An open system, if the energy and material flows are substantial enough, evolve into more and more complex systems.
In the case of the birds, if there is a mix-up, we need to add new birds to the mix to replace the ones for which we don’t know what they were consecrated for. In other words, we need to put in energy and intelligence to unmix the mixture. The way this is done in particular circumstances takes up the bulk of the tractate.
The tractate ends on a different note:
R. Shimon ben Akashya says: elderly ignoramuses, the more they age, the more confused their minds become, as it is stated: “He removes the speech of men of trust, and takes away the sense of the elders” (Job 11:20). But elders [who are Torah scholars], as long as they age, their minds become settled, as it is stated: “There is wisdom with aged men, and understanding in length of days” (Job 12:12).
This quote obviously has to do with mental entropy. How does this work? On the surface level, an ignoramus is not intellectually curious, doesn’t use his mind to its fullest potential, and doesn’t see much beyond the surface of things. Such a closed mind is subject to the law of entropy (2nd Law of Thermodynamics). The scholars, on the other hand, keep their minds subtle and supple, their intellects sharp and their hearts overflowing. They move from strength to strength, from “aging to Sage-ing” in the words of R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, z’l.
On a deeper level, however, we have to evaluate this statement in terms of what Torah is. It is the blueprint of creation, Gd speaking to Himself (see Rashi to Num 7:89), the home of all the laws of nature. Real Torah study is accomplished when “their minds become settled” into the silence of pure Being, and they connect with the infinite source of energy and intelligence at the basis of the universe. Established in that, the Sage is perfectly attuned with nature, the mind has become cosmic mind, perfectly orderly and infinitely powerful. He “draws waters of joy from the wells of salvation” (Is 12:3)