Not Your Father's Talmud

Survey – Eruvin 76-80 (December 20-24)

2006-04-15T11:53:00.000-07:00

There are times, working one’s way through the various permutations of eruv possibilities when multiple interlocking courtyards are considered, that one wishes there had been an ancient building code forbidding such structures. Why? Because they raise all kinds of possibilities of residents in an inner or outer courtyard participating or not in their courtyard’s eruv, and how that effects their desire to travel through one or the other. Our current survey begins with a discussion of how large a window between the courtyards must be to allow the residents to use one eruv for both if they choose. The Mishnah declares that it must be 4 hands wide by 4 hands tall, and less than 10 hands above the ground. So, the Talmud asks, why does the Mishnah go on to also explain the opposite: that if it is less than 4x4 or higher than 10, one eruv may not serve for both courtyards? Why, PART of the window could be under 10 handsbreadths and the rest over – only if ALL of the window is higher than 10 hands must 2 eruvs be prepared. We might say that it was simply the Mishnah’s style to say both the law and its corollary opposite, but because the Talmud considered the Mishnah its law source, it was assumed that nothing was stylistic and everything admitted of legal analysis.

And then you can debate how large a round window must be, which shows us again that the rabbis could have derived a rough sense of pi (a circumference of 3 is about a diameter of 1 > a diameter of 1 creates a circumference 3.14159… to be more precise), or the diameter of an isosceles right triangle – sides of 1, diameter of 1 + 2/5 (or 1.4142 with a calculator). They were not about to discover the law of gravity, but we can often forget that the ancients had some sophistication with mathematics, engineering, and other sciences we sometimes assume are basically modern. Even if there isn’t a permanent wall, there are other ways to designate division: a pile of hay 10 hands high can count, and residents of each courtyard could feed their cattle on their respective sides, provided they didn’t take any away but just fed them from the pile. But the cattle shouldn’t eat it down to under 10 hands high, since that would create new problems.

How low and how thin can the wall between the courtyards be to permit a joint eruv (10 hands high and 4 thick)? How large of a breach in the wall counts as a doorway for the same purpose (10 cubits, or 15 feet)? In fact, a larger breach means they’re one courtyard and may ONLY prepare one eruv – thus giving us some sense of the rabbis’ minimum balance of wall and open space needed to define property lines. And what about a trench – how deep must it be (10 as well), and if it’s been filled in with hay or gravel or dirt does that make them be considered one courtyard? What if there’s a ladder against the wall – does that make a difference, and what does the ratio of wall-height to ladder-height need to be to enable sharing an eruv? We even read that using a tree as a ladder is forbidden while using an asherah, a tree dedicated to a Canaanite fertility goddess from which any benefit is absolutely forbidden as idolatry and paganism, IS permitted! The Talmud tries to explain that since the prohibition on using the asherah comes from something other than Shabbat, it’s allowed for this purpose, but the ruling still strikes one as odd, given the Biblical and rabbinic abhorrence of the asherah (see, for example, II Kings 23:6).

We also get a Mishnah explanation for a concept explored in previous pages: how to create a shittuf, or shared space in an alley. One places a jar there (later explained to have wine or other food), declaring “this belongs to everyone,” and then a person considered an independent individual needs to “receive” it: a grown-up son or daughter, or a wife, or a Hebrew maid or slave/servant (eved) can do so. But a minor child or a Canaanite maid or slave cannot. We easily understand the distinction for the minor, but why treat the slave differently? Because Hebrew slaves are periodically freed, but Canaanite slaves can be slaves forever! Cheers for considering Hebrew slaves still people, but jeers for not doing the same for all peoples.

Rather than delve right into this topic, however, our Talmud page instead jumps from a ruling of the savei d’pumbedita – the elders of Pumbedita, one of the pre-eminent rabbinic academies in Babylon – on this subject to a whole host of other rulings by the same group. One who recites Kiddush [wine blessing] for Shabbat or a holiday must taste at least a mouthful; one may only light a fire on Shabbat for a woman in childbirth; and an asherah by implication is a tree guarded by priests but not eaten from. Only then does the Talmud return to questions of whether a real transfer of possession is required to define shittuf, or merely the declaration by the individual is enough. And there are even cases where a wife may set up shittuf without her husband’s knowledge – heaven forbid!

There are two rulings of special interest and relevance to us with which we may conclude. First, Rabbi Ishmael, the son of Rabbi Yose, speaks to our reaction to these many laws when he quotes his father, who said, “Every time you can be relax eruvim rules, relax them!” And second, when debating what minimum quantity of food is required to keep an eruv valid after some have eaten from it over the course of Shabbat, Rabbi Yose rules that even the smallest quantity of food is all right, since they only enacted the rule of eruvim for courtyards so that the children should not forget it. Does this mean that all of this legal discussion was only to provide an educational point? In fact, that is the precisely the role it is serving for us here – not a guide to active living, but an opportunity for memory that these rules existed and were lived by by our ancestors once upon a time.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Survey – Eruvin 71-75 (December 15-19)

2006-04-14T15:28:00.000-07:00

So far in Eruvin, we have seen how ownership is a balance between private possession and shared space – my household versus a shared courtyard. Our current survey begins with a further such complication: what if two or more households have agreed to split a common possession in a shared space, like an alley? I can think of friendly neighbors today, for example, who would share a more expensive lawnmower and just take turns using it rather than buy and maintain it alone. In our case, the Mishnah claims that if they share a vat of wine, they need no special eruv, but if it is wine and oil, they do. Why? As the Talmud explains, the wine could be kept in one large vat, but wine and oil require two containers and thus are not as clearly shared property. The reason this discussion is included in Eruvin is that there is a secondary kind of connection neighbors may make called a shittuf, or “association” – by contributing to a shared pot, they create a shared space for Shabbat. Not quite a modern “co-op,” but something in that direction. Unlike an eruv, which must be made with bread, a shittuf may be made with wine or, of course, with bread. Rabbi Meir would require an eruv for courtyards and a shittuf for alleys, but the consensus of the other Rabbis was that either device would work to cover both – an eruv in a courtyard covers the alleys, and a shittuf in an alley covers the courtyard.

BUT don’t think that the Rabbis of Meir’s generation have the last word, for later Rabbis claim three ways Rabbi Meir wins out in the long run:

- Rab Judah claims Rab said “the halakha [religious law] is as Rabbi Meir [says].”
- Rabbi Huna says, “the minhag [custom, lower force than halakha] is as Rabbi Meir.”
- Rabbi Yokhanan says, “the people act [nahagu ha-am] as Rabbi Meir.”

In other words, three sources of authority for a particular practice: halakha, minhag, and what the people actually do. Personally, I’ve always found the second two both more relevant and more interesting to my life than the first. Would you really rather think through the permutations of five courtyards and an alley – an eruv in one with no shittuf in the other, or a shittuf in the alley but one inhabitant of one of the courtyards forgets to chip in for the eruv, or one forgets about the shittuf – or hear about the cultural customs and daily life conditions as actually lived in Talmudic times? In truth, both are important: after all, halakha is a testimony both to some lived experience and to what the rabbis wanted people to do (even if they didn’t). And even the rabbis draw on actual experience: one common phrase used in this survey is ta sh’ma – come and hear of a real example that demonstrates the legal principle under debate.

The Talmud considers still more possible eruv situations – if several groups stay in a room, need they contribute one eruv portion to the common courtyard eruv for each group, or one for the whole room? How much of a partition counts to treat them as if they were in different rooms? And if children eat for Shabbat at their father’s table before going back to their own homes (on the same courtyard, a commentator clarifies) to sleep, can they participate in his eruv without contributing on their own, or need they renounce their share of the courtyard to be able to use it? The most important consideration in that last case is whether the son receives pras, or a maintenance allowance, from his father. Where does the Talmud learn that? From the case of a man who has 5 wives or 5 slaves he maintains with a pras – there is unrestricted movement between households automatically (though we can only imagine what the 5 wives thought about that). In fact, a similar relationship also applies to teacher and student.

Again, architects and urban planners would find the discussions of what to do when there is an inner courtyard entirely contained by an outer one – can those in the inner court walk through the outer courtyard to travel their permitted 2000 cubits, even though their eruv technically only applies to their own courtyard? Or can those from the outer go through the inner, since it’s contained in their own? I could draw a stretched analogy about how this could be compared today to relationships between inner cities and suburbs, or the “inner” person and the “outer” person, but to be honest, the rabbis who wrote this discussion were talking about inner and outer courtyards and what kind of restrictions on personal behavior they thought were required – NOT moral behavior, just private personal behavior! And whether people carry something in or out of their houses, in my mind, is much less important than whether they love their neighbors as themselves. Sharing a lawnmower, now THAT’S significant.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Survey – Eruvin 66-70 (December 10-14)

2006-04-14T10:49:00.000-07:00

Who knew that a simple commandment like “remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy” (Exodus 20) could create so many laws and conditions? Today’s selection continues earlier discussions of the conditions to create an eruv [Sabbath home marker] for a shared courtyard, but with a new situation: what if you have renters in a home owned by someone else? And what if the landowner is non-Jewish but the renters are Jewish? In fact, the renters can cause the non-Jewish landlord’s share of a courtyard to be counted towards a shared eruv, though again Rabbi Joseph claims to have never head this ruling and Abaye reminds him that Joseph himself taught that ruling! Even without a detailed medical history, we can suspect what Joseph was dealing with.

In addition to the interesting sociological tidbit that Jews would rent rooms in buildings owned by non-Jews (hardly a ghetto-style mutual separation), we also hear cases of interest to urban planners and architects: what if you have an inner and an outer courtyard? In this case, the inner courtyard takes precedence, for its eruv can be valid even if the outer courtyard has one “shareholder” not participating, but if the inner is invalid so too is the outer. There also is more haggling to be had concerning the size of a non-Jews doorway into a shared courtyard: what size may be considered a karmelit, an intermediary space between public and private ground. And if one renounces his right to a piece of the courtyard for the purposes of an eruv, how permanent is that, does it apply to their house as well, if they forget to participate in the eruv can they participate in the now-common space defined by the others, and so on and so on. Even to the case of someone dying in the middle of Shabbat – what then is the status of his share of the courtyard?

You may notice that I haven’t tried to answer any of these questions, or explain the Talmud’s way of working through them. One saying in our selection about two sages gives me the opportunity to explain why. We read about Rabbi Hisda and Rabbi Sheshet that they were a little afraid of each other: Rabbi Hisda was intimidated by how many mitaniya [rabbinic rulings or sayings] Rabbi Sheshet knew, and Rabbi Sheshet trembled from the pilpul of Rabbi Hisda. What is pilpul? It is quintessentially-Talmudic logic, splitting hairs for the sake of further discussion, on and on ad boredom. Much of the aforementioned discussion, particularly for the vast majority of contemporary Jews who do not observe Sabbath restrictions on carrying between private and public space (let alone other Shabbat rules!), is thus little more than pilpul. But the Talmud takes it very seriously: if there is a question in a particular teacher’s ruling, one should object before obeying if it concerns a Torah rule, but one should obey and object later if it’s a Rabbinic rule! You could say that this puts Torah rules on a higher level, since one should be extra careful about not breaking the rule, but it also puts the individual rabbinic teacher in a very powerful position. Never underestimate the importance of who wrote the document to who is given authority.

As one example, in our original Mishnah text under Talmudic discussion, Rabban Gamliel related his childhood experience of sharing an alley with a tsdoki [Sadducee] – a member of the Jerusalem priestly elite who disagreed on many ritual questions with the Pharisees or early rabbis. Interestingly, while the Talmud claims the Sadducee is like a non-Jew for eruv questions, Rabban Gamliel says they are not – personal experience with a neighbor, perhaps? But in a Talmudic retelling of the anecdote by Rabbi Meir, the Sadducee is referred to as to’av – abomination. On one hand, they are closer to each other by both being Jews; on the other, their differences are magnified by their very proximity and conflicting claims to authority.

We also read a fascinating discussion of other kinds of renegade Jews, from the rabbinic perspective: the mumar [“changed”, one who doesn’t follow rabbinic law] and the gilui panim [“revealed face”, bold public sinner]. Can they renounce their portion of a shared courtyard for an eruv? It hinges on an old debate between Rabbi Meir and the sages: Rabbi Meir felt that someone who disregarded one area of the Torah was suspect in all areas, while the Rabbis gave him the benefit of the doubt unless the one area he violated was idolatry [avodat kokhavim, literally “serving the stars”]. In our experience, consider our debates over the question of whether someone cheating on their taxes (or their spouse) makes them suspect everywhere else. In fact, the conclusion to the Talmud’s discussion is that offering wine to idols is on the same level of violation as public Sabbath desecration, since one who does either was not allowed to offer sacrifices. In other words, according to this reading of the Talmud, those who publicly violate Shabbat (most Jews today) can be suspected of violating every Torah commandment, including honoring their parents or bestiality!

And we who celebrate Shabbat Friday night or even Saturday morning but go to the gym on Saturday afternoon are not exempt – we read here that something permitted for part of Shabbat is allowed for all of Shabbat, and something forbidden for part is forbidden for all. This “all or nothing” approach is one reason why the most traditional lump Conservative, Reform, Humanistic and other Jews into one bag – do they observe traditional halakha [religious law] in its entirety or not? If not, then they’re like the Sadducee of Rabban Gamliel – to be avoided. But who needs their approval to have a personally-meaningful connection with one’s heritage?

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Survey – Eruvin 61-65 (December 5-9)

2006-04-13T12:40:00.000-07:00

One of the fascinating features of Talmudic discussion is the interaction of multiple chronological layers of halakhic [Jewish religious legal] debate. In the beginning of this survey, the Talmud continues its earlier discussion two towns close enough to each other to be considered one for the purposes of traveling on Shabbat by discussing the next Mishnah passage that has not yet been cited, since the rabbis discussing it already knew it was coming. In that passage, we see a record of Rabbi Akiva disagreeing with the multitude: on Shabbat they would allow a person to walk through both towns, and then 2000 cubits beyond (as if they were really one), while Akiva would be more strict and only allow one 2000 cubits from their individual eruv [Shabbat home marker]. He makes a reasonable analogy: if he put his eruv in a cave, you’d only let him travel 2000 cubits! They respond: “aymatie – when is this? When no one lives there!” In other words, if you’re creating a legal-fictional home by your eruv, it might as well extend through inhabited space like a town. And then the Talmud continues the debate – his contemporaries and later consider the case of a deserted town, or a large and spacious cave like that attributed to King Zedekiah (Jeremian 52:7), but the final result is stated succinctly by Raba centuries later: in eruvin, we don’t listen to Rabbi Akiva.

The next topic, however, is another of anthropological as well as halakhic interest: the Mishnah and following Talmud discussion considers the case of a Jew sharing a courtyard with a nokhri [non-Jew], or with someone (Jewish) who “ayno modeh b’eruvin – who does not accept the principle of eruv.” Does it take only one of those to make the courtyard off limits for Shabbat, or does it take several Jews who disagree? Rabban Gamliel even remembers growing up in Jerusalem sharing an alley with a tsdoki [Sadducee – rival Jewish sect to the early rabbis] and his abba [father] telling them to hurry up and put out what they’d need to use before he could restrict their use of the eruv. All of this is wonderful historical information: Jews and non-Jews sharing courtyards, Jews disagreeing with each other about Jewish practice, Sadducees who had a reputation for Biblical literalism not accepting the rabbinic innovation of the eruv, and so on.

