[Avodah] How many Korban Pesachs could be sacrificed in 1 day?

[Micha Berger]

On Tue, Sep 03, 2013 at 11:47:50AM +0300, Marty Bluke wrote:
: How it is just tight? as I pointed out there are only 3 groups for
: Korban Pesach meaning that the groups consist of 400,000 (or more). Do
: you really think 398,000 people can fit in 1500 square meters?

I don't think the frequency of 95 per sec is a problem, given enough
teams doing qorbanos. E.g. there are 

R' Yochanan (Sukkah 8a) uses 24 people as a way to measure a 24 ammah
circumpherance. Mar Kashisha suggests he meant a person fits in 2/3 of
an ammah. Also let's assume (based on arguments I made here in the past,
besides being on the more liberal end) that in those days they held an
ammah was around 17 to 18" -- to make things easy, say 1/2 meter. So,
1 sq meter holds roughly 9 people. And if we could simply pack people in,
we're talking 1500 sq meters being room for 13,500 people. By a generous
reading of Chazal's own estimates for packing people in.

And then we also need room for the sheep, the kohanim, the space in
which to shecht, qabbalas hadam, etc...

The mishnah (5:7) says the third shift was smaller than the other two --
sha'amah mu'atin. Hallel would be said two or three times during the first
two shifts until every qorban for the shift was complete. However, in
the third shift they either never finished the 2nd iteration (tana qama)
or didn't reach Ahavti (of the 2nd iteration? the first? either way -- R'
Yehudah). So, the first two shifts had to have more than 400,000 qorbanos.

Aside: The Kotzker Rebbe has a clever piece of mussar on this. The third
kat never reached ahavti because if they had that ahavah, they would have
found a way to be in an earlier kat! Zerivim maqdimim!

I thought of three possibilities, and they aren't mutually exclusive:

1- The Yisraeli didn't stay for the full shift. They came in, joined
the choir for Hallel -- or maybe were saying Hallel elsewhere -- made
their way in a parade past the kohanim, and continued back out.

But as RET mentioned, even fitting 12mm people in Y-m is a problem.

2- This is the same neis as tzar li hamaqom or hishtachavayah.

But as Lisa noted, we need to know why bowing was mentioned and not
this. I don't find this a show-stopper question, since it's proof by
ommission. Maybe we'll find that medrash among the Cairo fragments;
Chazal took it for granted we'd put 2 and 2 together; or whatever
other excuse we could make up.

3- Guzma.

4- The context is Aggripas's census. And for that sake the number is
around correct. So the problem is in assuming that Aggripas deduced
the number from the number of qorbanos, that every 10 Jews actually
did bring their own qorban pesach.

Maybe (my own suggestion) the kohanim gave Aggripas a number of left
kidneys from which he or they estimated that there *should have been*
1.2 mm qorbanos. Including those who lived far away, who sinned, who came
for Pesach Sheini, etc... Not that 1.2mm qorbanos were actually brought.

This would also solve RET's housing problem.

Side question: The impression I got from Pesachim 85b, 86a-b, was that
we really maximized the number of people per chaburah. Given that it had
to be eaten al hasovah, not gasa, and last, we would aim for around a
kezayis per member of the chaburah. Admittedly this isn't said anywhere,
this maximalization seems to just underly numerous statements. And it
would mean far more than 10 people per lamb.

And in any case, I don't know where the average of 10 would come from
if we were talking actual demographics rather than estimation.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             When memories exceed dreams,
micha at aishdas.org        The end is near.
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