Pesachim 80 a, b

The past few days (Sept 4-7, 2013) have been Rosh Hashana and then Shabbat.  I have been reading but not blogging.  It feels strange to jump in with my ideas on Pesachim 80 without having touched on the past few dapim.  However, to keep myself functioning, I am going to stick with this one daf.

In a continued effort to understand rituals surrounding the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb, the rabbis today look at the issue of community.  Do tribes each form their own community, or are do all of the tribes combine to form one large community?  If half of the the community is impure and half is pure, who is allowed to participate in the first Pesach? the second Pesach?  What if one half plus one person is impure?  What if the people are impure because of contact with a corpse versus people who are impure for other reasons?  What if we are speaking of zavim? and do the rules differ for zavim and zavot?

One of the many confusing arguments in today's daf seems to imply that a woman is a zavah if she finds menstrual blood on a day (or many days, watching carefully) outside of her regular cycle.  I had thought that a zav was a person with gonorrhea.  Is that only true for men? Are women zavot only if we have irregular menstrual flow, or in addition to when we have gonorrhea?  Needless to say, these distinctions are both perplexing and disturbing, given the stigma that seems to be attached to that particular state of ritual impurity.

Another interesting question jumped out at me.  The rabbis discuss what should be done when a small minority of people - perhaps even only one person - is ritually pure among one-half of a community that is pure.  They suggest that the person who is ritually pure remove him/herself from the community so that the larger group can be allowed to sacrifice the Paschal lamb (as this is allowed for those who are impure under certain circumstances).

I was shocked that the rabbis would even entertain this idea for theoretical purposes.  The suggestion is that the rights of a "deserving" minority can be trumped for the sake of the larger community.  To be more specific, the larger community - even when in a state of ritual impurity - should have the benefit of sacrificing the Paschal lamb.  Is this idea responding to the needs of those who are ritually impure before those who are ritually pure?  Are the rabbis speaking to the large group of people who are less able to engage with mitzvot; who dafka need opportunities to do those mitzvot more than those who are   able to engage with mitzvot more easily?

I would love to believe that our Sages had thoughtful reasons for debating these seemingly trifling details about offering of the Paschal lamb.  Today's daf suggested such as possibility.