The crux for the discussion in the following Talmud pages is the standing of the non-Jew’s home for the purposes of Shabbat. Is indeed a valid dwelling, or is another saying applicable: “khatsiro shel nokhri, haray hoo k’dir shel b’hayma – the courtyard of a non-Jew, behold it is like a cattle-pen.” In other words, their status in the courtyard is negligible, so they really can’t restrict its use. The ethics of that ruling notwithstanding, what would then give that “resident” the standing to interfere with an eruv? In fact, reasons the Talmud, the ruling was instead likely made to prevent the Jew from seeing and learning from what the non-Jew did, either by breaking Shabbat restrictions or general evil-doing, since by default “a non-Jew is suspected of bloodshed (nokhri khashood ashpikhoot damim).” To use the courtyard for Shabbat, the non-Jew must lease his piece of the courtyard to the Jews for that day, and so they debate how strict of a lease would be required to get him to agree – is a “perfect” lease (for some minimal sum or with documents and witnesses) required, or would an “imperfect” lease be acceptable? Acceptable that is, both to the non-Jew who has to consent, and to the rabbis for their own followers to offer. And there may be the case where the non-Jew simply suspects the Jew of “witchcraft” – if they don’t understand Shabbat in the first place, they’re unlikely to make temporary leases around it. As a later commentator put it, having to deal with the hassle every week would inspire the Jew to move elsewhere, saving him “from the evil influence of the heathen’s questionable mode of life.” We can see through this that sometimes ghettos were not only imposed from outside the Jewish community.

We saw earlier in this selection how later generations understood earlier legal discussions – what about two authorities operating in the same time? Even if there is a clear “master” in that period, or even in that place, can others proclaim halakhic [religious law] decisions? Raba claims that “a young scholar may examine his own knife” (for purposes of ritual slaughter), thus granting some autonomy in legal decisions. And Rabina explains that he can be both a talmid [student] and khaver [colleague] to his master, the ideal relationship of any scholar (even today) to their former students. But on the same page, Raba decrees that in general it is assur [forbidden] on penalty of death to make a legal ruling in the presence of one’s Master, and even in his absence (though not under penalty of death). Several anecdotes make the same point: such a student should be bitten by a snake, or die within a year, or go to she’ol [the afterlife] without children, and so on. While some claim that Judaism is a tradition of unfettered and unbiased debate and argument, there is also a clear sense of hierarchy, maintaining the ego and dignity of the teacher, and limiting the autonomy and independence of the student. This does have a practical side of restricting innovation, but a concomitant result of restricting innovation!

After all, what if your Master is like Rabbi Nahman, who disagreed Rabbi Judah’s prohibition on making legal rulings after drinking a log [six eggs’ worth] of wine – Nahman claims that without drinking a quarter log, his mind isn’t clear! And in a modern incarnation of the difference between DUI (Driving Under the Influence) and DWI (Driving While Intoxicated), the rabbis try to determine when one is shatui [had drunk] versus shikor [drunk] – the former may pray a valid prayer, but the latter may not. Some suggest walking or sleeping off the drink, but others claim it will make you more tired and drunk if you’ve have over a quarter log. And “Italian wine” [yayin italki – i.e. Roman wine] is considered stronger, requiring 3 times the walking to wear off. Those who are drunk and sell themselves into servitude, or commit a capital or flogging-worthy offense must face the consequences of their actions, unless they are as “drunk as Lot” (see Genesis 19:30 – unconscious). So what is a responsible use of wine? Rabbi Hanin claims it can comfort mourners and the wicked about to perish for their sins. Keeping a clear mind having drunk some wine puts one in august rabbinic company. And when wine flows like water in a house, it is a sign of blessing (we might say, alcoholism!). In all seriousness, it is very reasonable to have as a general guideline “shikor lo yoreh – a drunk should not make legal decisions.”

We’ll end this survey with one other piece of valuable wisdom: “a person is known by three things: his cup (how he drinks), his purse (how generous he is), and his anger.” The Aramaic is even more clever: koso, keeso, v’ka’aso. And others add: also by his laughter [sakhako]. If you want a way to understand others, or know if a person is a good person, these are not bad places to start.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
http://www.kolhadash.com/

Note on February 20th, 2006

2006-02-20T13:21:00.000-08:00

Some of my readers may have noticed that I have gotten behind in posting to “Not Your Father’s Talmud.” What I have been doing is filling in entries from the end of 2005, working to catch up to the current daf yomi [daily page]. For example, in the last few weeks I posted several entries from November. So if you’re looking for new material to read, start there. I hope to get through December and January and get back on schedule soon.

Thank you for your patience,

Rabbi Adam Chalom

Survey – Eruvin 56-60 (November 30-December 4)

2005-12-04T13:23:00.000-08:00

Again and again we have been struck by the combination of insight and ignorance we find when it comes to Rabbinic knowledge of the natural world. On one hand, we read at the very beginning of this survey that darkened bread, new beer and vegetables were thought to increase one’s excrement, bend the stature and reduce 1/500th of human eyesight. And there was some debate over whether a radish should be considered a sam khayim [drug of life] or sam ha-mavet [drug of death]! This particular radish hair is split by differentiating between the roots and leaves, or between eating it in winter or summer; we might say “it’s just a matter of personal taste!”

At the same time, however, we have a detailed discussion of compass directions and seasons in the context of setting the official boundary sides of a town to match the four directions. How to tell what are North and South (at least in the Northern Hemisphere)? Simple: on a “yom arokh – long day [i.e. summer day]”, the side on which the sun rises and sets is North; and on a “yom katzar – short day [winter day]”, it will do so in the South. And at tekufat Nisan and Tishrei [the “turning” of these two months], the sun rises and sets exactly in the middle of East and West – we would say, on the equinox. In fact, our terminology differentiates between solstice (longest or shortest day) and equinox (equal day and night), while the Talmud calls each event a tekufat in its particular month. And it defines the space between them as “91 days and 7.5 hours.” And if you do the math through 4 seasons, you reach 365 days and 6 hours, or the solar year under the Julian calendar (365 ¼ days, made even by a leap year every 4). We know today that the actual solar year is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_year), which is why in our Gregorian calendar there are exceptions to leap years for years divisible by 100 or 400, but not bad on the Talmud’s part!

This solar insight came from deciding the boundaries of a town, a discussion the explanation of which requires both more drawing and more geometric ability than I innately possess. More interesting than the intricacies of square area versus circles, and open space at the corners versus the sides, is the question of a karpaf, or extension of a city boundary. If one is allowed limited travel beyond the official city boundaries on Shabbat, but two cities are very close to one another, is there any way to have them count as one city for Shabbat travel? But of course, respond the Mishnah and Talmud – each town can extend their boundary a karpaf [about 70 cubits], and if the two karpafs touch, voila! You have two towns considered one for Shabbat travel! And if there are three towns in the shape of a triangle, the middle one can even be used to connect the further two! We might then ask, how restricting is this travel restriction now, anyways?

So how do you measure a tekhom Shabbat – Shabbat travel boundary? The Mishnah decrees one must use a rope exactly 50 cubits long (75 feet), based on the measurement of Exodus 27:18 of the court of the Ark of the Covenant. After debating of what material the rope must be made, the Talmud explores a dilemma raised by the Mishnah – what to do while measuring if you reach a valley or a hill? After all, going up or down would use up a lot of the 2000 cubits allowed. Being generous, the Mishnah and Talmud assume that the 2000 cubits are in a straight line – straight over a chasm (of a certain minimum depth, of course) or piercing straight through a hill (over a certain minimum height). In fact, we read further on that generosity is the entire rationale behind Shabbat boundaries in the first place – one is able to take the further out of two markers, or even the word of a slave or maidservant that ad kan tekhom Shabbat – the Shabbat boundary goes to here. The Mishnah claims that the reason for this automatic permissiveness is that the entire concept of the Shabbat boundary was declared by the sages lo l’hekhmir ayleh le’hakayl – not to be make more difficult but to make easier. Lest we think they are proto-Reformers, however, the Talmud “clarifies” this latter saying: another tradition holds they enacted rules not to make easier but to make harder, so in the classic tradition of “holier than thou,” divrei torah [Torah rules] are made stricter even if they may relax Shabbat boundaries, which are only d’rabanan [rabbinical].

We also read of the interesting case of a town that had been owned by one person [i.e. was all one private space] and became a town of many households [many private spaces] – one eruv is permitted for the entire town, even though the Talmud has a hard time imagining such a scenario actually taking place. And we find that a person cannot set their eruv up in the karpaf (see above), but that they can use one set up by their son to make it home for Shabbat even though that would limit their travel to 2000 cubits from the eruv but not from the city boundaries themselves. Evidently you can’t use two legal fictions at once to get TOO far beyond the letter of the law.

Since for liberal Jews these discussions of Shabbat boundaries are more academic or historical than life-altering, it is legitimate for us to ask what else might have been done if the time, energy, learning and discussion spent on these definitions and their enforcement had been turned to charity, science, poetry or other pursuits we today value? We can find allegorical meaning for ourselves in exploring what defines a neighborhood or a community, or how to define Shabbat as different in space as well as time by limiting our attention to a more restricted radius. But exact precision in such pursuits is more picky than practical.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Survey – Eruvin 51-55 (November 25-29)

2005-11-29T19:09:00.000-08:00

Life is hardly convenient, and we are forever busy. Thus it is entirely conceivable, in our day or in the days of the Talmud, that one could find oneself at some distance from their home as Shabbat was about to begin. If one cares to follow the rules, is there any way to make it home without traveling beyond the limit permissible? Indeed, even the Mishnah envisioned this possibility – if a person knows of a specific tree, he can claim to make his Shabbat base [shevita] under that tree, and thus can walk the allowed 2000 cubits to the tree, and another 2000 cubits to his home. A legal fiction, of course, since my guess is that he never plans to go BACK to that tree during Shabbat, but a fiction with the object of getting home for Shabbat at least makes some kind of sense.

It is the Talmud’s task, however to explain the peculiarities of that legal fiction. Raba claims it only applies if you can run and reach that root before Shabbat begins, even if evening would hit before you reached home. And can you rely on some ELSE knowing of a specific tree? Rabbi Yosef in this case lies to Rabbah, claiming that Rabbi Yose taught that one may rely on another’s knowledge. Even though Yosef says “s’mokh alie – trust me,” the Talmud confesses that he claimed Yose said it so Rabbah would agree with him, not because it was true! The ethics of this “well-intentioned falsehood” are not probed by the Talmud, and the status of the ruling itself is up in the air – if Rabbi Yose didn’t teach it, does that mean it’s still halakha [law] by someone else, or is the very ruling not really true? The pious would at least attribute it to Rabbi Yosef, but we might disqualify him for reverse plagiarism, or what scholars sometimes refer to as pseudepigraphy – claiming a citation to an older authority for his own original work!

In a classic Talmudic question, we are asked “where did the figure of 2000 cubits come from?” And in classic Talmudic style, the answer makes no logical sense: by a series of gezerah shavah [shared language], Rabbi Hisda connects in sequence Exodus 16:29 to Exodus 21:13 (both have the word “place”), then that verse to Numbers 35:26 (both have “flee”), then that verse to Numbers 35:27 (both have “border”), then that verse to Numbers 35:5 (both have “outside”) – the last verse specifies the open space around cities at 2000 cubits. There are, of course, plenty of other verses that use the same words (“place” is pretty common!), so the kind of reasoning WE would accept is again absent. Another reminder that Talmudic “logic” can appropriately be put in scare quotes.

We also find a common feature of life in every age that unfortunately is hard to change: the fact that rules for rich and poor are different. The subject here is defining an eruv (Sabbath border marker) with one’s feet or with bread – the poor perhaps could not afford to use bread, while it would inconvenience the rich to require them to walk out when they could send a servant with bread they could easily afford. Rabbi Meir claims the essence [ikar] of an eruv is bread, and thus relax the rule for the poor to let them use their feet, while Rabbi Judah says the essence of the eruv is one’s feet, but only a poor man could make a breadless eruv. And while Judah wants both rich and poor to define an eruv with their feet, other Sages are more generous to the rich, allowing a servant to set it and requiring bread from a poor person at home, assuming they will have enough. Credit for egalitarian impulses, deduction for problematic execution.

So far we have considered the cases of people punctilious in their observance of the law. What of someone who forgets to make such a declaration? Or someone who goes beyond their own prescribed border? In the latter case, the Mishnah would ban anyone going even one cubit (1.5 feet) beyond from returning, while others have a greater margin of error. And (you can almost predict it), the Talmud asks, “what about the person who has one foot on one side of the border and another on the other?” In addition to wanting to smack that person, it turns out it takes two feet to place one outside the point of no return. What if darkness fell when just outside the border? Again, the Mishnah is unforgiving, but Rabbi Simeon is generous, giving a 15 cubit margin of error for “hato’in – those who make mistakes.”

As the Mishnah goes on to discussing how to set a tekhom [boundary] around a town and what shape they should be, the Talmud instead goes off on another midrashic [homiletical] tangent to explain a few unusual places, names and incidents in the Torah; for example, does the new king that did not know Joseph at the beginning of the book of Exodus mean a new king or the old king who made new decrees as if he didn’t know Joseph? Archaeologists might actually have a third answer: a native Egypt king who rebelled and rejected the Hyksos kings and their fellow Semites. But a topic for another class, or for a commentary on the Torah rather than the Talmud.

We also learn that Rabbi Oshaia Beribi was a profound teacher – they would crowd closely in 8 students per cubit to learn from him, and like Rabbi Meir lo yokhlu haverav la’amod al sof da’ato – he was above and beyond his generation [literally “his colleagues could not stand at the end of his understanding”]. And again, we see the principle that earlier generations were greater, and this generation is terrible: their hearts were as wide as the Temple, and ours are like a thin needle; compared to them, for us debating is very difficult, our sabara [logical argument] is weak like a finger that can’t break wax, and we forget as easily as a finger fits in a large hole. And this from a generation that could quote the Hebrew Bible line and verse from memory, though they couldn’t cure an infection. We today have used our brains differently, but we have also learned that the intellectual achievements of yesterday are not always greater or more important than those since.

The most interesting section of this Talmud selection concerns the keys to good learning – what the b’nai yehuda [Judeans] did right and the b’nai galil [Galileans] did wrong. The Judeans cared for or were exact in their language and made simna [mnemonics], learned from one teacher, and made their learning public. And the Galileans did the opposite on everything; for example slurring their speech so people couldn’t know if they wanted ‘amar (wool), imar (a lamb), hamor (an ass) or hamar (wine). Of course, when asked to clarify the correct spelling of certain words in dispute, some Judeans said one while the other said the other! However, some others are smart by creating double meanings or speaking enigmatically, as other examples attest.

We also read a great story by Rabbi Joshua ben Hanina, a great sage who admits that he was only defeated in argument 3 times: by a woman, by a little boy, and by a little girl. Staying in an inn, he ate all the beans the hostess gave him the first two days, but when she over-salted them the third he claimed to have eaten earlier. She pointed out he still ate the bread, and that the sages have said one should leave none in the pot but a little on the plate. The little girl caught him “illegally” crossing a field on a path clearly made illegitimately. And when Joshua asked a little boy which of two roads to take to get to town, he was told “one is short but long, and the other is long but short.” Taking the first, Joshua found his way blocked, and came back to complain that the boy told him that that route was short. The boy answered “I also said it’s long. . .” and got a kiss on the head for his cleverness. And in the spirit of unexpected cleverness, we also see series of anecdotes about Beruriah, the very clever and learned wife of Rabbi Meir. She corrected Rabbi Jose the Galilean when he asked her in too many words how to get to Lydda, and a student who studied too quietly.

When should one study Torah? Why all the time of course, says Rabbi Joshua ben Levi. When traveling by yourself, or feeling pain in your head or throat or bowels or bones or even the entire body – because, like a universal magic potion, the Rabbis believed Torah study could fix everything. And that’s why so much space here and throughout the Talmud is spent on trying to get the exact meaning behind every word, phrase and verse; even if our way of understanding text, history, and authorial intent are light years away. And how do they claim to have gotten it right? They explain in Eruvin 54b that Moses received it from God, taught it to Aaron, then to Aaron’s two sons in his hearing, then the elders > thus Aaron heard it 4 times, so you can know what YOU received from your tradition is true too; so goes the traditional argument. We might dryly say the same about believing the world to be flat. This is the model for traditional learning: repeat, teach until the student has mastered it (even 400 times!), use mnemonics, study at fixed times, and be humble in your knowledge.

