Avodah: Ancient Poems for Yom Kippur

2. Shiv'at Yamim

2. Shiv=at Yamim “Seven Days” T his text is the earliest extant version of the Avodah service. It does not take the form of poetry but is rather a liturgical reworking of Mishnah Yoma. It gives us a reasonable picture of what kind of recitation of the Mishnah the Talmud might be describing.1 The text is one of those Avodah services mentioned in the ninth-century rabbinic prayer manual of Rav Amram Gaon.2 Although Shiv5at Yamim follows the Mishnah closely, it omits much and introduces some changes. Most significantly, it omits minority opinions of individual sages and much legal detail. It also adds details found in the Tosefta and the Palestinian Talmud, as well as a section adapted from Mishnah Tamid. The text also features a full text of the confessions of the high priest. Some details and transitional phrases, however, seem to be original to this text.3 Shiv5at Yamim was first published by Ismar Elbogen in 1907.4 This translation is based on an improved version of Zvi Malachi’s edition.5 Text included in Shiv5at Yamim that does not derive from the Mishnah is set in boldface type. 1. B. Yoma 36b, 56b; see the Introduction, above. 2. Seder Rav Amram Gaon, ed. Daniel Goldschmidt (Jerusalem: Mossad Harav Kook, 1971), § 127, p. 168. 3. See Malachi, Ha-“5 Avodah,” 1:12‒14, and Menahem H. Schmeltzer, “How Was the High Priest Kept Awake on the Night of Yom ha-Kippurim?” in Saul Lieberman (1898‒1983), Talmudic Scholar, ed. Meir Lubetski (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 2002), 59‒70. 4. Elbogen, Studien. 5. Malachi, Ha-“5 Avodah,” 2:127‒31. We have also consulted the translations of Mishnah Yoma by Herbert Danby, The Mishnah Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (London: Oxford University Press, 1933; repr., 1974), and Jacob Neusner, The Mishnah: A New Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), in our translation. 54 avodah [1:1] Seven days before Yom Kippur they would remove the high priest from his house to the Councilors’ Chamber, and prepare another priest in his place in case something happened to disqualify him. The elders of the court handed him over to the elders of the priesthood, and they read to him from the order of the day.6 [1:3] All those seven days he would slaughter and toss the blood, offer the incense, and repair the lamps and sacrifice the head and hind leg. Then they said to him: “Sir High Priest: Read, yourself,” lest he forgot or did not learn.7 On the eve of Yom Kippur, at dawn, they stood him at the eastern gate and passed bulls, rams, and sheep before him so that he could become familiar and accustomed to the sacrifice, and so that he would know which to sacrifice first and which to sacrifice last. All those seven days they would not forbid him food and drink. The elders of the court then handed him to the elders of the priesthood and led him to the upper chamber of the house of Avtinas. Then they adjured him and departed and went their own way. And they said to him: “Sir High Priest: We are emissaries of the court, and you are our emissary and the emissary of the court, and you are the messenger of the community.8 We adjure you by Him who caused His name to dwell in this house that you change nothing of all we have told you, so that you do not sacrifice the first [animal] last and the last first, and that you do not burn the incense outside and bring it inside, and not do as the Sadducees, but do the first first and the last last, as we have adjured you to do and demonstrated it before you.
He would turn aside and weep, and they turned aside and wept. If he was a sage, he would lecture. If not, they would lecture before him. If he was accustomed to reading, he would read. If not, they read before him from Job, Ezra, and Chronicles . And if he was an ignoramus,9 they would engage him with discourse about kings and discourse about the early pious men. 6. The ritual procedure for Yom Kippur. 7. Mishnah: “lest you forgot or did not learn.” shiv=at yamim 55 ezian lecb odk oiyixtn mixetkd meil mcew mini zray...