Study Menachot folio 65B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
And if Moses, our teacher, was a lover of the Jewish people, why did he delay them in the wilderness 40 years? The elderly man said to him: My teacher, you dismiss me with this retort? R' Yoḥanan ben Zakkai said to him: Fool! And will our perfect Torah not be as worthy as your frivolous speech? Yo
R' Yoḥanan ben Zakkai cites a proof that Shavuot does not need to occur specifically on a Sunday. One verse states: “Even to the morrow after the 7th week you shall number 50 days; and you shall present a new meal offering to YHWH” (Leviticus 23:16), and one verse, the preceding one, apparently c
The Talmud explains: How so, i.e., how can one reconcile these two verses? Here, the verse that mentions 7 complete weeks, is referring to a year when the festival of Passover occurs on Shabbat. In such a year, the 50-day period between Passover and Shavuot contains 7 complete weeks, from Sunday
The Talmud presents a mnemonic for several other proofs in refutation of the claim of the Boethusians: That of R' Eliezer: Number; R' Yehoshua: Count; R' Yishmael: From the omer; R' Yehuda: Below.
R' Eliezer says: The previous proof is not necessary, as the verse states: “7 weeks you shall number for you; from the time the sickle is first put to the standing grain you shall begin to number 7 weeks” (Deuteronomy 16:9). The term “for you” indicates that the counting of the weeks is dependent