Study Sukkah folio 5B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
of a bird called bar Yokhani, whose face is significantly larger than a handbreadth? The Talmud rejects this suggestion: If you grasped many, you did not grasp anything; if you grasped few, you grasped something. The Talmud asks: If so, say that it is like the face of a bird, which is extremely sm
The Talmud suggests: And let us derive a verbal analogy from the face of God, as it is written: “For I have seen your face as one sees the face of [penei] God, and you were pleased with me” (Genesis 33:10). The term penei is used with regard to the face of God as well. The Talmud rejects this sugge
The Talmud suggests: And let us derive a verbal analogy from the face of the cherub in the Tabernacle and the Temple, as it is written: “Toward the Ark cover shall be the faces of [penei] the cherubs” (Exodus 25:20), and their faces were presumably smaller than one handbreadth.
Rav Aḥa bar Ya’akov said: We have learned through tradition that the faces of the cherubs were not smaller than a handbreadth, and indeed Rav Huna derived the thickness of the Ark cover from here as well, i.e., from the verbal analogy between the instances of the word penei in the verses: “Upon th
Apropos the cherubs, the Talmud asks: And what is the form of the face of a cherub [keruv]? R' Abbahu said: Like that of a child [keravya], as in Babylonia one calls a child ravya.