Parah, Chapter 1, Mishnah 3. Before the tractate turns to the parah adumah itself, the opening chapter charts the ages of the animals used for korbanos: how old an animal must be, and how old it may become, in order to serve for each type of offering. This mishnah takes up the two categories that appear constantly in the Torah's list of korbanos, the keves (lamb) and the ayil (ram), and then asks about the animal that has slipped out of the one category without yet entering the other.
The mishnah begins: "Kevasim benei shanah, ve'eilim benei shtayim, vechulam miyom leyom." Lambs are in their first year, rams are in their second year, and all of them are reckoned from day to day.
The final phrase, "miyom leyom," tells us how the count is kept. Age here is not measured against the turning of the calendar year, but from the very date on which the animal entered the world. A lamb that was foaled on the first of Elul has not finished its year when Tishrei arrives and the calendar rolls over into a new year. Its twelve months are complete only when the first of Elul returns, a full year to the day from its birth.
The mishnah now introduces a problem case: "Ben sheloshah asar chodesh", an animal of thirteen months. Of such an animal the mishnah rules "eino kasher lo le'ayil", it does not qualify as a ram, "velo lecheves", and it does not qualify as a lamb either. The twelve months that define a lamb are behind it, and the second year that would make it a ram has not yet been reached.
Three Tannaim supply a name for this animal caught between the categories, and no two of them agree:
- According to Rabbi Tarfon, "korei hu palgas", its name is palgas.
- Ben Azzai's term for it is noked.
- Rabbi Yishmael refers to it as a perach digma.
Each name captures the animal's odd status. Palgas is a Greek word describing someone who has left infancy behind but has not yet become a youth. Applied here, the animal is no longer a lamb and is not yet a ram. There are those who read the word as though it were Hebrew, plag gas, meaning half of a full-grown size. Noked, which some read as nakud, describes a sheep whose proper place is out in the pasture and not on the mizbeach, since it is unfit to be brought. And perach digma is a Greek expression for a coin that a new king has invalidated, which will not circulate again until his own image has been struck upon it. So too this animal: it has already lost the stamp of "lamb," and it will not carry the stamp of "ram" until it is thirteen months and a day.
And if someone brought such an animal to the mizbeach nonetheless? The mishnah rules: "Hikrivo, meivi alav niskei ayil, velo alah lo mizbacho." The nesachim that accompany it are those of a ram: fine flour in the measure of two tenths of an ephah, oil to the amount of a third of a hin, and wine likewise a third of a hin. But the closing words, "velo alah lo mizbacho," mean that the offering does not satisfy his obligation. Whether he had pledged a ram or pledged a lamb, this thirteen-month-old creature that falls between the two leaves his vow still outstanding. It forms a class of its own: the nesachim of a ram attach to it, and yet it discharges neither a ram's vow nor a lamb's.
With that, the mishnah reaches its final ruling. Add "veyom echad", one more day beyond the thirteen months, and "harei zeh ayil": the animal is now a ram for every purpose. That lone day lifts it out of the nameless middle ground and restores to it a clear identity.