Pesachim 84

Today’s gen is a reminder that, while there is a difference between actively sinning and passively sinning, both are still a sin. On the daf, there is a difference between not eating the entire pascal lamb (a sin of failing to act) and the sin of breaking bones (the sin of inappropriate action). While the punishment for actively sinning is harsher, I value the reminder that, sometimes failing to act is a sin as well.

What are ways that we are failing to act right now? In what areas are we being silent? In what ways do we let our privilege pull us out of spaces that need our action? What do we do to avoid knowledge and therefore, avoid the need to act?

Granted, one who leaves over part of a ritually pure Paschal lamb is not flogged for having violated Torah law. There is good reason for this, as it was taught in a baraita: The verse states: “And you shall not leave any of it until morning; and that which remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire” (Exodus 12:10). The verse comes to provide a positive mitzva to burn the leftover after the prohibition against leaving it over, to say that one is not flogged because any prohibition that can be rectified by the performance of a positive mitzva does not carry a punishment of lashes. This is the statement of Rabbi Yehuda.

Rabbi Ya’akov says: This is not for that reason. Rather, it is because it is a prohibition that does not involve an action. The transgression is simply the failure to consume all the meat during the allotted time rather than the performance of an action. And one is not flogged for any prohibition that does not involve an action. But with regard to one who breaks the bone of a ritually impure Paschal lamb, from where do we derive that he, too, does not receive lashes? The Gemara answers that the source is as the verse states: “In one house shall it be eaten; you shall not remove any of the meat from the house to the outside, and you shall not break a bone in it” (Exodus 12:46). It may be inferred that the prohibition applies “in it,” in a valid Paschal lamb, and not in a disqualified one.