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

Shabbat 101-105 Survey (August 11-15)

2005-08-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

As we have seen on earlier pages, intent is an important component of the rabbinic understanding of Shabbat violations – unawareness of breaking a rule can mitigate its violation, unlike the modern aphorism that “ignorance of the law is no excuse.” But what if you remember that what you are doing is prohibited in the midst of an action, or in this case after something you’ve thrown has already left your hand? In a Mishnah passage dissected on these pages we see a general rule that one is liable for a sin offering involving throwing something on Shabbat only if the entire action was while ignorant – if the beginning of the action was intended [sh’gaga] but its end unwilling, or vice versa, one is not culpable.

What do they mean? In this Mishnah text, the example comes before the general rule - if you throw an object and then remember that it’s Shabbat, and then a person or a dog catches it, then no violation occurs. The Talmud goes even further – what if you throw it and it travels two cubits unwillingly (you don’t remember it’s Shabbat), then two cubits willingly (you remember), and then two cubits unwillingly (you forget again!)? The point of this example is probably not to imagine what to do is such a scenario, which is highly unlikely, but rather how to understand the general rule. Today some legal scholars believe that hard cases make bad law, but in this period the general understanding was that difficult cases clarify the intricacies of legal complexities. And we also discover that while a dog catching the object can absolve you, that doesn’t count if you were aiming for the dog to catch it – in other words, no Frisbee exceptions!

Unlike cases of throwing, where intention matters, or carrying, where distance and how it’s carried matter, in the case of “building,” any little amount of chiseleing or drilling a hole count as prohibited work [m’lakha]. Yet again we find a general principle [k’lal]: whoever does m’lakha on Shabbat and it lasts – like building a wall or drilling a hole – is liable. And in the Talmudic discussion that follows, we see more examples clarifying the boundaries of rules – is a chilseler, or one who puts a ventilation hole in a henhouse, liable because of “building” or because of “beating with a hammer?” Predictably, the rivals Rav and Shmuel take opposite sides of each case. And again and again the categories of work prohibited by the Mishnah without any Scriptural reference are tied back to the Torah’s description of building the mishkan [tabernacle] during the 40 years wandering in the desert.

Unlike “building,” in the case of agricultural work like “ploughing” or “weeding,” there are two standards – if one is doing so to improve the object or field itself, any little amount is prohibited, but if instead one is gathering fuel or animal fodder small amounts (enough to boil an egg or a baby goat’s mouthful) are permitted. And in “writing,” two letters are enough for culpability, whether they are written with two different hands or in two inks or in two alphabets or even two of the same letter. However, if they are written with something impermanent like road dust, or on two separate pages of a book that cannot be read together, then it is permissible. Note, however, that writing only one letter that finishes a book is a no-no. There is some debate, however, whether one letter that is intended as an abbreviation counts as writing. . .

But this innocent mention of writing is a marvelous opening for tangential intellectual creativity on the subject of the Hebrew alphabet and its written forms (you can see a Hebrew Aleph-Bet at http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm if you are not familiar). Modern scholars of what is called “secondary criticism” focus on the small differences between Hebrew letters that look or sound similar and may have been interchanged in generations of hand-copying Hebrew texts like the Torah and Bible. Here, the Rabbis also recognize common mistakes and warn that in a Holy text, one must not write:

“alef as an ‘ayyin, the ‘ayyin as an alef, the beth as a kaf, or the kaf as a beth, the gimmel as a zadde or the zadde as a gimmel, the daleth as a resh or the resh as a daleth, the heh as a heth or the heth as a heh, the waw as a yod or the yod as a waw, the zayyin as a nun or the nun as a zayyin, the teth as a pe or the pe as a teth, bent letters straight or straight letters bent [e.g. final khaf], the mem as a samek or the samek as a mem, closed [letters] open or open letters closed [e.g. final mem].”

And any volume with just such a mistake must be hidden away [nigneza] in a geniza and not used in public. In other words, the rabbis make a catalog of precisely the kinds of scribal errors that modern scholars use to date and evaluate ancient texts and their transmission, because of course scribal errors of just this kind happen all the time.

The most interesting passage in this Talmud section, however, I have saved for the last. The best teachers learn from their students, and Rabbi Joshua ben Levi learned from his Rabbis that “children have come to the beit ha-midrash [house of study] and said things such as have not been said even in the days of Joshua (i.e. right after the legendary revelation on Mount Sinai).” And an entire series of playful explanations for the order of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet follows – why Aleph, then Bet? First, learn wisdom (Aleph (#1), Binah). Why Gimmel Daled? Show kindness to the poor [gemol dalim]. And they even imagine why the letters look the way they do!
Why does the foot of the Gimmel reach out? Because the generous should reach out to the poor. Some of their explanations are very pious – the straightened Tsadee follows the bent one because the bent righteous person [tsaddik] will be made upright in the future – but others are simply ethical. Why Samekh-Ayin? Semakh ani’im – support the poor. Historically, the Aleph-Bet’s development is a matter for some debate – in fact, a recent archaeological discovery from the 10th century BCE indicates that the exact letter order was uncertain early in its development. But this child-game remnant is a wonderful alternative way to understand the Hebrew Aleph-Bet as well.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

For Further Reading:

If you look up a Hebrew alphabet, for example, at http://www.jewfaq.org/alephbet.htm, you’ll see how easy the scribal mistakes describe above could be.

You can also read more about the recent abecedary discovery at http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/09/news/alpha.php or other news sites.

Shabbat 96-100 Survey (August 6-10)

2005-08-29T12:01:00.000-07:00

Note – catching up for ‘blog paternity leave’

Rabbinic legal discussions often turn back to the Torah for both foundational legal texts and for narrative examples – if the original or rabbinically-articulated law is not clear, perhaps a story from the time of the holy writing can illuminate the question. Thus as they continue debate carrying objects across boundaries between private and public space on Shabbat, Rabbi Judah claims that the gatherer of sticks on Shabbat who is stoned to death by divine decree in Numbers 15 must have committed such a violation. From an historical perspective, we would argue that the very rabbinic concept and prohibition of “carrying from private to public” comes centuries after the purported Exodus narrative and this story, but for the Talmud’s Rabbis what is true in their day always was true in Jewish life.

In Shabbat 96b, Rabbi Akiva goes even one step further with the story of the stick gatherer. Where characters in the Torah have no names of their own (e.g. the wife of Lot in Genesis 19), Rabbinic midrash [creative interpretation] will fill them in. In fact, in many cases they try to tie up two loose ends at once – connecting a character without a name to a character whose name is known but whose actions are not. Thus Akiva speculates that the sick gatherer was in fact Zelophehad, a man who died for an unknown sin and who is more famous for his daughters’ assertion in Numbers 27 that in the absence of sons they should have the right to inherit.

But Akiva is berated for his statement by Rabbi Judah ben Bathyra, who says that “either way you have to account for what you’ve said.” If Akiva is right and it was Zelophehad, the Torah had covered up his identity to preserve his reputation, and Akiva has publicly “outed” him. If Akiva is wrong and it wasn’t Zelophehad, then Akiva has smeared the reputation of an innocent man. And in their disapproval of suspecting the innocent, the Talmud’s rabbis could have taught Senator Joseph McCarthy something important. Today we might also learn something interesting about the story of the Shabbat stick gatherer from a re-visioning of the story by the Hebrew writer David Frischmann, whose Bamidbar: Ma’asiyot Bibli’im, sipurim v’agadot [In the Wilderness: Biblical tales, stories and legends] includes a retelling of the story from the perspective of the gatherer!

Much of the rest of this section of tractate Shabbat explores the building and transporting of the holy Tabernacle during the Exodus period as a model for contemporary Shabbat restrictions. I always find it interesting that so much energy in the Talmud is devoted to the details of something like the Tabernacle that historically was probably never built and certainly was of little daily importance to the Jews who created the Talmud. Why worry about it? One possible answer is that while they could not control much of their life as minorities in exile, they could spend their time instead imagining a period when they could, and what they would have done. At times, however, their imagination failed them – when asked to explain how a beam of wood was on three walls simultaneously, the answer is “nes – a miracle.”

There is also a repeat of Shabbat 7 on Shabbat 99, and a discussion that could have been predicted; if previous discussions covered how far one could carry an object on Shabbat, or throwing an object from private to public space, or from one private space to another through public space (as from one balcony to another), then of course Shabbat 100 can ask: “what if one throws an object less than 4 cubits and it rolls past the 4 cubit line?” With that conundrum, we’ll end this survey of Talmud pages for today.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
Kol Hadash Humanistic Congregation

Shabbat 92-95 Survey (August 2-5)

2005-08-28T16:52:00.000-07:00

Who would have guess that HOW one carries an object out on Shabbat would make a difference? It turns out that the point is to avoid carrying out as people generally carry out – as the Mishnah on Shabbat 92 explains, carrying in either hand or on a shoulder is a violation, but carrying something with your foot or in your mouth or on your elbow or in your ear is not a violation. There is some debate about carrying out on your head, as this is the custom in some places (as we know today from National Geographic), but not in others. The general point is that one’s behavior on Shabbat should be very different from every day, and we can see to sides to this – on one hand, it’s good to get out of the ordinary to create moments of pause and difference, but on the other one should not be so pre-occupied with the different day and its different behaviors that that time becomes more worry than rest.

Thus on Shabbat 94b, one is not allowed to pluck out more than one hair, but pulling out the grey ones from among black ones is prohibited entirely – and not just on Shabbat, but on every day, since it is connected with the Torah prohibition of men wearing women’s clothing! The commentator mentions that it is in the pursuit of attractiveness to the point of effeminacy – no “metro-sexuals” wanted here, evidently. I remember once reading a medieval Spanish Hebrew poem (that I can’t put my hands on now) to the effect that you can pluck one grey hair, but it laughs at you because its reinforcements will eventually arrive to overwhelm you. And that is certainly true.

Some of these pages concern again permissible quantities and contexts for carrying out – using a utensil to carry out a material, or a bed to carry out a person, is not considered a separate violation because the tools are part of the important item (or individual) being carried out. However, make sure to avoid carrying out something k’zayit [the size of an olive] from a corpse or a vermin, since that’s a violation! But later generations allow a corpse to be carried out for a burial, drawing on a saying we saw cited on earlier pages – that human dignity is so great that it can supersede a negative Torah commandment; in this case, as Rashi points out, it’s a Rabbinic enactment regarding “carrying,” but remember that the Rabbis are not overly modest when it comes to projecting their authority and rulings back in time as “Torah.” Today we might say that human dignity and individual choice make commandments into suggestions, but that’s our voice, not the Talmud’s.

Shabbat 116 Sectarians and their Writings

2005-08-26T07:16:00.000-07:00

In its discussion of what counts as Holy Scripture worthy of saving from a fire on Shabbat, the Talmud turns to consider the Minim [sectarians] and their writings. Minim is a catch-all term for Sadducees, Samaritans, or Jewish Christians, though as we’ll see today’s page may well be referring to the last group. The difficulty we face in Talmud study today is that over the centuries the original text of the Talmud was censored in Christian lands to remove the most anti-Christian passages – both for self-preservation by the Jews themselves and by converts who pointed out the problematic passages to Church authorities. For example, an unedited text of this page includes mocking of the Gospels as the sin or the falsehood of blank paper – indeed, this entire discussion was sparked by the question of whether the blank spaces from accepted Jewish holy writings could be saved from a fire on Shabbat, so the comparison is insulting to Christians but makes sense in context.

Why such animosity? After all, these people come from a Jewish background, today would be called a “Jewish sect”, and use Jewish scriptures and language as part of their religious life – so are their books worth saving? Exactly the opposite: Rabbi Yose says that on weekdays he cuts out the holy names from their books, puts those scraps into a geniza, and burns the rest of the books. And Rabbi Tarfon vows to bury his son if he doesn’t burn them together with the divine names in them! If he was being pursued by a murderer, he would rather take refuge in a pagan Temple than in their buildings: they know better and still sin.

So when Rabbi Gamliel’s sister, Imma Shalom [mother of peace], goes to visit a "philosopha," she tries to trick him by asking to inherit with her brother against Torah law - if there is a living son, the daughter gets nothing. The philosopha allows her to divide it, and Rabban Gamliel points out his “error.” The response: “since you have been exiled, the oraita d’moshe [Moses’ Scripture] has been replaced by a new law that says son and daughter inherit equally.” But the next day, Rabban Gamliel comes again, and one of them says, “Look in the book, where it says ‘I did not come to destroy the oraita d’moshe nor to add to it,’ and in Moses’ law it says where there is a son the daughter does not inherit.” Unfortunately the context is not clear as to which of them says it, but it is an almost exact quotation of Matthew 5:17 from the New Testament. Striking that it appears here, even more striking if it was Rabban Gamliel who was able to cite it – meaning he had read the book! Perhaps he agreed that to read a book does not make one an adherent – I am no more a Christian for having read the New Testament than I am an Orthodox Jew for having read the Talmud.
Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 115 When to Save the Scriptures?

2005-08-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

There is a major exception to the rules concerning carrying on Shabbat – the saving of holy writings from destruction by fire. The Mishnah text under discussion today makes very clear that kitve ha-kodesh [the holy writings] may be saved from a fire, whether they are read or not. Parts of the holy writings Bible not read? As the Talmud goes on to explain, while the Torah and selections from the Prophets (readings called haftarot) are regularly read, the ketuvim [writings] part of the Bible are not. Selections from Psalms and the five scrolls (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther) became part of rabbinic liturgy, even if only once a year. But Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Chronicles and other books were defined as holy but did not become part of regular religious reading.

Interestingly, the Mishnah says that “even if they are written in any other language,” when worn out they should be hidden away in a geniza [see our discussion on Shabbat 90] – more confirmation that there were Biblical translations in use among Jews in this period. Many have heard of Targum [into Aramaic] and of the Septuagint [into Greek], but our page also mentions Egyptian, Median, and Elamite – interestingly, one is not allowed to read any of them but the Targum, even though ! There is a debate between Rabbi Huna and Rabbi Hisda as to whether Biblical translations can be saved from a fire – are they THAT holy? The question is not finally resolved, but it is comforting to know that even in Rabbinic times many needed to resort to a translation to understand the Bible.

Kitve ha-kodesh were clearly on another level from other writing involving the divine name – blessings that have been written down and amulets, even though they include God’s name and passages from the Scriptures, should not be saved from a fire. And a scroll that has become so worn out that one cannot find 85 legible letters in it may no longer be saved – who has the time to count in a burning synagogue, I don’t know. And though we would love more information on HOW those translations that may or may not be saved from a fire on Shabbat were used in those days, the Talmud is not a history book.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 114 The Status of a Scholar

2005-08-24T07:13:00.000-07:00

For all of the serious and problematic limitations to the Rabbinic intellectual enterprise, from its restriction to men and its pious limitations on range of acceptable questions and answers to its ahistorical view of the past, it should be noted that the emphasis on learning, scholarship and wisdom is an improvement over previous forms of Jewish governance. Kings are kings and Priests are priests because of their birth or their skill at power machinations and not because of any redeeming qualities or useful skills they possess. Scholars, at least, must learn and study and can potentially (like Rabbi Akiva) rise from any family background to lead communities.

Because of this, the status of a scholar is an important consideration for the Talmud (also, the people writing and reading the Talmud were “scholars” and it was in their own self-interest!). The very phrase for “scholar”, talmid khakham, literally means “wise student,” showing the connection between learning and teaching. This same connection is highlighted by several teachings in today’s daf: the scholar is the one who can answer a question of halakha from any place; the scholar who only knows one masekhta [tractate] may lead his own city, but one who knows the whole field of learning may serve b’resh metivta – as the head of an academy. In other words, the most learned are those who serve as teachers, and they also lead communities.

An interesting question in Jewish history, and in the Talmud as well, is how much status to give rabbis – for example, should a community provide the Rabbi a living, or should they also have a profession? Almost all rabbis in Talmudic times had professions, but there were also cases envisioned by Rabbi Yokhanan – one who puts aside his own interests in favor of khafatsei shamayim [the interests of heaven] should be supported by the community, but only his basic needs. Today, of course, where being a Rabbi is a trained and generally adequately-compensated profession, such minimal support would be difficult to sell.

But Rabbis today would also understand the sentiment behind Rabbi Yokhanan’s saying that it is a disgrace for a scholar to go out with patches on his shoes. In other words, you can tell the values of a community by how it treats what it claims to value most. If one person says they love all Jews but constantly complains that they don’t follow what that person believes is the only way to be Jewish, how sincere is that original claim? If the scholar is the leader of the community, then treat them well.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 113 Everything Changes on Shabbat

2005-08-23T07:25:00.000-07:00

We who live with closets full of clothes have a hard time imagining what it would be like to only have one garment to wear. Period – work, leisure, rest, you name it wearing the same clothing. But when Rabbi Huna says that IF one has a change (of clothing), he should change for Shabbat, that “if” is another example of how far from our experience the life of Rabbi Huna’s contemporaries was that he had to consider that possibility. And if one does not have a change? Rabbi Huna recommends even wearing that one garment differently.

For everything is different on Shabbat – drawing on a verse in Isaiah, the Talmud’s rabbis derive many traditions of how to act on Shabbat. Isaiah 58:13 reads “If you restrain your foot because of the sabbath, from pursuing your business on my holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy day of the Lord honorable; and shall honor it, not doing your own ways, nor pursuing your own business, nor speaking of vain matters,” and verse 14 promises rewards for this observance. But each clause in verse 13 becomes a rabbinic way to distinguish Shabbat.

“honor it” = wear different garments
“not doing your own ways” = your walking [hilukhekha - from the same root as halakha] should be different.
“nor pursuing your own business” = your business is prohibited, Heavenly business is permitted.
“nor speaking of vain matters/your words” = your words on Shabbat should not be like your speech during secular [khol] time. Or you can think about ordinary matters but should speak of them. Incidentally, some Jews historically spoke only Hebrew on Shabbat and their vernacular during the week to fulfill this interpretation.

So what does it mean that your walking should be different? One tradition would have prohibited crossing a stream that can’t be crossed without keeping the back foot on the ground until the lead foot touches the other side, but the resulting extra walking to get around a larger stream is even more work and wading through it might tempt one to wring out their clothes, so the ideal remains but a jump is permitted.

For the modern non-halakhic Jew, distinguishing Shabbat time from other time has taken on less significance, and is a less rigid and ritualistic observance. Nevertheless, the idea of special time, however we observe and use it, can be very useful – as one example, try vacationing without reading a newspaper, or checking your email and phone messages. Then your time really becomes your own.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 112 A Mensch Lower than Donkeys

2005-08-22T07:24:00.000-07:00

One of the implicit principles in many strict religious traditions is the decline in generations – one might also call it “de-volution.” The founders were, of course, more holy than their heirs, and their direct heirs were more holy than more remote inheritors, and our teachers were of course better than we are today. And things will probably only get worse from here forward. We’ve seen examples of this in how the statements of the Mishnah are treated by the Talmud’s rabbis as a new kind of sacred teaching, and how the earlier generation of amoraim are more authoritative than the later tannaim.

In today’s page, while trying to resolve the question of what to do with a sandal strap that happens to snap on Shabbat, one rabbi comes up with an innovative solution to the status of a repaired sandal that breaks again. And another exclaims, “This one is not human [Aramaic bar enash]!” to be so inventive. But others interject – he is indeed human, a paragon of humanity. The Hebrew translation for a generic human is ben adam [literally “son of Adam”], and a Yiddish equivalent which has made its way into English is mensch. But a mensch is more than a person – it is what the others interjected, the highest kind of person one can be.

Nevertheless, for the devolutionist perspective of traditional rabbinic perspective, the best of today cannot hope to equal what was in centuries before. As Raba ben Zimuna said, “if the rishonim [first (scholars)] were sons of angels, we are sons of people. If they were sons of people, we are donkeys.” And not like the saintly donkeys of Rabbi Pinkhas ben Ya’ir (which refused to eat untithed grain) or Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa (which would deliver its wage back to its master, but only if the amount were exactly correct, no more and no less) – we are like all the rest of the donkeys!

I much prefer to think of the people of the past as people, no more and no less. We may be wiser in many areas of life than they were, and they experienced the natural world very differently and more immediately than we do today – I’m sure that the stars were brighter at night than in our cities and suburbs. What does that make us if they were people? Simply people too.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Note: The Soncino Talmud translation renders “donkeys” as “asses,” but I restrained myself. . .

Shabbat 111 Anointing and Knots

2005-08-21T07:22:00.000-07:00

In the ancient Near East, where water was at a premium, anointing with oil was a common hygienic practice to cover the smell of the rarely-washed. Indeed, the rabbinic traditions of mikvah [ritual immersion] and lightly rinsing the hands before eating may have been improvements in their day, though cleanliness through washing was hardly unknown to Greco-Roman civilization. In any case, the question under discussion here is anointing on Shabbat – the Mishnah, concerned that one might use oil to heal on Shabbat (See above, Shabbat 109), says that one in pain may not rub themselves with wine or vinegar as medicines. Anointing with shemen [oil], on the other hand, since it is commonly done for non-medical purposes would be permitted.

What kind of oil would be permitted? The default in the area was likely olive oil, but the Mishnah clarifies that rose oil (implied to be more expensive) would not be allowed. However, b’nay malakhim [royal children] may do so since they do so anyways, and Rabbi Shimeon claims that all Israelites are “royal children,” and thus should be entitled to do the same. At the end of the Talmud’s discussion, it is agreed (according to Rab) that the halakha [religious law] is with Rabbi Shimeon but not for his reasoning – Shimeon would allow it even if its performance were rare, whereas Rab allowed it only because rose oil was common where he lived. Such are the vagaries of geography and halakha.

The other variable in today’s daf concerns manual dexterity – certain knots are permitted and other are forbidden to tie or untie on Shabbat. A camel driver’s or a sailor’s knot are prohibited, but for those unfamiliar with “knot-ology,” Rabbi Meir gives a much easier rule of thumb: any knot that can be untied with one hand creates no guilt. And many other knots are permitted, like a woman tying up her blouse or anyone tying up an animal to prevent its going out on Shabbat. So the more you practice untying knots with one hand, the more complex life on Shabbat may become – even without Boy Scout training.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 110 – Snakes!

2005-08-20T14:14:00.000-07:00

The Talmud’s rabbis have remedies for many ailments and situations, as we have already seen. The major concern in today’s page is how to deal with snakes. Their remedy for snakebite is, well, creative: get the embryo of a white donkey, tear it open, and sit on it! And there is the terrible tale of an officer in Pumbedita, one of the major centers of Jewish learning – after he was bitten by a snake, all 13 white donkeys in Pumbedita were torn open, but were found to be trayfa [unclean] and inappropriate, and the 14th was eaten by a lion before they could use it. And at that point one speculates that he was bitten by a snake derabanan [of the rabbis – i.e. cosmic punishment], if the cure was make so impossible – what are the odds?

Of course, all of this is after one is bitten – the rabbis also offer advice on how to avoid any contact from a snake at all. If the snake winds itself around you, you should go into water, put a basket over the snake’s head, force it into the basket and then throw both into the water and “ascend and make off,” or run like the dickens. And if a snake “smells him” (which we know today they do by their tongue), he should try to break the scent by being carried by a companion, or jumping a ditch, or crossing a river. He can also try to ditch it by running to a sandy place, which the Talmud’s commentary claims is impossible for them to follow – I’m not so sure if that one is true by real experience. And finally, if the snake still follows him, at night he can mount his bed on four barrels with one cat tied to each leg to be safe!

All of these have some common sense behind them, but we are instantly reminded of the psychological/mythical baggage behind snake imagery – many see snakes as phallic symbols, and reading this Talmud page does nothing to dispel that impression. If a woman is seen by a snake and is not certain whether it is focused on her, how can she test it? Why, remove her clothes and see if the snake winds around them? And how to throw the interested snake off the trail? Some suggest having sex with her husband in front of it, but others say that will only “strengthen its instincts” and suggest she throw some of her hair and nails at him saying “I am menstrually impure.” Obviously, the rabbis here were concerned that the snake wanted to have sex with the woman – but they also assumed it obeyed the taboos of niddah [menstrual impurity]! They even have a treatment in case a snake makes it all the way in involving spreading one’s legs and attracting it out with appetizing smells before grabbing it with tongs and throwing it on a fire lest it do so again.

Did Freud or Jung read the Talmud to create their theory of phallic symbolism? I doubt it. But it is fascinating to see such concerns here – was it psychological? Did the (male) rabbis “envy” the snake? Why else would it be assumed that snakes desire humans sexually?

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 109 – Healing and the Shabbat

2005-08-19T13:01:00.000-07:00

While the concept of work being prohibited on Shabbat is well known, less well-known is the tradition of additional dietary restrictions on Shabbat. It turns out that healing on Shabbat is prohibited, so taking certain herbs or remedies are actually forbidden during the day of rest. Thus certain leaves are said to have no medicinal properties, and thus are permitted to use on Shabbat. Or if one bangs their hand or foot, they may soak it in wine to reduce swelling, but not vinegar since that would too obviously be healing! And the delicate, who are healed by wine, cannot even do that, according to Rabbi Hillel (not the same as the early Hillel) who attended the academy of Rabbi Kahana.

We do have other, external evidence of historical Jewish reticence to heal on the Shabbat – if one reads in the New Testament, there is a story in Luke 13:10-17 on this very subject. In the story, Jesus preaches in a synagogue on Shabbat, and he heals a woman. The leader of the synagogue is upset, saying “there are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, but not on the Sabbath day.” The miraculous cure was not the issue, but rather the curing on Shabbat! This story would have taken place right around the time of transition from Pharisees to Rabbis, shortly before the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. Rather than baldly accept Jesus’s rebuke of the leader as a hypocrite, we must remember that “healing” in this period was not the rare miraculous event depicted in the New Testament gospels, but a profession common to holy men, amulet makers, and apothecaries the world over. In other words, it was a way to earn a living – something not to be done on Shabbat by any approach before modern times.

This is not to say that there is universal agreement on this principle of not healing on Shabbat – for example, Rab taught that a hand or foot injury was like an internal injury and thus could justify Shabbat desecration. We would think that alleviating pain and curing a disease would automatically be allowed at any time, but if we think in terms of professional healers, it makes more sense – even doctors are allowed a day off!

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

For the full New Testament story of healing on the Sabbath, visit http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/RsvLuke.html

Shabbat 108 – When Rav Met Shmuel

2005-08-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

Rabbinic literature is full of pairs of sages: we’ve already met Hillel and Shammai from the early rabbinic, or “Tannaitic” period, and today we meet Rab and Shmuel, the leading Babylonian scholars from the early “Amoraic” period, around 220-250 CE (these eras take their name from the Hebrew for how teachings are recalled – tanna vs. amar – with the older generally more authoritative). What’s interesting about this pairing, however, is that we have a story of how they personally met, and a little bit about their personalities as well.

According to today’s Talmud page, one day Shmuel was sitting by the royal canal of Babylon [nehar malka] with Karna, a sage who sometimes earned a living with his nose telling wine merchants which bottles of wine could be preserved longer (see Sanhedrin 105a). The water rose and changed color, and Shmuel read the sign to mean “a great man with stomach trouble is coming from the West” (Shmuel is often cited for his “medicinal” knowledge). So Shmuel tells Karna, “go and smell his bottle!” or, in other words, greet him and check him out.

So Karna meets Rab and quizzes him – how do we know [minayin] that tefillin [prayer boxes] can only be on the skin of a clean animal we are permitted to eat? Answer: it says “the words should be in your mouth” which means on that which could be in your mouth. How do we know that defiling menstrual blood has to be red to count? How do we know that a male must be circumcised in that particular place and not, say, in his heart (“circumcise the foreskin of your heart” Deut. 10:16) or even his ear (“their ear is uncircumcised” Jeremiah 6:10)? Evidently, Rab passes muster for Shmuel brought him home for dinner.

But the treatment wasn’t over yet – Shmuel fed Rab barley bread, a fish pie, and strong liquor but did not show him the privy to relieve himself. Why not? The medieval commentator Rashi claims that, since Shmuel (on this page and many others) was known for his medical knowledge, this must have been a cure for Rab’s stomach ailment. But Rab certainly didn’t know this, for he said with great feeling, “the one who causes me pain, may he have no sons!” And the Talmud says, “and so it was.” Shmuel known for medicine, Rab for his curses and knowledge, and each known better with the other.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

A special note

2005-08-17T14:10:00.000-07:00

Due to the birth of my daughter this month, I have been taking a break from the daf yomi. However, now that I’m able to sleep 3 hours at a stretch, I have the mental acuity to pick it back up. I will be working forward matching the general daf yomi schedule from yesterday on, and working back to fill in the gaps for the first half of the month of August.

Thank you for your patience,

Rabbi Adam Chalom

Shabbat 107 – Vermin and Worse

2005-08-17T11:26:00.000-07:00

Human animosity to vermin, snakes, and creeping insects [shekatzim u’remasim] is very old and deeply rooted – the villain in the Garden of Eden story is just one example. And this is animosity is very understandable, for poisonous snakes are dangerous, vermin spread disease and insects can destroy crops and make life miserable. Now it is very likely that there are cultures in the world that prize such beings, but Jewish culture is one of many that take the opposite approach. Biblical dietary laws forbid eating them (see Leviticus 11) and declares them unclean even to the touch, and even the Mishnah treats them separately from other animals when enumerating what one may or may not do to them on Shabbat.

Vermin should not be caught or wounded on Shabbat, but insects may be caught or wounded as long as one does not need them for something. And a parallel is drawn to any animal in one’s own domain: catching is permitted, but wounding is a violation. There is something positive here about an approach to Shabbat that avoids wounding or killing animals, though this pause is scant consolation to the bird awaiting a Sunday morning execution! The Talmud debates whether these eight types of vermin have “skins” separate from their flesh (since wounding flesh would clearly be prohibited), and thus whether wounding would be permanent or would heal – the details are less important than the discussion, in this case.

To be sure, there are more extreme approaches – Rabbi Eliezer would say that whoever kills a lice on Shabbat is like one who kills a camel on Shabbat! He would also blame someone who caught a flea on Shabbat, while everyone else would exempt them. Again we see concessions to reality as part of rabbinic jurisprudence – not swatting a flea on Shabbat seems rather extreme for human beings to contemplate. Religion can take ideas to far extremes, but fortunately some human common sense occasionally intervenes.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 106 – Trapping Animals

2005-08-16T14:09:00.000-07:00

When we think of Shabbat as a time to not do “work,” that does not necessarily mean that it is a time of no exertion at all. This is exemplified by today’s discussion of hunting and trapping animals – hardly a relaxing activity! The Mishnah explains that one who drives a bird into a turret, or a deer into a house, a courtyard, or a vivarin – translated “vivarium” as it derives from Latin (think “aquarium”) for a place for living animals – is liable for a Shabbat transgression. And Rabban Gamliel gives a klal [general rule] to explain why, since he feels that not every vivarin is the same. The general rule is that if the animal no longer needs to be caught (i.e. the space is enclosed like a house or a courtyard), one is liable, but if the vivarin is such that the animal still needs catching, one is exempt.

Why the distinction? Again we enter the world of connected action – if actually hunting a wild animal or physically capturing it would be a clear violation, then an act that has the same practical effect, like trapping the animal in a small enclosed space which makes killing it later a relatively simple task, should have similar consequences. We might think today of someone who doesn’t use a gun before hunting season but herds the deer he wants into an enclosed pen – this is clearly violating the spirit and the point of the law defining hunting season from the rest of the year.

Thus one is prohibited from fishing in an aquarium, or even closing the door if a deer enters the house, thus trapping it. Catching a blind or sleeping deer is a violation, since either would try to run away and escape; but a lame or sick (i.e. exhausted) deer can be caught since they do not. A contradiction between traditions, where one would allow catching animals from a vivarin on a yom tov [festival, literally “good day” or “holy day” like our “holiday”] and another would not, is harmonized by claiming one referred to a small vivarin with few places to hide or escape while the other meant a large one.

In the end, there is a limitation on exertions on Shabbat in this area – one may catch an animal from a vivarin on a festival because the work has already been done, and by the same principle one may not trap an animal in the same on Shabbat because that would be work. In an era when the refrigerated supermarket meat counter has enabled us to be far removed from the process of meat procurement, this vivid reality of what would be necessary to obtain fresh meat in Talmud times on any day of the week is a good reminder of that reality of life.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 91 - Intention at the Threshold

2005-08-01T11:24:00.000-07:00

We have seen that intention makes a big difference in rabbinic law – if one intends to sow a seed, its moving from a private to a public domain is forbidden in any amount, even if it is less than the quantity forbidden to take out as described in earlier pages. And if one takes food out of the house in a permitted quantity, and then decides once out to plant it, he is still liable for a violation. Note that no actual planting has been performed – only the INTENTION creates the violation.

Here we see a similarity and a difference with our own sense of transgression – the intent to a criminal action makes a big distinction between manslaughter (accidental killing) and pre-meditated murder, but merely intending a criminal action is not a crime except in Steven Spielberg’s recent movie Minority Report. One exception to this principle, which is what makes them philosophically controversial, are “hate crimes” – if I knock you down to steal your wallet, it’s assault; if I do so with a racial or ethnic slur, it’s a crime on top of a crime. Should anti-Semitic graffiti be punished simply as property damage, or as hate crime? Intent makes all the difference.

The other interesting legal theory discussed in today’s daf is the idea of a completed action – according to the Mishnah, one may carry food to the askufa [threshold] and set it down, and then subsequently carry it out. Since the action was not done in one motion [b’vat akhat], even if the first step places a basket of fruit with most of the fruit outside the door, he is not guilty. The Talmud discusses the idea of an intermediate space [karmelit] between public and private, but we find the whole distinction academic – how can pausing in the middle of an action change the nature of the entire sequence? This is why end results matter as much as intentions for us – steps that lead to a crime, even if separated, lead to the criminal result, and THAT should be the determinant for violation.

Rabbi Adam Chalom

www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 90 – What is Hidden Away

2005-07-31T17:30:00.000-07:00

As we have seen, many items are prohibited to take from private to public space in certain quantities, but smaller quantities are allowed. In today’s page, we see a list of materials of which ANY amount is prohibited: various kinds of spices and metals, long pepper, and so on. On some level, this kind of absolute prohibition makes somewhat more sense then the “pocket police” or the guilt-stricken individual trying to measure a fig’s size worth of nutshells to determine if a violation has been committed. The most interesting items of this list are old scrolls and their covers, and pieces of the misbeakh [altar] and its stones, because we get a reason WHY they should not be taken out – they are only taken out from a place in order to be “hidden away” [l’gonzam], so they cannot be removed on Shabbat.

This tradition of “hiding” or burying old holy items, particularly books, is not particularly explored in this Talmud page, though it will be on Shabbat 115a. Because that later page is full of detail of what goes in and is excluded from a geniza [where the holy books are hidden or buried], this is a good opportunity to highlight the most exciting result of rabbinic superstition in Jewish history. In short, to avoid “taking the name of YHWH in vain,” the Rabbis enacted that texts with God’s name, like Torah scrolls or prayerbooks, should be disposed of in a geniza rather than simply discarded, destroyed or reused.

In 1896, Solomon Schechter, then a scholar of Rabbinic Judaism at Cambridge University, was shown a couple of papyrus fragments that two (non-Jewish) women had bought on vacation in Cairo. He immediately recognized them as fragments of the Hebrew original of the Wisdom of Ben Sira, a book up to that point only known to modern scholarship in a Greek translation. In fact, before that moment many scholars had believed that Ben Sira was originally written in Greek and the claim of translation was a fake! Schechter discovered that the fragments came from the geniza of the Cairo Jewish community, and he managed to transfer the bulk of what was there to Cambridge by 1898. It turns out that the Ben Sira text was copied in the Middle Ages from an older original, but fragments of a more ancient Hebrew Ben Sira were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls over 50 years later.

This Cairo Geniza has proven to be a treasure trove of Jewish documents from the Middle Ages of all kinds, for the Cairo Jewish community began to “hide” not only holy books but also letters, contracts, liturgy, and just about anything on paper! Thus an unofficial archive of medieval Jewish life was the end result of Rabbinic fear of disrespecting the divine name by throwing it out. Who could have guessed?

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 89 – The Torah Revealed from Heaven

2005-07-30T16:49:00.000-07:00

One of the offenses that would deny an Israelite a place in the world to come, according to the Mishnah (Sanhedrin 10:1) is to deny that torah min ha-shamayim – the Torah is from heaven. The idealization of the Torah in rabbinic Judaism has its parallels in the idealization of wisdom in Hellenistic and Biblical wisdom literature – for example, “it is a tree of life” in Proverbs 3:18 is about wisdom; the rabbis read that phrase as referring to Torah.

But there are always complications bridging heaven and earth. According to today’s Talmud page, when Moses ascended via Mount Sinai to heaven to receive the Torah, the angels objected to his presence – they use a line from Psalm 8:5 “what is man, that you are mindful of him?” to object to his giving humanity the Torah, a secret treasure that existed 700 generations before the world itself was created! God tells Moses to answer them, and he is afraid lest they destroy him, so God extends his protection and Moses lets them have it. With citation after citation, he makes clear that the Torah was written for human beings and for the Israelites – “honor your mother and father,” “I brought you out of Egypt,” and so on. This Torah that Moses receives has been handwritten by God himself – when Moses ascends, he sees God writing the taggin, or crowns, on the letters. THIS is the basis for the rabbinic reverence for the Torah that, if one watches how traditional congregations treat the scroll, borders on “Tor-olatry” [Torah idolatry].

All of this legendary storytelling has clear goals: to make Jews feel special to be chosen to have received the Torah, to encourage piety and obedience to rabbinic authority as the authorized interpreters of this heavenly text, to create wonder and awe as part of the religious experience every time the Torah is taken out for ceremonial reading. We who see the Torah as the product of human beings are at once more and less impressed – it is not the product of heavenly powers, but isn’t it amazing that we are still reading the product of HUMAN powers so many centuries later! Not worthy of worshipping, but definitely worth exploring.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

There is also an amusing discussion in the second half of this page where God says to Isaac “your children have sinned” and Isaac retorts “when they said ‘we will do and we will hear’ you were proud to call them “my children,” but now that they sinned you’re calling them ‘YOUR children?’” How many parents have had similar discussions?

Shabbat 88 – “We will do and we will hear”

2005-07-29T16:31:00.000-07:00

The most important difference between Orthodox Judaism and more liberal approaches concerns the issue of a covenant to follow the Torah entered into at Mount Sinai. Orthodox Judaism sees this promise as real, binding, and obligatory for all Jews everywhere and in every generation. On the other hand, liberal Jews everywhere consider the complete revelation of the Torah (written and oral) at Mount Sinai a pious myth rather than actual historical fact. Nevertheless, the “event” remains the central myth of rabbinic Judaism, whether or not one believes it happened or is binding today.

Just before the Sinaitic revelation described in Exodus, Exodus 19:17 says the Israelites “stood b’takhtit [under or at the foot of] the mountain.” According to one rabbi, this means that God held the mountain over them saying, in essence, accept my Torah or die. Another rabbi wryly notes that this gives ammunition to reject its observance, seeing that it was not a free choice, but a third retorts that a later generation accepted its obligations again in the days of Esther. One does indeed wonder, however, what implications this has for enforcing the punishment provisions of the Torah if punishment was threatened for its rejection.

This “forced” interpretation is in stark contrast to the very next discussion on this Talmud page – that of the famous “na’ase v’nishma – we will do and we will hear” (Exodus 24:7). In other words, they agreed to follow the covenant before hearing what it was! We read here that 600,000 angels (one for each male Israelite) gave them each two crowns at that moment – one for na’ase and one for nishma. An outside critic generations later points out that the Jews must have been rash, giving precedence to their mouth over their ears and not listening before accepting. Raba responds that this was a sign of faith and integrity rather than impetuousness.

IS absolute acceptance, before hearing the conditions, an ideal? The traditionalist might respond, “it’s unconditional love of God – no matter what! Don’t you love your family unconditionally?” And my response: “Continuing to love anyone who is violent, abusive, neglectful, arrogant and distant unconditionally is a recipe for personal pain and tragedy. It may hurt to say goodbye, but that will be better for me than the silence.” Reading the fine print in any contract is always a good idea!

Rabbi Adam Chalom

www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 87 - The Holy Chronology

2005-07-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Keeping track of calendars through Jewish history is a complicated task. One of the most difficult problems is that the calendar fundamentally changed in the middle of Jewish history. In Leviticus 23, where the major Torah holidays are listed, we read that Passover takes place in the first month, while the “day of atonements” takes place in the seventh month. Today, of course, the “day of atonements” is part of the Jewish New Year, which begins in the fall, while Passover is a spring holiday that takes place in the seventh month. The Torah itself doesn’t name most of the months, and the names it does use are not those of our current Jewish calendar (which was likely adopted from the Babylonians after the 6th century BCE).

Thus much of today’s page continues a debate begun yesterday as to what day various events took place in relation to Shabbat, the revelation of the Torah, and the current Jewish calendar. One of the tools the Talmud’s rabbis used to ensure events fell on the correct day used to be the variable quality of months. Months were based on observation of the moon’s cycle, and the lunar month being 29.5 days, some months had 29 days and others had 30 depending on when the New Moon was sighted. For over 1500 years, the Jewish calendar has been calculated mathematically, but in discussing the Torah’s chronology, the Rabbis can claim as they do here that what today is fixed as a 29 day month was that one year given 30 days!

Indeed, even divine commandments admit of some flexibility under Moses’ hands. The Rabbis point out three times that they believe Moses took actions mida’ato [from his own understanding] and God agreed post facto – he added a day to prepare for the revelation in Exodus 20, he entirely separated himself (sexually) from his wife, and he broke the Lukhot [Tablets] of the law. Why the first? He reasoned that the 2 days started tomorrow. The second? If the (male) Israelites had to be pure by sexually abstaining to hear God once, Moses did so all the time, so kal va’homer [how much more so] must he abstain all the time! The third? If one of the taryag mitzvot [613 Torah Commandments] says a stranger may not eat the Passover sacrifice, then how can rebellious Israel that has made a Golden Calf to worship receive them all? And one Rabbi adds that God congratulated him on that last decision, exclaiming, “Yasher kokhekha sheh-shibarta – good job that you broke them.”

Note what is implicit in this passage – for the Rabbis, the lukhot contain NOT JUST the 10 Commandments, but also an entire Torah! A later version is given, but what might have been written on that first version? That is our opportunity for new mythmaking – thou shalt not treat women with less respect than men, thou shalt not condone slavery in any way, . . .

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com
To research the Hebrew date or calendar for any Gregorian calendar year or month, you can visit www.hebcal.com/hebcal.

Shabbat 86 - Semen, Sex, and Sin

2005-07-27T15:30:00.000-07:00

One of the more common “ritual contaminants” that can make someone or something tameh [ritually impure] is zera [semen, literally “seed”] or other sexual discharges. The Mishnah text debated today considers a woman who has a sexual discharge after three days unclean based on what the Torah describes as the preparations for the Israelites to receive divine revelation in Exodus 19:15 – “be ready by the third day; do not come near a woman.” The implicit assumption in these instructions, it must be noted, is that the audience is men (excluding women, who may be excluded from the revelation as well). But the practical result for later generations is the assumption that sexual relations, because of the emission of sexual fluids, are inherently a source of impurity for both.

The Talmud goes on to debate on which day Moses offered these instructions to avoid sexual contact, since it is assumed that the 10 Commandments presented in Exodus 20 were offered on Shabbat. And what time of day did he warn them? One objects that it could not have been morning, since “Israelites are holy and do not cohabit [literally “use the bed”] during the day,” so he would not have needed to warn them in the morning. Why would daytime sex be profane? Obviously, because one could see nudity! This is clarified by exceptions to the daytime prohibition – if the house is dark, it is permitted. And a rabbinic scholar [talmid khakham] can make darkness with his “garment” [literally tallit, or prayer shawl!] and proceed.

Love and sex are complicated issues for modern ethics because the restrictions and taboos of earlier generations seem quaint, antiquated, or simply offensive. For example, our Talmud page also explores what hypothetically happens to semen in non-Jewish women, whose bodies are assumed to run differently because they are not worried about mitzvot [commandments], and also animals (!). So the old rules are rejected, but absolute freedom has physical and emotional consequences as well – from heartbreak to pregnancy and disease, and an undermining of the emotional intimacy of pair-bonding (straight or gay) that is a powerful factor in human happiness. While sex and the human should not be “impure,” entering this Paradise can still be risky business.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 85 – Sowing Seeds

2005-07-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

One of the more obscure restrictions in the Torah concerns what one may planting in a field – Deuteronomy 22:9 says: “You shall not sow your vineyard with different seeds; lest the fruit of your seed which you have sown, and the fruit of your vineyard, be defiled.” Is this an example of early agricultural wisdom based on observation and experience? Perhaps; but it is also one of a series of laws that, two verses later, commands one to avoid wearing any garment with linen and wool together. This rule, called shaatnez, is so opaque that even Maimonides, the famous Sephardic medieval rabbinic authority, said it was one of those commandments meant to test your obedience to God because there was no real reason behind it. So perhaps not sowing with different seeds was more theological than agricultural.

Be that as it may, the Mishnah and Talmud inherited this rule and needed to work within it. Thus when the Mishnah claims that in a planting box six handsbreadths on a side, one may plant therein 5 different kinds of seeds, one on each side and one in the middle. How to do this without violating Deuteronomy’s law? The Talmud claims that the earlier rabbis realized that such a planting arrangement would not cause the roots of each to draw nutrients from each other, which is how they interpret the original Deuteronomic rule. And the Talmud and its commentators further explain planting patterns that clearly indicate that the seeds were not indiscriminately planted together but rather in independent strips.

This passages is of more historical than ethical or philosophical interest – we can learn something about patterns of small-scale agriculture in more urban settings, something of the vegetable diet of the times, and also about the change in priorities in rabbinic law. The Mishnah contains an entire seder, or order, called Zera’im [seeds] – obviously, agriculture and planting were very important to them, particularly rules concerning planting in the land of Israel. The Talmud explores the section from Zera’im on Blessings (as we did this year), but that’s about it! The agricultural insights they have to offer are sown [pardon the pun] throughout the rest of the Talmud instead. This may indicate a move to more urban concerns, or the reality of a Babylonian Talmud composed hundreds of miles from Israeli fields. Today, with new and active Jewish farming in that very soil, old issues have sprouted up [oops. . .] all over again.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 84 – The Limits of Possibility

2005-07-25T16:42:00.000-07:00

Sometimes we can give up too easily. Many times when we say to others (or to ourselves), “I just can’t do it,” we really mean, “I just don’t want to do it.” If the task at hand were important enough to us to put our full minds and resources towards it, we would; but if it isn’t important enough to justify a radical refocusing of our priorities, then we “can’t” do it. At the same time, of course, there are literal no-win situations where fulfilling others’ expectations ARE simply impossible.

As we explore the Talmud’s labyrinth of laws and rituals, we can concede that in many cases, if it were important enough to us we could manage like this – although our choice to pursue a different course for our lives is frequently reaffirmed. It is also nice to see that one of the legal assumptions behind Talmudic reasoning is that fulfilling one’s obligation should not be absolutely impossible, even if it is ridiculously difficult.

In debating what kind of objects are susceptible to becoming defiled by a zab, or one ritually impure because of a sexual discharge, we find the following discussion: certain objects cannot be cleaned in a mikvah [ritual bath], so if they can’t be cleansed are they susceptible to defilement? The answer: it depends on the material. If other objects made of similar material (e.g. clay, wood) are able to be cleansed by a mikvah, then it can become defiled; but if nothing made of that material can be so cleansed, it is not at risk. Thus at the same time some objects may be made useless, but some limits to contamination are possible.

My approach to the question, particularly in the kitchen, is: if I can’t clean them, I don’t want to use them! Further, cleanliness is a much more clear-cut issue to worry about than ritual impurities which are invisible and a human construction with no physical reality behind them.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 83 – Defilement and Holiness

2005-07-24T08:47:00.000-07:00

When I was an undergraduate in Jewish studies, I sometimes got the feeling that I was learning about the Jews as if they lived in a bubble – outside world history seems only tangentially related to the internal developments of Jewish civilization. The truth is, as is evident from any study of even rabbinic sources, that Jews have lived among, been influenced by, and dealt with non-Jews for over 2000 years. The Talmud is addressed to the Jews, but it is very aware of the involvement of non-Jews in Jewish experiences.

One case in point is today’s page, which discusses a tangential Mishnah ruling that idols defile someone by carrying them just like something menstrually impure [niddah]. Aside from feminist objections to treating menstruation as “impure,” the discussion still further beyond a modern multicultural respect for religious difference: a foreign man or woman, as well as their idol and its serving utensil ALL defile if they are carried, even if they are not physically touched. In fact, non-Jews are declared here to be impure like zabin [those with impure sexual discharge] in all respects! And not just they themselves, but anything they move or carry acquires their impurity. An idol may defile only if it is the size of an olive or larger, but this small concession is little consolation to our offended sense of tolerance and human dignity. So much for shaking hands with your neighbor – or for choosing to live near anyone not Jewish.

While the Rabbis could not create a hermetic seal between the Jewish world and its surroundings, they could imagine a world where it would be so – at the end of today’s page, one rabbi offers a new insight into a particular rule, and another exclaims that one should never leave the beit hamidrash [house of study] even for an hour because this law had been studied for many years until someone found its reason. And others emphasize the importance of studying Torah every hour, even at the hour of one’s death. Indeed, the Talmud claims, the Torah can only survive with those willing to sacrifice their lives for it. Is there anything today that WE would sacrifice as much for? Or has our love of life become a positive value that outweighs loyalty to an ancestral tradition that, as we have seen today, commands an ambivalent allegiance?

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 82 – Successful Bodily Functions

2005-07-23T08:45:00.000-07:00

Lest you begin to think that the Talmud’s excursions into the details of outhouse procedure are irrelevant to its overall project of explaining and exploring the Oral Torah given to Moses on Sinai, we find an amusing anecdote of a father-son dispute that also highlights the difference in mindset between Talmudic times and our own. Rabbi Huna once said to his son Rabba, “why don’t you go to study with Rabbi Hisda, who is such a wise man?” Rabba answers, quite understandably, “I go to him to learn Torah and holy things and he gives me milay d’alma. [translated by Soncino as “secular discourses,” literally “words of the world”] For example, he tells me ‘when you enter a privy, don’t sit down too fast or strain too much because you might dislocate one of the three glands in the rectum.” I can imagine teaching this in a Jewish adult education class today and getting shocked stares from an audience expecting something very different.

Rabbi Huna’s response is very telling – “he speaks of the life of God’s creations, and you think he’s teaching milay d’alma. All the more reason to learn from him!” In other words, even the most mundane, secular or even profane matter that has to do with God’s creation is fodder for religious exploration. Today we understand the world divided into “religious” matters and “secular” matters – working at our job, fixing our roof, going to the bathroom all in the latter category. While rabbinic Judaism did have words for “holy” [kodesh] and “secular” [khol], they didn’t really have the same sense, since even the “secular” was suffused with a sense of omnipresent and omnipotent divinity. It is only when our concept of God shrinks to accommodate to real-world experience that space for the “secular” is created.

Thus advice for the person who needs to “evacuate” but cannot (i.e. constipation) is not just advice, but part of the tradition of living a healthy life. One Rabbi suggests standing up and sitting down; another suggests moving side to side; and there is a dispute over whether concentrating on it or not thinking about it at all will be more helpful. There is even a traditional blessing for successfully leaving a bathroom with every tube and orifice in working order! And even the most secular of us may let out some religious vocabulary (from other religions too!) when we’ve had to go and finally have success.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

For more on this topic, see my entry for Berakhot 60, which is also where the “bathroom blessing” is found. A traditional (and straight-faced) exploration of the “bathroom blessing” that contains its full text can be read at: http://torah.org/features/firstperson/everythingablessing.html.

Shabbat 81 – How to Wipe Yourself

2005-07-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

Warning – it is advised not to read this entry immediately before or after eating. . .

Early in tractate Berakhot, we saw how preoccupied the Rabbis became with rules concerning outhouses [in Hebrew, beit kisay – house of “the chair”]. The Talmud again returns to the subject in the context of stones – one is prohibited from carrying out a chip or a stone large enough to throw at a bird, and this is the tangent to leap to privy procedures. Why? Because in Talmudic times it was evidently customary to clean oneself after “evacuating” with small stones – paper being tremendously more scarce and thus expensive at the time! And there are special considerations to carrying stones on Shabbat, of course.

Initially, the standard of stones used in a privy was to use three of specific sizes, but an authority points out that one is hardly inclined to weigh them on a scale to find out, so the standard is changed to “maleh ha-yad - a handful.” One is not supposed to “evacuate” on a ploughed field on Shabbat, lest it cause a clod of dirt to fall in a hole and qualify as the forbidden action of ploughing; nor should one cleanse with a potsherd – not because of any danger or suspicion of witchcraft, nor because it might unintentionally tear out hair, but because Rabbi Yokhanan said it lest you think that as a utensil, a shard would be permitted. In other words, they can’t find a real reason, but because a famous rabbi said it, they have to at least find a reason for why he said it even if not for the rule itself.

We also find Rabbinic advice for avoiding takhtoniot, or hemorrhoids – do not eat leaves of vines or reeds, the spine of a fish, or drink the lees of wine; and do not wipe yourself with lime, clay, or [read on at your own risk!] a chip one’s neighbor has already used. Now Rabbi Sheshet would allow this last case, since the stone would be evidently of a size permissible to handle on Shabbat since a previous user had already done so.

This entire question brings two thoughts to my mind. First, there has to be a limit to reusing items in the bathroom. When, a few years ago, my wife suggested that we start buying recycled toilet paper, I stared at her aghast until she quickly clarified that we should buy toilet paper made from recycled paper – I had obviously understood her very differently. Second, knowing how to wipe yourself is one of the basic steps to independence – at first you’re taught by a parent, but you soon figure out how to do it best for yourself. If we didn’t think the Talmud’s rabbis were a little anal retentive before now, it is certainly more plausible than ever before.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 80 - “We Must Labour to be Beautiful”

2005-07-21T08:54:00.000-07:00

If you thought that the quantity debates couldn’t get more detailed, you would be wrong – today’s page begins to explore what happens if one brings out half of a prohibited quantity, and then the second half somewhat later! You can’t bring out enough ink to write two letters, but if you bring out enough to write one letter, write it, then go back in and bring out enough ink to write a second letter and write that, you are not guilty of a violation. And if you bring out enough for one letter in a pen, enough for one letter in dry ink, and enough for one letter in an inkstand? This question will have to wait for Elijah to return [teku] to resolve it.

