Chevre, this week’s Parsha is Tzav (צו) followed immeidately by Pesach (Passover פסח). The parsha this week continues with the operations in the Mishkan/Temple. We learn about more sacrifices, the consecration of the Priests (Cohanim). Something that jumped out at me this week is the idea of Pigul. This is essentially left-overs. There is a limited window (the day it’s offered and the next day), but after that, it can no longer be eaten. Anything left over must be burned. There is no auto-scaling in sacrifices like there is in many cloud services.

This leads directly to Pesach. The Korban Pesach (Passover Sacrifice) also has a limited time when it may be eaten and there can be no left-overs. For this reason, a party or group is created for the Korban Pesach and they need to eat the sacrifice at Their Seder. To make sure there is enough meat for everyone, they can also bring the Korban Chagiga. Here we kind of have a concept of auto-scaling, but they have to decide ahead of time. You can’t have left-overs and you can’t change the group once the sacrifices are brought.

This year, Pesach follows immediatley after Shabbat which makes things a bit more challenging. The fast of the first-borns was yesterday (Thursday), we did bedikat chametz last night (the searching for the chametz), today we are burning our “left over” chametz, but we only do the declaration that we would normally make after burning the chametz tomorrow (on Shabbat). And tonight and tomorrow morning (Erev Shabbat and Shabbat Morning) we dafka will be eating challah. Shacharit has been brought earlier so we can eat finish the eating the chametz before the time when we can no longer eat chametz. Suedat Shlishit (the 3rd meal) will not have bread or matzah because it’s past the time when we can eat bread and before the time when we can eat matzah (no matzah before the seder). So things are a bit extra strange.

For me personally, I’m excited to get a good nap in tomorrow before staying up late for the seder. May we see all of Am Yisrael come home from captivity free speedily in our days. Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach.