Tamid Photo Essay in Lego® #21

 

The Shot

Walk the Walk

The Kohanim bring the Tamid offering to the Mizbeyach.

The Story

The Tamid offering was skinned and divided into its various cuts of meat (as described in great detail in Tractate Tamid 4:2-3). When these were ready, a number of Kohanim were assigned to bring all of the pieces, along with the other items that accompanied the Tamid, to the Mizbeyach. Nine Kohanim in total were employed in this process and the Mishnah (ibid.) tells us what they held:

1. The head and the right hind leg

2. The two forelegs

3. The back portion and the left hind leg

4. The chest and the neck area

5. The two sides of the rib cage

6. The intestines (in a large bowl) with the four feet placed on top

7. A container of flour

8. The chavitin loaves of the Kohen Gadol

9. A container of wine

The Setup

This shot is modeled and rendered in Bricklink Studio with depth of field added in Photoshop (read more about this process in my introduction). I do not have a setup shot for this image because it is pretty straightforward and similar to an earlier scene. If you have ever tried to pose minifigs in mid-stride you know it involves some careful balancing, so the Studio magic certainly helped here. For those who look closely, you will see traces of continuity from earlier events of the day (hint: look for red elements in three different places).

A point about scale: The Beis Hamikdash is described in the Biblical and Talmudic sources in measurements of amos (cubits) and it is very tempting to simplify the design and construction of a Lego model by using a 2x2 tile as a square amah tile. However, this is too large for minifigs who will quickly become dwarfed by the structure. In my model I use one brick (=3 plates) as one amah in order to best match a minifig's height. A tricky part is steps, because all steps in the Mikdash are half an amah high but it is not easy to build steps that are 1.5 plates high. My personal custom is to use 2 plates for each step. In the image above there are wide steps running from left to right. The first of these is a large, one-amah step which is 4 plates high, and there are 3 regular steps above this at 2 plates high. These three steps are the duchan, or platform, where the Leviim stand when they sing songs and play musical instruments for the Avodah.

Any visual similarity between this image and a certain album cover of a certain British music group popular in the 1960s is purely coincidental, I think (#iykyk).

 

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