Pesachim 70 - What is the difference between a knife and a cleaver

On the previous page, we said that the Festival offering called Chagigah is different from the Passover offering: it is eaten for two days and a night in between, it can be boiled and not roasted, and so on. However, Ben Beteira thinks differently and holds that it is exactly the same as Passover offering in most respects. Even though Ben Beteira's view does not become the accepted law, the Talmud spends significant effort investigating what Ben Beteira thinks about various aspects of Passover.

An even more special situation is found in the next rule that talks about finding a knife and a cleaver right before Passover. The knife is for the Passover offering where, by the way, the bones are not allowed to be broken. The cleaver is for Chagigah, the Festival offering, where there is no such prohibition. But the only situation when the two will be treated the same is when the community was pure on the day before Passover and suddenly became impure the next day. And the only situation where that can happen is when the head of the Sanhedrin, de-facto spiritual ruler, was on the verge of death before Passover. The community was all pure, but there was an all-too-real possibility that they will all go to his funeral the next day and thus become impure. The Talmud does not comment if this combination of events ever occurred in history.

Art: Carcass of Beef by Rembrandt