A special Pesach shiur delivered in the past by Rabbi Ofer Erez shlit"a to the Shuvu Banim Kollel in Miami — Do you need to destroy chametz in the courtyard? How did King Shlomo reach South America? How many Korban Pesach offerings were brought, and what did they learn from that about the size of the population?

The holy tzaddik Rabbi Ofer Erez shlit"a shares sacred words about the festival of Pesach, but first he opens our hearts with new insights about the Beis HaMikdash

These are his holy words:

An avreich asked a halachic question to Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein shlit"a: Do you need to destroy chametz in the courtyard?

Rabbi Zilberstein answered: In places where birds are common, there is no need to destroy the chametz, because they eat it!

The avreich continued to challenge: It says in the Gemara Sotah that birds do not eat from a stingy person, and I know about myself that I am stingy.

Rabbi Zilberstein replied:That is true for the rest of the year. But the Shulchan Aruch rules that during the days of Pesach, birds eat the chametz in Jewish courtyards. The birds hear a bas kol telling them to go eat the chametz in the courtyards of Israel, and they have no ability to choose between a stingy person and a non-stingy person.

Why does the metzora need two birds?

In Parshas Metzora it is written that when the metzora completes his purification process, he must bring two birds. One bird is slaughtered, and the second is sent away. And they ask: Granted, the slaughtered bird is an offering for the metzora, but why is the sent-away bird needed?

They explain: That metzora who was healed received his tzara’as because he spoke lashon hara. But it is possible he will return to his old ways and speak lashon hara again. Targum Yonasan ben Uziel says a wondrous chiddush: the living bird flies back to its place, but if he returns to speaking lashon hara, the living bird will come back to him to warn him!

What was King Shlomo doing in South America?

A young man approached me after one of the shiurim in Tel Aviv, and told me that on his trip to Central and South America he reached a tribe of Indians in the Amazon. There they gave him to drink ayahuasca tea (an entheogenic, psychoactive brew from the Amazon basin in South America), and he asked the Indian shamans (a “rabbi” of the kelipah) how they know to prepare this tea specifically from those plants, out of tens of thousands of plants in the region.

They answered that they have a tradition passed down from generation to generation that King Solomon (King Shlomo) was there, and he revealed to them this secret of ayahuasca tea.

And the question is: how did King Shlomo reach all the way to them?

I found five different sources, among them Seder HaDoros and Sefer Otzar HaChaim, written by a rabbi from Portugal 100 years ago. These sources bring that King Shlomo was in America, and that he arrived carried upon a carpet.

An interesting question: how many Korban Pesach offerings were brought?

The Gemara in Pesachim tells about King Agrippas, who checked in one year how many offerings were brought in Jerusalem at Pesach time. He asked the kohanim to count the Korban Pesach offerings, but how can you count Korban Pesach offerings, when the avodah of bringing the korbanos was done at tremendous speed?

Agrippas told them to set aside one kidney from each korban they brought, and by counting them they would know how many Korban Pesach offerings were brought. It turned out that in that year, 1,200,000 Korban Pesach offerings were brought. And the Gemara relates that for each Korban Pesach, at least ten people were registered together.From here, that year there were at least 12 million people in Jerusalem—and we must remember that the size of Jerusalem then was only a bit more than today’s Old City.

If you calculate the needs of the crowds who came to Jerusalem, it comes out that they would have had to prepare about 24 million liters of wine for the pilgrims, because “there is no joy except with meat and wine” (as it says, “And you shall rejoice in your festival”—with what do we gladden them? With wine; Pesachim 109a). And correspondingly, about 30 million kilograms of matzos—and the same is true regarding the festival offerings and the rest of the needs of the festival. When you contemplate the descriptions of the quantities of korbanos and the people who came to bring them in such a small, confined area, you understand that the Beis HaMikdash was beyond place and beyond time.