Finally, finally, we return to towns and Sabbath borders. But after this excursion, do we really want to get back to small details instead of great visions, idealism, pedagogy and anecdotes?

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Survey – Eruvin 46-50

2005-11-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

We have seen many previous examples of the Talmud recording both sides of an argument, often without a clear ruling as to what the final halakha [Jewish religious law] is. Over the course of 1000 years of rabbinic argument, there was a constant creative tension between legal code and legal discussion – a legal code (like the mid-1500s Shulkhan Arukh [set table] by Rabbi Joseph Caro or Maimonides’ earlier Mishneh Torah) states clearly and simply the halakha for each topic, while legal discussion explores hypotheticals, alternate rulings, and other possibilities. So one generation would want a clear statement of halakha, while the next wanted more discussion, and so on. The Talmud is clearly a case of legal discussion, and in our current selection we finally get some rules of thumb when it comes to resolving disputes between authorities.

The first case they consider is the difference between two individual rabbis with conflicting rulings and one rabbi who disagrees with several of his khaverim [colleagues – literally “friends”]. You can imagine that it would take extraordinary circumstances for one to prevail against many, and indeed that is the case. For example, Rabbi Akiva disagrees with the khakhamim [sages] for what to do when one hears a report of the death of a close relative – if the news arrives after 30 days after the death, Akiva says one need only mourn one day, while the sages say the full seven strict and 30 semi-strict mourning days must be observed from the point the news is received. It turns out that the halakha follows Akiva, for another sage gives the general rule: whenever you find a case where an individual rabbi is permissive and several are restrictive, the halakha follows the many EXCEPT for this case with Akiva! But the Talmud claims immediately that this is the only exception, based on another general rule that halakha follows more lenient rules in mourning – by and large, yekhid bamakom rabim [one versus many] follows the rabim.

And what of the many cases where it is yekhid bamakom yekhid/one on one? Here Rabbi Jacob and Rabbi Zerika, and then Rabbi Johanan and Rabbi Assi, finally come to the rescue. Here is the simplest form of the discussion, in the format of a single-elimination tournament – those familiar with the 1990s band “They Might Be Giants” will recognize the pattern too!*

Rabbi Akiva versus any one other colleague – Akiva wins
Rabbi Yose versus several of his colleagues at once – Yose wins
Rabbi (i.e. Rabbi Judah) versus any one other colleague – Rabbi wins

Rabbi Meir versus Rabbi Judah – Judah wins
Rabbi Judah versus Rabbi Yose – Yose wins
Rabbi Simeon versus Rabbi Judah – Judah wins

And, the Talmud says, no need to say explicitly that Meir or Simeon lose badly to Yose by the transitive power of halakhic superiority! And what is Rabbi Simeon goes up against Rabbi Meir in the “consolation match?” Teku – it remains undecided. There is some debate as to how strictly these general rules were meant – for usual halakhic decisions, or to incline the judgment in that direction, or merely to say it’s acceptable to end up that way? Nevertheless, this general road map to the halakha is very useful!

However, Rabbi Mesharyeha tries to throw a wrench in the works, claiming that these “matchups” should be disregarded. And the next full daf [page] is consumed trying to find on what that ruling was based (again you see the creative tension between simple rule and reasoning/argument behind it). Possible supports range from examples in the Mishnah text currently under discussion to many others; e.g., Rabbi Simeon’s ruling defeats Rabbi Judah’s in the case of an eruv for three intersecting courtyards. Or take the case of a person out of his house on Shabbat affecting the eruv of the courtyard he shares with others: Rabbi Meir says it affects the others, Rabbi Judah says it doesn’t, Rabbi Jose says it affects them if he’s not Jewish (and could be expected to return even on Shabbat) but not if he’s Jewish (and wouldn’t be expected to break the rules), and Rabbi Simeon says even if he stays in town but goes to his daughter’s house, he’s not expected to return so he doesn’t affect his courtyard neighbors. And Rabbi Simeon sets the halakha! And so on for many examples – but to each example, the Talmud offers this rebuttal: “mai kushiya? Dilma: heikha d’itmar, itmar; heikha d’lo itmar, lo itmar – What’s the difficulty? Perhaps if it’s said it’s said, but if not said it’s not said.” In other words, if an exception to the general rule of “who beats whom” is stated in the tradition, then we follow that; but if not stated, why not use our new guidelines?

The opposite kind of proof is also tried – in cases of conflicts between individual rabbis, examples where they DO follow the pattern of “who beats whom” and explicitly say “the halakha follow Rabbi X” might disprove the general guideline; after all, why would they have to say explicitly “the halakha follows Rabbi X” if everyone knows it does? And these cases are much further afield – whether one can make a man wait 3 months to marry certain kinds of women after their husbands die, or whether one can risk defilement by going to non-Jewish fairs, courts, or other areas to do business or to study Torah. In the end, the most the Talmud admits to Rabbi Mesharyeha is that these general guidelines were not universally approved, since Rab disagreed. But I have to admit, there seemed to be plenty of examples to disprove the rule – how many exceptions to a guideline constitute a problem? We might even be more interested in the anthropological details of which kind of widows were more problematic, or details of contacts between Jew and non-Jew, like the cases of Jews borrowing objects from non-Jews over Shabbat or festivals, or a non-Jew returning something on Shabbat previously borrowed from a Jew, that are turned to next.

Finally, we arrive at the core of our discussion – the few cubits allowed to a person who has found himself BEYOND the Shabbat limit. While I mentioned above that a cubit [amah] is about 18 inches, technically a cubit is the distance between one’s elbow and middle finger. So Rabbi Mesharyeha astutely asks his son to ask Rabbi Pappa whether one should use their own arm or the standard amah for sacred objects? And what about the legendary giant Og of Bashan – did he get an extra advantage? Pappa’s response is priceless: “if we were so exact, we’d never get anywhere – always use your own arm!”

And what of two people who find themselves next to each other – can they treat each other’s 4 amot [6 feet] like a common courtyard, giving them more room to move? A series of rabbis compare this example to intersecting courtyards, courtyards and alleys, and so on, but we also find a general discussion of the principle underlying the very institution of the eruv itself – is it kinyan [acquisition of property], so the residents around a shared courtyard become joint owners of everything, or is it dira [residence], since people depend on food so where food is placed they can all be considered to be living? The practical question is whether one may use an object or only food to define an eruv, but it is fascinating that what the basis is for the very institution in this tractate is not fully clarified – we haven’t been told who wins between Samuel and Rabbah.

The issue that will consume our next selection is begun at the end of this one – what if someone is approaching their home as night falls on a Friday evening but is still about 4000 cubits away, and they know of a particular tree or wall; can they say “my eruv is placed there” and thus be able to get to their house even though Shabbat has already begun? Points for cleverness, but you have to have a very specific 4 cubit space in mind for this to work; if you’re not specific, “lo amar kloom – [it’s as if] he said nothing.” We also learn from the Mishnah, without discussion from the Talmud, that Rabbi Judah said that both rich and poor could define an eruv by their feet (b’raglav), but that the Rabbis were nice to the rich man who could afford an eruv loaf of bread so he didn’t have to personally go out with his feet at sundown. Isn’t that generous to the rich – rather than make both face the same rule, here the rich get an advantage. Just goes to show that even rabbis are not immune to making life easier for those who already have it easy. I prefer the line from E.K. Hornbeck in Inherit the Wind: “my job is to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.”

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

* See the lyrics to “Particle Man” from the album Flood to get the reference. E.g. at http://www.lyricsdepot.com/they-might-be-giants/particle-man.html

Survey – Eruvin 41-45 (November 15-19)

2005-11-19T14:11:00.000-08:00

In any document of law, whether is be a Constitution or a Talmud, there is always a balance to be struck between restriction and freedom – when does the individual have autonomy, and when are they told to stop. We have already seen debates over whether to apply a lenient or restrictive ruling to various issues concerning eruvim, but this tension is highlighted in particular in our current survey selection.

The survey begins with the continuation of an issue raised at the end of the last one – what to do if two religious duties conflict when two holy days are adjacent or even the same day. Unlike the previous example, which was a case of multiple positive celebrations, what is one to do if Tisha B’Av, the solemn fast day the Rabbis created to commemorate the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, happens to fall on or adjacent to Shabbat? If the fast was the day before and ended at sundown the moment Shabbat began, one would “enter Shabbat afflicted,” so one must eat food k’baytsa [the size of an egg] before sundown. If right after Shabbat, one must cut short the Sabbath seudah shli’sheet [third meal] to begin the fast. But if they are on the same day, okhel v’shoteh kol sheh-tsarkho – one should eat and drink as needed, even to make a feast like King Solomon.

Similarly, according to Rabban Gamliel, the head of the Sanhedrin, and others, one may not impose a fast on new moons, Hanukkah and Purim. We would prefer that, when push comes to shove, life and celebration are more important than restrictions, mourning and death. Indeed, later we read that anyone who crosses a Shabbat boundary to save a life or for other positive religious duties, even as far as 2000 cubits [3000 feet], may return without additional restriction. But that is not always the resolution - a second kind of restriction addressed here concerns the present and the past – after the death of Rabban Gamliel, his long-time rival Rabbi Joshua tried to reverse the above ruling about fasts and festivals, but the Sanhedrin rejects his attempt – “Yehoshua, ayn shom’im lakh – Joshua, none listen to you” – because it is too sudden. By the days of Rabbi Yose (some 50 years later), however, the halakha [religious law] is changed to what Rabbi Joshua wanted – one must complete a fast before Shabbat rather than ‘take the edge off’ before Shabbat begins.

The previous 40 pages of Talmud tractate Eruvin have addressed how to define an eruv and a little of what one may do inside of one. But what if that restriction is broken and you find yourself beyond the limit? What if, the Mishnah imagines, Gentiles or a ruakh ra’ah [evil spirit] carry one beyond the limit? One is only allowed to move within 4 amot [cubits, about 18 inches] where one finds oneself, but if they carry one back in it’s as if one never left. We are intrigued why non-Jews would carry a Jew out of town (most likely for no good, of course), but what is a ruakh ra’ah? It is explained by the medieval commentator Rashi as follows: a demon possesses you, you go out of your mind, and you find yourself outside the border. The phrase ruakh ra’ah itself is the trigger here for a totally unrelated piece of Talmud wisdom - three things cause a person to lose his mind [m’avirin et ha-adam al da’ato]: idolators, ruakh ra’ah, and severe poverty. But as consolation, they will never see Gehenna [Hell], having already atoned for their sins, who suffer these in life: severe poverty, bowel disease, and ha-reshut [government(!)]. And some add “or an evil wife [isha ra’ah],” though others argue one may divorce her instead of suffering, though her ketubah [marriage agreement] settlement might cost too much or he may have children with her. To soften this, here is a very old joke on that last topic: why is a Jewish divorce so expensive? It’s worth it.

Obviously, if being taken out restricts one to 4 amot, if one willingly leaves he has the same restriction. So what if one is carried out and walks back, or walks out and is carried back? Does the carrying back erase the walking out, or does the carrying out against one’s will “immunize” against walking back? In fact, any deliberate move in or out limits one to 4 amot. The exception to that limitation? If one must “answer the call of nature,” one of our favorite principles applies: Human dignity is so important that it supersedes a negative Torah command. And in one of the more silly arguments, what about fruit that went beyond the border – can you eat it? It makes sense that something taken out b’mazid [intentionally] would be forbidden, but it turns out that even if it was taken out b’shogeg [unknowingly], you can only eat it if it is in its original place. And, believe it or not, some claim that one can only eat the fruit if they were unknowingly put back in the original place – in other words, by pure coincidence! Never underestimate the power of religious thought to supersede reality; for example, the 2000 cubits one is permitted to move may end in the middle of an enclosed courtyard or in another town. And such a case, the eruv takes precedence over the enclosed courtyard or the very town – the imaginary line of a temporary house more significant than bricks and mortar.

And what if one is on a ship at sea that is constantly moving? The more permissive allow one to move within any enclosed area like another town, a cattle pen or a ship. The more piously restrictive, like Rabbi Akiva, stick to a strict limit – one may only move within 4 amot of where one finds oneself either on a ship. If one is carried away to another town on land or placed in an enclosed cattle-pen, some allow full travel within that enclosed boundary, but others restrict movement to 4 amot. And not necessarily 4 amot in any direction, but at its most restrictive one is imagined to be in a circle with a DIAMETER of 4 amot, thus meaning one may only move 3 feet one-way in any direction! Even at the most permissive, one may only move 6 feet, and even then it is a one-way movement. What a powerful metaphor for how we experience unreasonable restrictions of religious tradition: one is only allowed to move within a few feet of space.

But what if one is over a certain height off of the ground? In an age before airplanes, the Rabbis debate whether tekhumin [Shabbat boundaries] apply over a meter off of the ground. Their only possible examples are someone on a ship, and maybe the time Elijah spoke in both Sura and Pumbedita [2 Babylonian rabbi academies] on the same Shabbat (thus flying between them), or maybe it was Joseph the demon who wouldn’t care about the rules anyways. The issue is not fully resolved, but we next read some examples of “pre-airplane” rabbinic practical innovation. Rabban Gamliel had a sh’foferet [tube] that enabled him to see at a distance – try it yourself with any tube and see how the tunnel focuses your vision. They could also measure the height of a palm tree from its shadow’s length: by comparing a person’s shadow to their height, the tree’s shadow is the same ratio because the angles are the same!

Another major exception to Shabbat restrictions applies to saving lives – midwives assisting at childbirth, a person trying to save another from bandits or a flood, even soldiers defending their city from attackers are permitted to go beyond the boundary, even if they must carry weapons! One can even attack foreigners besieging a Jewish city on a frontier, as long as they came for murder or plunder – if only for money, then the Sabbath cannot be violated. And not just a national frontier, but even a boundary between Jewish and non-Jewish settlement. Jewish self-defense is thus not only an innovation of modern times, but part of the reality of Jewish history.

There are further discussions of what to do if one falls asleep before entering a town on Shabbat eve, and whether overlapping circles of restricted movement of different individuals enable them to share the other person’s distance in order to share a meal, and so on. But thus far is enough for this survey.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Survey – Eruvin 36-40 (November 10-14)

2005-11-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

It is entirely possible that in a long career of teaching, one may teach one side of one position, and years later argue the opposite on a different topic. In a post-script to The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco describes having a critic point out that he has a character and that character’s adversary make the same argument on the same page – he had added a few lines at the last minute before publication and forgotten about what was written right afterwards! Eco’s post-modern response is that the text has a life of its own, and “The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text.” (p508, Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1984). The Talmud has a very different approach to contradictions: when Rabbi Jose seems to be on both sides of a fence, permitting a doubtful eruv but requiring extra care for doubtful ritual purification, no contradiction is possible. He must have been quoting his teacher’s rather than his own perspective, or else he must consider the more serious rule d’oraita [from Scripture] while the other is d’rabanan [Rabbinical]. Traditional Judaism’s refusal to admit contradictions takes the early Rabbis, and rabbinic tradition as a whole, out of the realm of human production; our own conviction that the creators of Judaism were indeed human opens up a wide range of new possibilities.

