Menachot 104 – Largest Flour Offering of 60 Tenths

The largest amount of flour that an individual can bring in a single offering is sixty tenths (of an ephah measure), that is, about 300 pounds. This amount can be put in one vessel and brought as one offering. If he wants to bring more, he needs to divide it into two offerings.

Everybody agrees to this rule, but they argue about the reason for it. One opinion says that since the largest flour offering that a congregation can bring, which happened on the first day of Sukkot if it fell on Shabbat, amounted to 61 tenths, then an individual cannot exceed that. Rabbi Shimon argues and says that the sixty-one seah of the congregation were all different offerings and not mixed, so that we cannot learn from it. Rather, sixty tenths can be properly mixed with oil, while more than that cannot. They asked him, how can the measure be so precise? There should be a little give and take! He answered that all measures of the Sages are that way, for example, a mikvah of forty seah is valid, a little less than that is not.

Art: Adriaen Jansz. Van Ostade - A Man At a Counter, Holding A Pair Of Scales