T80 (Tinyana) PNC - Terumas HaDeshen — The Mishnah of Yoma Read as the Inner History of Rabbinic Leadership

**"Isa b'perek sheini Maseches Yoma — ba-rishonah, kol mi she-ratzah literom terumas ha-deshen, torem."** Rabbeinu opens by lifting the dry-looking mishnah of Yoma 22a — the rules for who removes the ashes from the mizbe'ach each morning — into an inner-history of Jewish leadership across the dorot. **Stage 1 — "Ba-rishonah, kol mi she-ratzah, torem."** In the first generations, *anyone who wanted* could go up and do *terumas ha-deshen*. Why? Because those generations were *tzaddikim* — wanting it was already a sign of fitness. **Pesher**: *deshen* = *hisnaseh*, elevation, leadership. **Tehillim 23:5** "דִּשַּׁנְתָּ בַשֶּׁמֶן רֹאשִׁי" — *deshen* is the oil of leadership-anointing. So in the first generations, anyone who *desired* to be the manhig of the dor was, *for that very desire*, fit; he simply *torem*, took up the role, and *hayah manhig ha-dor*. **Stage 2 — "K'she-hayu m'rubim, ratzin v'olin ba-kevesh; kol ha-kodem es chavero b'arba amos zachah."** When many wanted, they *ran* up the *kevesh*; whoever beat his fellow by *four amos* merited. The image looks athletic; Rabbeinu reads it as Torah-magnitude. **"Olin ba-kevesh"** is *kivshono shel olam* (cf. Chagigah 13a) — the deeper sodos of Torah; whoever knew and attained more in those *sodos* was the one *m'manin parnas al ha-tzibbur*. **"Arba amos"** is the *arba amos shel halachah* (Berachos 8a) — concrete halachic mastery. So the metric was honest: greater Torah-attainment + greater halachic depth → leadership. **Stage 3 — "V'im hayu shenehem shavin, ha-m'muneh omer la-hen: hatzbi'u."** If two were equal in *Torah-attainment*, the *m'muneh* (the appointed officer) tells them: "extend your fingers" — and they extend *one or two* (numbers in a counting-game), *but they do not extend a thumb in the Mikdash.* **Now Rabbeinu's chiddush, surgical and devastating**: when two are equally great in Torah and each wants the leadership (because *bi melachim yimlochu* — Mishlei 8:15 — Torah grants kingship), the *m'muneh* who shows up to break the tie is *the yetzer hara himself*. He says "hatzbi'u" — the Yiddish-Aramaic homonym Rabbeinu hears: *hatz-vi'u* = *show some tzevi'us*, *show some hypocrisy* before the public, just enough to make them choose you. And he sweetens his pitch: *u-mah hen motzi'in, achas o shtayim* — *what's the big deal?* Stick out *one or two* hypocrisies in front of the masses; once you're established as *the* tzaddik in their eyes, you can return to truth.