An eminently human impulse is to hedge one’s bets and invent conditions. One may, for example, use bread for an eruv that is promised to be consecrated later (because who knows if this will be followed through), but something declared to be holy now and planned to be made unholy (and thus edible) later cannot be used. Or the Mishnah claims that one can set up TWO eruvim on either end of town in case threatening nokhrim [strangers] whom one wishes to flee or a sage [khakham] whom one wishes to approach show up – the eruv would apply that would get one closest to the sage or farthest from the strangers. And if neither applies, one could ignore both and be like an ordinary town dweller, able to use the town itself as his marker. Amusingly, Rabbi Isaac learned this tradition backwards, so one would want to approach the foreigners and flee from the sage! Rather than admit a mistake, however, the Talmud explains it thus: one wants to flee tax collectors but approach town elders, and one would approach a sage but flee a basic school teacher (particularly if a sage was also approaching).

The halakhic [Jewish religious legal] issue here is if two sages come from two directions - if a person could CHOOSE which eruv applied, it would be a retroactive designation, also called b’raira [literally, “choice”]. If you buy a quantity of wine that needs to be tithed, can you promise to set aside an amount later and drink anyways? Or can you say the last tenth of grain is the offering, even though you don’t know exactly which grain that will be until you use the other 9/10ths? In our particular example, can you set up an eruv for all the shabatot [Shabbats] of a year that may or may not apply depending on where one wants to go? In the end, a similar distinction is attempted between rules that are d’oraita and d’rabanan, with the latter more permitted, though some would say it applies to all or none. And one could make the common-sense argument that a universal condition like the permanent eruv would eliminate awareness of its existence for the rest of the year, so what would be the point to the rule in the first place? On the other hand, attention to tiny details of what is and is not a valid eruv is hardly the topic that will inspire a passion for Judaism among the masses.

Because of the strictness of the Talmud’s Shabbat, what if a yom tov [holiday] immediately follows Shabbat – can one set up TWO eruvim, one for each event, as Rabbi Eliezer suggests? The Mishnah’s sages recommend instead having one eruv for the two days, accomplished with the aid of an emissary to re-establishes it for the second day and eats it then. But both agree that the two events are separate “holinesses” [kedoshot]. Imagine having your birthday and anniversary one day after the other – both deserve some acknowledgement, even if some arrangements are made to cover both at once. This discussion also highlights an alternative method of defining an eruv: not just with food but “b’raglav – with his feet”, or by physically sitting there at twilight as Shabbat or the holiday begins. But you can’t mix and match – if you set the first holy day’s eruv with your feet, you can’t use bread for the second day, and vice versa.

The reluctance to admit error even applies to measures the Rabbis instituted just in case, like the second day of Rosh Hashana [the New Year festival] for Jews in exile [galuyot] – the extra day was added because the testimony of the previous new moon might not arrive in time to know the exact date of the holiday. Different Rabbis suggest conditional eruvim or tithing or even liturgy in case the second day is the actual date, but the khakhamim reject it. There is something amusing about Rabbi Dosa’s suggestion that the liturgy read, “Fortify us God on this the first day of the month, either today or tomorrow [eem hayom eem l’makhar].” In this case I agree with the Rabbis – pick a date and stick with it! In fact, this debating can be seen as anthropological evidence of the process of acclimating to living outside of the land of Israel – exactly how holy ARE these new days and customs we’ve innovated, and how careful do we need to be to avoid working on them?

And we also face the conflict of religious duty – what if, as Rabbi Dosa’s conditional prayer highlights, the New Moon [Rosh Khodesh] and a festival (like Rosh Hashana) are the same date? What if the New Year also falls on Shabbat (as it does in 2006), making it a triple festival: what blessings do you say, how do you celebrate it? We for whom Shabbat is not that different from all other days, and who often miss the new moon, find such juxtapositions interesting but not a crisis. But we also live on the other end of history: for us they are traditions; for the Talmud’s Rabbis, they were innovations that became institutions. And so too with our creations of our own day – loo y’hee, may it be.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Eruvin 31-35 (November 5-9)

2005-11-09T18:57:00.000-08:00

A large number of contemporary apologetics for traditional rabbinic Judaism include “rational” explanations for the mitzvot [commandments] laid out by tradition. The apologetics try to find personal reasons for following the commandments along the lines of “you’ll be happier and healthier if you do so.” But the traditional answer to “why follow the commandments” was much more like Tennysons Charge of the Light Brigade: “ours is not to reason why/ ours is but to do or die.” Or, as Raba puts it, “mitzvot lo leihanot nitnoo – commandments were not given to enjoy.” Raba’s statement helps to explain why an eruv may be placed on a grave, even though one is not allowed to “enjoy” something like a grave – if one is fulfilling a commandment, it by definition is not for one’s own enjoyment.

As we saw before, an eruv may be made up of just about any food, including sometimes food that couldn’t be eaten by one of the common courtyard residents. After all, if demai [food of uncertain tithing status] is only for the poor, who’s to say (however unlikely) that a person couldn’t possibly renounce his property and thus become poor? But the person making the eruv is supposed to know what they are doing – thus the Mishnah prohibits sending an “imbecile, deaf-mute, or minor” to make it (the minor may make an eruv for courtyards but not for travel boundaries). If you send them towards another person, as long as you stand and watch them go, and the other person receives the food to set up the eruv, then you can even send a trained peel [elephant] or kof [monkey] with the food! And what if the recipient doesn’t do his duty? The assumption is that shaliakh oseh sh’likuto – an emissary does his mission, at least for the purposes of assigning halakhic [religious legal] blame. And this reasoning makes some sense to us: if you send someone to accomplish a task, if they are able to do it and just don’t by their own fault, it’s hard to blame the person who sent them.

An argument about a parallel case regarding required tithes on produce does make a distinction, however, whether that shaliakh [emissary] is a khaver [“friend,” i.e. colleage of the Rabbis] or an am ha-aretz [ignoramus, literally “person of the land” or “peasant”]. In other words, can you trust that they fulfilled their mission with all the attention to detail required? Anyone who has worked in an office with more than one other person knows this kind of problem! Amusingly, the argument comes down to a debate between father and son: if you are in doubt whether the am ha-aretz performed the proper tithe, but not eating what he gives you would cause him to break an even more important rule, what should you do? Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi [the prince] would rather the khaver break a small prohibition [isura kalila] than the am ha-aretz break a big one [isura raba], but his father Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel would rather the am ha-aretz break a big rule than the khaver break a small one. What does this mean to us? It’s a question of elites versus the masses – Rabbi Judah would rather have the elites be slightly less holy to save the masses from greater transgression, while his father preferred to keep the elites pure even at the cost of greater transgressions by the “peasants.”

And, to draw on contemporary experience, what if one is in a bear-prone area and wishes to put their eruv in a tree? The Mishnah specifies that it must be lower than 10 amot [hand widths] (about one meter), but it can’t be moved if it is between 10 and 3 amot above the ground according to Rabbi Judah. The Sages disagree with that last proposition, but all agree that if the tree is in private ground, it doesn’t matter how high it is – only if the tree is in public space does the height matter. It must be that the person intends to “Sabbath” at the roots, or under his own eruv. And, of course, the tree must be at least 10 amot high and at least 4 amot wide, etc. etc. The basic concept, however, is that the eruv has a lot of power to define just about anywhere as private space, even in the midst of public space. In case one is interested, one could also put one’s eruv down a cistern [bor – literally “hole”], even if it is 100 amot [10 meters] deep. Our closest parallel to this concept today might be our sense of “personal space,” a variable concept that changes depending on the different standards of where you were raised – in my experience, Europeans and Indians have a much higher tolerance for crowding (e.g. in subway cars) than Americans, and New Yorkers much more so than Midwesterners.

The other important argument in these pages is that a person and their eruv need to be in the same place or kind of space – if the bottom of the cistern is described as private by the eruv but the person at the top is in purely public space, then that food couldn’t work as his eruv (only if he’s in a karmelit, or intermediate space, does that case work). So imagine this real possibility: the eruv is put in a cupboard, and the key is lost – are the person and his eruv in the “same space” if he can’t get to it? Well, Rav and Shmuel assume, the cupboard must be of bricks, which Rabbi Meir permits to breach to get food out. And it must only be referring to an eruv for a yom tov [holiday] but not for Shabbat (even though everything else seems to be talking about Shabbat), and the key must have been lost in town – if it’s lost in a field, then the eruv is not valid. Or it might be a wooden cupboard, reason Rabbah and Rabbi Joseph, so it’s like an object that the prohibitions on building and destroying don’t apply. Or maybe it’s like a tent, says Rabbi Eliezer!

In any case, the question is what is something happens to the eruv once it’s placed? The Mishnah asks, what if it rolled away or got burned, or something fell on it? If it happened before nightfall, and he could fix it, then it doesn’t apply; but if afterwards, it’s ok. And what if you’re not sure? Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Judah agree here: you’re stuck both pushing a donkey and pulling a camel – can’t go far at all in any direction. But there is a debate as to whether a doubtful eruv counts as an eruv – even among the sayings of Rabbi Meir himself. For minor tameh [uncleanness], he is lenient if purification is doubtful; but for major tameh, he is restrictive. And once it’s proven that Rabbi Meir believed the rules of Shabbat travel limits to be d’oraita [from Scripture], and that must be a major rule, then he would restrict in the case of doubt.

While the Talmudic rabbis are clear that they believe one should obey mitzvot without an eye to any enjoyment, we would take the more lenient approach of balancing serious, non-harmful enjoyment today with continuity with the past – if the latter inhibits the former, then it can and should be reconsidered. But if the Rabbis separated enjoyment from mitzvot, it is also clear that they did derive some enjoyment from DEFINING the mitzvot themselves – in the debate and memory and citation, there is a process that we too are a part of by our very study.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Eruvin 26-30 (October 31-November 4)

2005-11-04T13:14:00.000-08:00

WARNING! This one’s a long one. . .

This survey begins to delve into a particular case of defining an eruv that was common given domestic architecture of the Talmudic period: when there is a courtyard shared by many houses. While this is not made explicit at first, food is brought out to the common courtyard on a Friday afternoon. This temporarily defines the open space as “private” for the course of Shabbat and tus permits people from multiple houses to carry objects from one to the other without crossing a boundary between public and private space. But what if one neighbor doesn’t get along with all of the others (a common experience now and probably then) and does not participate in defining the eruv even though he lives on the courtyard – can others still carry into his space, or can he carry out of it? Does he have to explicitly declare his non-participation, or can he opt out by silence or forgetfulness? And does his non-participation in the eruv also forfeit his right to carry in his own house? After much discussion, the conclusion is that if he explicitly declares his non-participation, then the eruv is valid but not for him; but if he says nothing, the eruv is not in effect. An interesting result of this ruling would be the need for neighbors to cooperate, or at least speak to each other once a week – this was clearly long before suburban sprawl, front lawns, and anonymous neighbors.

It is the next Mishnah section that begins to define what may be used to create an eruv, although 50 pages later the Talmud and later commentators like the Tosafists (12-13th century CE) make a distinction between eruvim for travel on Shabbat and for defining a courtyard. It turns out that any food except for water and salt, which are not considered real nourishing food and thus are permitted to a person who vowed to eat no food, may be used to define the former. You can even use salt AND water mixed together, but not either individually. But only bread may create a courtyard eruv. The Talmud tries to exclude unripe dates and lichen, but later teachers allowed it – for example, when Rab came to Babylon where lichen was in fact eaten, it became permitted. And one must define what counts as food in the first place: if raw beets are said to be dangerous to your health and raw onion even poisonous, can they count as food? And how much food is required? The answer: two meals’ worth, or garnishing equivalents.

And it doesn’t have to be food that you like, or even food you personally are allowed to eat: a nazir [one under vow of wine abstinence] may be included in an eruv made by wine (since others could drink it), and any ordinary “Israelite” can use terumah [tithed food] even though only a priest may eat it. If you vowed not to eat a particular loaf, it can still be used for your eruv; however, if you said “this loaf is prohibited to me” (i.e. for ALL benefit), then you couldn’t use it. Beit Hillel [the house of Hillel] argued this point with Beit Shammai, explaining that since one may set up an eruv on Yom Kippur [day of Atonement] that an adult can use even though the food is only permitted to a child or pregnant woman (who are not required to fast), so too in this case. There is part of the rational mind, however, who might agree with Beit Shammai on this one – doesn’t it make sense to use food one might be able to eat? But that’s asking for sense out of a legal fiction that enables one to carry on Shabbat without crossing public ground – human inventions (and in my opinion mishegas [craziness] all).

Before giving the specifics of what and how much, however, an important theoretical legal discussion takes place first. Rabbi Yokhanan said “ayn l’midin min ha-k’lalot v’afilu ba-makom sheh-ne’emar bo ‘khootz’ – we do not learn from general rulings, even in a case that specifically includes ‘except.’” In other words, when you have a general rule that has exceptions, the exceptions may not be limited to what has been listed. So just because you know the general rule, don’t automatically apply it to everything! In face, we soon learn in the Talmudic eruv discussion that other foodstuffs are also not allowed to define an eruv, even if water and salt are the only exceptions listed by the Mishnah. Now we, with a historical mindset, might say that the Mishnah authors really did intend everything to qualify except water and salt while later generations of rabbis expanded the prohibition further in violation of the general rule, but that approach is outside the framework of Talmudic thought.

A parallel example is the general rabbinic rule that women are exempt from positive commandments [mitzvot aseh] with a fixed time [sheh-ha-z’man gorma], while men must fulfill them, but those not time-dependent must be performed by both. We must recall that being “exempt” in a context where being obligated to perform an action is the highest duty is no privilege. Thus, for example, reading the Torah on Shabbat was not required, and thus for centuries was neither expected nor encouraged, of women. But the Talmud immediately points out that there ARE time-based commandments that women must do, like eating matza [unleavened bread] on Passover or rejoicing during Sukkot (Deuteronomy 16:14 – “And you shall rejoice in your feast, you, and your son, and your daughter, and your manservant, and your maidservant . . .”). And there are non-time-dependent commandments from which they are exempt, like “be fruitful and multiply” or even Torah study [talmud torah] – as the medieval commentator Rashi explains, Deuteronomy 11:19 can be read “teach them to your sons” and not daughters. Of course, “sons” in Hebrew (b’neikhem) could also be read inclusively as “children,” and though Rashi himself only had three daughters and no sons, the patriarchy of his time and his tradition went unchallenged until our own era.

We can see how the Talmud sometimes uses unrelated legal discussion to clarify the main issue, as it veers off into a discussion of what may be purchased by money tithed according to Deuteronomy 14:26 and thereby elaborates on the overall issue of general rules and exceptions. And for us, it re-emphasizes the importance of punctuation, something absent from the Bible. The verse says, “And you shall bestow that money for whatever your soul desires, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatever your soul desires;” in other words, a general rule (whatever your soul desires), specific examples (oxen etc.), and another generality. The question for the Talmud is: is this a case of ribuyay u-miyutay [expansion and restriction], or k’lalay u-p’ratay [general and detail]? Here’s how each works:

Ribuyay u’miyutay: if you have an expansive rule followed by restrictions, you can only do what’s included by the example. If the verse had been “whatever you want: oxen, sheep or wine,” you could only get one of those three. But since we have expansion-restriction-expansion, it is understood in this progression: expansion - whatever you want; restriction inward: oxen, sheep, wine are ok; great expansion outward again: not just oxen and sheep, but anything remotely like them. If it differs totally, like water or salt, then it clearly doesn’t count. “Spend that money on whatever you want: oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink or just about anything of use.”

K’lalay u-p’ratay: a general rule followed by details works similar to the way it was explained in the other example: “whatever you want: oxen, sheep, wine, etc.” meaning only one of the examples, and the general statement gives you some context so you don’t include, say, people (WHATever, not WHOMever) by analogy from just a list. When you have general-detail-general, you can only obtain something that is substantially similar to the details: like oxen, sheep, or wine, if it gets its sustenance from the ground. “Spend the money on whatever you want: oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or anything else in that vein.”

Why all of this in the context of an eruv discussion? The Talmud has made a connection between what could be bought by this tithe, and what may be used to define an eruv. Since both discussions hinge on salt, water, and salt water, they must be connected, must be the assumption. We’ll end with one last kernel of rabbinic wisdom from Eruvin 29b, so breathtaking as to need no amplification:

“Abaye further stated: Nurse told me: If a man suffers from weakness of the heart let him fetch the flesh of the right flank of a male beast and excrements of cattle [cast in the month] of Nisan, and if excrements of cattle are not available let him fetch some willow twigs, and let him roast it, eat it, and after that drink some diluted wine.”

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

If I haven’t recommended it before, I found it very useful for this discussion of the halakhic principles of generalities and details to turn to The Talmud, the Steinsaltz Edition: A Reference Guide by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz (NY: Random House, 1989).

Survey – Eruvin 21-25 (October 26-30)

2005-10-30T21:47:00.000-08:00

In my experience, I have found two teaching styles effective in their own way. One is to be organized, systematic, logical, and structured; the second is to meander in interesting ways, covering the topic at hand but not feeling constrained by outlines or agendae. The risk of the former is that structure can take precedence over interesting content, and the risk of the latter is tangential topics that are uninteresting or cause us to lose the forest (the main topic) for the trees. The Talmud is definitely an example of the second pedagogy, both its positive and negative sides.

This survey begins with a continuation of the previous pages’ discussion of the rules of using a well on Shabbat by defining it temporarily as a private space in the midst of public space. But it soon leaps from a saying of Rabbi Hisda on topic to Rabbi Hisda’s memories of other Rabbis explaining passages from the Hebrew Bible as referring to the righteous and the wicked. Israel are of course synonymous with “the righteous,” for they follow the law and then some. The young men have never tasted sin, and the women tell their husbands they are menstrually impure, or even shut them out for that time, just to be sure – reading “new and old, which I have laid up for you, my beloved” in Song of Songs 7:14, “old” must refer to the Torah commandments, while “new” must refer to those of the sofrim [scribes], or the rest of the Hebrew Bible. One Rabbi understands the Song of Songs line to mean Israel saying to God, “I have decreed many more decrees upon myself than you did, and I have kept them.” Who would have thought that in the game of ‘holier than thou,’ the Talmud would try to best God? Another rabbi considers “new” to be kalot [easy/minor] and “old” to be khamorot [difficult or major], but another encourages you to be MORE careful with rules of the sofrim than the Torah! Rebuttal: if they were so important, why weren’t they in the Torah? Answer: Solomon already clarified his earlier passage from Song of Songs in his later writing in Ecclesiastes 12: “of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”

You would think that this last phrase would be a problem for rabbis who proclaim the virtue of endless study, but not so: by tweaking pronunciation and making puns, they interpret the last clause to mean that those who scoff at the sages are boiled in excrement, or that those who study much feel the taste of meat like a rich man. Rabbi Akiva might have followed the first interpretation: an anecdote relates that while in prison he was brought very little water: not enough to ritually wash his hands nor enough to drink, and he refused to eat until he could wash his hands because better to die than to disregard the sages’ rulings. Because these prooftexts come from works traditionally thought to have been written by Solomon, this is an opportunity for the Talmud to leap in that direction.

Because the Bible describes Solomon as very wise, rabbis two millennia after Solomon supposedly lived assumed he was wise in rabbinic law as well – they claim Solomon was the one who invented the concept of the eruv and the washing of hands before eating (also a connection between the Akiva story and the Talmud tractate). ‘Ulla remembers Rabbi Eliezer saying that the Torah was like a basket with no handles before Solomon gave his explanations. And the Song of Songs which he allegedly wrote in his youth can’t really be a beautiful love poem; it must be an allegory for Israel’s love of God. Watch how they explore Song of Songs 7:12-13 – a great example of rabbinic midrash [creative explanation] if not a good model for calling a spade a spade:

Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages. Let us go early to the vineyards; let us see if the vine has flowered, if the grape blossoms have opened, if the pomegranates are in bloom; there will I give you my loves.

“Come, my beloved, let us go forth into the field;” – Israel said to God, “don’t judge us like urban criminals who lie and rob.” And “going to the field” means “let me show you the scholars enduring poverty to study Torah.
“let us lodge in the villages.” – The Hebrew for “villages” can be tweaked into “disbelievers”, so compare us to those who receive your generosity and despise you.
“Let us go early to the vineyards;” – that is, the batei k’nesiot (synagogues) and batei midrashot [houses of study].
“let us see if the vine has flowered,” – that is, the masters of Scripture [ba’alei mikra].
“if the grape blossoms have opened,” – masters of repeating the early rabbinic tradition [ba’alei mishnah].
“if the pomegranates are in bloom;” – masters of contemporary rabbinic debate [ba’alei gemara].
“there will I give you my loves.” – I will reveal My greatness and glory to you.

This is beautiful love poetry made into religious doctrine by the power of interpretation. And largely unrelated to Shabbat observance, for those who recall the ostensible focus of Eruvin.

When the Talmud returns to that discussion, we read that the mekhitzot [partitions] defining a private space to permit certain actions Shabbat can even overcome a public road running through them! It also turns out that according to Rabbi Yokhanan, in the land of Israel one may carry in a public space on Shabbat with no guilt, so this entire discussion doesn’t apply there - another example of the Diaspora setting for the creation of the Babylonian Talmud. And, as we have seen before, one may have different definitions for different issues – just as the minimum distance may differ for planting different seeds vs. the space between mekhitzot, so the same space (like an alley that ends in a cave) may be considered private space for Shabbat but public space for t’umah [ritual impurity]. Even a public road may be considered private if it so is narrow and difficult to travel that the general public would not use generally it. While the level of detail explored here may seem excessive, it is impressive to see so many hypotheticals and conditions brought to bear on the discussion.

We alluded to courtyards earlier, and by Eruvin 23a the Mishnah has moved on to discussing privately-enclosed spaces, which can actually be as large as seventy square cubits (approx. 150 square ft.). Rabbi Ila’i remembers Rabbi Eliezer saying it could be as large as a beit kor (space to sow a kor of seeds, or about 17,000 square meters), but when he went back to all his students to confirm his memory [bakashti li khaver – literally “looked for a friend for me’], he was unable to do so. We do find here that a beit se’ah [space to sow a se’ah of seed] is 50 x 50 cubits (approx 580 square meters) in the context of defining the maximum size of a karpaf [enclosure] behind a house that can be considered private space – if it’s larger than that, even if it has walls it’s not completely private space for Shabbat carrying. One rabbi even contemplated the following: a mansion adjoined an orchard, and when a wall of the house fell the three remaining walls could be imagined to enclose the orchard for Shabbat! But he is corrected: those walls were made for the inside, not the outside. But points from me for trying to make the best of a bad situation.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Eruvin 16-20 (October 21-25)

2005-10-24T22:00:00.000-07:00

Gentle reader, please recall that while we search for valuable ethical insight, part of the “Not Your Father’s Talmud” blog project is to explore the thought process of those generations who created and studied the Talmud, even if the subject is less than immediately relevant to our own lifestyle. Today’s survey has some of both.

Our previous discussions of permissible carrying on Shabbat were in urban settings – alleys, streets and buildings. This selection begins with a discussion of a caravan stopped for Shabbat – a very common situation for Jewish merchants in this period, if not for the present day outside of summer camps. The Mishnah says that you can define a permissible space [eruv] by encamping in a valley and surrounding the camp with kley b’heyma [“tools of beasts” – as the Talmud clarifies, saddles, saddlebags, saddle cushions, etc.]. However, the gaps between the objects defining the “fence” must be less than 10 cubits (15 feet), so they can be treated like a doorway, and the gaps between the piles must not be wider than the piles themselves. But what if the gaps are exactly EQUAL, asks the Talmud? Predictably, one rabbi says “OK” and another says “no way.” This question of gaps versus built-up partitions also bears on defining private space in cities, alleys, and courtyards as well, but the caravan setting is used to try to clarify the issue.

It turns out that a caravan camp could also surround itself with 3 ropes with the highest 3 feet high (a horizontal boundary), or by reeds placed in the ground (vertical) – either horizontal or vertical partition markers with limited gaps between individual markers, but both were not required by the Sages even if particular rabbis disagreed. We recall the debate about marking a narrow alley by either a side-post or a crossbeam, or sometimes needing both, as a parallel discussion. In this case, the limit of space that can be enclosed with a partial partition is, for an individual or two, two beit seah – the space it would take to sow a seah of seed, or approximately 50 x 50 handsbreadths [amot]. And for the Talmud “three’s a caravan” that enables them to enclose six beit seah in such a manner, though others claim they can take as much space as they need as long as there are not two beit seah unoccupied by people or objects.

So here comes the Talmudic genius for hypotheticals – what if three people have defined a space of six beit seah for Shabbat, and then one of them dies? Or if there were two who wrongly defined a space of six beit seah and a third arrives (by camel or birth)? Rabbi Huna and Rabbi Isaac disagree: one claims that the way it was defined to start Shabbat matters more, while the other holds that the number of people is more important. Interestingly, the Talmud is not sure which Rabbi held which position, and it has to bring another anecdote of Rabbi Huna allowing someone to continue to use an eruv defined by a door that was later blocked up to be sure that he is the former and Rabbi Isaac the latter. This debate parallels one between Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Jose in the Mishnaic period – the former was permissive and would allow one to continue to use an eruv even if the marker fell down for that one Shabbat but no more, while the latter wanted to be more consistent and said, “what they can do on this Shabbat they can do in the future, and what they can’t do in the future they can’t do now.” By virtue of his authority, we can know that Rabbi Judah, the nasi [head of the Rabbis] of his generation and the likely compiler of the Mishnah, holds the accepted ruling, though the Talmud text itself gives absolutely no indication!

The next example is even more hypothetical – the Shabbat obligations from which Jewish soldiers are exempt in their camps, including the eruv. For a people without their own national army for 70 years by the time of the Mishnah and centuries by the compilation of the Talmud, this is imaginary indeed! There are variations if they are in a milkhemet reshut – an “optional war” as decreed by a king as opposed to the milkhemet mitzvah – a war commanded by God himself like the destruction of the Canaanites decreed in Deuteronomy. Not only can soldiers camp in any place, they may be buried where they fall – the only others entitled to this are the dead with no relatives to bury them who become a met mitzvah [death of commandment], which enjoins anyone, even a priest, to bury them immediately where they lie. They and the poor can also eat demai, produce from which one suspects tithes have not been taken. How often this ruling applied to situations in the Talmudic period is certainly dubious.

The most interesting passages in this selection uses the Mishnah discussion of how to define a well as private space for Shabbat as a launching pad for an extensive midrash [creative interpretation] on the Garden of Eden and the creation of humanity. Rabbi Jeremiah ben Eleazar, in the first of a series of sayings introduced by the cryptic mnemonic “two, under a ban, praise, dove, house, two, was cursed, by a relationship, three” that indicates earlier oral recitation, suggests that Adam, the first human, had a face on either side (like the Roman god Janus). Why? Because in Psalm 139:5 God is praised for having shaped man akhor va-kedem – in back and in front. Does this mean a full face, or perhaps a tail that was removed later? In support of the full-face explanation, Genesis 1 claims “male and female he created them”, but in support of the tail tale, in Genesis 2 God “built” what he removed from Adam into Eve – as the Talmud says, in the shape of a storehouse: wide at the bottom and narrow on top in order to hold the “fruit.”

Some modern Jewish feminists have looked at this simultaneous, two-face creation as a support for gender equality, but leave it to the Talmud to undercut that modern value right away: if there were two faces, which walked face-first? Of course the man, because “no man should walk on a road behind a woman, even if she’s his wife.” It must be the temptations of the view, but evidently women can't be so tempted. And anyone who crosses a bridge after a married woman or counts out money to her hand directly in order to see her face will be eternally condemned even if he is otherwise as holy as Moshe Rabbenu [our teacher Moses]. Walking behind a woman is not as bad as following an idol or (the worst) walking past a synagogue while the congregation is praying – a “sin” committed by a large majority of Jews every day of the week!

Most of the rest of Rabbi Jeremiah’s sayings are affirmations of the virtues and rewards of piety, and vice versa for vice – Gehenna [Hell] for the wicked and Gan Eden [Garden of Eden] for the righteous. For a tradition that some believe has no afterlife, Eruvin 19a has a lot of speculation on Hell – where its three gates are, what its seven names are (including eretz ha-takhtit – “the under-world.”), and whether wicked Jews would likely repent while wicked ovdei kokhavim [idol worshippers – literally “servants of stars”] would not. Rather than, as the Talmud does, dive back in to the minutia of how to define a well as private space for Shabbat and what happens to that partition if the water dries up, or how much of a person or cow needs to be in the private space to be allowed to drink, let’s end on this note of “hope” instead!

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Eruvin 6-10 (October 11-15)

2005-10-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

We recall from tractate Shabbat the complications of carrying objects from private to public space on Shabbat, a restriction which necessitates clear definitions of which is which. Before we saw the case of a closed alley; but what of an alley between two buildings that is open on both ends? The Talmud, following the tradition of Beit Hillel [the house of Hillel] settles on having a locked (or at least partially closed) door at one end and a side post and crossbeam – which suggests a doorway - at the other. And what of a crooked alley that has a bend? Rav was more strict and subject it to the rules of an open alley, while Samuel was more lenient and treated it like a closed alley. And there was even a crooked alley in Nehardea that was treated according to the rules of both – the bend was like a closed alley, but because the two side walls never met it was like an open one. And it also depends where the alley ends – does it end in a backyard or a courtyard (something that is or can be defined as private space), or does it end in an open field or a major road (obviously public space).

So what do you do if two authorities disagree? After all, Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai are famous for their disagreements, yet while the Talmud asserts “halakha [religious law] is always according to Beit Hillel” [l’olam halakha k’beit Hillel], sometimes later authorities agree with Beit Shammai. The path suggested here is an interesting one: you may choose to follow EITHER Beit Shammai or Beit Hillel. But if you follow only the lenient rulings of both, you are wicked; and if you only follow the strict rulings of both, the Talmud quotes Ecclesiastes 2:14, “the fool walks in darkness”. Later discussion clarifies that this should apply when each authority uses the same reasoning to opposite conclusions – if they are not absolutely mutually contradictory, one may indeed choose the lenient rulings of both.

What if you have minor alleys branching off of a major alley like the legs of a centipede? What if one end of an alley is a rubbish heap and the other is the sea? Can one use the space under the crossbeam defining an alley as private space for other purposes outside of Shabbat private space demarcation, or must it be kept clear? Can the side post be visible from the outside but flush set in the wall from the inside view? These and other conditions are explored and debated, sometimes even within one Rabbi’s own memory: Rabbi Joseph, who lost his memory, says, “I did not hear this teaching.” And Abaye reminds him, “We learned this from you!” There is even a short debate between a width measurement: two fingers or one and a half fingers? These pages are an example of Talmud that is less relevant to modern liberal Judaism, even if we could theoretically explore the legal discussion for mental exercise.

The one detail of this discussion to note is the need for spatial relations to fully appreciate the discussion. In the tradition of Gardner’s “multiple intelligences,” Talmudic culture is often considered to be a verbal culture – prizing ability in words instead of graphic art or mathematics. Reading these discussions of architecture, however, we see that spatial intelligence would have been a real asset in these particular discussions. And while we don’t have records of sketches they could have drawn, an “illustrated Talmud” from that period when books copied by hand would have been too much to ask.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Eruvin 2-5 (October 7-10)

2005-10-10T19:55:00.000-07:00

In tractate Shabbat, we saw several allusions to the concept of an eruv – a way to define what could be thought of as public space into private space for the purposes of carrying on Shabbat. Our new tractate Eruvin [plural for “eruv” in Aramaic] focuses on this specific issue because defining its parameters and usage is so complicated. As we begin, we are also aware from our experience that the tangential discussions and historical details found along the way may prove very interesting.

