Backups to my backup TB Pesakhim 97

 To appreciate today's daf TB Pesakhim 97, you have to be quite familiar with the laws of sacrifices (קדשין). For example, there is a halakha of Moses from Mount Sinai that there are 5 sin offerings that are not offered up on the altar  because they are not eligible as sin offerings. Animal rights activists will be happy to learn that they are placed in a locked room and starved to death. The five categories are: 1, an offspring of the sin offering, 2, the exchange animal (תמורה) of the sin offering, 3, the sin offering when its owners died before it was sacrificed, 4, a sin offering when the owner already gained atonement for the same sin with a another sin offering, 5, a sin offering that is ineligible because it's too old.

Admittedly, I know next to nothing in this area of Jewish law. I also find these pages difficult because these laws are very theoretical ever since the Temple was destroyed back in the year 70 CE by the Romans. Neither am I praying for the restitution of animal sacrifices as the main mode of worship. I just hope that I earned heavenly credit by studying pages like this in Talmud.

I did find a case mentioned in today's daf that I can truly identify with. "Rabbi Oshaya said: If one separated two sin-offerings from the outset as a guarantee, so that if one is lost he may gain atonement with the other, he gains atonement with one of them and the second is left to graze." (Sefaria.org translation)  Rabbi Oshaya is describing someone who is so worried about gaining atonement that it brings along "insurance" of another animal just in case that something happens to the first animal like it wanders off and gets lost.

As a rabbi I am very anxious about everything surrounding my sermons before and during High Holidays. Just before  Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, I make backup of my backups of my sermons. There's one on the bimah, another one on my desk, another one I email to myself so I can access it from any computer, and of course, there's one on my computer. Thank God, I have never misplaced my original bimah sermon. One of my sons when he took a break from services and rested in my office, he would read my backup sermon. Returning to the main sanctuary and sitting next to his mother during the sermon, he would quietly and confidently tell her that in 10 seconds Abba is going to tell this joke. And I did!