Episode Details

There is a tradition that there are two communal offerings that require semicha. Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Shimon disagree about which two they are. They both agree that the communal bull offering (brought for an unintentional sin of the congregation) requires semicha by the elders, but they disagree about the identity of the second one. Rabbi Yehuda holds that it is the scapegoat on Yom Kippur, noting that according to the verse in the Torah, the Kohen Gadol performs semicha on it. Rabbi Shimon disagrees because he holds that semicha must be performed by the owner, and he argues the Kohen Gadol is not the owner of that sacrifice; the scapegoat atones only for the sins of the Israelites, while the kohanim receive their atonement from the confession of the Kohen Gadol on his own bull offering. Rabbi Yehuda disagrees with Rabbi Shimon's position, holding instead that the scapegoat atones for the sins of the kohanim as well, which makes the Kohen Gadol an owner of that sacrifice.

Rabbi Shimon includes the communal goat offering for idolatry as the second sacrifice requiring semicha, deriving this from the word "goat" written in the context of the semicha of the nasi's (leader's) sin offering (Vayikra 4:24); the extra word implies that another goat - the communal one - is included in the requirement. Rabbi Yehuda, however, uses the verse in Vayikra 4:15, which specifies "the bull," to exclude the goat and limit the requirement to the bull alone. The Gemara questions why each sage needs a specific verse to prove his opinion when they could have simply relied on the established tradition that only two communal offerings require semicha.

All individual offerings require semicha, with the exception of the firstborn animal, animal tithes, and the Pesach offering. The exclusion of these three is derived from the verse regarding peace offerings, "his offering," which implies an offering that is designated as "his" by choice.