In the midst of these hairsplitting quantity debates, however, we do find a fascinating anecdote on the coming of age of young women in Talmudic times. One of the amounts prohibited by the Mishnah is “Lime – enough to put on the smallest of girls.” This refers not to the fruit but to the building material, which was evidently also used as a hair remover (depilatory) at this time. The Talmudic discussion of this rule cites Rab’s teaching that when b’not yisrael [Jewish girls] experience puberty early [literally “without reaching their years”] and thus have new hairs growing, poor girls would cover/remove the hair with lime, rich girls with fine flour, and princesses with special oil. Today, women of all ages turn to bikini wax instead. We also read that Rabbi Bibi made a practice of treating his daughter with a depilatory one limb at a time, and “received 400 zuzim for her” – evidently as a bride price.

Clearly, there was a premium on appearing young – it certainly “added value” to Rabbi Bibi’s daughter. There are many uncomfortable reasons why men wanted and want women to look like girls, or today young girls to look like women – is it for interpersonal dominance, or desire for a virgin for clear genetic transmission, or something even darker? We could ask the same question about “trophy wives,” for that matter. But what this Talmudic passage proves above all is the insight of W. B. Yeats’ masterful poem, “Adam’s Curse.” In this work, a poet complains about how hard his job is, and is brought up short by a woman who says simply:

'To be born woman is to know--
Although they do not talk of it at school--
That we must labour to be beautiful.'

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Complete text of Yeats’ “Adam’s Curse”: http://www.poetryconnection.net/poets/William_Butler_Yeats/425

Shabbat 79 - On What to Write a Mezuzah?

2005-07-20T08:52:00.000-07:00

In the Mishnah’s catalog of items of which specific amounts are forbidden to take from one domain to another on Shabbat, one small item receives substantial attention. The Mishnah prohibits taking out parchment [klaf] “enough to write on it the smallest phrase in tefillin [prayer boxes], which is Shema Yisrael [Hear, Israel].” The problem arises from an non-Mishnaic tradition that one is not allowed to take out enough parchment or duksustos [a lower-quality parchment] to write a mezuzah [doorpost box]. Which is the correct amount?

The connection between tefillin and mezuzah is obvious from many perspectives – they contain the same passages from Deuteronomy [Deut. 6:4-9 and 11:13-21 – tefillin also have passages from Exodus]; anthropologically, they are both totems and good luck signs; behaviorally, they were traditionally used and touched multiple times a day. The resolution of this particular issue is that duksustos is determined by mezuzah size, since one should not use it for tefillin, while parchment is determined by this shortest phrase in tefillin, the famous “Shema.” Incidentally, there are other passages in Deuteronomy that begin “Shema Yisrael,” but when you use those two words, everyone refers to Deuteronomy 6, including the Talmud here.

Again we see the difference between recommended and acceptable practice – it is a “halakha l’moshe misinai – a law from Moses on Sinai” (in other words, “so old we don’t know when or why it started”) that tefillin texts should be written on parchment and those in a mezuzah on duksustos, but also that in a pinch each can use the other material. But there is a limit to efficiency – a Torah scroll or tefillin text that has worn out may not be remade into a mezuzah using the unwritten margins of the parchment.

The question we would like to ask again it outside the bounds of Talmudic discussion: why include THESE texts in the tefillin or the mezuzah? In modern times, could one choose their own texts, from the Bible or even from other Jewish writing, to signify their highest values? And is there a risk that such ritual behavior crosses the line into superstition? After all, many rabbinic authorities to this day suggest that if you’re having a run of bad luck, you should check your mezuzah. . .

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 78 – More Carrying Out on Shabbat

2005-07-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

The debate over permissible quantities continues. How much paper can one move from private to public space on Shabbat? How much water? How much oil, and how much honey? One could get lost in the details of quantity, quality, and possible uses of each of these substances in the Talmudic world. Fortunately, we do find a general principle worth exploring under the heading of “water.”

Abaye derives the following general principle from the Rabbis’ specific rules: whatever has a common use and an uncommon use, the rabbis follow the common use towards leniency. So if drinking wine is common while using it as a remedy is uncommon, the minimum amount for liability is the amount one would drink, even if as a cure one uses less. The same for milk: common for drinking but not for healing, so the larger amount is permitted. For honey, on the other hand, which at the time was used for both eating and for healing scars or scabs, the smaller amount for healing is what creates the Shabbat violation. There is some debate about water and whether it is commonly used for healing or not, but since the Rabbis chose the smaller amount as a restriction we know that the end of the discussion will show in certain places and contexts that water healing is in fact common – in this case for the eyes.

We saw similar principles with regards to physical objects that have permitted and prohibited uses on Shabbat, and the real question is what one’s presumption is – will one use it for prohibited purposes, or can one trust that people are obeying the rules even if it looks like they might not? And our approach is one more step removed: can we treat what one carries from any place to any other place on Shabbat as that person’s private business? Whether they are following detailed Shabbat restrictions may have little to do with whether they are a good person, or nice to their fellow human beings, or tolerant of other people’s opinions. But this just another version of the quantum leap one makes out of a traditionalist mindset into the wider world of modern thought.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 77 – A Purpose for Everything

2005-07-18T11:34:00.000-07:00

Rudyard Kipling wrote an entire series of “Just So” stories, where he explained how certain things in the world today came to be. And there are many stories like this today: how the Zebra got its stripes, why the mosquito buzzes in your ear, and so on. Evolutionary biologists have their own take on this literary genre, explaining the “evolutionary advantages” of features like the zebra’s stripes or opposable thumbs as why the animals are the way they are today. And Creationists believe that, in the words of today’s Talmud page, God “in his world did not create one thing in vain” or without a purpose.

Thus we learn, according to Rab Judah in Rab’s name, that the snail exists to serve as a remedy for a scab, the fly to treat hornet stings, the mosquito for serpent bites, and spiders for scorpion stings. And Rab Judah also told Rabbi Zera “the secrets of the universe”: Why do goats walk before sheep? Like in Genesis, the dark precedes the light. Why do camels have short tails? Because they eat thorns and a long tail would be caught. Why is the ox’s tail long? To swat off the flies. Why is a chicken’s lower eyelid bent upwards? To keep out the dust from living in the rafters. Many of these are either rabbinic versions of “just so” stories, or part of the theology that the world exists for human benefit and use – either non-scientific or an incitement to human entitlement. But some of these explanations do make sense from an evolutionary perspective, like the ox’s tail. More proof that close observers of the universe, even coming from very different perspectives, can come to similar conclusions.

In the same vein, there are a whole series of puns or popular etymologies on today’s page – thus levusha [outer garment] is like lo busha [no shame], darga [stairs or ladder] is like derekh gag [way to the roof], etc. In some cases, the linguistic connection is clear – because Hebrew and Aramaic are both Semitic languages, their vocabularies and grammar are very similar. And because Semitic languages use a three-letter root system for word-concepts, the same three letters in different combinations can mean similar concepts. For example, Shalom is peace, shalem is complete, l’shalem is to pay, mushlam is perfect, etc.

All in all, an entertaining diversion from the picayune details of materials allowed out of the private domain on Shabbat!

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 76 - How Much is too Much?

2005-07-17T11:32:00.000-07:00

One of the ways Talmudic debates can easily get beyond a modern’s patience threshold is when they begin to haggle amounts – not just whether one is permitted to leave the house with certain objects or not, but how much of a particular substance constitutes a violation. The Mishnah specifies that one should not carry out quantities of food that would satisfy different animals – enough straw k’maleh fi parah [that fills a cow’s mouth], enough corn for a lamb’s mouth, enough herbs for a goat, etc. The Mishnah also clarifies that their quantities cannot cumulatively amount to a violation, since each has a different standard – so corn, straw and herbs need are counted in separate categories. For human food, anything over the size of a dried fig is too much, and different foodstuffs DO combine for humanity since that same size is the standard of violation for all of them.

Now one could get caught up in the debate and begin to argue from within: can’t cows eat herbs too? Or lambs eat straw? So then why use that particular animal to designate an appropriate quantity, and why can’t the food items be considered together? Or in a more philosophical vein, one could argue about the intent of the Mishnah’s rule – why NOT feed animals that are not one’s own by bringing food from the private into the public sphere?

But it is also important to take a step back and look at the big picture. How does someone know if you’ve carried out too much? Do they turn out your pockets to check? And what kind of society can be created by such fastidious attention to detail and quantities – the kind that focuses on the letter of law rather than the spirit, one that focuses more on the pilpul [tiny details] more than on people and their needs and desires? Because the restrictions on what may be carried from private to public space are so complicated, this also has the result of forcing people to stay home, because who can know if they’re able to leave? When seeing the debate from this perspective, our answer to the question of how much is too much becomes: “genug! - enough already!”

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 75 – The Limits of Learning

2005-07-16T21:06:00.000-07:00

While it’s been said that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” it often depends what that little knowledge is. In a style we have already seen in our Talmud study, one authority’s saying on multiple subjects is an opportunity for interesting tangents. Rab said three things of increasing punishments to one of his disciples: one should not pull out a thread from a seam on Shabbat on pain of a sin-offering, one should not learn from a Magush [Magus – a Persian astrologer/sorcerer] on pain of death, and one who can calculate the tekufot u’mazalot [celestial cycles and Zodiac signs] should do it on pain of being shunned.

There is a difference of opinion between Rav and Shmuel as to whether magushta [“magianism” or Persian astrology] are sorcery or blasphemy, but in either case it is clearly strictly prohibited to learn from them. In some ways, this was Rabbinic stargazing’s loss, since Mesopotamian and Persian astronomers had many centuries of celestial observation experience and expertise from which Rabbinic calculations could have benefited. In Rabbinic theology, “magic” and “miracle” were very different animals: one was permitted and divinely-authorized supernatural power, and the other was forbidden. Our English words “magic” and “magician” come from the Persian magus via Greek (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magi) – so learning their star patterns, even if intended to better calculate the Jewish calendar, violated this boundary. From our perspective, however, they were two sides of the same coin.

The other limit on learning described here is a brief elaboration on the Shabbat prohibition on “writing two letters.” I personally find learning much more effective if I can take notes – even if I never look at the notes again, the act of writing fixes the information better in my brain. But such a learning style would be restricted on Shabbat – though it is comforting to know that someone writing one letter large enough to cover the space for 2 letters is not liable. However, if someone erases one letter to create enough space to write 2 (even without actually writing them), he is liable. So for the Talmud it’s not only what you learn, but how you learn it when learning happens at sacred times.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 74 – From Many to One?

2005-07-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

As we saw on the previous daf, the Mishnah provides a general list of the avot melakhot [major categories of work – literally “fathers of work”] that are prohibited to perform on Shabbat, while the Talmud takes each term (e.g. “reaping”) and clarifies other similar actions that are likewise prohibited. At other times, however, it seems that the process could work in reverse: it is pointed out in today’s daf that “winnowing, selecting, grinding and sifting” could all be considered “one” action – as the medieval rabbi Rashi’s commentary explains it, they all involve separating food from the inedible. So why did the Mishnah list them separately?

The answer Raba and Abaye both give is based on a Talmudic assumption – why are there 39 categories of prohibited work? Because, according to the Rabbis, there were 39 categories of work performed to build the mishkan [Tabernacle – Tent of Meeting during the Exodus and 40 years of wandering]. So Raba and Abaye agree that if these labors were involved separately in that project, then they must be listed here separately.

There is a problem with this line of argument, however – it is immediately observed that “pounding,” a labor performed to build the mishkan, is not listed by the Mishnah as a forbidden action! And while commentators clearly accept pounding as a forbidden action, it is not part of the number 39. This imprecision when it comes to numbers is nothing new in Jewish counting – the “40 years” in the wilderness consist of 1 year of events and “39 years later. . .”, and the Rabbinic agreement that the Torah contains 613 commandments does not extend to what they actually are – thus the number is not really a list, but lists are made to reach the number.

Note the power of definition – the Rabbis can claim all sorts of actions are prohibited if they can show them as derivative from an av melakhot [major category]. Boiling pitch mishum [on account of] “cooking,” plucking a bird mishum “shearing,” and so on. Thirty-nine proves only the beginning of Shabbat prohibitions that today are of mostly academic interest to the majority of the world’s Jews.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 73 - From One to Many

2005-07-14T11:28:00.000-07:00

In an undergraduate philosophy course, I was told that Aristotle’s philosophical works are challenging to begin studying because each section seems to assume that you have already studied the other sections; thus there is no perfect entry point from which to begin. Rabbinic legal works like the Talmud and Mishnah are very similar – here we have been studying Shabbat rules for over 70 dapim [pages], and only in today’s page do they list and explore in detail the major categories of work prohibited on Shabbat.

The Mishnah lists “forty minus one” avot melakhot [major work categories], from agricultural to handicrafts, creating or destroying, writing or erasing, kindling or extinguishing fire, and the last we saw at the beginning of our Talmud tractate: carrying from one domain to another. The Talmud then takes each category and describes which tasks are subsumed under that general category. Thus where the Mishnah says “Sowing,” the Talmud claims that sowing, pruning, planting, and grafting are all one labor.” Or “Reaping,” because it is a harvesting of food, should also include collecting grapes or gathering olives, dates, figs, or other cultivated food.

One can imagine what today would be called a “strict constructionist” objecting to this line of Talmudic argument – if it says “reaping,” they meant “reaping” only! And that would certainly limit the reach of these prohibitions. But we can also understand how general terms can be used to define broader areas of law – banning murder but ignoring accessories, or criminalizing armed robbery but ignoring embezzlement would not make sense.

Of course, a systematic law code would begin with texts just like this, and then proceed to specific examples. Tractate Shabbat began with the specific case of carrying from one domain to another, and took much space to get to the general pronouncement. This is just one more example of what makes the Talmud a distinctive document – one meanders to and through the law in a way that one is forced to understand halakhic reasoning and debate instead of simply getting the rules in a list. It’s not an accident that the word Talmud is related to the word talmid [student].

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 72 – Shabbat and the Week

2005-07-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the examples one chooses to illustrate a legal point can be more interesting than the legal point under discussion! Today’s page continues trying to hash out the difference between the liability when one has prior knowledge of one’s transgression versus being unaware that one’s action was prohibited. It turns out that there are two categories of guilt-offerings: asham vadai [certain guilt] and asham talui [“depends” guilt], and ‘Ulla tries to illustrate that one can still require a certain guilt offering even if unaware at first that it was prohibited.

Here is his example: if one “cohabits” five times with woman betrothed to another (violating Leviticus 19:21), he is only liable for one offering. Rabbi Hammuna objects that one could cohabit, set aside a sacrifice, and say “wait until I come back after ‘cohabiting’ again” in the interests of efficiency! But ‘Ulla clarifies that his example only applies to prohibited “cohabitations” not set apart by offering an atonement sacrifice in between. And others consider the same example from the perspective that prior knowledge would require separate atonements for each “cohabitation.” It is certainly interesting how far hypothetical examples to explore other legal points can take us from our central topic.

Returning to the central focus of this tractate (i.e. Shabbat), we find another example of the importance of relativity to truth – in certain contexts one’s breath is warm (with cold hands), but in others it is cool (with hot soup). Here the Rabbis teach that khomer Shabbat mish’ar ha-mitzvot, v’khomer sh’ar ha-mitzvot me’Shabbat – Shabbat can be more strict than the rest of the commandments, and the rest of the commandments can be more strict than Shabbat. If one performs two actions while unawares on Shabbat, one is liable for each unlike with other mitzvot. At the same time, unintentionally violating a regular mitzvah still automatically incurs an atonement offering, but unwitting violation on Shabbat does not. Yet one more reason Rabbinic Judaism made a separation [havdalah] between Shabbat and the week – even the law has different effects.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat 71 – The Theory of Involvement

2005-07-12T09:39:00.000-07:00

Today’s page concerns ignorance of the law – if one unwittingly broke a Shabbat work restriction and was then informed of what the law was, what should one’s punishment be? And if one then committed a similar action that falls within the same av or general category of forbidden work unaware that that too was forbidden, is he liable to perform a khatat [sin-offering] or not? And can atonement for one action cover another, what the Soncino translation renders as “the theory of involvement”? To summarize the discussion, a few of the Rabbis cited here do not accept “involvement” [gerira], but most do.

Two caveats we must keep in mind in this kind of exploration: first, the Rabbis in the Talmud are discussing sacrifices that haven’t actually been performed for hundreds of years since the Temple was destroyed in 70 CE. So their punishments are theoretical, though one could read this as simply their vocabulary for approval or disapproval, permission or prohibition. Second, the major reason the Talmud’s rabbis have to deal with cases of unwitting violation is that they are constantly creating and adding to the halakha [religious law] – so you can’t fully blame the average individual for being unclear on what was prohibited and what was not!

In our own context, we can imagine cases where many rules might be broken in one series of actions, and the question we would pursue is: what constitutes restitution? Is it only the first in the series, or each individual violation? We imagine that our courts pursue each count or charge individually, but we know that plea bargains aim at a simplified, cheaper process that also creates an overall punishment – thus they throw out certain charges to get a plea deal to lesser offenses. While this may violate some abstract sense of justice, where every little violation demands a specific compensation, we can also accept that we live in an imperfect world with imperfect justice, and sometimes the best we can do has to be good enough. Though in theory we don’t, in practice we too accept our own version of “involvement.”

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Rabbinic “Mercy” - Shabbat 70

2005-07-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

There are many elements of a prohibited action of which one may be unaware during its unwitting performance – one may not know that the action is forbidden at a certain time, or that the forbidden time is now, or what the punishment for such a violation would be. In this case, one may not know that it is Shabbat, or not know that a particular action like writing is prohibited, or not know what the punishment is. And the Talmud is certainly not the easiest place to find a quick answer to any of those questions. For those who would like a more detailed examination of traditional Jewish law and practice, I can recommend Isaac Klein’s A Guide to Jewish Religious Practice, which does a very good job of both explaining traditional observance and giving primary sources (Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud) for specific practices.

But we are interested in the Talmud less for its concrete conclusions than for its process and discussions. Most interesting today is another example of what could be called “rabbinic mercy.” Many of the harsh punishments laid down pretty explicitly in the Torah are modified, softened, and even categorically transformed by rabbinic interpretation. The Talmud begins by trying to explain why one may be liable for several sin-offerings for several actions that were committed while knowing that it was Shabbat but unaware that the particular action was forbidden. And even though the Torah repeatedly says that someone who violates Shabbat should be killed (cited here from Exodus 31:14 and Exodus 35:2), the fact that the first citation uses the emphatic form of “be killed” [mot yumat – “will surely die”] while the second does not [yumat – “will die”] is an opening to interpret that an unwitting offender should “die by money” [yumat bamamon] – that is, be financially penalized by offering a sacrifice.

