Yoma 28 a, b

The start of daf 28 is the completion of the conversation regarding priests and non-priests performing different rituals at the Temple.  This completes Perek I.  Amud (a)  takes us into Perek II, where we begin a new Mishnah that describes the morning routine.  

Learning that light has broken, an appointed priest announces that morning has arrived as light can be seen from Hebron.  It is important to understand the time of day so that slaughtering occurs at the right time.  The High Priest is brought to the Hall of Immersion where he covers his legs (defecates) and then immerses.  We learn in this Mishnah that defecation is followed by immersion, and that urination is followed by sanctification (washing) of the hands and feet.

The Gemara begins by looking at the issue of determining the morning hour.  Rabbis consider other such determinations, including when people arise to find workers who will begin their work in the fields at dawn, and Pesach.  Using the Akedah as a proof text, Rav Safra notes that the prayers of Avraham begin later, when the sun makes dark shadows appear beside the walls.  A side argument suggests that we should not learn halacha from Avraham, as he lived before the Torah was given.  To refute this, we learn that the halacha of early morning circumcision is taken from Avraham, for he hastened to leave with Yitzchak in the morning; we had also learned from Avraham that circumcision takes place on the eighth day after birth.

But perhaps that wasn't even the difficulty!  Rava suggests that Rav Yosef had no problem with deriving halacha from Avraham.  In fact, his difficulty was with an earlier suggestion regarding the timing of an afternoon offering: we could follow Avraham's example and begin our sacrifices even earlier than suggested.

The Gemara then launches into one proof text after another regarding our learned Elders Abraham, Yitchak and Yaakov.  We are offered numerous interpretations of Biblical text that 'proove' Avraham's learned status; Yitchak's time in yeshivot.  For example, Avraham's rush to do G-d's will (the Akedah; hospitality) was because he otherwise was an elder who sat and studied long hours in a yeshiva.  Yitzchak, as well, had dim eyes in his old age (Genesis 27:1) not due to frailty or age alone but due to his Torah study (Ritva).   Yaakov, too, must have sat in the yeshivah studying, for his eyes were "heavy with age" (Genesis 48:10).

The rabbis use a particularly obscure mitzvah, the joining of cooked foods, to demonstrate that Avraham observed even the rabbinic ordinances.  As the phrase referred to my Torahs, the rabbis believed that Avraham kept the mitzvot of both the written and the oral Torah.

To observe whether or not the eastern sky was lit to Hebron, the rabbis think about one person looking from a roof and one person looking from the ground.  Each could then confirm with the other about their views of the sky. Why is this necessary?  Because occasionally moonlight would be mistaken for sunlight.

It seems that the rabbis saw moonlight as a pillar and sunlight as diffuse through the sky.  Clouds could obscure this reality, however, forcing moonlight to diffuse broadly like the sun.  They believed that the sun was most strong when diffuse and thus matzah could not be kneaded outdoors for fear of the sun's effects on rising dough.  To prove this concept of 'smaller is stronger', the rabbis suggest that the strongest smell of vinegar comes from a jar opened only slightly.

Although many of today's words are enjoyable and meaningful and 'fill the cup', they almost feel 'quaint', which is not how I like to think of our Sages.  Some of their theories have been proven wrong for hundreds of years.  Their patterns of logic that they share, however, are fascinating and simply brilliant.  I continue to wonder where they thought of their connections and proofs as creative metaphor and where they truly advocated super-natural explanations for their interpretations of the text.