The exploration begins with an entrance to a closed alley (with walls on three side and one open side) – how to define it as private space? One may have a beam across the opening, says the Mishnah, as long as it is lower than 20 cubits (about 30 feet) and narrower than 10 (15 ft.). Rab speculates that the figures derive from the structure of the Second Jerusalem Temple [mikdash] when it stood, or perhaps the Biblical description of the Tabernacle [mishkan] during the 40 years of Sinai wandering. It is interesting from an historical perspective to see that the Talmud concedes that the two terms are sometimes exchanged (likely because they served similar purposes of “divine encounter), because some modern scholars believe that the Biblical descriptions of the mishkan were actually written around the building of the mikdash instead. The reason they focus on these buildings is to determine what the maximum size of a permissible “entrance” is by Biblical definition, so they can define what size would count in order to define the alley as private space for Shabbat carrying. If the original Mishnah claims that the shape of a doorway is enough, even if wider than 10 cubits, what counts to define a doorway shape?

The other major parallel the rabbinic discussion draws on is a sukkah [booth for the holiday of Sukkot], which according to the Rabina has much more specific size parameters because it is d’oraita [from the Bible] while the rule of the entrance to an alley is only d’rabanan [from the Rabbis]. The irony is that the Rabbis are the ones who define the details of what is d’oraita – the Bible says nothing about the SIZE of one’s sukkah. And it is the Rabbis who also create their own problems: what about a crossbeam where part of it is over 20 cubits high and part is under 20 cubits high? After much discussion, the Talmud asks: what’s the decision? I’ll quote the Soncino translation directly: “Rabbah b. R. Ulla replied: The one as well as the other is inadmissible. Raba replied: The one as well as the other is admissible.” I’m glad they cleared that up! And if your crossbeam on your alley is under 10 handsbreaths high (the minimum, approximately 4 feet), don’t worry – you can always dig out some of the earth beneath it to make it tall enough!

Another problem that Abaye raises “in the name of Rabbi Nachman” is the very measurement of a cubit, which traditionally was the distance between one’s elbow and the tip of their middle finger (which of course is different on everyone). A “cubit” [amah] for the sukkah or an entrance is five “handsbreadths” [tefakhim], while a cubit for purposes of “forbidden mixtures” [kilayim – as in planting a field with two kinds of seeds] is six tefakhim. Or you can say that the standard is six tefakhim, but for kilayim one spreads out one’s fingers for each tefakh while for openings one keeps the fingers together. In either case, it’s clear that one is supposed to be more careful to give extra space when facing the possibility of a forbidden mixture. And since one can find basically no discussion in the Bible for any of these measurement debates, Rab asserted strongly that they are halakha l’moshe mi'sinai: a law given directly and orally to Moses on Sinai and then passed down orally, and thus known by rabbinic tradition but not provable from the written revelation. And in the middle of discussing possible Scriptural sources for such rules, the Talmud interjects: do you imagine these are actually written (in the Torah)? They are traditional halakha that the rabbis have supported from the Torah! We would say there’s a big difference between deriving the law from the original source and connecting it post facto to give a new rule old authority.

Indeed, this is what much of Talmudic law is trying to do. But this issue of the authority of measures and partitions is crucial to the entire agenda of tractate Eruvin – if the goal of Talmudic debate was to determine the law [halakha] that one should follow, then one should be sure that the subject of one’s debates was indeed halakha l’moshe mi’sinai and not just the invention of a later age. We today don’t need to imagine that the debates and issues go back any further than Rabbinic Judaism itself, 1800 years ago – that’s far enough back for us to feel like we’re reaching into the distant past.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Shabbat 151-157 (Sept. 30-Oct. 6)

2005-10-06T18:10:00.000-07:00

It’s been said that death never takes a holiday, and it certainly doesn’t check with our schedules for convenience. Much like its other rules on Shabbat concerning non-Jews, the Mishnah allows Jews to use graves or coffins made by non-Jews on Shabbat as long as they were made for the non-Jew, and not directly for the Jew. While there is no way to be sure that the coffin-maker’s intent was NOT to sell it to a Jew, the presence of doubt creates permission. But it may well be the case that a Jew dies on Shabbat, and what to do then? We of later generations know that Jewish funerals do not take place on Shabbat, but whence that tradition?

One is allowed within limits to prepare the body: to anoint with oil, to remove the pillow, tie the jaw so it opens no further (but not closed), even place the body in sand to help it keep until the funeral. The Talmud adds one can place a vessel on the stomach to stop swelling, and stop up the bodily openings to prevent air from entering. But one may not close the eyes on Shabbat, and the Mishnah goes on to say that one may not close the eyes someone is about to die – one who does so “sheds blood,” like a lamp about to go out that is nevertheless extinguished. In other words, one is not allowed to hasten even an imminent death, according to Talmudic ethics. So what to do if someone dies on Shabbat with their eyes open? Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel recommends blowing wine in his nostrils, putting oil between his eyes and holding his big toes; and the eyes should close themselves. Honestly, I have no idea if this works or not.

This discussion is an opportunity for the Talmudic rabbis to explore the nature of the aging experience before natural death. Through their commentaries on Biblical verses, they claim that becoming old includes: forehead and nose droop, eyes are made weaker from weeping (unlike before age 40), arms and legs tremble, teeth vanish (“the grinders do not grind”), lips become slack, and one is bent over as if looking for something that has not been lost. Two legs become three (with a stick for walking), digestion becomes difficult, even a bird can wake one from sleep but singing voices sound like a whisper. The smallest bump seems like a mountain, and even walking on a flat road is scary. Opinions can change, and the wise may become wiser but the ignorant even more foolish, but the passions fade. These “interpretations” really derive from experience, and thus their connection with Biblical text is all the more clever.

The overall approach to death on Shabbat is stated succinctly by the same rabbi: “For an infant a day old the Sabbath is desecrated; for David, King of Israel, dead, the Sabbath is not desecrated.” There are two senses here in which the living are better than the dead. Why is the smallest of the small of the living greater than the great among the dead in this case? Because one violates one Shabbat so that many may be observed, but the dead are free of mitzvot [commandments]. And one need not guard a baby against being eaten by a mouse, but the body of a dead giant like Og king of Bashan needs guarding.

So what happens after death, according to the Talmud? For all of the protestations one might have heard that “Jews don’t have an afterlife,” it’s just not true as these pages demonstrate. Worms pain the dead as a needle would hurt the living, and one’s own soul mourns for 7 days after one’s death. The dead can hear all said in their presence until the grave is closed, or until the flesh rots away. The body returns to dust (a la Genesis: from dust you came and to dust you return), but the spirit [ruakh] lives on and is delivered to “Dumah,” the angel of the deceased: the righteous have rest under the Throne of Glory [kisay ha-kavod], while the wicked suffer and are thrown about the world. The bones of the righteous do not rot like those of the wicked until just before the resurrection of the dead. For the first 12 months, the body exists and the soul can go up or down, but after 12 months the soul ascends and never returns. And Rab claims that you can know if a person will be part of ha-olam ha-ba [the world to come] by the funeral eulogy – if one is moved, that’s a good sign. And you should plan to repent one day before your death. Who knows when they will die, respond the students? All the more reason to repent today, replied Rabbi Eliezer. We might say, live life to the fullest each day because who knows?

What if Shabbat takes you by surprise, while you are still on the road? In a concession to reality, the Rabbis allow someone to pass his wallet (or anything of value he finds BEFORE Shabbat) to a non-Jew, even though that’s asking him to carry on Shabbat – it was proven to the Rabbis through experience that people can’t restrain themselves when it comes to money, and if you don’t allow this they themselves will carry it over 4 cubits in public space! If there is no non-Jew present, you can put it on a donkey even though the donkey is supposed to be resting on Shabbat too (see Exodus 20). If the choice is between a donkey and an imbecile, deaf-mute or minor, choose the donkey because it is not human, but if no donkey is there the imbecile should carry it; and predictably there is a debate over priority between the deaf-mute and minor! And what if one is alone? The Sages had a secret: one CAN carry it, but in increments of less than 4 cubits, broken by a pause; and they didn’t start with that because it was both the worst and the easiest of the alternatives. We can accept the pedagogic value of that approach.

The case of the laden animal provokes more lengthy debate – the Mishnah says that for objects that can’t be handled on Shabbat, one should untie the cord so they slide off. The Talmud clarifies that if they would break, pillows may be brought to cushion the fall. So what of Rabban Gamliel? His ass was laden with honey, and he would not unload it on Shabbat so it went rancid, at which point it was only good for dressing camel sores. If he untied the cords, the containers would have broken; if he brought pillows, they would have been stained and no longer useful. And the animal’s suffering [tsa’ar ba’aley khayim] under the load for a full day? Well, says the Talmud, that’s only de-rabanan [a rabbinical rule]. . .Nevertheless, care for animals is important, even on Shabbat. Animals not only rest but may be fed on Shabbat from big quantities (even untying sheaves), but not by undoing small bundles because that would mean more work for the human than minimally required – you can make fodder, but don’t make a big deal out of it, so pour water on bran but don’t stir it. We may be shocked to read that one may not force-feed calves but may do so to birds, until we remember that we still eat food from force-fed fowl.

Even though tractate Shabbat ends on 157b with a discussion of the details of closing a skylight, the major discussion on 156a-b is much more interesting – do horoscopes apply to Jews? Rabbi Joshua ben Levi speculates that one born on the first day of the week (i.e. Sunday) will be without “one thing” – the Talmud elaborates to “completely wicked or completely righteous” because light and darkness were created on the first day (Genesis 1). He goes on to give “horoscopes” for each day, but he disobeys the rule of newspaper horoscopes: always say something nice so people identify with it, because who wants a horoscope like this?
- Born Monday: bad-tempered, because then the waters were divided.
- Tuesday: wealthy and unchaste, because plants which multiply rapidly and intermingle were created on day 3.
- Wednesday: wise and with a good memory, because the Sun and Moon were made on day 4.
- Thursday: generous, because animals who live on divine generosity were made on day 5.
- Friday/erev Shabbat: will be a seeker, one says, a seeker after good deeds.
And one born on Shabbat will die on Shabbat, since the great day of Shabbat was desecrated because of him. Another Rabbi disagrees, claiming that the mazal [fortune or constellation] of the hour is more important: under the influence of the sun, distinguished with no secrets but thus an unsuccessful thief; under Venus, wealthy but unchaste; under Mercury, wise with a good memory; under the moon, he will suffer destroying and rebuilding (like the moon) but will have secrets and can be a successful thief; under Mars, he will shed blood - as a surgeon, a thief, or a mohel [circumciser]; and so on.

But do Jews believe in horoscopes, in fortunes, in constellations, you might ask? What about the absolute Biblical prohibitions on worshipping the tseva ha-shamayim [the army of heaven, i.e. the stars]? In the classic rabbinic style, you are also right – what follows in the Talmud is a long series of Rabbis who decree ayn mazal l’yisrael – the constellations have no power over Israel. Yochanan and Rab each bring their own prooftext or midrash [creative interpretation] to prove it; Samuel and Akiva have personal narratives where Jews do charity and avoid their “cosmologically-fated” death, and they teach tsedaka metzil mi’mavet [charity saves from death].

But the final anecdote is the most important for us: Rabbi Nahman b. Isaac’s mother was told by a fortune that her son would be a thief, so she made sure to cover his head to ensure his piety. It failed and he ate someone else’s dates right off of the tree, but the point for us is the anthropological evidence that wearing a headcovering (kippah) was NOT expected of everyone; in fact, it was imposed here to try to make someone with wicked tendencies more pious. Thus those who choose not to wear one today are actually going back to earlier Jewish practice. And that’s an important part of the Not Your Father’s Talmud blog project – to find these details of evidence for the way life was to inspire the way life is today.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Shabbat 146-150 (Sept. 25-29)

2005-09-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the frame stories for Talmudic teachings can be more amusing than the teachings themselves. In an anecdote that begins at the end of 145b, two rabbis sat before their teacher, Rabbi Yochanan, who dozed as they speculated as to why life is different in Babylon compared to the land of Israel: why chickens are fatter, why festivals are more joyous, and why scholars dress differently. Suddenly Rabbi Yochanan awoke and rebuked them for idle speculation: “if something is as clear to you as the fact that your sister is prohibited to you, then say it; otherwise, don’t say it!” And he gives his own answers: chickens are fatter because they never suffered exile like those of Israel; festivals are more joyous because they do not suffer there under the curse of Israel for its sins; and Babylonian scholars dress differently because they are not in their homeland.

From this opening, however, we find the most interesting speculation and explanation: why are idolators [ovdei kokhavim – literally “servants of stars”] lustful? The answer is familiar to us, but not generally from Jewish sources: when the serpent in the Garden of Eden came to Eve, he implanted lust in her, so all humanity is naturally lustful. We’ve heard much more on this theme from Christian sources, but here is some evidence that the concept of sex as the sin that caused the Fall was Jewish as well – you can also read about it in the post-Biblical, pre-Christian Jewish writing 4 Ezra, chapter 4. In this text, the Israelites are understood to have escaped from their lust by being present at Sinai to receive the Torah, but idolators were not so lucky. And what of converts, who accept Torah laws and thus should be considered exempt from this “infection?” They were not there, but their “mazalot – fortunes or lucky stars” were to be inoculated on their behalf. We also see again a double standard between Jews and non-Jews – assuming “they” are lustful while “we” are not.

The primary discussion for this survey selection begins with the saga of what may be opened and how on Shabbat – may one open a raisin wrapper, one may not create a new hole on Shabbat but some say one may expand a pre-existing hole and there is a debate about inserting a tube though all agree a tube may be re-inserted if it falls out, and so on. More interesting, we see again the importance of hospitality, as Shimon ben Gamliel proclaims that if one has guests on Shabbat, one may bring a cask of wine, pick up a sword, and cut off the top with one swing with no fear of Shabbat violation! An important general principle is brought up in the discussion: whatever the Sages [khakhamim] banned because it might look bad [mar’it ha-ayin] is forbidden even in the most secret chambers [khidrey khadarim – literally “room of rooms”]. Why? My guess is that perhaps someone could see you there, or more likely what the Sages forbid is forbidden even if you quibble with their reasons behind it.

And for liberal Jews, a very important anecdote appears as well: Ulla visits the Rabbinical academy at Pumbeditha, and he sees the scholars [rabanan] shaking out their cloaks on Shabbat even though we read just above that Rabbi Huna forbade it. Ulla exclaims, “Scholars are desecrating Shabbat!” And Rab Judah says to the scholars, “go shake it near him, because we are not sticklers on this [lo kafdinan mee-day].” A few pages later, we also read about a prohibition on beating the breast or dancing on Festivals that the people ignore without rebuke. The answer to “why not rebuke them?” is marvelous: “better they do it in ignorance (of our law) than in disobedience;’ in other words, they’re not going to stop so why bother telling them? If only allowing others to practice differently because they are not kafdinan [sticklers] for the areas of Jewish tradition they choose to relax, or accepting what people actually do rather than futilely demanding that they change, were today widely accepted Jewish principles. . .

We have already seen that life may be saved on Shabbat, but here we see that not all medical treatments are allowed: the Mishnah stipulates one may rub on oil but not knead it in, one may not induce vomiting or set a broken bone. And if a limb dislocates, one may only bathe it normally “and if it heals, it heals” [v’im nitrapeh nitrapeh]. The Talmud softens these restrictions: that one may oil an invalid on Shabbat, provided the treatment is done differently than it is during the week, vomiting may be induced by hand if not by potion, and a fracture may be set if not a break. But it also offers a cautious tale to those visiting spas: Rabbi Eleazar b. Arak visited places renowned for their wine and hot springs, and his attraction to these pleasures made him forget his learning – when he returned to read from the Torah scroll, he mistook a dalet for a resh and a bet for a khet. Vacationers, beware.