On one hand, we can be glad that the rabbis softened what is a blanket Torah condemnation of any Shabbat violation. On the other, we can admit that rabbinic cleverness doesn’t completely soften the original harshness. This is the difference between interpretation of a founding document and having the courage to clearly amend or object to parts of it. The Rabbis of the Talmud will say elsewhere that courts that condemn even a few people to death in several years are wicked courts – but following the Bible’s legislation explicitly would lead to every court being very wicked. Thank goodness they didn’t, but too bad they weren’t willing to assert their own values more explicitly.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

What Day Is It? - Shabbat 69

2005-07-10T07:14:00.000-07:00

We have all had weeks, or even particularly long nights, when we wake up and wonder to ourselves, “what day is it?” For those living a secular lifestyle, while this may be a problem if it’s a school or work day we think is the weekend, it is not as crucial whether today is Saturday or Sunday. For those who observe the rules for Shabbat, however, it makes a big difference.

So, Rabbi Huna asks, what happens if you’re traveling in the wilderness (or, some manuscripts add, on the road) and you don’t know when it is Shabbat? His answer: you should count 6 days and then observe one as Shabbat. Hiyya bar Rab suggests the opposite: you should observe one day and then count six. Why do they disagree, asks the Talmud? One treats it like the Creation of the world – six days of work followed by a “shabbat.” The other treats it like the experience of Adam ha-Rishon [Adam the first (human)] – he was created on the 6th day, so for him it was one day of rest followed by six of work. The Talmud settles on the first suggestion – count six and observe one.

Nevertheless, suggests Raba, you should be extra careful – do only the work you must do for your requirements, except on your 7th day. Another interjects: “so he should die on that day?” Answer: on the previous day he prepared double. Response: “what if that day happened to be Shabbat and he did double the violations?” Resolution: do only what you must do, even on your seventh day. Final follow-up question: “So how do you know it’s his 7th day?” Because of Kiddush [sanctification of wine and Shabbat at its beginning] and Havdallah [“distinction” marking the end of Shabbat]. One can derive from this discussion that to “observe” Shabbat in less certain times means to mark it with Kiddush and havdallah, even if not performing work is not possible.

The early modern Hebrew writer, Hayim Nachman Bialik, wrote a short story called “The Short Friday” that appears in, among many other collections of his work, Random Harvest: The Novellas of Bialik. In “The Short Friday,” a Rabbi is called away just before Shabbat to a bris [circumcision], at which he gets drunk, falls asleep, and ends up at midnight at an inn run by a Jew – the Rabbi knows it because he sees the remnants of a Shabbat meal on a table before he dozes off again. As the Rabbi sleeps, the innkeeper sees him and assumes he must have made a mistake – how could the Rabbi be there if it was truly Shabbat? So he cleans up, wakes up everyone, opens up the inn and goes to work. When the Rabbi awakens, he assumes he slept through 24 hours and totally missed Shabbat, so he gets on the sleigh and goes home – arriving just as everyone in town gets out of Shabbat services to see him! How much of our sense of time depends on the world around us. . .

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Forget Shabbat - Shabbat 68

2005-07-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

A great principle – a klal gadol – of Shabbat observance brought up by the Mishnah and elaborated by the Talmud concerns violation through ignorance. As understood through Talmudic interpretation, if someone forgets that there is such a thing as Shabbat and commits many prohibited labors on many Shabbats, they are liable for only one sin offering for all of it. If you know about Shabbat but forget that it’s Shabbat at that moment and break many rules, you’re liable for each Shabbat you’ve broken. And if you know that it’s Shabbat and what that means, you’re liable for every primary category of labor you break, once per category even if you write or sew many times. In short, unlike our common understanding of laws, ignorance of the law IS an excuse.

Who would be someone who wouldn’t know what Shabbat is but still be expected to observe it? After all, non-Jews are not required to observe Shabbat, so if they don’t know what it is it doesn’t matter. Rab and Samuel agree that someone not knowing what Shabbat is must be a case like a child taken captive among nokhrim [strangers, Gentiles], or someone who converted to Judaism while still among nokhrim. But it could be the case for either of those examples that they DID know what Shabbat was at one time – the child from their early experience or the convert from early instruction. In that case, some feel they should be liable as anyone else who just forgot that it was Shabbat, but others would not blame them for their violations.

The experience of “hidden children” during the Holocaust has strong echoes of this discussion – some of those children were given to other families so young that they forgot what it meant to be Jewish. And they certainly could not observe Shabbat while hiding among non-Jewish families, even if they remembered what they were supposed to do and not do. And the “convert” example could connect for us with people who discover that their parents or grandparents had been Jews and they never knew it – Stephen Dubner’s Turbulent Souls: A Catholic Son’s Return to his Jewish Family tells his own story of being raised by devout Catholics in upstate New York who were both born Jews in New York City and abandoned it. Or former Secretary of State Madeline Albright would be another. From an ethnic point of view, we are glad they have discovered their roots. From a Jewish law perspective, as we’ve seen, it can raise different challenges.

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

The Ways of the Amorite - Shabbat 67

2005-07-08T10:17:00.000-07:00

One of the trickiest lines to draw is that between miracles and magic: miracles are divinely-authorized supernatural interventions, while magic is a non-God-related supernatural intervention. Those more secularly inclined don’t see much of a difference between the two, but to strict monotheists and monolatrists [worshipping ONLY one God] like the Rabbis, there is a big difference. The fear was that magic power like that drawn on in incantations and amulets would in fact be worshipping other gods, which was strictly forbidden.

Rabbi Jokhanan’s suggestion to cure an inflammatory fever by cutting one notch in a cord each day while reciting progressive verses from God’s encounter with Moses in a burning bush in Exodus 3 is entirely acceptable, since you are using both God’s text and his power. For an abscess, we are told to speak of the angels could cure boils and then say the magic words: “bazak, bazik, bizbazik, mismasik, kamun kamik” – even Rashi admits they have no meaning but are part of the incantation, like "abra-cadabra." And there are similar incantations against demons, even a “demon of the privy”! Here we begin to get into the murky waters of angels, demons, and other supernatural powers not strictly under the umbrella of direct divine authority. And certainly foreign to our experience today, where much more can be plausibly explained using natural cause and effect.

So how can you tell what kind of incantations are forbidden? The Rabbinic phrase for them is yesh bo mishum darkhei ha-emori [there is in it something of the way of the Amorite], and Raba and Abaye agree that anything that has a cure in it is not “the way of the Amorite.” But the Talmud does give plenty of examples of what is forbidden: asking one’s luck to be lucky, or a husband and wife exchanging names (probably to avoid evil), saying “I will drink and leave over” twice, dancing and counting 71 fledgling chickens so they won’t die, or requires silence to cook lentils, or the woman who urinates in front of her pot to speed its cooking – in all of these behaviors yesh bo mishum darkhei ha-emori. Evidently there is a difference between kosher magic and treyfe [not kosher] magic – but to me, it’s all magic and make-believe.

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

Haimishe [home] Remedies - Shabbat 66

2005-07-07T10:16:00.000-07:00

The first half today’s page is consumed with the debate of whether an individual with a prosthetic leg or arm can wear them out of the house on Shabbat. The fact that the discussion takes that long is one problem; its conclusions are still another. What is more interesting to us is the later discussion of what kinds of cures and treatments are permissible to use on Shabbat – not for what it teaches us about Shabbat observance, but for what it demonstrates about the treatment of illness in rabbinic times. And even back then, there was suspicion of how effective the cures were: wearing 3 garlands can stop an illness, 5 can cure it, and 7 can protect against witchcraft! But like every good magical cure, there are enough conditions to make disproving it impossible: according to Rabbi Aha ben Jacob, these garlands only work if they have not been seen by sun, moon or rain, nor has it heard iron, chickens, or footsteps. Thus another one says, in effect, very helpful since that’s basically impossible to do!

Other cures permitted on Shabbat: putting a hot cup on the stomach for stomachache, swaddling a baby, or wearing a “preserving stone” (to prevent miscarriage). We also learn that one may rub oil or salt into the skin. In fact, three famous Rabbis would rub oil and salt into their hands and their insteps to sober up! Once they were feeling tipsy, they would rub in these materials and recite: “just as this oil becomes clear, so may the wine become clear.” Or, if this didn’t work, they’d soak clay from a wine vessel in water, asking for the same result. We still have “home remedies” today, but it’s interesting to see what they were centuries ago.

Abaye even shares some tricks he learned from his mother: all incantations that must be repeated many times should include the name of the sick person’s mother, and whenever the number of repetitions is not specified, it should be 41. And if you have a daily fever, you take a new coin and equivalent weight in salt, and tie both to your neck with a twisted cord. Or sit a crossroads and catch an ant with a large burden in a brass tube that you seal with lead, then shake it and magically transfer your burden to the ant. Or go to a river, take a pitcher of water, swing it around your head 7 times, then throw it over your back, all while asking the river to borrow some water and then announcing its return. Since I don’t believe the river is really listening these days, I think I prefer ibuprofen.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Protecting Daughters - Shabbat 65

2005-07-06T15:19:00.000-07:00

One index of how free a particular society or culture or family is would be to look at how it treats its women – specifically, how protective the authorities are over women in different phases of life. In traditional Jewish life, before they were married women were under the authority of their fathers. In some cases, as with the legend mentioned a few days ago that holds that Rashi educated his daughters and taught them to wear tefillin [prayer boxes], paternal permissiveness ruled. In others, restriction was the rule.

Such is the case for a particular anecdote in today’s daf [page]. The Mishnah permits banot [daughters] to go out with threads in their ears, as an allowed ornament in place of an earring to prevent the ear-hole from closing. But Samuel’s father was extra strict: he would not allow his daughters to go out with threads in their ears. He also would not allow them to sleep together, and he went to extra effort to build them mikvaot [ritual baths] and thus facilitate their ritual purity. When it is pointed out that he forbids what the Mishnah explicitly permits, the difference is fudged by saying they had colored threads for their ears, which were more of a temptation to remove and show off. By the way, the same is true of a gold tooth – too tempting to remove to show off and thus carry too far; but a silver tooth is permitted.

And why prevent them from sleeping together? In some passages, it is assumed that women are not sexual beings until they are married, but here there is fear of Rabbi Huna’s saying: “women that commit lewdness with each other are banned from marrying priests” (i.e. not pure virgins as they must be to marry a kohen [priest]). As intriguing as this issue might be for modern sexual identity politics and history, the Talmud explains rather that he was more concerned that they “get used to a strange body.” In modern times in developed countries, sharing a bed, even with one’s loving partner, is a learned process since most have their own beds from childhood – anyone who has fought over the covers or been clocked in the head by a stray elbow knows the experience. In the Talmud, the focus is on preserving daughterly purity; today, we might call learning to share a life skill!

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

For Appearance’s Sake - Shabbat 64

2005-07-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

There are times when the rabbis of the Talmud can sound as puritanical as any fundamentalist religious authority – today’s page asks why the Israelites of the generation that wandered in the wilderness for 40 years under Moses were in need of atonement. The answer: shehzanu eyneihem meen ha-ervah – literally, they whored their eyes through nudity. And what does it mean that their atonement, according to rabbinic interpretation, included casts of breasts and wombs? They symbolize “outer” and “inner” lusts, and from this Rabbi Sheshet learns that whoever looks upon a woman’s little finger is as if he gazed on her “special place.” Not that far away from a fundamentalist Islamic authority who decrees women should be covered head to toe for similar reasoning.

The more important legal concept explored here, however, concerns the importance of appearances. “Rab Judah said in Rab's name: ‘Wherever the Sages forbade [aught] for appearances’ sake, it is forbidden even in one's khidrey khadarim [“room of rooms” or innermost room].’” The principle of mar’it ayin [“seeing of the eye” or appearance’s sake] means that one should not perform a certain action lest it lead to the perception of incorrect behavior. To draw a modern parallel, sitting in a non-kosher restaurant, even if one eats nothing, looks like un-kosher behavior is taking place. Or, in an example brought by the commentator Rashi, one should not lead camels tied together on Shabbat lest others think you are taking them to market to sell them. But Judah is going even farther – just because no one is there to watch you and judge you incorrectly doesn’t mean you can still do the action! Even in private, you are not free of the tyranny of popular prejudice.

If we ran our lives based on the perceptions of others, no one would fear “Big Brother” because there would be many judging eyes on everyone at every moment. Thank goodness that we are not only free to make our own decisions about life, but that we are free to make them without being constrained by others’ senses of propriety. We do sometimes choose based on the possible perceptions and sensitivities of others, but these are free choices we make from our generosity towards their sensibilities. We could also choose to tell them it’s none of their business. Or, in one of my favorite lines in the fabulous movie The Price Above Rubies, when the main female character is chastised for not covering her hair, “You can look at the ceiling, or you can look at the shoes, but it’s not my problem!”

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Messiah, Meaning, and Companionship - Shabbat 63

2005-07-04T17:39:00.000-07:00

Today’s page is one of those meaty ones that make us wish we could linger for a few days on one page without pursuing the next and the next. However, if one lingered on every such page, the daf yomi [daily page] cycle would take even longer than 7.5 years! The Mishnah text that forms the core of the discussion is a beautiful connection between prophesy and legalism. Should swords be considered “burdens” or “ornaments” on Shabbat? Rabbi Eliezer maintains that they are ornaments, but the Sages agree that they are merely “shameful.” Why? In Isaiah’s famous end of days prophesy (Isaiah 2:4) he imagines, “they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” In other words, if swords were primarily ornamental, why would they be totally transformed and vanish in messianic times, why call them “ornaments” on Shabbat now? Because it is like a candle at noon – ornamental at the moment, but needed in dark times.

One rabbi asks why Rabbi Eliezer called the swords ornaments, and he is pointed to Psalm 45:4 which speaks of binding a sword upon a leg. Rabbi Kahana objected – this verse must be referring to words of the Torah! In other words, he takes the rabbinic interpretation of “sword” as metaphor for “Torah” as the original or only meaning of the verse. He is corrected with a very important saying: “Ayn mikra yotse mip’shuto – Scripture never leaves its plain meaning.” Even if there is an allegorical or metaphorical interpretation, the literal meaning of the text still applies. In our terms, don’t let later understandings and creative interpretations replace or totally obscure the original meaning, even of problematic texts. In response to this, Rabbi Kahana exclaims, “By age 18 I had studied the entire Talmud, and I never learned this saying until today.” And from this anecdote the Talmud draws a beautiful lesson for any student – keep studying, and you’ll understand it eventually!

We also read several statements about the value of two scholars working together – phrased in Talmudic theology of divine help and reward, they nevertheless describe an ideal of collegial cooperation from which we can learn. Two scholars should sharpen each other in what they study, be amiable to each other in their study, and pay attention to each other. The traditional model of hevruta [companion] study, where two students study together in discussion rather than each individually, is an interesting model to apply to all kinds of textual study, but also important in any endeavor of shared inquiry.

And we don’t even have the time to go into the implications of a fascinating saying by Rabbi Lakish: “He who lends [money] is greater than he who performs charity; and he who forms a partnership is greater than all.” The implications of this saying for pride and shame, poverty and generosity, even Maimonides’ famous ladder of tsedakah [charity], must be teased out on your own. Or, for that matter, the anti-canine implications of “whoever raises a bad dog keeps loving-kindness [khesed] from his house” – is this why some Jews don’t like dogs? More study for another occasion. . .

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Women and Commandments - Shabbat 62

2005-07-03T17:37:00.000-07:00

As we have seen on other pages, women are treated differently from men when it comes to rabbinic laws. After all, the Mishnah didn’t prohibit a man to leave his house wearing a “golden city” ornament. So when ‘Ulla’s saying that “what is fit for a man is not fit for a woman, and what is fit for a woman is not fit for a man” is brought to bear here, it is meant to claim that something like a signet ring can be simultaneously a “burden” for a woman (and thus not wearable out on Shabbat) and an “ornament” for a man (thus wearable). When one rabbi objects to this double standard for the same object, Rabbi Joseph responds that Ulla meant, “women are a different people.” Wise-crackers today might put it, “it’s like they’re an entirely different species!” And women might say the same about men.

We read here an assumed principle discussed on earlier pages, that women are exempt from all time-specific positive commandments [kol mitzvah aseh sheh-ha-zman gorma nashim p’turot]. In this case, Rabbi Meir argues that since tefillin [prayer boxes] are required both at night and on Shabbat, it is not limited by time and thus incumbent on women. There is a legend that the famous medieval Talmud commentator Rashi taught his daughters to wear tefillin, and a recent novel Rashi’s Daughters: A Novel of Life, Love and Talmud in Medieval France by Maggie Anton takes a romantic (and not too historical, according to a review I read) look at that story. In most traditional communities, however, the principle regarding time-bound positive commandments is invoked to prevent women from publicly reading from the Torah or participating in a minyan [prayer quorum] or reciting kaddish [prayer in honor of the dead].

Today’s page later delves into the gruesome cosmic punishments of Jewish women for being too seductive and haughty, but for us there is a bit of comic relief. How would you interpret the saying, “Three things bring a man to poverty: urinating naked in front of one’s bed, disrespecting washing the hands, and his wife cursing him to his face”? Fortunately, Raba clarifies each of these possibilities. Urinating facing away from the bed or into a chamber pot is acceptable, but on the floor is not. Even washing the hands inadequately is OK, as long as they are washed at all. And the wife’s cursing must be because of her jewelry, and he is only at risk if he has the money but doesn’t provide it. Incontinent slovenly penny-pinchers, beware!

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

How to Tie Your Shoes - Shabbat 61

2005-07-02T16:14:00.000-07:00

A famous Hasidic legend tells of two followers going to visit their Rebbe – one plans to listen to the rebbe’s teaching and learn a great lesson, while the second plans to watch the rebbe tie his shoes to learn a great lesson. Why “tie his shoes?” Because when a person is considered holy and perfect, EVERYTHING they do is considered holy and a model.

This is one of the reasons Talmudic discussions can go from the sublime to the ridiculous. On today’s page, Rabbi Yokhanan says one should treat their shoes like tefillin [prayer boxes], which are worn on the left hand; thus one should put on their left shoe first. But a baraita [Mishnah-era teaching not included in the Mishnah] says one should put on the right first and then the left! Fortunately, Rabbi Joseph appears to put our minds at ease: since the baraita has it one way and Rabbi Yokhanan the other, either way is acceptable. A Win-Win! But Mar son of Rabina found the best way to satisfy both: he put on the right shoe but didn’t tie it, then slipped on the left shoe and tied it, and only then tied the right one. This pickiness is not limited to putting on shoes – one must take off the left first and then the right, and washing must begin with the right and then the left. There is one sane voice in this chorus: R. Ashi reports that R. Kahana was not particular about how he put on his shoes!

The more interesting anthropological detail in today’s page is the discussion of which kinds of amulets, or magic charms, can be worn on Shabbat. The Mishnah says that only one made by an expert can be worn – the Talmud discusses how to define an approved amulet or an approved amulet-maker – the general standard is three magic healings. Of course we should be calling them “miraculous” healings and charms, since they derived their “powers” from the use of the divine name (YHWH), but “magic” gives us today a better sense of how they were used. We also read that they were considered special because of the divine name, but not holy enough to save from a fire on Shabbat.

Jews have not been immune from their own superstitions – monotheism does not cure the desire for magic power. If one is facing a run of bad luck, they are encouraged to check their mezuzah [doorpost box with holy text]. And the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov [“master of the good name”], most likely got his title from making the very kinds of amulets discussed in today’s page. But we will never know exactly how he put on his shoes.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

The Soul of Soles - Shabbat 60

2005-07-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Every religious tradition has its debates about issues that take up more space than they deserve. A famous Catholic debate concerned how many angels could fit on the head of a pin; today’s daf debates how many nails on a sandal should be permitted to wear out of the house on Shabbat. In case you were wondering. . .

The Talmud asks why the Mishnah prohibited men leaving their homes on Shabbat with “nail-studded sandals” [the Hebrew for sandal is “sandahl,” derived from Greek]. Samuel proceeds to tell a story where Jews hiding from persecution in a cave decided that they could enter the cave but not leave it lest their hiding place be discovered. Unfortunately, one of their sandals was reversed and its track on the ground led them to believe one had left, thus panicking them into a crowding frenzy that killed more of them than the enemy did. Other rabbis speculate that instead they heard someone walking above the cave, or at the back of a synagogue, and thus panicked and trampled each other with their nail-studded shoes. And since this took place on a Shabbat, thus the prohibition (after much more discussion, of course) of sandals whose nails are structural rather than ornamental.

But never let it be said that the Talmud’s Rabbis missed an opportunity to disagree: HOW MANY nails count as ornamental? Some say seven, others say 13. One says five is allowed but sever is forbidden. Another says 5, 7, 8, or 9 are allowed. In Pumbedita [a Babylonian rabbinic academy] they allow 24, while in Sura [another Babylonian academy] only 22. And if most of the nails have fallen out and only 4 or 5 are left, that is permitted too. Who knew that such profound lessons could be derived from a deep study of religious tradition?

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

A Golden City - Shabbat 59

2005-06-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

Our current Talmud discussion concerning what certain people may wear out of their house tries to draw a distinction between an ornament and a burden – one is not supposed to carry around a burden on Shabbat, but wearing an ornament would be permitted. I remember being surprised as an undergraduate in college hearing that on Shabbat Orthodox Jewish students would not carry their keys in their pockets but could wear them with a pin on their clothes, but I have since learned that this is the same kind of rationale.

In our original Mishnah text, we read that women should not go out wearing “a golden city” [ir shel zahav] – in other words, a golden ornament so bulky that it crosses the line from ornament to burden! What city? Of course, “a golden Jerusalem” [Aramaic yerushalayim d’zahava], just like Rabbi Akiva made for his wife (that story is in Nedarim 50a). This kind of an ornament is often referred to in rabbinic literature, and it became the basis for the very famous Naomi Shemer song Yerushalayim Shel Zahav [Jerusalem of Gold] written after the Israeli victory in Jerusalem in 1967. You can read all about the song, including more on rabbinic sources, at http://www.jerusalemofgold.co.il/.

Rabbi Meir would hold a woman going out with such an ornament liable for a sin-offering, but the Sages exempt her unless she takes it off in order to show it and thus carry it in the street. And Rabbi Eliezer tries to reason that the only kind of woman who would have such a piece would be an “important woman” [ishah khashuva], and such a woman wouldn’t remove it for display. Interestingly enough, any considerations of modesty, decorum, or tact in terms of how large a piece of gold jewelry can be on Shabbat are not explored. For me, any piece of jewelry that is so large that there is even an argument about whether or not it is a burden is too large for my tastes.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

What May Slaves and Animals Wear? – Shabbat 58

2005-06-29T09:29:00.000-07:00

While it is true that Biblical and Rabbinic legislation prescribed a day of rest on Shabbat for not only Jewish individuals but also for slave and animals, slaves were still slaves on Shabbat just as animals were still livestock. So just as the men writing the Talmud could discuss what women were allowed to wear out of the house while observing Shabbat, so too should one understand what other beings for which one was responsible were allowed to wear.

Thus we read that, according to Samuel, a slave is allowed to leave the house with a seal (of ownership) on his neck but not on his garment. What is the difference? One idea is that his master puts the seal on his neck but he puts it on his garment – and as commentators explain, in that case he is afraid to remove and carry the neck seal but might do so with the garment. However, interjects the Talmud, of course the master has put his seal of ownership on the slave’s garment as well! Rather, it must be that if the seal breaks off the garment, he might fold the garment over his shoulder and carry it out of fear – as Rashi interprets, fear that his master might accuse him of losing it on purpose and trying to pass himself off as a free person [ben khorin, the same phrase used at Passover in the song Avadim Hayinu/We were slaves]. And going out with a folded garment on one’s shoulder is a clear no-no. To prevent that possibility, circumstances that could lead to it are also prohibited.

There is another tradition that slaves cannot leave the house with an ownership seal on either the neck or the garment, because they are neither ornaments nor tools but rather badges of shame (again, Rashi’s understanding). The problem with this interpretation is that the Talmud discussion goes on to make a distinction between a metal and a clay seal of ownership, permitting a clay one. While they may certainly weigh and be worth different amounts, the shame of both is probably equivalent. Rather than challenging slavery itself, the Talmud is more focused here on defining the conditions of servitude and Shabbat observance.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

What May Women Wear? - Shabbat 57

2005-06-28T07:51:00.000-07:00

The next area of Talmudic Shabbat discussion is more closely defined by the Mishnah text under consideration than the previous few pages. The focus is on what women may wear out of the house on Shabbat, and what they may not wear. As we have seen before, the Mishnah lists specific examples of what may not be worn out, like wool or linen ribbons or a “golden city” [ir shel zahav], but does not give a general principle defining WHY these particular items are prohibited and others are allowed. We are told by the Mishnah, however, that wearing these out is not a serious transgression – she who does is nevertheless not liable for a sin-offering in atonement.

How to discover the rationale behind these particular items? First, the Talmud notes an oddity to the Mishnah passage – when talking about not wearing ribbons out on Shabbat, it also says that she cannot perform tevilah [ritual immersion/cleansing] in them. The Talmud interjects (my translation): “who said anything about tevilah?” But this is how they find their answer: because she can’t wear them for tevilah, that means if she had to perform that ritual she would have to take them off. If she had them in her hand and carried them more than 4 cubits, she would violate the Shabbat limitation on carrying. Thus the ribbons are prohibited on Shabbat.

This, of course, begs another question – why are they prohibited for tevilah? The answer, coming from other legal discussions, is that some believe that they are a barrier between water and the skin of the person being immersed and therefore should be forbidden. This explains why later on in the Talmud’s discussion ribbons of hair are permitted, since they allow water through. And now one has a general principle of what women may and may not wear in their hair out of the house on Shabbat.

Today, of course, our concern in what we wear in going out is far less about what we may need to take off for ritual immersion and far more about appearance and comfort (every individual strikes their own balance between the two). Traditional restrictions on dress, for Shabbat or for every day of the year, have been left behind for the freedom of individual expression. We can understand the reasoning and values behind rabbinic prohibitions like ribbons on Shabbat even if we don’t accept the prohibition itself.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Saving Heroes - Shabbat 56

2005-06-27T13:44:00.000-07:00

The theme of the end of yesterday’s and all of today’s page is “kol ha-omer ____ khata, ayno ayle toeh – All those who say that _____ sinned, they are nothing but wrong.” So if you thought that David, or Solomon, or Josiah sinned because of what you can read about them in the Bible, you must be wrong. One could be forgiven for coming to such a conclusion from reading passages like I Kings 11:6: “and Solomon did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord” – as the rabbis explain this away, in fact he WANTED to do evil but didn’t actually do it. The Rabbis serve as spinmeisters for Biblical heroes!

And so on through some of the most famous moral failings of the Judean monarchy. Jewish “cheerleaders” often highlight the fact that the Bible’s portrayals of early figures like David and Solomon include their faults and failings, thus making them more real heroes. But the Talmud wants them to be perfect, so if David steals away one of his soldier’s wives and has the man killed (as he does with Uriah and Bathsheba in II Samuel 11, this must be explained away. Thus Rabbi, who claims to be related to David, defends him. David must have WANTED to do even but of course didn’t do any. And every man going to war in David’s army gave their wife a bill of divorce [get], so it wasn’t adultery. And the prophet Nathan’s condemnation of David is also explained away – Uriah disobeyed David’s order to go home (intended to cover up David’s adultery that had impregnated Bathsheba), and should have been condemned by the Sanhedrin, but he received his just penalty. Never mind that Uriah refused to sleep with his wife because of his loyalty to the troops suffering in the field, or that the Rabbinic Sanhedrin didn't yet exist historically. . .

Indeed, to preserve the reputation of David and Solomon, others take the fall – in the Bible Solomon is condemned for building altars to other gods, for letting his many wives turn him away from worshipping only YHWH, but here he is blamed not for DOING anything, but for allowing things to be done. Thus we end up with a mix of positive and negative messages for our own times – honesty to the evidence would mean accepting the human mistakes of major figures in our literature (and in ourselves) and not interpreting or fudging them away, but we agree that allowing bad things to happen has as bad results as doing it oneself. In all this, we must let the truth be the truth – save spin for politicians.

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

Text of David’s affair with Bathsheba, Uriah’s murder, and Nathan’s condemnation – II Samuel 11-12. http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Rsv2Sam.html

Life, Death, and Divine Justice - Shabbat 55

2005-06-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

In a lengthy theological digression from Shabbat rules and regulations, the Talmud turns to questions of divine justice. We saw at the end of the previous page that one has an obligation to inform others of their incorrect behavior, and today’s page clarifies that even if they will not accept the correction, still one has an obligation to inform them. This obligation derives from a rabbinic midrash [story based on a Biblical passage] on Ezekiel 9:4, where God commands that a tav [last letter of the Hebrew Aleph-Bet] be put on the foreheads of those in Jerusalem “who sigh and who cry for all the abominations that are done in its midst,” so that

The midrash creates a dialogue between God and the “midat ha-din” [attribute of justice], a side of God’s decision-making process whose counterpoint is the midat ha-rakhamim [attribute of mercy]: God puts a tav of ink on the righteous and one of blood on the wicked, but midat ha-din asks what the difference is since “they had the power to protest and did not.” God tried to defend them by saying “I knew their protest would not be received,” but he is answered, “You knew, but did they?” In other words, no human can know in advance whether a protest against wickedness will be heard or ignored, so we have an obligation to protest. In this case, rabbinic midrash has interpreted the original narrative even more cruelly – while Ezekiel seems to save at least those who “sigh and cry,” this version condemns them as well for their failure to protest to the wicked.

The case of Holocaust bystanders provides a powerful parallel – who can say what might have happened if more had chosen to protest earlier in the process? The parallel to the Holocaust experience is even more powerful when one of the rabbis interprets the two different tavs – one is for tikhiyeh [you shall live], and the other is for tamut [you shall die]. Just as Nazi doctors played God in the concentration camps, pointing to the right or the left for the gas or life, so does the Talmud’s God play God by supposedly condemning or rescuing those who live or die. Facing the classic conundrum of providential religion – why do people suffer and die if God is good and all-powerful - Rabbi Ammi puts the rabbinic perspective flatly: “There is no death without sin, and there is no suffering without iniquity.” Many today would just as flatly disagree.

While there are some minimal attempts to refute this bald conclusion in today’s page, there are far more attempts to soften the sins of Biblical figures – where the Torah says Reuven slept with his father Jacob’s concubine (Gen. 35:22), the Rabbis have decided he must have simply turned over her bed, because how could his descendents in Deuteronomy have cursed those who committed the same violation? More on this topic in tomorrow’s page, but suffice it to say here that from our perspective, hypocrisy would be nothing new under the sun.

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

For information on the German Pastor Martin Niemoller and his famous quotation on the importance of protest during the Holocaust, see:
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/quotations/niemoller_jews_communists_socialists.html

Human Responsibility - Shabbat 54

2005-06-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

A classic ethical debates concerns the limits of human responsibility – am I only responsible for my own actions, or am I also responsible for the actions of others under my authority? On one hand, we know that we have a duty to teach our children correct behavior, and that we should be held responsible for failing to do so. On the other hand, if we are adults and independent individuals, we have no need of and are insulted by others having the khutzpah [gall] to tell us how to live our lives.

The Mishnah mentions that a cow is forbidden to go out on Shabbat with a strap between its horns, but also that Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah’s cow would go out like that but without the permission of the rabbis. The Talmud’s rabbis ask if it truly was his only cow, as implied by the Mishnah’s phrasing – after all, another tradition holds that this rabbi was so wealthy that his annual tithe was 13,000 calves annually! Rather, it is claimed that it was his female neighbor’s cow, and since he could have easily corrected her but did not, it is referred to as his.

From this specific case, the Talmud turns to the general philosophical question highlighted above. Four rabbis sat and discussed the question and taught their conclusion: whoever can stop the people of his house from transgression and does not, is responsible. And the same is true for the people of his city, or even for the entire world [kol ha’olam kulo]. I am at once inspired by the willingness and generosity to take responsibility for the moral behavior and education, and made nervous by contemplating what counts as a “transgression” worthy of intervention. Is my choice of diet, or dress, or Shabbat observance, or marriage partner, or any other of the freedoms I enjoy, subject to nosy intervention by well-meaning “responsibility-takers?”

Today, one would hope that Rabbi Eleasar ben Azariah could address his situation like this: he could politely inform her one time of the rabbinic rulings on Shabbat and cows, and then let her be mature enough to make her own decision and take responsibility for those actions. Thus he has taken responsibility for informing her, but not taken away her dignity by assuming she can’t make decisions for herself. Wouldn’t the world be much nicer if values arguments proceeded on this basis instead of the way they work today?

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Animal Suffering and Pleasure - Shabbat 53

2005-06-24T07:59:00.000-07:00

The proper treatment of animals on Shabbat was much more important in Jewish life when livestock were part of everyday life – today we are not concerned whether our dogs or cats are carrying to much of a burden any day of the week. A hot topic in today’s Talmud page concerns what a donkey [khamor] may wear, and may not wear, during Shabbat when it is also commanded to rest (see Deuteronomy 5:13-14). The Mishnah text discussed here permits a donkey to wear a cushion tied to its back, and the question the Talmud considers is: why? And what else can it wear if a cushion is permitted?

A saddle is not allowed, according to this discussion, and one must lead around the donkey until it falls off because removing a saddle is intended to cool off the donkey, which is not considered as crucial as keeping it warm as a cushion (i.e. blanket) would. Rab taught that one may put a fodder bag on an animal to feed from on Shabbat, and if one may provide the animal the pleasure of feeding, kal va’khomer [how much more so] may one put on a cushion to avoid causing animal suffering! Samuel, on the other hand, would allow the cushion but not the fodder bag since the animal could be fed by dropping food on the ground and a feed bag is a luxury. When Samuel was told what Rab had taught, he responded, “If he said that, he knows absolutely nothing about Shabbat!”

The question we can consider here is the appropriate level of concern for animals – do we want only to avoid needless animal suffering (and what counts as “needless”), or do we also want to provide them positive pleasures? Modern consumers, who do not personally encounter the wide variety of animals whose meat and other products they enjoy every day, rarely consider the conditions in which the animals are raised, treated, killed or prepared. One need not become completely vegetarian or vegan [use no animal products at all] to contemplate or act on such questions, and releasing cattle into the wild would itself be animal cruelty since they have been bred to be fed fodder and killed for meat for so many generations that they are practically helpless on their own. But this is a case where the difference in life experience from the days of the Talmud to our own times can remind us to consider our lives in a new way.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

The Importance of Specificity - Shabbat 52

2005-06-23T07:58:00.000-07:00

There are several times in Talmudic literature that general categories require refinement. In fact, much Talmudic discussion is focused on harmonizing different teachings that come into conflict in areas of overlap. For example, a person’s ring [taba’at] is susceptible to uncleanness, but an animal’s (nose) ring and other utensils are not. So why does the Mishnah text under discussion mention purifying animal accoutrements like chains or rings by sprinkling water or immersion, if they can’t become unclean?

One rabbi suggests that this refers to human objects that have become animal ornaments (thus changing categories), but another comes up with a more convincing explanation because it harmonizes with another teaching. Such objects can become unclean just as it was taught elsewhere that an animal’s staff can become unclean. What does an ox’s nose ring and a shepherd’s staff have in common? They are both used by humans to lead animals. Thus it wouldn’t matter whether they were originally human ornaments or originally made for animals, and that could have been the end of the discussion.

To complicate matters, a student from Galilee had heard about distinctions being made between rings, and Rabbi Eleazar responded “you must mean about during Shabbat, because for uncleanness the one and the other are the same” (i.e. they are all alike). Another way to the same conclusion as above, but are all rings really alike, the Talmud asks? After all, above it said that human rings could be unclean but not those of animals? Yes, he meant human rings. Did he mean finger rings or other rings used by humans for fastening clothes or robes? (finger rings). And what if the ring is metal but the signet is coral, or vice versa? He only referred to entirely metal rings.

The point we can learn from all of this is the importance of specificity. It may be the case that we want to make a general pronouncement, and our thinking isn’t clear without several examples. Or it may be the case that when we look to apply general rules to specific cases, they don’t work as well in every eventuality as we imagined they would. Any rule needs to be checked against real life to see if it should be a real rule, and the more cases the better.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Respect and Compassion - Shabbat 51

2005-06-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

For all of the attention to picayune detail we have seen so far in defining Shabbat observance, there are also times when a touching humanity is displayed in rulings and legal discussions. The first half of today’s page is mainly focused on elaborating the Mishnah’s ruling concerning storing cold water during Shabbat. To answer a “rabbinic paradox” – two opposite legal rulings ascribed to the same rabbi – we are told that Rabbi prohibited such storage before his encounter with Rabbi Ishmael son of Rabbi Yose, but permitted it afterwards. The encounter was very simple: Rabbi ruled against storing cold water, and Rabbi Ishmael said “my father allowed it.” And that is all Rabbi needed to hear to change his ruling, so great was his respect for Rabbi Yose. But that respect went two ways, because Rabbi Yose occupied his father’s place but was submitting to be a student before Rabbi, and then Rabbi submitted to his authority as well! Rabbi Papa touchingly observes: “Come and see how much they loved each other!”

In the second half of today’s page, the Mishnah text under discussion concerns the circumstances under which animals may go out and about on Shabbat. We should recall that Biblical Shabbat law commands rest not only for the landowner, but for everyone and everything:

Six days you shall labor, and do all your work; But the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord your God; in it you shall not do any work, you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your manservant, nor your maidservant, nor your ox, nor your ass, nor any of your cattle, nor your stranger who is inside your gates; that your manservant and your maidservant may rest as well as you. (Deuteronomy 5:13-14)

So when the Mishnah specifies what kind of controlling device (a bit, rope, or chain) specific animals may be wearing on Shabbat, the Talmud explains that one wearing a device intended for another could be considered a burden, and thus prohibited. There is some debate about a muzzle/collar [soger], but the resolution is that since its goal would be to protect the animal, it is indeed permitted. The attention to this detail, the compassion for the rest of others of other species, deserves to be highlighted here.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

When to Act and What to Expect - Shabbat 50

2005-06-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

Two general rabbinic principles ripe for philosophical debate appear in today’s Talmud page, as the rabbis continue to grapple with how to handle certain materials on Shabbat. After all, one may use a number of materials for either a permitted or a prohibited purpose, and it all depends on what one intended to do with them as to whether one may handle them. And such materials are generally designated as intended for a permitted purpose in some way.

So if one is permitted to bring a sackful of earth into a house to use for one’s needs on Shabbat, says one rabbi, he should mark a corner of it. The problem is that dirt looks like dirt! Fortunately, there is an out: the sages decreed (in more convoluted language) that where such an act is possible, it should be done; but where an act is impossible, nothing is required. The philosophical debates in this principle are not unpacked in the Talmud, but they could be rich: is there NOTHING one could do in a given situation – have we given in to “impossible” to quickly? When can acting when there is really nothing to be done make the situation worse? And why be guilty in particularly difficult circumstances for doing nothing when there IS no right action to take?

The second general principle brings us back to the conflict between the restrictive Rabbi Judah and the permissive Rabbi Simeon. If there is a side-effect to a particular action, like cleaning a utensil with a material like sand or chalk that may incidentally smooth out or alter the metal, Rabbi Judah would prohibit it – “a thing not planned – prohibited” [davar sheh’ayn mitkaven – asur]. But Rabbi Simeon would allow it – davar sheh ‘ayn mitkaven – mutar [permitted]. Again, the philosophical roads not taken beckon us: should one be allowed to benefit from unintentional but foreseeable consequences? How can you draw the line between intended and unintended results – that is, couldn’t people “clean” their utensils while really wanting to smooth them out? These general philosophical inquiries were not the primary attention of the Talmud and its traditional commentators, but they might well be for later generations!

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Miracles and Making Lists - Shabbat 49

2005-06-20T17:57:00.000-07:00

There are two very important elements in today’s daf [page] that we will consider separately. The first is an anecdote about a man named Elisha that appears again almost verbatim later in tractate Shabbat 130, inspired here by a mention that food can be stored for Shabbat in dove’s wings. Elisha is called the “master of wings” [baal k’nafim] because of the following story: once the Roman government prohibited the wearing of tefillin [prayer boxes] on pain of death, but Elisha wore his anyways. When pursued, he fled, and when he was caught, he hid them in his hand. When asked what he had in his hands, he replied “wings of a dove,” and miraculously that is what was there. The moral of the story, as often happens in rabbinic parables, came at the beginning – wearing tefillin requires a pure body. And what does that mean practically? Raba says one shouldn’t sleep in then, while Abaye suggests one should not pass wind in them. This entire passage is a great example of the heights of rabbinic religious imagination, combined with the almost shockingly-earthy reality of rabbinic pronouncements and human concerns.

The second is a great example of one of the basic tasks of the Talmud – to explain the thinking behind the Mishnah. The Mishnah said that there are 39 categories of work prohibited on Shabbat; the Talmud here asks the very reasonable question: “why 39? To what does the number 39 correspond?” One rabbi speculates that it is related to the kinds of work performed to build the Tabernacle during the Exodus, since the rules of Shabbat appear right next to the Tabernacle construction in Exodus 35. Another claims that it is the number certain variations of the word melakha [work] appear in the Torah, and when challenged he suggests they pull out a Torah scroll and count them! The challenge comes that the word melakha can sometimes be professional work, but it can also be used euphemistically for other activities, so the challenger asks if a particular example of the word counts towards the 39. The end of this debate is teku – undecided, and waiting for Elijah to return from heaven to settle the issue! (see Blog entry on Shabbat 5 for more on this concept). Besides, using my CD ROM of the Hebrew Torah to count the occurrences of those words, I came up with 47. . .

All of this is very different from our approach to lists. Do we want to have a number fixed, and then try to fill it, or come up with sensible categories and then find out how many we have? While it is a good idea when giving a speech not to have too many points (audience memories are notoriously spotty), not necessarily when making laws. Why not? Because one invents things to fill the number rather than giving an honest list of the genuine possibilities.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

The Necessary Connection - Shabbat 48

2005-06-19T15:35:00.000-07:00

Is a tire part of an automobile? On one hand it is integral for the car’s function, but on the other one could argue that a tire is clearly replaceable and removable, and the car remains clearly an undamaged car when on a repair jack with a tire off. In rabbinic terminology, a similar question is put in various ways: are otherwise acceptable objects attached to problematic ones also forbidden to use on Shabbat? Or, in another way of thinking about it, are these items considered connected in terms of becoming unclean in general?

A piece of wood temporarily improvised as an axe handle, or laundry loosely stitched together for transportation, or a bunch of keys – all are considered “connected” for purposes of uncleanness unless they have begun to be untied. In other words, a loose tire might be considered less on the car than on its way off of it! Rabbi Meir is credited with the general principle: whatever is bound to something, behold it is like it (i.e. they are one object). Of course, Rabbi Meir’s authorship of this saying must be deduced by other rulings of his on similar subjects, but that is par for the rabbinic course.

What can we glean from this discussion? Think of necessary consequences – if we know that a particular action is fine in and of itself but it will necessarily lead to bad consequences down the road, we cannot but consider those two pieces one issue. And the same is true in considering what happens to us – sometimes what gets us is an unintended consequence of another action, but that doesn’t make the originator of the bad results innocent if they could have been reasonably predicted. In other words, they share what the Scottish philosopher David Hume called a “necessary connexion [sic]” upon which we base our basic concepts of causality, sequence, and for that matter personal responsibility.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Outside the Box - Shabbat 47

2005-06-18T15:34:00.000-07:00

Jewish culture has always had fruitful interactions with its non-Jewish surroundings. Exhibit A on today’s page is the originator of a tradition – a chain of rabbis 5 removed from the actual event relies on the authority of testimony by “Rabbi Romanus.” For all the official enmity between the rabbis and Roman/Hellenistic culture, obviously there was some interchange if a rabbi could be named Romanus! There have been many studies done comparing Talmudic dialectical argument to Hellenistic philosophy, and there are over 2500 terms of Greek linguistic origin in the Talmud (cited in Louis Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World, 1993, p31). Even if those terms are rare in theological, literary, or philosophical discussions, their prevalence in areas of government, society, and personal behavior indicates a profound linguistic and social interaction.

Another interesting detail demonstrated in today’s page is the ability of the rabbis to come up with ways around strict yes or no answers. You would think that behavior would simply be defined as “do this” or “don’t do that,” but the rabbis are very creative in refining these categories. Here they consider the case of assembling a bed –the sockets for the legs or the legs themselves should not be inserted, but if they are inserted the individual is not liable for a sin offering. But it is still forbidden to do it! This concept of patur aval asur [exempt but forbidden] runs the risk of becoming a rule without any penalties other than “I’d be very disappointed in you.” Yet it also provides for shadings of grey in behavior – something could be forbidden and liable for punishment, or forbidden but exempt, or permitted. And this is independent of considering whether an action was intentional or not!

The best example of new options is Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, who says if the legs are loose, it is permitted. Who would have thought outside the box to come up with another option beyond inserting the legs or not? Or that shoddy workmanship could exempt you from a sin offering? The best parallel I can think of to this in modern Jewish life is how Israeli parliament votes take place. You would think there could be three options: yes, no, or abstain. But at every sensitive vote, certain legislators use the “outside the box” option – they are absent. I know that this strategy is not unique to or created by Jews, but just as Hellenistic vocabulary and argument have found their way into the Talmud and inform Jewish identity, so too have parliamentary maneuvers.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

The Annulment of Vows - Shabbat 46

2005-06-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

Our previous discussion concluded with the category of individually-declared muktzeh [temporarily forbidden] items, whether from a traditional rabbinic perspective or in modern ethical and personal decisions. Rabbi Simeon’s permissive ruling in allowing the handling of a lamp on Shabbat extends to many other categories of behavior. In fact later generations had different practices because some followed Rabbi Simeon while others did not – one rabbi visits another’s house and moves a lamp, he angers his host! And a rabbi who follows one practice in one town and another elsewhere may be an astute politician, but the implication is that he should choose a side and stick to it (his excuse is that he believed one but didn’t want to disrespect the other). I particularly like the anecdote when Rabbi Avia visited Raba and tracked mud in the house, so Raba got mad and tried to vex him with a question about this issue – neat freaks have been part of humanity for many generations.

More problematic for us is a later discussion of the voluntary proscriptions that individuals may choose to apply to themselves. Of course, men are free to make such declarations, but rabbinic law, based on the rules set forth in the Torah in B’midbar [Numbers] 30, accepts that a father may cancel his daughter’s vows, or a husband his wife’s. And such vows by women can be annulled even on Shabbat, so how can a woman know what should be muktzeh for her since her husband could simply cancel her vow? On the other hand, if she expected him to cancel it, how can she be sure and thus handle the item? Thus the general rule of Raba as proclaimed by Rabbi Pinkhas: any woman who vows, on the opinion (i.e. consent) of her husband does she vow.

Needless to say, this is not the way of the world for contemporary liberal Jews. In the era this was written, property belonged to the husband or father and thus its final disposition depended on his consent; thus a “dependent’s” vow needed official approval. Today, I cannot and should not annul my wife’s vows, though if a child were to promise a telemarketer to buy 100 Flo-Bee systems I imagine parents would intervene to cancel that vow! So while we have redefined who may competently take a vow, adult supervision may still be required.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Self-Prohibitions - Shabbat 45

2005-06-15T22:41:00.000-07:00

Today’s page continues the previous page’s discussion of the intricacies of muktzeh [temporarily prohibited] items on Shabbat, specifically nerot [lamps] on Shabbat – may one move them or not? Rabbi Judah defined the official approach of the Mishnah by permitting only never-used lamps to be handled, while Rabbi Simeon articulated a broad minority perspective that all lamps could be moved except a lamp actually burning on Shabbat – once it went out, it too could be moved. The problem with Rabbi Simeon’s approach is that Rabbi Judah defined the lamps as muktzeh because they were “repulsive”, not because of their active use or original purpose, so how can Rabbi Simeon permit it?

Rabbi Simeon, it turns out, takes a permissive approach to muktzeh in a lot of areas – he might well allow people to use the wood from their sukkah [festival huts] for other purposes, just as his son would allow people to draw oil from a lamp burning on Shabbat. And he would certainly allow someone to define part of the fruits and decorations of their sukkah as permissible to eat during the festival, while others might not. One authority claims that Rabbi Simeon rejects the category of muktzeh for anything except drying figs and grapes, where an individual defines them as off-limits until they are finished changing. The important point here that IS generally accepted is that items can be defined as muktzeh not only by their general function or by their “repulsiveness” but also by individual decision.

As we go through life, we often try to exercise self-control by defining certain items, substances, or behaviors as unacceptable – sometimes from popular agreement, and sometimes on an individual basis. Our guidelines for living are no less important because we ourselves had defined them – if I decide that ice cream is muktzeh for me because I can’t eat it in moderation, then I should take that “ruling” as seriously as a strict diet supervised by a dietician. I can change my mind later if circumstances warrant (i.e., I’ve demonstrated renewed self-control in other areas), but just because I made the rule doesn’t mean it wasn’t made for good reason.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

What is Prohibited? - Shabbat 44

2005-06-14T22:40:00.000-07:00

One of the trickiest parts of legal categorization, whether by contemporary or rabbinic legalists, is deciding what is included in a particular category and what is not. What does “regulate commerce” mean in the US Constitution – does that include items that COULD be sold but are used privately (for example from recent news, medicinal marijuana), or only actual business that crosses state lines? Today’s page explores some permutations of the rabbinic category of muktzeh, or “temporarily forbidden.” Objects that are muktzeh are, on ordinary days, perfectly permitted to be handled and used, but on Shabbat or on holidays are permitted.

Adin Steinsaltz, in his tremendously useful The Talmud: The Steinsaltz Edition – A Reference Guide (NY: Random House, 1989), describes some of the different kinds of muktzeh in terms of subcategories – items whose customary function would be prohibited on Shabbat (like a pen), items that are repulsive, items specifically designated not to be used on a particular Shabbat because they would not be ready before Shabbat began, and so on.

The question considered here in both the Mishnah and its accompanying Talmud discussion is about a lamp – obviously it may be used for the Shabbat lights, but may one handle it afterwards since it is forbidden to light a new light on Shabbat? The rabbis conclude that one may handle a new (i.e. never been used) lamp and not an old one, not because of the usual function of a lamp but rather because of “repulsiveness.” Though not stated explicitly in the Talmud, I suspect this is because a used lamp still has some oil in it and could be relit, while a never-used lamp would have been impossible to light. If they had defined lamps as untouchable because of their general function, on the other hand, this would have contradicted earlier generations that permitted handling them in certain circumstances.

What are we to glean from this? We should always be willing to ask ourselves if our reactions are based on real reasons, or if they are rationalizations. Is a burned-out lamp really “repulsive,” or is that the reason given to avoid other problems? Is our behavior in a particular situation really based on the reasons we give, or are those “reasons” really rationalizations for decisions we made emotionally or with personal interest in mind? Don’t just think about what you’re doing – explore WHY you do what you do as well.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

A Corpse on Shabbat - Shabbat 43

2005-06-14T18:46:00.000-07:00

A conflict of mitzvot [commandments] often produces the most interesting discussions, just as in contemporary philosophical debates a conflict of two positive values can produce sparks. If one values both color-blind justice and ethnic diversity, how to handle public college admissions? In today’s case, the conflict is between kavod ha-meiteem [honoring the dead] and observing Shabbat. What to do if one sees a corpse lying (i.e. rotting) in the sun, though it is Shabbat?
On one hand, it is clear that one should not just blithely ignore the body. On the other, one may not simply pick it up and haul it away – this would both defile oneself and violate the rules of carrying on Shabbat. Rabbi Huna suggests a legal fiction: one can make a shade for the dead for the sake of the living, but not for the sake of the dead. The Talmud itself asks, “huh?” So two rabbis explain – two men sit down next to the body, make a shade for themselves, then walk away. Voila! “A screen is located above the body.” Or, we might say, a clever way to honor the dead by slowing decay.

Other legal fictions may be possible – in the story of David’s death and burial by Solomon in Shabbat 30, it was mentioned that one may place a loaf of bread or a child upon a body to enable one to move the body. The reasoning behind this legal principle will not be explained until daf 142, but another possible solution is to move it from funeral litter to funeral litter – kind of rolling it away with small movements.

The more interesting case is whether one may rescue a corpse from a fire. A well-known Talmudic principle is that one may break one Shabbat to save a life so that the individual may celebrate many more Shabbats; but a corpse has none in its future! In this case, the law is decided more for the living than for the dead: Rabbi Judah ben Lakish says that since a person will be so agitated for his dead (loved one), he might extinguish the fire, you should permit the rescue of a corpse from fire. Compassion for the dead is an important value, but so too is considering the emotions of the living.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Through Thick and Thin - Shabbat 42

2005-06-13T18:45:00.000-07:00

Over 100 pages into the Daf Yomi [daily page], I have found that some pages are treasure troves of historical information, rabbinic philosophy, interesting anecdotes and creative reasoning. And some pages are, frankly, rather thin in terms of material relevant to contemporary liberal Jews who live lives independent of the authority of Talmudic halakha [religious law]. This should not be surprising; in fact, the vast philosophic gulf between these two worlds makes it inspiring to have found as much interesting material as we have.

Today’s page is, unfortunately, one of the thinner ones. In English translation, one can tell how detailed the halakhic wrangling is by the relative sizes of the Talmud text and its commentators – the more contentious the issue, the more later commentators like Rashi or the Tosafists had to say on the subject. Thus the more surrounding commentary was created for that particular page, and less original Talmud text could fit there. The pages we have found most interesting have been those anecdotal or ethical texts that have had less commentary and more original material.

A central issue in today’s page, continuing the discussion of “indirectly heated materials on Shabbat” is how to handle water that has been boiling on a stove – for example, Beit Shammai [the house/school of Shammai] claims that one may pour hot water into cold (thus cooling it), while one may not pour cool water into hot (thus heating it). Beit Hillel, on the other hand, would allow one to pour hot into cool or cool into hot. The Talmud clarifies that this permission applied only to a drink, but not to something as substantial as a bath. Then it debates if a basin is more like a bath or a cup. Since pouring into another container is one more step removed, the rabbis are more permissive here than they were with indirectly-heated ovens. In short, this is not likely to be a legal debate that will shape global ethical behavior. But tomorrow’s promises to be much more interesting. . .

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Naked Etiquette and Hygiene - Shabbat 41

2005-06-12T18:43:00.000-07:00

We saw in tractate Berakhot [blessings] that a not-insubstantial number of rabbinic discussions concerned etiquette in bathing and toilet situations – should one wear tefillin [prayer boxes] into a privy, or recite the Amida [standing prayer], if one is, shall we say, less than modestly attired? A similar set of questions is raised in today’s page, as the rabbis consider the appropriate etiquette for entering or leaving a river for bathing.