**The tzaddikim refused.** They *would not extend any tzevi'us, would not listen to the etzah of the yetzer*, *machmas godel hakaratam b'gadlus ha-Borei*, because of the magnitude of their recognition of the Creator's greatness, *she-mlo kol ha-aretz k'vodo* (Yeshayah 6:3) and He *roeh v'yodea ha-kol*. They were *m'siv'shin lifnei HaShem yisbarach l'har'os eizeh tzevi'us* — they were ashamed before HaShem to put on a show. **The mishnah's last line as their refusal**: *ein motzi'in agudal ba-Mikdash*. Rabbeinu reads *agudal* — the thumb — as *sichlam*, intellect (per Berachos 33: *kol mi she-yesh bo dei'ah, k'ilu nivneh Mikdash b'yamav* — the intellect-of-da'as IS the Mikdash). So *they would not extend their intellect-thumb in the Mikdash*: they would not lend their da'as to a tzevi'us-performance, because their da'as itself was *the Mikdash*, and you cannot make the Mikdash perform fakery. **Stage 4 — the disaster**: *ma'aseh she-hayu shenehem shavin v'ratzin v'olin ba-kevesh, v'dachaf echad mehem es chavero v'nafal v'nishbera raglo.* Two were equal, ran together, and one *pushed* the other off the ramp; the pushed one's leg broke. *Vechavayan she-ra'u beis din she-ba'in lidei sakanah, hiski'nu she-lo y'hei tor'min ela b'pais* — by lottery, henceforth. **Pesher**: "*nishbera raglo*" = *kefirah*. The proof is **Makkos 23a**: *bah Chavakuk v'he'emidan al achas — "v'tzaddik b'emunaso yichyeh"* — Chavakuk grounded everything on one *foot*: emunah. *Regel*, the foot, is the foot of *emunah*. To break the leg is to break the emunah. **And the etiology of the kefirah is precise**: *machmas kin'ah she-kinei es chavero, she-hayah shenehem shavim b'hasagas ha-Torah, va-chavero dachaf oso — al yedei zeh kafar ba-ikkar*. Jealousy of the equal-in-Torah peer who got the leadership leads, *al yedei zeh dayka*, to outright denial of the ikkar. **Sanhedrin 102a — the proof**: Yerav'am asked "*mi ba-rosh?*" — that very *who-goes-first* question is the seed of his fall. **Rabbeinu names the contemporary application unsparingly**: *kamah benei adam naflu mi-emunasam machmas she-ro'in she-bnei gilam alu li-gedulah*. Many a Jew in this dor lost his emunah because *people his age* rose to greatness while he didn't. The leg-break of broken-emunah is not in some far enemy; it is in the same-aged peer's broken-pride. And whoever *did* shove his fellow off the kevesh and grab gedulah for himself, his very act is *azus* — and Sanhedrin 105a: *azus malchusa b'la taga*, audacity is kingship without a crown. *He's still ruling, but his crown is missing*.

**The takanah of *pais***. Beis Din saw they were coming to *sakanah* and instituted: *eyn tor'min ela al yedei pais* — only by lottery. Rabbeinu reads *pais* not as random selection but as *piyyus*, *appeasement* — until *all the people come and appease* (yepayisu) the candidate to accept rabbanus, he should *not* take it. The new rule, in Rabbeinu's translation: **"mi-techilah hayu rotzim b'hisnaseh l'shem shamayim — aval achshav she-ha-hisnaseh hi bishvil k'vod atzmo, hisk'inu she-lo yirdof shum adam achar hisnaseh, ela yivrach min ha-hisnaseh."** When the original drive was *l'shem shamayim*, running was acceptable. Now that the drive has been compromised — *hisnaseh hi bishvil k'vod atzmo* — *no one* should pursue. *Yivrach min ha-hisnaseh*: flee from elevation. The only safe acceptance is *after the entire community has come and appeased you* — and even then, only because they appeased, not because you wanted. *V'lo yirdof achar hisnaseh*. **Why so unsparing**: *ki lo matzi'nu ba-dor ha-zeh she-y'hei kavanaso l'shem shamayim*. Rabbeinu won't soften it; in *this* generation he found no one whose pure motive he could trust to be *l'shem shamayim* in pursuing leadership. The proof from his own corpus: **Horayos 13b** — Rabban Gamliel instituted *kavod l'atzmo, kavod la-Nasi, kavod la-Av Beis Din* (a hierarchy of honors); when Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Nasan saw it, they consulted to *nullify the takanah*. "And surely their kavanah was not, c"v, for self-honor — it was for *kavod HaShem yisbarach*." Even within the bnei Torah elite of the Beis Din ha-Gadol, one wing tried to dismantle a kavod-system the other wing built — *not* out of self-interest but precisely because the *kavod-system itself* had become the slot through which *not-l'shem-shamayim* gets in. **The take-home**: *don't run on the kevesh*. If you have the four amos of halachah AND the *sodos ha-Torah*, sit. Wait. Let the community come, *piyus* you, *piyus* you again. Then maybe accept — and even then, ask yourself if the kavod is for HaShem or for you. The four-amos-prize is real; the leg-break is real; both are real because the same kevesh is involved. The only safe foot on it is the one that did not climb to claim.