View of the Mikveh above the Water Gate

Having just spent the night of Yom Kippur in the Avtinas Chamber, the Kohen Gadol would begin the Avodah of the day by immersing in a mikveh located above the Water Gate prior to donning the Priestly Vestments. This mikveh was accessed via [a door located on] the non-sanctified side of the Avtinas Chamber and so did not possess Courtyard sanctity.

Yoma 31a implies that the dimensions of this mikveh were 1x1x3 amos, the minimum size of a mikveh, even though the average person is actually closer to 4 amos tall.

Preparation of the Incense and View of the Avtinas Chamber

The next chamber I would like to explore is the Avtinas Chamber. This was an elevated chamber located directly above the Water Gate on the southern side of the Courtyard where the Avtinas family would compound the Incense offered daily in the Temple. In order to design this workspace it is instructive to review how the ingredients of the Incense were prepared.

View of the Chamber of the Paroches: Part 2

After the weaving was complete, the cloth on the lower beam needed to be transferred to another location (a larger chamber on the Temple Mount, most likely) where the paroches could be assembled. Now, the total weight of the paroches was almost 30,000 pounds which meant that each of the five sections weighed nearly 6,000 pounds. To move these, I imagine that they would attach two wheels to the frame holding the lower beam, and add some poles to make handling easier. A team of Kohanim could then roll this newly woven section of the paroches out of the chamber, through the Courtyard, and wrangle it down to the Temple Mount.

Moving the completed section of paroches
out of the chamber.

View of the Chamber of the Paroches: Part 1

In a previous post I detailed the design of the paroches curtains according to the opinion of Tiferes Yisrael. Using that description we can start to imagine what the Chamber of the Paroches might have looked like.

One important decision was the overall size of the chamber. According to Tiferes Yisrael the paroches was constructed in sections, 4 amos (6 feet) wide, which were then stitched together to form the full 20-amah width. When he states in Middos 1:1 §10 that this chamber is where "the paroches was woven" does he mean that this room was where the individual sections were woven, but then they were taken elsewhere to be assembled into the full curtain, or was the entire paroches woven and stitched together in the same location?

View of the Chamber of Shekalim

The Chamber of Shekalim (background)
near the northwest corner of the Courtyard

As described in an earlier post, there were 13 collection boxes, called shofaros on account of their long, curved necks which resembled a shofar, which were placed within the Courtyard. Two of them were used to collect the half-shekel donations brought to the Temple by the public each year. Both of these shofaros were kept inside a chamber located in one of the corners of the Courtyard. As the donations came in, the treasurers would deposit them into these shofaros and issue a receipt to the donor. At the end of each day the coins would be transferred to a (larger) storage container also located inside this chamber.

Within the Chamber of Shekalim were two shofaros,
a writing desk, and a large storage cabinet

View of the Chamber of the Spark

The Chamber of the Spark (בית הניצוץ) was located at the Spark Gate (שער הניצוץ) in the northern wall of the Courtyard. This chamber consisted of two walls which protruded into the Courtyard on either side of the gate and above these walls was an unroofed balcony. On the ground floor of this chamber the Kohanim maintained a fire which was kept burning constantly and would be used to relight the Altar fire should it ever be extinguished. For this purpose they specifically chose a type of wood which burns very slowly, and because the embers from this fire lasted a long time the gate and its associated chamber bore the name ‘spark.’ The upper floor of this chamber is one of the locations where the Kohanim would stand guard in the Temple. This balcony was not accessible directly from the Courtyard (for had that been the case the balcony would have assumed the sanctity of the Courtyard and thus the Kohen guards would not have been permitted to sit down while on duty); instead, a door in the Courtyard wall opened to a flight of steps (possibly within the wall itself) which led down to the Cheil, thus granting the balcony the status of the Temple Mount. The Spark Gate, like all Temple gates, was closed off by a large curtain while the doors were open.

Two Kohanim restock the firewood in the Chamber of the Spark.

View of the Courtyard Portico

Although the Courtyard was open to the sky, there was a portico, or roof, along the inside of the walls around all four sides which jutted out of the walls halfway up their height. [The walls were forty amos high, which would put this roof at a height of twenty amos, or just even with the tops of the gateways.] The roof was not continuous but was built in sections which ran between the gates of the Courtyard, and each section was supported by a single row of marble columns similar in design to those of the Temple Mount.

Each morning the Kohanim from the Hall of the Fire would make their way beneath this roofed area around the perimeter of the Courtyard to check that all of the Temple vessels were in place for the start of the sacrificial service.

Early morning view of the southwest corner of the Courtyard.

Double Dipping: The two mikva'os used by the Kohen Gadol on Yom Kippur

During the service of Yom Kippur the Kohen Gadol immersed in two different mikva'os a total of five times. The first of these was done in a mikveh located above the Water Gate on the southern side of the Temple. The remaining four immersions were done in a mikveh built on the roof of the Chamber of Parvah in the southeast corner of the Courtyard.

