'על מיקומה של פיסקת "מכאן אמרו" אחת בספרא ומשמעותו'

This short paper is a response to a note made by S. Naeh in his article 'Polishing Measures and Cleaning Scales' (Tarbiẕ, LIX [1990], p. 385, n. 23). Naeh argued for the preference of the reading found in the Oxford manuscript of the Sifra, which places the passage מיכן אמרו הדקין שבכלי חרס וכו' correctly after the drasha ומניין לרבות את שברי כלי חרס תלמוד לומר וכל כלי חרס, not after the drasha אשר יפול מהם as found in other text-witnesses of the Sifra. His main argument is the difficulty of explaining the common reading, which seems to have no sense. We have suggested treating this problematic passage as a marginal addition that made its way into the text in a wrong location. This conclusion leads us to think of the possibility that many other mikan amru passages in halakhic midrashim constitute a later stratum of the text, material brought in by ancient scholars who enlarged the text by adding to it from other sources.