Tamid, Chapter 1, Mishnah 4. Our chapter has been following the kohanim from the moment they wake in the Beit Hamikdash through the first lottery of the day, the one that awards the privilege of removing ash from the mizbeach. Now the mishnah turns to the avodah itself and describes, step by step, how the terumat hadeshen was actually performed.
The kohen whom the lot had favored would head out to lift the ash off the mizbeach. As he departed, his colleagues called a caution after him: be careful, touch none of the sacred kelim in the Mikdash before you have washed your hands and your feet at the basin.
Their concern centered on the shovel. The machta used for scooping the ash off the mizbeach lay on the ground at the angle where the kevesh (the ramp) met the mizbeach, on the ramp's western side. They feared he would pick it up and climb straight to the avodah without washing first, and no service may be performed unless the kohen has sanctified his hands and his feet at the kiyor. That kiyor was the great copper basin positioned between the mizbeach and the heichal.
Why did he need to be told at all? Very possibly this was his first time being chosen for the terumat hadeshen, and the other kohanim understood that a newcomer might simply not know the order of what comes first.
No one accompanied him into that section of the azarah. Presence there is restricted to a kohen actually occupied with a service at that moment, and this particular avodah was carried out by one kohen by himself.
Walking by the Light of the Mizbeach
He carried no candle and no lamp to light his way. He walked by the glow thrown off by the fire on the mizbeach, which gave just enough light for him to find his way through the dark.
Those left behind could not follow him with their eyes as he approached the basin to wash, since the mizbeach's ramp stood in the way and cut off their view. Neither did his footsteps betray him, for he moved silently. Nothing told them he had arrived at the place of washing until one sound reached their ears: the noise of the wooden device built by a kohen called Ben Katin, a wheel by which the kiyor was raised and lowered.
Ben Katin's Invention
Ben Katin lived during the era of the second Beit Hamikdash, and he devised a mechanism by which the kiyor was lowered each night into a well of water and raised again each morning. It worked on a wheel and pulley, light enough that a single kohen could operate it on his own, and it produced a very loud noise.
Why did the kiyor have to be lowered every night? Because the kiyor is a kli sharet, a sanctified vessel of the Beit Hamikdash, and whatever remains inside a kli sharet overnight becomes unfit for use. That meant the water would have to be poured out each day and the basin refilled. Ben Katin felt there was something disrespectful in disposing of the water of the Beit Hamikdash in this way, simply discarding it every morning because it could no longer be used. His solution was to lower the kiyor into the well, where the water inside it joined with the water below, and that connection kept it fit for the following day.
The Ash Is Removed
That wheel, then, was their signal. "V'hen omerim: higia et", and they would say: the time has come. Once the noise reached them, they knew he stood at the kiyor and was about to climb the mizbeach and lift out the ash, and they began to ready themselves, since the moment for each of them to wash at the basin was now close at hand.
"Kidesh yadav v'raglav min hakiyor", having brought the basin up by means of the wheel, the kohen who had won the lot sanctified his hands and his feet from its water. "Natal machtat hakesef v'alah l'rosh hamizbeach", he then picked up the silver machta from its place alongside the mizbeach, returned to the kevesh, and climbed to the summit of the mizbeach.
"Ufinah et hagechalim hilach v'hilach", with that shovel he cleared the large coals to one side and the other, and then scooped up from the innermost coals, the ones that had burned down most completely and had all but turned to ash. Holding the shovel, he descended the ramp facing south.
"Higia laritzpah", upon reaching the pavement of the azarah, "hafach panav latzafon", he turned himself to face north. "Halach l'mizracho shel kevesh k'eser amot", he proceeded some ten amot along the eastern flank of the ramp. "Tzavar et hagechalim al gabei haritzpah", he piled the coals gently onto the pavement, "rachok min hakevesh sheloshah tefachim", at a distance of three tefachim from the kevesh.
That same location had further uses. The crop of a bird brought as an olah was placed there, and so were the ashes swept from the golden mizbeach on which the ketoret was burned, together with what was cleaned out of the menorah's lamps. All of it was brought to this single spot day after day, and a miracle occurred: the pavement of the azarah drew it in and swallowed it up.