Another example of the “lest” principle described in our previous survey appears in this one as well – one should not count his guests and their portions of food from writing lest he either be tempted to erase mistakes or lest he go on to read secular documents or the text under an image. But from this discussion we are brought to invectives against Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who destroyed Jerusalem and exiled Jewish leadership to Babylon. He is accused of casting lots over his nobles to determine whose turn it was for homosexual sex [mishkav zakhor – literally “lying with a male”]; he tortured the captive Jewish king Zedekiah by stretching his penis [literally orlah – foreskin] in public; and when he went to Genennah [Hell], he even scared those who were already there!

Finally, we read that one may take certain steps while awaiting the end of Shabbat – one may go to the border of permissible travel to look at one’s field, or to make arrangements for a bride or a corpse, though not to hire someone to do labor once Shabbat is completed. Indeed, one may even travel to theaters and circuses on Shabbat if one is dealing with communal affairs [iskey rabim] – you can’t calculate your own accounts, but charity for the poor [tsedaka l’ani’im] or other “religious accounts” are allowed. All in the name of creating distinctions between Shabbat time and weekday time, something we culturally agree with even if the details elaborated for page after page in tractate Shabbat strike us as overly kafdani’im – more focused on details than the big picture.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

For Further Reading:

You can see how similar the Hebrew Aleph Bet letters are that Rabbi Eleazar b. Arak confused at http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm.

The full text of the Apocryphal work 4 Ezra (also known as 2 Esdras) is available at:
http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Rsv4Ezr.html

Survey – Shabbat 141-145 (Sept. 20-24)

2005-09-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

One of the most important conjunctions in Rabbinic thought is “lest”. Many actions are prohibited on Shabbat because they MIGHT perform a forbidden action. Imagine this dilemma – can one scrape clay off of a shoe? One rabbi says scraping on the ground is allowed but not on a wall, lest it be construed as “building.” Raba responds that you’d look like quite a dumb builder to be adding clay to a wall like that, so he allows one to scrape off clay on a wall but not on the ground, lest one level a hole that way! A third rabbi allows both, and a fourth allows neither, only letting him use a piece of wood. As we have already seen in tractate Shabbat, sometimes intention is more important – adding oil to a leather shoe may be done if the intention is to polish it but not if the goal is making it softer – but at other times, actions are prohibited because of “lest.”

Much of this survey’s discussions focus on “indirect handling” – for example, picking up a child who is holding a stone rather than the stone itself. As Rabbi Yannai’s school touching adds, “this refers to a child who longs for his father” [batinok sheh-yesh lo ga’agooin al aviv]; in other words, the crying child may be picked up, but you can’t just use a child to pick up a stone (like contemporary baseball fans who lower their kids over the railing to pick up foul balls). And immediately after the original Mishnah permission the Talmud adds that carrying a child with a purse of money around his neck still makes one liable on account of the purse. {a not-so-nice joke on this theme is at the end of this survey}

Many of these rules can tend to the ridiculous. How to open a cask of wine with a stone on it? Tip it over so the stone rolls off. And the very next sentence says that if the cask is among others (thus the falling stone could damage the others), one may lift out the cask of wine from among the others and THEN tip it so the stone rolls off. In other words, to avoid lifting the stone off the cask, one has to lift and move the entire cask first! And the same for forgetting something in the street like a wallet or even a saddlebag full of money – rather than simply pick up the saddlebag, they consulted Rabbi Yochanan who advised them to, “hinikhu aleyha kikar oh tinok v’tilteluha – place a loaf or a child on it and move it.” In other words, artificially define it as private space and then pick it up, even if hauling a child there is more “work” than pickup up the wallet!

We also find a general principle of Shabbat observance articulated here, one that makes much more sense to our sense of Shabbat as human-defined “time outside of time:” “that he does not do as he does during regular weekdays” [sheh-lo ya’ase kaderekh sheh’hu oseh b’khol]. In this case, this is specifically applied to why one may not sponge up wine from a broken cask or collect the produce lying in one’s yard in a basket. We who look for expressions of Shabbat more meaningful than the details of which fruits may not be squeezed to produce juice (most of pages 144a-b and 145a) find this more interesting – what else can we do differently from the weekday to create a sense of rest and difference on Shabbat?

Finally, we again see the value of pursuing tangents – while the main subject may be squeezing fruit, because another well-known saying also began “davar Torah – a word of Torah,” we also find a discussion of halakhic legal cases when evidence is admissible from a person who heard about the situation from another person who actually witnessed it (also called “hearsay”). For Talmudic jurisprudence, hearsay evidence only admissible in the case of a woman whose husband died (thus mercifully freeing her to marry again if she chose) or in the case of wanting to eat a b’khor [firstborn] animal – only if it received a blemish after birth in the presence of a witness was that allowed. And in our own legal system (or at least on TV), hearsay evidence is likewise routinely rejected for good reason.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

A bad joke for tractate Shabbat - Two Jews are sharing experiences of miracles that they witnessed. One describes looking for a particular passage in the Talmud, opening a volume and finding himself on the exact page of tractate Shabbat that he needed. The other replies, “That’s nothing. Two weeks ago it was Shabbat, and as I was walking home I saw a wallet on the street. I wondered what to do about it, given that it was Shabbat and I couldn’t pick it up. Then, a miracle! At that moment it was Tuesday!”

Survey - Shabbat 136-140 (Sept. 15-19)

2005-09-19T10:56:00.000-07:00

One of the more difficult questions for any religious tradition to answer is what to do in the case of an infant death. The Catholic Church (or was it Dante?) created the idea of limbo in part to address the situation of infants who died before they were baptized – condemning them to Hell seemed unjust, but baptism to cleanse from original sin was required for Heaven. In the days when the Talmud was written, infant mortality rates were likely around 30% - the rate in the United States today is 6 per 1000 live births, and the worst in the world is still under 20% (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate). If one in three children would die within the first year, the question of viability was vital and common.

For Rabbinic law, Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel set the guideline for viability at surviving for thirty days (eight days for an animal). But this instantly raised the question: if before 30 days the child is doubtful, how can one circumcise a son at 8 days? The answer is just in case: if he lives, ok, and if he dies, it’s as if one simply cut basar [meat]. If the baby “fell from a roof or was eaten by a lion” (i.e. died accidentally), it was assumed to have been viable. In the depths of mourning, this would matter little to bereaved parents, though this page records Rabbis questioning other rabbis’ mourning the death of their infants under 30 days old. Viability is actually an issue for the Rabbis because of the archaic tradition of yibbum, or “levirate marriage” – in an oversimplification, if a man dies without having a child, his brother is supposed to take his widow to father a child to inherit the dead man’s land. So if the child died early and were considered dead from birth, then the mother would have to go through o if the child died early and were considered dead from birth, then the mother would have to deal with yibbum.

We do conclude the topic discussed in our previous survey of when one may circumcise a son, including the amusing case of a man with two children, one to be circumcised on Shabbat and one born just before or just after Shabbat – what if he mixes the twins up and circumcises the wrong one on Shabbat? And we also read that, depending on the calendar, a child may end up being circumcised on as late as the 12th day after their birth – normally circumcised on the 8th day, if born at twilight where there’s some doubt on the 9th, if at twilight on erev Shabbat (Friday evening) on the 10th, if a holiday follows Shabbat on the 11th, and if it’s Rosh Hashana (with two days observed) on the 12th. All of this because if the circumcision is NOT on the 8th day, it can’t supersede a festival – one CAN do a circumcision on Rosh Hashana if that’s exactly the 8th day after birth. Today, many choose to circumcise in a hospital, and to celebrate a babynaming when convenient for the family and the parents rather than wrestle with the calendar.

The historical context mentioned in our previous survey for the Rabbinic emphasis on circumcision is highlighted here as well, as the Mishnah basically asserts that “one who doesn’t look circumcised isn’t circumcised” – in the Hellenistic period, some Jews had tried to disguise the fact that they were circumcised to more comfortably participate in Greek (naked) athletics. Thus there is more detail in these Talmud pages than we need to explore as to what constitutes a valid and invalid circumcision. What is more interesting is that at the very end of the discussion, the Talmud finally describes what blessings are to be said by whom during the actual circumcision ritual for infants, converts and slaves bought by Jews. And the most meaningful passage for us here is what the bystanders are to say: “Even as he enters the covenant, so may he enter into Torah, huppah [marriage canopy], and ma’asim tovim [good deeds].” The wishes of wisdom, partnership, and ethical living still resonate for us at the birth of our children.

In the second half of our survey, the Mishnah turns back to the rigors of Shabbat observance – would straining the lees out of wine be work if the strainer had been set before Shabbat began? What about grinding or combining certain ingredients of food or medicine? Or setting up a canopy over a bed – is that like building a tent (thus forbidden), or not? And so on and so on. The details are less interesting and relevant to contemporary liberal Jews than the sayings and stories that the Talmud brings in tangentially in the context of this discussion. We see the Rabbis at Yavneh, who established Rabbinic Judaism and canonized the Hebrew Bible there out of the ashes of Jerusalem destroyed in 70 CE by the Great Revolt, lamenting that in the future the Torah will be forgotten from Israel [atida torah sheh-tishtakeyakh may’yisrael]. Their interpretation of a prophecy in Amos 8 imagines a future where halakha [rabbinic law, which the rabbis equate with “Torah”] is unknown, or at least unclear. As a continuation of this, we also read that the calamities of a generation are caused by the wickedness of Jewish judges [dayyanin], which is later connected to their ignorance. While we today might chafe and strain mightily under Torah or Talmudic law, we can appreciate the importance of both learned and ethical justice.

And the last section of interest in our survey appears in the latter half of page 140b – sayings of Rabbi Hisda, a leader of the Babylonian Rabbinic academy of Sura in the early 4th century CE, on a variety of topics. He recommends that a “scholar" [bar bey rav, literally “son of the house of a rabbi”] with little bread should not eat vegetables to whet his appetite, should not save it for later, but should share his little bread with friends. Hisda also “endorses” underwear from the Nehar Abba section of Baghdad: if you wash it every 30 days, it will last you a year! But don’t sit on a new mat, because it will wear out your clothes. And Hisda also had advice for his daughters: act modestly and don’t eat bread with your husbands, don’t eat greens or dates or drink beer/liquor [shikra] at night, don’t use the privy where they do, and greet a knock at the door with “who is she?” rather than “who is he?” Hisda didn’t give reasons for his recommendations, but the medieval commentator Rashi interprets the dietary rules as avoiding bad smells and laxatives, and the greeting so that they should not get used to speaking with men! Today advice, like the food it concerns, should be taken with some grains of salt.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

For more information on Jewish infant mortality in ancient times, you can read “Infant Mortality in the Land of Israel in Late Antiquity” by Professor Meir Bar-Ilan, in S. Fishbane and J. N. Lightstone (eds.), Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, or online at http://faculty.biu.ac.il/~barilm/infant.html.

Survey Shabbat 131-135 (Sept. 10-14)

2005-09-14T13:51:00.000-07:00

All of the previous 130 pages of rules for Shabbat are all well and good, but as we saw in our last survey there are times when real life interferes with absolute rest. In today’s survey, we see more examples of other Jewish obligations that directly impinge on Shabbat observance. While the original Mishnah text asks what actions may be taken on Shabbat to prepare for a Brit Milah [ritual circumcision], the Talmud broadens the exception to include the gathering of the omer [wheat sheaves] and preparation of two loaves for Shavuot, preparing the lulav and sukkah for Sukkot, matza [unleavened bread] for Passover, or the shofar for the New Year. After all, if the day before such important holidays happened to be Shabbat, without these exceptions who could prepare for the major festivals? The Talmud is very interested in how Rabbi Eliezer came up with all of these exceptions, though none of them are eliminated or really even modified by the subsequent discussion of their reasons. But Rabbi Akiva has the last word, and from a Talmudic perspective it makes sense: anything that can be done on the eve of Shabbat cannot supersede Shabbat, but that which could not be done then may be done on Shabbat. In other words, forgetting or being lazy is no excuse to break Shabbat!

A major part of this survey concerns the initial topic of the Mishnah passage – circumcision and Shabbat. The debate here is not whether one may circumcise on Shabbat or not, but rather whether one may do work on Shabbat to prepare the circumcisions “preliminaries” (i.e. its tools) as well. And how does everyone agree that circumcision supersedes Shabbat? The Talmud’s initial answer: halakha – it’s just the law. The medieval commentator Rashi uses the expanded formula of halakha l’moshe mi’sinai – it is a law from Moses on Sinai. In other words, this practice goes so far back that no can remember it ever being different, so that’s the way it is. There is much further discussion trying to find Scriptural connections for the rule, but in the end we know what the conclusion will be. Even the more interesting philosophical debate of whether or not one may save a life on Shabbat is derived from this question – if circumcision, which affects only part of a man, supersedes Shabbat, kal va’khomer [how much more so] saving the entire person.

Anthropologically, circumcision has been an important part of Jewish civilization for a long time, claiming mythological origins with Abraham but historically part of the culture of that part of the Middle East. It assumed greater importance during the clash with Hellenistic culture, which abhorred what it considered to be bodily mutilation, and by the time the Mishnah and Talmud were written it was the major baby welcoming ritual in Jewish life (there was a minimal ceremony for girls, but we have already seen plenty of other evidence of Talmudic patriarchy). This section of the Talmud provides a wealth of information on the rabbinic approach to this ritual in this period – by detailing the essentials that could be performed on Shabbat, we can learn what the general procedure was. The child would have the foreskin removed, the head of the penis uncovered, the wound would be sucked (to remove excess blood), and a compress with cumin would be placed on the wound. He would be washed both before and after the circumcision, and on the third day after as well.

We also learn some interesting details about infant care in general – Abaye has a series of sayings amra li ima “Mother told me”. If the baby doesn’t suck, its lips are cold so warm them up with a hot coal; if it doesn’t breathe, fan it with a fan or rub the placenta on it. And if a child is too red, its blood has not yet been absorbed; if too “green,” it is lacking blood. In either case, circumcision should be delayed until the child is healthier. And according to rabbinic law, circumcision could only supersede a major festival or Shabbat when being performed on the prescribed eighth day after birth, but not if delayed because of illness, because the baby’s survival is in doubt because of premature birth, or if it is hermaphroditic to a different day.

And what of the rare case of a child “born circumcised?” It is agreed that for that case, the foreskin has been suppressed and a ceremonial hatafat dam brit [drawing a few drops of covenant blood] is required. Whether Shabbat be superseded to do so is the point of debate. And for a convert who is already circumcised before his conversion, there is also a disagreement – Beit Hillel [the house of Hillel] would exempt him, but Beit Shammai would not. We can also read here about the requirements for circumcising slaves as they are acquired, or if they are born into a Jewish household based on the rules for circumcision described in Genesis 17.

In the end, what is our reaction to these discussions of circumcision for adults, infants and slaves, other than crossing our legs? We may be surprised by the imposition of circumcision on slaves (a barrier to Jews buying European slaves in the Middle Ages, by the way, since conversion to Judaism from Christianity was very dangerous), and the medical procedures for infant care and circumcision may seem quaint at best. But the institution of circumcision itself, as the Talmud itself concedes, is so far back in cultural memory that its practice is as deeply rooted in Jewish life as any one can imagine. As for the ethics of the ritual, that is not the Talmud’s concern.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

For more information on issues concerning circumcision, you can read the statement on Brit Milah of the Leadership Conference of Secular and Humanistic Jews at http://www.lcshj.org/circum.html.

