ABSTRACT
Rituals can sometimes go wrong and fail, either in small ways or in spectacular fashion. For those performing and participating in the ritual, this failure can be distressing or even calamitous. Theory, or theoretical models for analysis, can be a useful tool for the study of ancient texts such as the Mishnah. The application of theory, however, must be accompanied by an awareness of its limitations and its necessarily heuristic nature. The most typical references to ritual failure in the Mishnah suggest that the rabbinic authors thought of ritual simply as something that must be done. The ritual consequence of establishing a connection with the divine, perhaps implied in the passages quoted above, emerges in a more explicit way in a different set of mishnaic passages that evoke or refer directly to the biblical covenant. The rabbis considered their own time, at least in part, as the aftermath of a grand ritual failure.
