Who walks the walk of shame? TB Pesakhim 82

Generally speaking the rabbis time and time again spoke out against embarrassing another person. For example,“And Mar Zutra bar Toviyya says that Rav says; and some say Rav Ḥana bar Bizna says that Rabbi Shimon Hasida says; and some say Rabbi Yoḥanan says in the name of Rabbi Shimon ben Yoḥai: It is more comfortable for a person to cast himself into a fiery furnace, than to humiliate another in public to avoid being cast into the furnace.” (TB Baba Metzia 59a, Sefaria.org translation) Nevertheless, there can be good guilt if it motivates a person from doing something wrong

Beginning on the bottom of yesterday’s daf and continuing on today’s daf TB Pesakhim 82, the Gemara speaks of the person who walks the walk of shame and the person who we protect from embarrassment. The sugiyah begins with the Mishna delineating what we should do with the korban Pesakh when it is kosher, but the owners become disqualified from eating it either because they are ritually unready or have died in between. 

“If the owners became ritually impure or died, its form must be allowed to decay by leaving it for a period of time instead of burning it immediately, and it should be burned on the sixteenth of Nisan, immediately after the first day of the Festival.” (Sefaria.org translation) “What is the reason? Rabbi Yosei bar Hanninah said: To embarrass them.” (my translation) Tosefot (ד"ה נטמא) explains by embarrassing those people who were lax and brought the korban Pesakh in a state of ritual unreadiness, the rabbis desired to motivate then to be more careful in future years.

The Gemara brings another example of embarrassing a person, this time kohainim, who were lax and became ritually unready. “We learned in a mishna there, in tractate Tamid: The head of the watch would stand the ritually impure priests at the entrance to the eastern gate each morning. The Gemara asks: What is the reason that they did not simply send them home without making them stand at the entrance to the eastern gate? Rav Yosef said: It was in order to embarrass them for not having been careful to avoid becoming impure.”1 (Sefaria.org translation)

When the circumstances are beyond the control of the individual, we must be careful to keep his dignity intact. “The Gemara asks: Granted, if people want to burn it with wood from the arrangement in their own courtyards one does not listen to them. This is because the Sages were concerned lest they leave over some of the wood they took to burn the Paschal lamb and come to experience a mishap with it by using the wood for another purpose. But in the case in which they wanted to burn the offering before the Temple with their own wood, what is the reason one does not listen to them?

Rav Yosef said: It is in order not to embarrass one who does not have the means to bring his own wood. If it were permitted to bring one’s own wood to burn in the Temple, people would realize that only the poor people take wood from the Temple. This would be embarrassing to the poor.” (Sefaria.org translation)

1. To be fair, Rava disagrees with Rav Yosef concerning the underpinning reason of the halakha. See the Gemara on daf TB Pesakhim 82a to see his reason and the difference between his and Rav Yosef’s approach.

2. Wood belonging to the Temple