Shabbat 130 - Accepting Mitzvot

2005-09-09T18:55:00.000-07:00

Rabbinic law is based on the obligation of origins – since your ancestors accepted these rules, you are obligated to follow them. We can sympathize with this approach to a limited extent –national constitutions are not re-authorized every 10 years but continue their authority based on the tacit acceptance of inheritance. The major difference between these two cases is the question of historicity – it is in recorded history with much evidence that the American Constitution was signed, while the only ancient source for the Torah’s authority is the Torah itself! But just as contemporary scholars investigate the “framers’ intent,” so too did the Talmud’s Rabbis believe that how mitzvot [commandments] were accepted in earlier generations set the tone for later generations.

In today’s page, we find interesting insights into the relative importance of certain mitzvot based on their historical experience. Rabbi Shimon ben Eleazar suggests that actions for which Jews had died as martyrs based on the decrees of non-Jewish governments (e.g. the Hellenistic king Antiochus or the Roman emperor Caligula) are taken more seriously. If previous generations died rather than worship idols and insisted on pain of death on circumcising their male babies, these traditions “remain strong in their hands” [adayin hee mukhazeket b’yadam]. On the other hand, mitzvot like tefillin [prayer boxes] that were not the source of martyrdom are “weak in their hands.” And this is reflected even in modern-day Jewish experience – circumcising male children and not bowing to idols or converting to other religions continues in great numbers among very secularized Jews in America and Israel, but tefillin use has certainly declined!

Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel, from an earlier generation, goes even further back in “history” to the original reception of the mitzvot – those accepted in joy, like circumcision, are still performed in joy; but those accepted with unhappiness like rules of permitted marriage (see Leviticus 18) are still the source of misery. As this rabbi put it, delikha ketubah d’lo rimu ba tigra – there is no marriage agreement in which they do not have a dispute! As someone who performs marriage every year, this tradition has definitely been continued.

We also see on this page that what we think of today as “the tradition” was not always so – while today chicken is considered meat for kashrut [kosher] rules to separate milk and meat, it was not universally thought so, even among the Rabbis. Rabbi Jose the Galilean had ruled that since the rule in Deuteronomy 14 said to not boil a kid in its mother’s milk, and chickens do not produce milk, then they were not included in the rule. Thus in his district they ate milk with fowl! A traditionalist would say that the intervening centuries of rabbinic practice impose their own authority, but the cultural historian can point out that what was later is not necessarily what always was.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Shabbat 126-129 (Sept. 5-8)

2005-09-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

One always finds one’s enthusiasm for Talmudic ethics that resonate with a modern sensibility tempered by subsequent jarring passages. We read in a Mishnah text that one is allowed to move four or five baskets of straw or produce (but not the entire supply) to make room for guests or for students in the Beit Hamidrash [house of study], and in the Talmudic discussion as we shall see, it is an opening for a wonderful collection of sayings and traditions about hospitality. But before that we find detailed discussions of why the Mishnah says “four or five,” if four would be included if you allowed five? And why not the entire supply? Because you might be tempted to smooth out the depression left in the floor! And which is the bigger concern, carrying a heavier burden with fewer trips (thus minimizing the walking) or carrying lighter loads which would require more walking? All agree on less walking.

More interesting to us is the initial impulse – that one may behave specially, creating more space, for guests and for the Beit Midrash. Having juxtaposed the two, rabbis debate whether hakhnasat orkhim [welcoming guests/hospitality] is as great, or even greater, than attending or even being early to the Beit Midrash. And Rab Judah even goes so far as to claim that welcoming (human) guests is greater than receiving the face of the Divine Presence [shekhina]! They also list a number of ethical actions that are described as “a man eats the fruit of them in this world, and the core remains for him in the world to come” – while they meant that there would be a cosmic reward for them in the afterlife, in our vocabulary we might say, “they are their own reward.” These include hospitality, visiting the sick, early attendance at the Beit Midrash, and teaching one’s children to study. Others remember different actions described with the same phrase, including honoring one’s parents, gmilut hasadim [acts of loving-kindness], making peace between a person and his fellow, and above all studying Torah. We are struck by the prevalence of human-focused ethics and behavior, and if we think of “study Torah” as “study wisdom” as WE understand it, there is even more inspirational material here.

One of these principles, ha-dan et khavero l’kaf z’khut -“judging one’s neighbor by the standard of merit” – is explained by a few stories on page 127b. A man from upper Galilee traveled far away to work for another, and before Yom Kippur he wanted to go home to his family and asked for his wages. The employer said he could not pay him, neither in money or produce nor livestock nor material goods. So the employee went home upset (understandably). After the holiday the employer brought three fully-laden donkeys to the employee’s home in Galilee to pay him, and he asked what the employee thought. At every turn, the employee gave him the benefit of the doubt, or “judged him by the standard of merit” – assumed that there was a legitimate reason that his money or his livestock or his produce were tied up and unavailable. And so it was. The principle even applies to rabbis – when Rabbi Joshua went to a Roman noblewoman’s house, took off his tefillin [prayer boxes] four cubits away, went in and shut the door, then immediately upon leaving went to the mikvah [ritual purification bath], his students could have suspected him of sexual impropriety, but they again, as we say, “gave him the benefit of the doubt” and were praised. In our own cynical times, the importance of trust and optimism are worth reinforcing.

These discussion are much more interesting to our mind than the fact that salted meat may be moved on Shabbat but there is a debate about unsalted meat, or alternatively salted fish may be moved but not unsalted fish while both kinds of meat are allowed, and duck meat is fine because for the rabbis it was edible raw. It is cute that one may make calves or foals walk, and a mother is allowed to make her child walk, even in public, as long as he/she can lift up and put down her feet rather than drag them (or be dragged). And while one may not actively work on an animal in labor, one may assist by catching the newborn on the way out. For human beings, fortunately, a woman in labor can be delivered, one may run to fetch a midwife from a distance, one may break Shabbat to light her a lamp or carry oil from a neighboring house, the umbilical cord may be cut, and if the eighth day after a boy’s birth is Shabbat he may be circumcised. A clear principle in Rabbinic Judaism, reaffirmed here, is that sometimes life takes precedence over Shabbat – as one rabbi said, “where [a matter of] life is in doubt we are lenient.” For us our freedom is our life, and so we are "lenient" on more than only matters of life and death.

This opens up an anthropologically fascinating discussion of medical treatments for both women in labor and general invalids, since both may have Shabbat rules broken for them. The Talmudic rabbis were clearly subscribers to the theory that bloodletting was good for the health, even if a complete theory of bodily humors is not articulated. Some recommend eating meat before a bloodletting (life for life), while others suggest wine (red for red). They do suggest eating substantially, especially afterwards, an after-care treatment that makes logical sense to me even if the bloodletting itself doesn’t. And one should wait awhile before getting up, because one is closer to death than life if one gets up too quickly from: bloodletting, sleeping, eating, drinking and sex. You can let blood every 30 days, preferably on Sunday, Wednesday or Friday, but not if the Wednesday is the 4th, 14th, or 24th of the month because that could cause weakness or be dangerous. And Tuesdays are out because Mars [Ma’adim, from the root for “red” adom] rules the even hours, and it would be dangerous to bleed when the Red Planet is out. . .

For my tastes, the ethics are still very interesting, but the medicine has long since been left behind.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – Shabbat 121-125 (August 31-Sept. 4)

2005-09-04T13:06:00.000-07:00

In all of the previous discussion of saving objects from a fire on Shabbat, we have not clarified the rabbinic reason behind ANY action that otherwise might have been forbidden. One is NOT authorized to carry away from a fire a tool that otherwise could not be handled on Shabbat because it is important to save the tool, as we might think. In fact, one may save certain kinds of property from a fire because a person might become agitated seeing the fire and put it out in order to save his property. And THAT would violate the Shabbat restriction on kindling or extinguishing a fire, so lest one violate that Shabbat prohibition, certain items might be saved from a fire. And if a child moves on impulse to put out the fire, they should be restrained because their observance of Shabbat is our obligation. While we might say that allowing a fire to burn unchecked is more of a problem than breaking Shabbat restrictions, the Talmud thought differently.

But an idea comes instantly to mind – what if a non-Jewish person [nokhri] could put out the fire? After all, as a Mishnah passage cited on Shabbat 121a mentions, “his resting is not our concern” [ayn sh’vitato aleyhen]. The Mishnah claims that we shouldn’t tell him to put it out or not, but the Talmud’s Rabbis offer a solution: one may announce in his hearing “kol ha’m’khabeh lo mafsid – whoever extinguishes will not lose (financially).” You can’t tell him to work, you can’t tell him not to work, but this language may follow the letter of the rule while allowing the problem to be solved.

Those familiar with the functioning of the Shabbes Goy (the Shabbat non-Jew) would expect that this would be the opening to allowing non-Jews to do all kinds of work for Jews, but in fact the Mishnah and Talmud in Shabbat 122a-b restrict it instead: As the Mishnah states clearly, if a non-Jew lights a lamp, draws water for his animal, or makes a ramp to descend from a ship for himself, a Jewish person may use it after him; but if he did any of those bishvil yisrael – expressly for the Jewish person – it is forbidden for the Jew to use them. And the Talmud adds: gathering fodder to feed animals, or using a bath immediately after the Sabbath in a town where the majority are Jews; if the majority are non-Jews, one can assume that the water was heated intended for their use instead. The light in particular is a classic example of what the proverbial Shabbes goy would do for a Jew, as long as the Jew asked obliquely like “if someone lit the lamp, they wouldn’t lose by doing so.” So while the original sources in Mishnah and Talmud would seem to have limited such a maneuver to emergencies (like a fire) as too clear of a violation of the spirit of the rules, later generations evidently felt more flexible to bend the rule even further.

The other major discussion in these pages concerns the handling of tools – may one handle them if their usual purpose would be forbidden, even if your intent is to use it for a permitted purpose? Well, yes and no. A blacksmith’s hammer can’t be used for crushing nuts (while a nut hammer can), but a needle may be used remove a thorn, even if it is a needle with an eye that could be used for sewing; as one Rabbi says, “what does it matter to the thorn if it has an eye or not?” In other words, that’s not the “business end” of the needle for this scenario! In fact, eventually just about all tools were allowed to be handled, as long as it wasn’t just moving a tool for a Shabbat-forbidden use just to use the space where it had been lying. As Abaye describes the process, first they allowed tools whose usual function was allowed if you were moving it to use it, then they allowed you to move those tools even if you only needed the space, then even to handle a tool generally for a Shabbat-forbidden use as long as you were using it. And at first one could only use one hand, but later even two hands were allowed. Raba adds that they added the intermediate step of allowing one to move an object from the sun to the shade before opening the door to moving even forbidden objects if one needed their place, and then allowing two people to move objects until finally they capitulated and said, “kol ha-kelim nitalin ba-shabbat - all tools may be handled on Shabbat”. There is plenty more discussion of this subject on these Talmud pages, like who allows what kind of objects to be moved for what purposes, but my guess is that that is enough of this subject for OUR purposes.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Survey – 117-120 (August 27-30)

2005-08-31T17:06:00.000-07:00

One of the more complicated situations for the Jew striving to live by the Talmud is what to do in case of a fire on Shabbat – what is one allowed to save from the fire, to where one must take it if carrying an object beyond private space (see the discussion at the beginning of tractate Shabbat), and what one must leave behind. The Mishnah text cited on a previous page claims one may save certain objects only into a closed alley but not an open one, which demands Talmudic clarification of what counts as each. An alley is defined by 3 walls (i.e. a cul-de-sac between two buildings), and it is called closed or open depending on the number of stakes at the open end, or if there are stakes at all. While we might assume that there would be one standard for what constitutes each, it turns out that the standard differs – to save a sefer Torah [Torah scroll], one stake at the open end would be enough, but two would be required to save food.

How much food may one save? Again, it depends – this time on the time of day. The Talmud clarifies the Rabbis ordained that one should eat three meals during Shabbat based on the number of times the word hayom [today] appears in Moses describing Sabbath rules for eating mannah in Exodus 16:25. By the way, from the same chapter in Exodus and its explanation on this same Talmud page comes the Jewish tradition of two loaves for Shabbat evening. So how much food to save? On Shabbat evening, one can save three meals’ worth – so as to have the three prescribed meals. On Shabbat morning, one may only save two, and so on. And if one has saved some food either for that Shabbat or for the following week, one should not appeal from charity relief for either – we are sociologically intrigued to learn that there are two separate charity funds for different needs, as well as communal charity to support poor travelers with both food and lodging, though these charities are described in more detail in tractate Pe’ah.

From this discussion, the Talmud branches off into a long creative collection of sayings and stories about Shabbat – its beauty, its holiness, and its importance. It begins with one Rabbi speculating why three meals? To save from three calamities: the difficulties before the Messiah, purgatory, and the “wars of Gog and Magog.” But saying after saying follows about the beauty of Shabbat. A sampling from pages 118-119 follows:

- R. Johanan said in R. Jose's name: He who delights in the Sabbath is given an unbounded heritage.

- R. Hiyya b. Abba said in R. Johanan's name: He who observes the Sabbath according to its laws, even if he practices idolatry like the generation of Enosh, is forgiven.

- R. Johanan said in the name of R. Simeon b. Yohai: If Israel were to keep two Sabbaths according to the laws thereof, they would be redeemed immediately – incidentally, this is one of the sayings that inspires the modern Chabad movement to encourage so-called “non-observant” Jews to at least light Shabbat candles.

- R. Hanina robed himself and stood at sunset of Sabbath eve [and] exclaimed, ‘Come and let us go forth to welcome the queen Sabbath.’ R. Jannai donned his robes, on Sabbath eve and exclaimed, ‘Come, O bride, Come, O bride!’ – two early expressions of metaphors for the Sabbath as queen and bride that are very important in later Jewish songs.

- It was taught, R. Jose son of R. Judah said: Two ministering angels [malkhay ha-sharet] accompany man on the eve of the Sabbath from the synagogue to his home, one a good [angel] and one an evil [one]. And when he arrives home and finds the lamp burning, the table laid and the couch [bed] covered with a spread, the good angel exclaims, ‘May it be even thus on another Sabbath [too],’ and the evil angel unwillingly responds ‘amen’. But if not, the evil angel exclaims, ‘May it be even thus on another Sabbath [too],’ and the good angel unwillingly responds, ‘amen’. - This Talmud text may well be the source for the malkhay ha-sharet imagined in the traditional Shabbat melody Shalom Aleikhem.

- Abaye said: Jerusalem was destroyed only because the Sabbath was desecrated therein.

- Resh Lakish said in the name of R. Judah the Prince: The world endures only for the sake of the breath of school children. Said R. Papa to Abaye, What about mine and yours? Breath in which there is sin is not like breath in which there is no sin, replied he. Resh Lakish also said in the name of R. Judah the Prince: School children may not be made to neglect [their studies] even for the building of the Temple.

Mixed in with these statements on Shabbat we also see statements on other topics by Rabbi Jose, hoping that his portion [khelki] will be like those who eat three meals on Shabbat or die of bowel trouble or are suspected while innocent – all righteous people anticipating a divine reward. They also include his claims to have never looked at his circumcised penis, to have had sex (only) five times and fathered five sons, to have always believed what his neighbors told him, and to have never in his life retracted anything he said. It’s almost as if the editors said to themselves, “well, we just had a saying by Rabbi Jose on Shabbat, so let’s just put the rest of his sayings in here.” And after Abaye’s statement on Jerusalem, we get authorities with other reasons why Jerusalem was destroyed – for not reciting the Shema, for neglecting to educate school children or despising scholars, for not being ashamed of or rebuking each other for their sins, and so on. In other words, in your own life you had better do these things or else . . . for you!

And from these ethical and philosophical peaks we return on page 120 to the details of what can and cannot be saved from a fire on Shabbat. Much better to end our discussion with “the world endures only for the sake of the breath of school children.”

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation