Crowds, Crushes, and Censuses: Talmudic Historical Anecdotes of The Pilgrimage to Jerusalem for Passover in the Late Second Temple Period (Pesachim 64b)
Historical Incident: “The Crushed Passover”; Census by King Agrippa
Historical Incident: “The Crushed Passover”
The baraita recounts that no one was ever crushed (נתמעך) by the large crowd in the Temple courtyard (עזרה) except during one Passover in the days of Hillel1 when an elderly man was crushed, leading to that Passover being called "The Passover of the Crushed".2
תנו רבנן:
מעולם לא נתמעך אדם בעזרה,
חוץ מפסח אחד שהיה בימי הלל,
שנתמעך בו זקן אחד,
והיו קוראין אותו ״פסח מעוכין״.
The Sages taught:
No one was ever crushed by the great throngs of people in the Temple courtyard,
except for one Passover in the days of Hillel
when an old man was crushed,
and they called that Passover the Passover of the crushed.
Census by King Agrippa
The baraita recounts a story where King Agrippa3 wanted to take a census of the Jewish population. The High Priest suggested using Passover sacrifices as a proxy for the number of people.
The High Priest collected a kidney4 from each lamb, and 600,000 pairs of kidneys were found, representing twice the number of Israelites who left Egypt.5 This count excluded those who were ritually impure or too far to participate, and only counted the lambs, not the people. Since each lamb had more than ten people registered, this Passover became known as the "Passover of the Crowded" due to the vast number of participants.6
תנו רבנן:
פעם אחת, ביקש אגריפס המלך ליתן עיניו באוכלוסי ישראל.
אמר ליה לכהן גדול: תן עיניך בפסחים.
נטל כוליא מכל אחד,
ונמצאו שם ששים ריבוא זוגי כליות, כפלים כיוצאי מצרים.
חוץ מטמא ושהיה בדרך רחוקה.
ואין לך כל פסח ופסח שלא נמנו עליו יותר מעשרה בני אדם.
והיו קוראין אותו ״פסח מעובין״.
The Sages taught:
Once, King Agrippa wished to set his eyes on the multitudes [ukhlosin] of Israel to know how many they were.
He said to the High Priest: Set your eyes on the Paschal lambs; count how many animals are brought in order to approximate the number of people.
The High Priest took a kidney from each one, as the kidneys are burned on the altar,
and six hundred thousand pairs of kidneys were found there, double the number of those who left Egypt.
This did not reflect the sum total of the Jewish people, as it excluded those who were ritually impure or at a great distance, who did not come to offer the sacrifice.
Furthermore, this was a count of the Paschal lambs and not of the people, and there was not a single Paschal lamb that did not have more than ten people registered for it.
They called that Passover the Passover of the crowded, due to the large number of people.
Flourished during the end of the first century BCE and the beginning of the first century CE.
פסח מעוכין.
For an instance of a sage claiming to be afraid to go somewhere due to fear of being crushed or trampled by the crowds, see my previous piece here (there are a number of other examples elsewhere in the Talmud. Relevant additional verbs used in this context include דרס and דחק).
In contrast to the historical statment in this talmudic passage, compare Josephus, cited in Wikipedia, “List of fatal crowd crushes“ (incidentally, this is the only example of a crush provided there for the “Ancient era”):
[…] Josephus recorded that in Jerusalem, while Ventidius Cumanus was procurator of Judea (AD 48–52), a Roman soldier mooned Jewish pilgrims at the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem who had gathered for Passover, and "spake such words as you might expect upon such a posture", causing a riot in which youths threw stones at the soldiers, who then called in reinforcements. The pilgrims panicked, and the ensuing stampede reportedly resulted in the deaths of thousands of Jews. According to Josephus, "upwards of ten thousand" and more than twenty thousand people perished in the event, though these numbers may have been exaggerated.
Flourished early first century, at the end of Second Temple period. For another example of a Talmudic story featuring King Agrippa, see my previous piece here.
כפלים כיוצאי מצרים.
On this phrase, see the Sefaria sourcesheet by Dovi Seldowitz, “Double those who left Egypt / כפלים כיוצאי מצרים“:
In the Talmudic tradition, the number of Israelites of the Exodus from Egypt is used as a poetic description for any large number of people. And for added emphasis, larger figures are viewed as double those who left Egypt. This doubling (using the exact phrase in the title) appears in six locations in Talmud (five in the Babylonian Talmud, once in the Jerusalem Talmud).
For another general example of the general usage of 600,000 in the Talmud as a hyperbolic number to mean “tremendous amount”, also in the context of a historical anecdote, this time about the period of the earlier, Hasmonean King Yannai, see my previous piece here.
The claim of 600,000 pairs of kidneys, multiplied by ten, to get 6 million, is a hyperbolic figure, as mentioned in the previous footnote. It serves to emphasize the large number of participants.
A more reasonable estimate of the number of Jews making pilgrimage to Jerusalem (עלייה לרגל) participating in the Passover sacrifice during King Agrippa's time would likely be in the low hundreds of thousands, not millions. The precise number is uncertain, but it would have been significantly lower than the Talmudic (or Josephus's for that matter) exaggerated figures. See Wikipedia, “Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE)“ > “Background”:
During the Second Temple Period, Jerusalem was the center of religious and national life for Jews, including those in the Diaspora. The Second Temple attracted tens and maybe hundreds of thousands during the Three Pilgrimage Festivals. The city reached a peak in size and population during the late Second Temple period, when the city covered two square kilometres (3⁄4 square mile) and had an estimated population of 200,000
Famously, Jesus was present in Jerusalem and the Temple Mount during Passover, and he was executed during that time.