The Ma'ayan Mikveh
Both mikva'os were fed from the Eitam Spring, apparently for the purpose of granting them the halachic status of a ma'ayan [flowing spring], as opposed to a mikveh of collected rainwater.

Plumbing [in] the Depths of the Temple

The Temple had a complex plumbing system which supplied water to many different locations. In this post I would first like to examine the eight places in the Temple where water was located.

Locations where water was used in the Temple

Counterweighting the Kiyor

I wanted to reexamine one detail from my model of the Muchni – the sturdy wooden machine which raised the Kiyor [Laver] from the well of water each morning and lowered it down again in the evening. In my model I have the Kiyor balanced by a lead counterweight hanging from the back of the Muchni and it is this weight which keeps the Muchni from tipping over and also makes it possible for a single Kohen to raise the Kiyor which, when full of water, weighed over 5,000 pounds (see the earlier post for more on this).

To perfectly balance the Kiyor a total of 5,548 pounds of lead would be required, which works out to a solid block measuring about 1 x 1 x 2 amos (18 x 18 x 36 inches). To balance the Kiyor in the afternoon (when it was empty) would require only 3,356 pounds of lead, or a block measuring about 1 x 1 x 1.25 amos (18 x 18 x 23 inches). When I first made my model I had simply guessed at the size of the counterweight but, after looking at the numbers above, it turns out that the block of lead I used is actually quite close to 3,356 pounds. So while the Muchni does offer some mechanical advantage in the gearing and pulleys, the Kohen raising the Kiyor still has to put some muscle power into it.

Here is an updated version of the animation showing the Kiyor being raised from the well of water. 

Location of the Yesod Ramp: Part 2

Last week I came up with the following diagram and accompanying equation which describes where along the main Ramp of the Altar the minor ramp to the Yesod branched off to the west. 

Tiferes Yisrael, in his Temple Diagram §48, indicates that the minor ramps branched off somewhere on the lower half of the main Ramp. When the above equation is solved (I entered it in Grapher, my Mac's built-in graphing program), we get:

e = 13.81

This means that the ramp to the Yesod began 13.81 amos from the foot of the main Ramp, or 2.19 amos below its midpoint, which is indeed on the lower half of the main Ramp.

As for the ramp to the Sovev on the east, it is physically impossible to have it branch off on the lower half of the main Ramp and also conform to the Temple standard of 1 amah of height for every 3 amos of length. Since the slope will, in any case, differ from the standard, it appears that we may have the minor ramp to the east branch off at the same point as the ramp to the Yesod on the west. This not only makes the Altar more symmetrical, but having the two ramps directly across from one another shortens the distance that the Kohen needs to walk when descending from the Sovev to bring excess blood to the Yesod.

Location of the Yesod Ramp: A Mathematical Diversion

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SUMMARY It is possible to determine mathematically where the minor ramp to the Yesod branched off from the Main Ramp based on the dimensions of the Altar.

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Two minor ramps branched off of the Altar's Main Ramp, one on the west leading to the Yesod and the other on the east leading to the Sovev. Tiferes Yisrael states that the "two minor ramps branched off near the foot of the Main Ramp, on its lower part" (Temple Diagram §48), which I take to mean that the minor ramps began somewhere on the lower half of the Main Ramp. In this post I attempt to figure out exactly where the ramp to the Yesod began.

Lighting the Interior of the Antechamber

In an earlier post I included this image of the interior of the Antechamber. Here the large curtain of the main entryway is partially open with the morning sun shining in from the east, a pretty typical lighting scheme.

The Otem

The floor level of the Antechamber stood 6 amos above that of the Courtyard. These first 6 amos of the building’s height were occupied by the Otem, a sturdy foundation of hewn stone which rested upon the bedrock of Mount Moriah and supported the immense weight of the Antechamber and Sanctuary walls. Due to the steps in the east, the Otem was not at all visible on that side but could be seen on the northern, southern, and western sides of the Antechamber. The Otem extended under the Sanctuary as well but was not visible from the outside of the building (it formed the inner wall of the bottom level of tau'im, or small rooms outside the Sanctuary).

Structure and location of the Otem

Women of the Wool – Their Role in the Tabernacle and in Astrophysics

The Torah makes special note of the fact that one aspect of the Tabernacle's construction - the spinning of the goat hair - was done by the women (see Exodus 35:26). I had often wondered why, of all the types of manual labor which went into constructing the Tabernacle, this job (and perhaps others like it, such as weaving or embroidering) was given to the women. It is not necessarily the case that they were more experienced in this work than the men, since for 210 years prior (while slaves in Egypt) the men had been forced to do women's work and vice versa (Sotah 11b). Since spinning wool was traditionally a woman's job, it should emerge that, if anything, the men would have been better trained at this skill than the women.