Menachot 56 and 57 - Half-Cooked

Tablet Magazine

Menachot 56 and 57 - Half-Cooked

Tablet Magazine

March 9, 2026 · 7:30

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On today's pages, Menachot 56 and 57, the Talmud moves from leavened offerings to the laws of cooking on Shabbat, and somewhere in between we meet ben Derosai — a man so famous for eating barely cooked meat that the rabbis made him a unit of measurement. Was he an outlaw eating fast because the Romans were closing in, a righteous gentile who smashed idols for the Jewish people, or simply a mythic wild man who ate like an animal because that's just who he was? Listen and find out.