In his learned work on the Haggadah, Joseph Tabory offered the following insightful commentary on the Hagigah sacrifice, including instances where it could not be celebrated:
The Hagigah Sacrifice
It is important to stress that Pesach, matzah, and maror made up the main course of the evening, in contradiction to later rabbinical theory, that maintained that these items, especially the paschal lamb, were not the main fare of the evening. According to the rabbinical understanding, these foods were eaten ceremoniously after the meal, which consisted of the meat of another sacrifice known as the Hagigah. The reason given by the rabbis for the need of another sacrifice was so that the paschal lamb should be eaten when one was no longer ravenous of hungry. Several reasons have been offered to explain why the paschal lamb in the Jerusalem Talmud (JT Pesachim 6:4, 33c), involved the prohibition against breaking a bone of the paschal lamb. By eating the lamb when one was no longer hungry, there was less danger of breaking a bone by gnawing on it. However, according to the Babylonian Talmud, all sacrificial meat was to be eaten, when one was not hungry, perhaps to show that the eating was done to fulfill a commandment of God and not in order to fill one’s stomach (see Philo, De Specialibus Legibus 2:148). In spite of these rationales for the offering of the Hagigah, the sages admitted that there were a number of circumstances in which the Hagigah sacrifice would not be offered. It could not be offered when the fourteenth of Nisan fell on the Shabbat or when the people who were to offer the sacrifice were ritually impure. The paschal sacrifice was offered in those circumstances, but the rabbis thought that this permission did not extend to the Hagigah sacrifice.
A more significant limitation of the Hagigah sacrifice was based on the number of participants in the paschal meal. If the paschal lamb supplied a sufficient quantity of meat for the participants, the Hagigah was no offered. In that case, serving the Hagigah sacrifice as the main meal would mean that some of the meat of the paschal lamb would not be consumed, whereas the Torah prescribed that no meat should be left over. Analysis of the size of lambs in the spring and the evidence that we have about the size of the group show that it would be a rare occurrence, if at all, when the lamb did not provide sufficient meat for everybody. Thus the theory about the Hagigah sacrifice seems to be more theoretical than practical, and there is no evidence that a Hagigah was ever eaten at the paschal meal. Nevertheless, this theory was an important one for it influenced the way that the seder was conducted in later times. (Joseph Tabory, The JPS Commentary on the Haggadah: Historical, Translation, and Commentary [Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 2008], 9-10)
Something that is of interest would be the translation of the following part of the Kiddush:
Blessed art Thou, Adonai, our LORD, King of the universe, who has chosen us among the nations . . . (Ibid., 80)
The underlying Hebrew of “the universe” is הָעוֹלָם, but such is not translated “the age” or “the eternal,” but “the universe,” showing that עולם has a wider range of meaning and application than some of our critics are aware of.
