Comments on: Thanksgiving vs. Pesach: Putting Korbonos in a Modern Context

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:12:32 +0000

mike: not sure; we are assuming for the sake of our discussion that we’ve got 100% utilization of animals. I’m sure that in real life, there is a significant number of animals that will be found to be treif after scheitah.

By: mike

mike — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 14:07:44 +0000

How much longer does it take to slaughter a kosher lamb vs a treif turkey? If you slaughter 100 lambs, how many of those can actually be used as a karbon? (ie. how many are not treif etc…)

By: Moishe Potemkin

Moishe Potemkin — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 13:19:00 +0000

Eli -

If I was right, it was only by accident – I appreciate the correction. Another thought I had was that meat tends to lose somewhere between 20-30% of its mass when cooked (mostly water loss), so there are fewer people per lamb. Also, it seems reasonable to assume that some percentage of the population will want to use a larger shiur.

Of course, you can also use goat. The other grey meat.

By: Ezzie

Ezzie — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:31:09 +0000

…and I thought I was bored.

By: David G.

David G. — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:12:56 +0000

A few points:
1. There are 13 million Jews but how many will actually bring a Korban Pesach? How many don’t believe in God or believe in God but don’t believe we should bring korbanos etc? I know we’re talking about Moshiach coming but I still find it hard to believe that more than half the Jews will all of a sudden start bringing Korbanos. maybe I’m wrong.
2. You brushed over the fact that all the animals will have to be slaughtered in one place. That’s a huge deal and the thing that is most dissimilar to Thanksgiving. I do agree with you that it will be manageable with proper planning but it will still be an awesome thing to see if you can get close enough.
3. The day of the korban Pesach there will be Chagigos brought plus some other regular korbanos. It’s going to be unbelievable.

Great post (as usual).

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:02:53 +0000

Eli: thanks for your correction, you’re numbers make sense.

Moishe is right though, the source I used mentioned “bone-in chuck,” so we’d have to remove that from the equation. Still, we’ve got more than enough wiggle-room by limiting to 50 pplp (persons per lamb).

By: peninah

peninah — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:00:39 +0000

I am glad the illustration says “BaltimoreJewish.com” for when it is stolen to appear in the next RJJ journal.

By: Greg

Greg — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:58:57 +0000

Subtracting 10 lbs of weight from the meat of the lamb to account for bone-in chuck would still give us about 15K cubic cm of meat, enough for about 350 ke’zaytim. We figured 50 people per cow for the sake of simplicity, so I think we’re ok.

I’m glad you liked the illustration.

By: Eli

Eli — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:55:12 +0000

Moishe – if you check that link, the weight of a lamb given here is average weight of usable meat on a lamb.

By: Eli

Eli — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:53:26 +0000

I think the navy bean density (0.8 g / cm^3) was the wrong one to use. And I'm not sure how you did your calculation. (45 pounds) * (1 cm^3 / 0.8 g) =~ 25,500 cm^3 (calculation here) Anyway, the density of muscle, which is what meat is, is 1.06 g / cm^3 (See references here.) Using this value, you get ~19,250 cm^3 of meat. (calculation here) That is about 428 people per lamb. Still huge. Good comparison, though.