We now begin the eleventh chapter of Maseches Menachos, starting with Mishnah 1. Three meal offerings are purchased with public funds and brought as communal offerings, and they are brought in their own right, not as libations accompanying other offerings. The first of them, the Omer offering, we learned in the previous chapter; the remaining two, the Lechem HaPanim and the Shtei HaLechem, are the subject of this chapter.
The Shtei HaLechem:
Two loaves made from wheat, each one from a tenth of an ephah of fine flour. They are waved on the festival of Shavuos, forty-nine days after the bringing of the Omer. Their function, besides being a mitzvah in their own right, is to permit the new harvest grain to be used for meal offerings in the Beis HaMikdash.
The Lechem HaPanim:
Twelve loaves, each one from two tenths of an ephah, twenty-four tenths in all, which are placed on the golden Table, the vessel that stood in the Heichal. The loaves are arranged in two stacks, two rows of six loaves each, and upon them are the bezichin, the two bowls of frankincense. The bread lies there all week, and every Shabbos it is removed and replaced with fresh bread.
What permits them to be eaten:
Lechem HaPanim - the burning of the bezichin.
Shtei HaLechem - the slaughtering of the lambs, the communal peace offerings that are brought together with them on Shavuos.
In both cases the recipe is simple: flour and water alone.
There is a further common denominator, and it is the thread that links them: neither of them is offered on the Mizbeiach at all. The bezichin in the case of the Lechem HaPanim, and the Shavuos lambs in the case of the Shtei HaLechem, are what permit them to be eaten by the kohanim in the Azarah, but no part of the Lechem HaPanim or of the Shtei HaLechem actually goes up on the Mizbeiach. For this reason they are taught together in this chapter, and their laws overlap to a great degree.
The words of the Mishnah:
The Mishnah opens with the Shtei HaLechem, the two loaves made of wheat flour, which are chametz and are certainly not fit to go up on the Mizbeiach, but rather are waved on Shavuos, forty-nine days after the bringing of the Omer.
"Nilashos achas achas" - even though these are two separate loaves, each one a tenth of an ephah, one may not knead a double batch of two tenths and then divide the dough in two. Each loaf is made from its own tenth, and is kneaded as a separate dough.
"V'ne'efos achas achas" - the baking too is done separately: one loaf in one oven, and the second loaf in the other oven.
"Lechem hapanim nilosh echad echad v'ne'efeh shnayim shnayim" - the lechem hapanim is likewise kneaded one at a time (the word "lechem" is used both as masculine and as feminine, which is why the Mishnah shifts from "achas" to "echad"), but its baking is done two at a time. So in both cases each dough is prepared separately in the kneading, while in the baking the shtei halechem are baked one at a time and the lechem hapanim two at a time, each according to what the Torah commands for it.
"Uv'tefus hayah osan":
The lechem hapanim was made in a mold. The shape of the lechem hapanim will be discussed at length in the coming mishnayos, but the basic point is that its shape was unusual: it is described as a kind of box without a cover and without two of its walls - something like the shape of the letter U (and there are various descriptions of this). In other words, the loaf has walls standing vertically, and that requires a mold to hold them in place.
The three molds:
Several of the poskim wrote that three separate gold molds were used, in order to ensure that the lechem hapanim came out properly shaped:
The first mold, the one mentioned in our Mishnah - the dough is placed inside it so that it will take on the proper shape of the lechem hapanim.
The second mold, which is not mentioned explicitly in our Mishnah - the dough surrounds it from the outside, and it holds the shape during the baking. For in the oven the bread expands and hardens, and we want it to expand outward and not inward, and therefore the dough sits on the outer part of the mold.
The third mold - as the Mishnah will say: "Ucheshehu rodan nosnan b'tefus kedei shelo yiskalkelu" - "rediyah" is a special term for removing bread from the oven, and when the loaf is taken out of the oven it is placed in a third mold, so that the shape of the lechem hapanim will not be ruined.
A note on the language is worthwhile here: the word "tefus" is identical in meaning to the word "defus" with a dalet. In modern Hebrew only "defus" is used in the sense of a mold or form, since defus and tefus are both forms designed to impress their shape onto something else. Here the reference is to the mold in which the bread was baked.