Who Really Expects a Third Mikdash?

The mizbayach (from my Midkash project)

A friend of mine decided to get training in the full nikkur process. That is, he is now able to remove the veins and nerves even from the hindquarters of slaughtered animals. In North America, that particular skill is rarely used because, for the most part, commercial considerations dictate that we don’t use meat from those parts of animals for the Jewish market.

And while that’s been the business model used in North America for a few generations, it’s not possible elsewhere. So meat processing operations in Israel, for example, are forced to engage in the time-consuming and complex purging process.

I’m sure none of that will be breaking news to any of you. But I also suspect that the North American approach might come with significant unintended consequences. My friend, who now lives and works in Israel, asked his former rav whether he’s permitted to eat meat from the animals he and his colleagues process. The rav told him that he should not eat it because “we have no mesorah” for that process.

My first problem with that is I have no idea what “we have no mesorah” means here. I could almost understand it if the rav had said “it’s not our minhag” - although picking up your family and moving to Israel would normally come with a new set of minhagim.¹

But if you “have no mesorah”, then the simple solution is to get one. How? By speaking to the rabbonim and professionals with experience in the field. There. Now you’ve got your very own mesorah.

Which brings us to my second problem. Like many Jews, I learned סדר הקרבת קרבן פסח a few days ago. Perhaps partly because of residual reflex memory from my 35 year-old Mikdash project my mind automatically tried to visualize the process.

Those visualizations included the unsettling image of tens of thousands of inexperienced Jews running around the עזרה holding shechita knives.² If we get through the first year without any fatalities I’d count that as a greater miracle than Moshiach’s coming. I also struggled to visualize how we’d get enough water to clean out the lamb and goat intestines before they’re burned on the mizbayach. In fact, I also wondered how many of us would even be able to identify the intestines.

However what struck me as most troubling was how we’d manage nikkur. After all, there’s a full prohibition to leave any meat of the pesach uneaten, so every single group (חבורה) will need to actively remove their own animal’s forbidden veins and nerves to permit the hindquarters for consumption.

This will likely be a logistical problem even for the Israeli population, but the hundreds of thousands of North American Jews who hope to participate (complete, no doubt, with luxury hotel accommodations “just steps from the mikdash”) will be singularly unable to contribute their share of the needed labor pool. After all, because of our strange “mesorah” qualms, there won’t be any nikkur specialists among us.

If we really expect the temple’s rebuilding, shouldn’t we at least try to pick up as many critical organizational and practical skills as we can? Even if some physical and political elements of the new mikdash turn out to have Divine origins, relying on some kind of miracle for what should be our part isn’t a great approach.

1. And the “חומרות המקום שיצא משם וחומרות המקום שכנס לשם” rule wouldn’t seem applicable here because this isn’t technically a “chumra” but a commercial model.

2. There would definitely be tens of thousands of them because, besides the fact that kohanim aren’t necessary for shechita, there simply wouldn’t have been enough of them to slaughter the million pesachim (and, for most years, another million chagigos) squeezed into a few hours during the afternoon of erev Pesach.