Rabbi Zera claims to have seen Abbahu covering his privates in such a setting but is not certain whether he touched himself or not. The Talmud immediately (almost indignantly) asserts that of course he did not, since Rabbi Eliezer clearly taught, “the one who holds his member and urinates is as if he brought a Flood upon the world.” A piece of graffiti I once saw over a urinal dealt with the same issue: “if you shake it more than three times, it’s masturbating.” Abaye defends Abbahu’s behavior, saying there was no risk of impure thoughts because his concern was the river. Others wonder whether he was covering up because he was shamed of his circumcision, but again alternative circumstances explain both position – if one descends towards the river, one need not cover for modesty reasons, but ascending could require discretion. The scholars of Rabbi Ashi did just that – going to the river they stood upright, proud of the covenant of Abraham (i.e. circumcision), but ascending they bent over out of modesty. Note that this entire discussion does not concern holy behavior like reciting blessings, but rather everyday interactions with one’s own body. So while in some areas Judaism can be seen to affirm human sexuality, in others it clearly sees the naked human body as shameful.

We also see here more rabbinic recommendations for healthy living, examples of which we also saw in Berakhot. Eating without drinking leads to stomach trouble, eating without walking at least 4 cubits creates bad breath, having to defecate but still eating is like an oven heated on its ashes and leads to perspiration. And several suggestions concerning bathing are simply argued by analogy: bathing in hot water without drinking any, or bathing hot without a cold shower after, or bathing without anointing afterwards are all frowned upon. Will breaking these rules lead to the consequences described? Probably not – but you’re welcome to experiment!

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Refining Rules - Shabbat 40

2005-06-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

Today’s page concerns the question of water heated on the eve of Shabbat [erev Shabbat] – water heated ON Shabbat is clearly forbidden, but how can one forbid water heated BEFORE Shabbat begins? The Talmudic version of “give them an inch, they’ll take a mile” is the following story.

People used to bathe with water warmed just before Shabbat, and then they started bathing with water warmed on Shabbat while claiming it had been warmed just before. So the rabbis banned the use of warm water for Shabbat bathing entirely, but allowed people to use steam baths instead. But they kept bathing in warm water and claiming that they were just sweating! So then the rabbis banned sweating but still allowed the use of the hot springs in Tiberias. Of course, people kept using water heated on Shabbat and claiming they went to Tiberias! The rabbis then tried to ban the Tiberias hot springs, but “they saw this rule would not stand for them” (i.e. the people wouldn’t or couldn’t be that strict), so they allowed the hot springs but kept the ban on sweating. Anyone who has tried to refine house rules with children knows this kind of a dialogue!

No wonder the very next saying is that one who violates a rabbinic commandment can be called a “transgressor” [Aramaic avreina]! And one can imagine that Talmudic rabbis wanted to avoid such a title as much as possible. So what to do if someone is about to commit a violation in a place like a bathhouse or outhouse, where for Rabbi Jokhanan human nudity forbids speaking of Torah and divine law? Two anecdotes of Rabbis teaching lessons in bathhouses would seem to contradict this rule, and claiming those rabbis spoke in “secular language” [lashon khol] rather than Hebrew [lashon kodesh – literally “holy tongue”] doesn’t apply since according to Abaye one may speak of secular matters in holy language, but not of holy matters in secular language (thus this entire blog would be treyfe [forbidden]!). The answer is that one may teach a Torah lesson even in a bathhouse if it is to stop someone from a transgression [aveira]. While we today may disagree on what constitutes a “transgression” worth correcting another about, we can agree that violating social norms may be necessary to prevent someone from doing wrong. Children certainly, but even adults can use and should be willing to accept gently-offered words of advice.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Ingenuity and Compromise - Shabbat 39

2005-06-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

If necessity is the mother of invention, rules are the progenitors of ingenuity in getting around them. A case in point is an innovation in Tiberias described by the Mishnah text cited in the previous page; they had a pipe of cold water that ran through a hot springs to warm the water up. Very clever, but can one use such water on Shabbat? The Mishnah says that the sages prohibited washing with or drinking it on Shabbat, and just washing on other holidays. The question the Talmud explores is: what makes it warm? All agree that something may be used on Shabbat that is warmed by the sun, while direct fire heat is prohibited. The question is what to do with objects like stoves that are heated by fire and can then heat something else?

In this case, the issue is how the hot springs are heated. One side says that the hot springs are made hot by the sun, while another claims that they are made hot by passing over the entrance to Gehinam (commonly pronounced Gehenna, the Rabbinic word for Hell) – thus heated by fire! Note that, contrary to contemporary liberal Jewish presentations, Jewish tradition does in fact include an afterlife with a burning Hell for the condemned. In the end, the Tiberians enjoy a pyrrhic victory: Ulla says that the halakha [rabbinic law] agrees with them, but Rabbi Nakhman reminds him that the Tiberians themselves broke the pipe a long time ago to avoid the controversy, and thus the entire discussion is moot. Moot in the particulars of Tiberias, of course, but not in rabbinic thought for parallel or comparative cases.

More interesting for those who have chosen to not be bound by Shabbat restrictions is a general approach of rabbinic debate cited at the end of Shabbat 39b – "Every place you find two disputing and an additional one compromising, the halakha is as the words of the compromiser." We have seen how far the Talmud goes to harmonize disagreeing positions, and again we see the value of compromise and agreement. Many Jewish communal institutions continue to run subconsciously on this kind of principle, seeking compromise that is generally acceptable by consensus rather than ramming through by majority vote what is deeply disagreeable to a minority. This lesson, unfortunately, needs to be learned and relearned in every generation.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Intention and Forgetfulness - Shabbat 38

2005-06-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

Any guide to life and human behavior must address the question of intentions as well as actions – we may intend well but create terrible results, or we may not have intended to break a rule but do so anyways. And sometimes we unintentionally violate a rule in a way that benefits us; the question then becomes can we enjoy the fruits of our forbidden labors if we didn’t intend to break the rule? If we forgive ourselves for accidentally leaving a restaurant without paying, are we more likely to “forget” again?

Rabbi Hiyya Bar Abba was asked, “what if someone forgot a pot on the stove and cooked it on Shabbat?” This would deal with the case of a dish that was not mostly or completely cooked, since the previous page dealt with the line between reheating and cooking anew. Hiyya spent the night thinking about it and came back in the morning to say that if it was accidental, he may eat of it, but if intentional he may not. There is some debate about what a third party may do – some say a third person could eat even if it had been deliberately cooked on Shabbat (because they did nothing wrong), while others say that a third person can’t eat even if the cooking was accidental (because no one should enjoy the fruits of willing transgression).

The amusing side of this discussion is the development of the principle of forgetfulness: once the Rabbis decreed that one who forgets is like one who unwittingly cooks on Shabbat, there was a rash of people who all of a sudden kept “forgetting” pots on stoves and cooking on Shabbat. At that point, the Sages [khakhamim] changed their mind and began to penalize those who forgot. This situation is similar to the story of the Orthodox community that permitted their adherents to buy VCRs, with the idea that they could watch tapes of the Rebbe teaching Torah, but when they found that some community members were also using their VCRs to watch pornography, they had to change the ruling back again.

The more serious question for us to consider is the danger demonstrated in the Talmudic anecdote of permitting enjoyment of what is obtained accidentally but illicitly – people will being to claim it was an “accident” to enjoy what has been forbidden. Intentions are important, but so too are effects in the real world. And just like the Rabbis re-evaluated their decision based on how it played out, we should be willing to reconsider our rules based on the consequences they produce.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat Reheating - Shabbat 37

2005-06-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

If one is not allowed to use fire to actively cook food on Shabbat, what are the grey areas around that activity that might be permissible? In other words, how did our ancestors manage a hot meal despite Shabbat restrictions? Talmud Tractate Shabbat returns to direct legal debate about Shabbat observance with a Mishnah text concerning a stove that has already been warmed but whose fire has been swept out or covered with ashes – in what contexts may one use the accumulated heat as long as it doesn’t involve active fire?

First, the original text makes a distinction between a pot of water and a dish of food, since one is a matter of heating or cooling while the other may actively change through cooking. The Talmud then tries to claim that the Mishnah’s discussion applies to putting a pot or dish on the stove but not to simply keeping it there as Shabbat begins; later discussion makes clear that even a pot kept on the stove requires the active fire to be removed. Some clever person then imagined the case of TWO stoves joined to each other, where one is swept out but the other is not so that the heat of the stove with an active fire will still carry over to the other stove that has been properly treated – can one put something on the properly-treated stove? There is some debate as to the positions of Beit Hillel [the house/school of Hillel] and Beit Shammai according to Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Meir on this question – one says they would allow nothing or just water, where the other says one would allow water and the other water and a dish of food.

The larger question is: what constitutes forbidden cooking? What is the line between reheating and cooking in the days before microwaves and Tupperware leftovers? The Talmud’s rabbis observed details, and they noticed that cooked food has less bulk than raw food. So Rab and Samuel created a general rule that anything that, through heating, shrinks and is improved is forbidden to leave on a warm stove, and Rabbi Nahman adds that if it shrinks and deteriorates it is allowed. All of this makes us glad to live in communities where firing up the stove on Shabbat is a personal decision, with no communal condemnation awaiting.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shofars, Trumpets, and Transformations - Shabbat 36

2005-06-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

As we saw in yesterday’s page, at one time in Jewish history the beginning of Shabbat was marked with public blowing of a shofar [ram’s horn]. But this creates a conundrum for the hazzan [community official] who blew the shofar – if Shabbat begins at the last shofar blast, and there is a tradition that one is not supposed to handle (lest one use) an instrument like a shofar on Shabbat, what does he do with it now that Shabbat has begun? The Talmud claims that he would have a hiding place for the shofar on his roof, where he puts it immediately after its use.

The problem is, there is an alternative legal tradition that says that a shofar may be handled, but not a trumpet [khatsotsra] – one may use a curved shofar to hold water and, as the Talmud says, “give water to a child,” but a trumpet is too long and straight to be so used. Rabbi Joseph tries to harmonize the two traditions, claiming “lo kushiya – no difficulty”: the latter refers to an individual’s shofar, while the former refers to the community’s shofar. The problem with this solution, Abaye points out, is that the community shofar is just as useful to give water to a poor child as an individuals is! And further, there is a THIRD legal tradition that says both a shofar and a trumpet may be moved on Shabbat.

The “solution” the Talmud offers is to ascribe each view to a different authority – as the medieval commentator Rashi explains, Rabbi Judah allows a shofar to be moved, since there is a permitted use for it, but since a trumpet could only be used on Shabbat for a forbidden purpose (i.e. sound), for Shabbat it is defined as muktzeh, or “untouchable.” Rabbi Simeon, on the other hand, allows anyone to move muktzeh items on Shabbat, so he would allow both to be handled (though of course not used for forbidden purposes!). Rabbi Nehemiah, on the third hand, says one only uses an object for its normal purpose, and since it’s forbidden to sound a shofar on Shabbat and that’s its normal purpose, one may handle neither a trumpet nor a shofar on Shabbat. All of this is even more complicated because Rabbi Hisda claims that after the Temple was destroyed, the very words “trumpet” and “shofar” exchanged meanings!

What does all of this have to do with us? Plenty. It is refreshing to see some historical awareness that terms can change their meaning over centuries, and that what WE mean by a particular term is not what it has always meant. The diversities of rabbinic thought and practice are evidence of Jewish plurality, if not philosophical pluralism. And we can follow the tradition of putting objects, ideas and even culture to new uses in new settings.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Shabbat, Stars and Shofars - Shabbat 35

2005-06-06T15:39:00.000-07:00

While the previous daf [page] tried to define twilight so one can know when Shabbat begins in terms of the setting sun, today’s gives a different rule of thumb – according to Rabbi Judah, seeing one star means it is still day, seeing two defines twilight, and three is nighttime. And another Rabbi clarifies that this refers to neither “large stars” one can see by day (what we now know are planets) nor small ones only seen really at night, but rather middle sized stars. And if it’s cloudy? The Talmud suggests observing the chickens in a city, or a raven in the countryside – no word about what to do in a suburb that prohibits owning livestock.

In part to address the challenges of determining sundown in a city, we also read about an historical anecdote that is a Jewish parallel to the public Muslim call to prayer – the Rabbis claim that the shofar [ram’s horn] used to be blown six times to mark the start of Shabbat. Today we use the shofar exclusively for the High Holidays, but historically it was the Jewish “Public Address System” for many occasions. In this case, there is some discussion as to what the blasts signified. The first was a sign for people to stop working in the fields, the second told shops in the city to stop work, and the third meant one should light the Shabbat lights. Then three blasts would be blown – a teki’ah [long sound], a teruah [several short sounds], and a teki’ah – and Shabbat would begin.

However, there is a fly in the ointment – Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel, the nasi [head of the Rabbinic council], asks what to do about the Babylonian Jews who blow teki’ah and teruah and then start Shabbat in the middle of the teruah? Another voice interjects to clarify that they must have blown two tekiahs to make up six sounds, though we might argue that they followed a variant tradition. In any case, the exemption is very simple: minhag avoteyhen b’yadeihen – their fathers’ custom is in their hands. They follow what their ancestors did, so who are we to change it? Another example of Jewish variety within rabbinic Judaism, even in the ancient world.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Defining Twilight - Shabbat 34

2005-06-05T14:39:00.000-07:00

From our rather entertaining excursion into Second Temple Rabbis like Hillel and Shimon bar Yohai and their speculative philosophy on life and death, today’s page returns to the more expected exploration of the rules of observing Shabbat by expounding on the Mishnah – in this case, the last-minute “checklist” just before Shabbat begins of tithing from food, setting up a courtyard eruv [public food that makes public space private for carrying objects], and then lighting the candles. The Mishnah also specifies what to do is there is doubt whether it is fully dark or not, but this kind of question opens up miles of commentary for the Talmud.

What IS twilight [beyn ha-shemashot – literally “between the suns”]? Keep in mind that the Rabbis were trying to define this concept without the benefit of clocks or a strict sense of universal time – today we could just define it by something like 6:15-6:42pm. Imagine you were camping without a watch or a computer and had to decide when it was nighttime – the sun setting is a very gradual process, and while there is clearly a difference between a red glowing sunset and nighttime under the stars, what is the dividing line between one and the other? Rabbi Judah claims that while as the eastern sky has a reddish color, and while the lower horizon is “paler” than the upper, it is still twilight; once the upper and lower horizons are of the same color, it is night. To my mind, this is as good a definition as any other.

The reason defining twilight is important for the Talmud’s rabbis is based on another question: does twilight count as day or as night? That is, on a Friday evening, how can you know when it is Shabbat, or not yet? On one hand, twilight is considered a “doubtful” time, where one can be flexible in assigning blame for not completing tasks like the eruv in time – “a doubt in Rabbinical law is judged leniently.” On the other, because it is an uncertain time, the rabbis would rather be safe and put in effect the more strict requirements – just in case. This is why in traditional Jewish practice there is a “margin of error” around candlelighting times for Shabbat. Because at that time of day, one has entered. . .the twilight zone.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

Tragedy and Judgment - Shabbat 33

2005-06-04T14:04:00.000-07:00

There is a macabre competition the religiously-inclined can pursue when facing tragedy – which is more numerous, the varieties of sins worthy of punishment or the varieties of cosmic punishment for sins? Today’s page explores the punishments for robbery, for perverted or delayed justice, for vain oaths and profaning God and Shabbat, for bloodshed, and for blasphemy – any number of tragedies, from the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and national calamity to an individual falling ill are connected to Jewish transgressions. Even about this there is disagreement – some argue that askarah [digestive trouble] comes from neglecting tithes, or slander, for eating untithed food, or for neglecting Torah study. We would point to “diet,” but that’s missing the rabbinic point of explaining tragedy in a just universe. We can, however, take heart that we agree that several of the issues they call transgressions are still objectionable, even if for us their correction relies more on human than on divine justice.

This last “reason” of neglecting study raises predictable questions: why then would women, or children, or non-Jews (all of whom are not commanded to study) – or for that matter school children [tinokot shel beit rabban – literally “babies of the Rabbi’s house”] who DO study enough - suffer from askarah? The answers: for women – because they interfere with their husbands’ study; for non-Jews, because they interfere; for children – because they make their fathers neglect to study. I would argue the last one is actually a worthy replacement! Why do school children suffer? Rabbi Gorion (or perhaps Rabbi Joseph ben Shemaiah) claims that the righteous suffer for the sins of their generation, and if there are no righteous the school children suffer instead. One begins to sympathize with Job and ask, “is that justice?”

This page also contains a fascinating story about Rabbi Simon bar Yohai and the dangers of loose lips. Rabbi Judah comments how great are the public works of the Romans, and Rabbi Simon retorts that they built streets and markets to install whores, baths to clean themselves, and bridges to take tolls. This is the reverse of a marvelous scene in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, where Jewish revolutionaries ask disparagingly “what have the Romans ever done for us?” and come up with a large number of answers: “apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?”

Rabbi Shimon’s comments were reported to the authorities, and he and his son fled to a cave where they hid for 12 years. They took of their clothes (to prevent them wearing out) and sat in sand up to their necks until it was time to pray, at which point they got dressed, prayed, then took them off again. Having been told by Elijah that the Roman emperor was dead and the decree against them annulled, they leave the cave, only to be so judgmental of people living ordinary lives plowing and sowing rather than studying Torah that their gaze causes everything to burn up. They are returned to the cave for a year, after which they come out and see someone hurrying to observe Shabbat, which calms them down.

What can we get from this fable? Shimon bar Yohai is traditionally claimed (impossible historically) to be the author of the Zohar, the most important book in Jewish mysticism, so this story is understandably celebrated in those circles. We see the danger of critical comments, and also the problems created by being unnecessarily negative about the good works of others with whom we have conflict – even if the bridges were to collect tolls, now you can cross the river! Studying in isolation from the outside world is dangerous, because you won’t accommodate your ideas to messy reality. And even if we can’t burn up others with our judgmental eyes, the emotional impact and its consequences are similar.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com

You can read or hear the entire The Life of Brian scene at:
http://arago4.tn.utwente.nl/stonedead/movies/life-of-brian/scene-10.html

Death and Justice - Shabbat 32

2005-06-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

One can think of few worse tragedies than a woman dying in childbirth, an occasion that is much less frequent today than in previous generations because of modern advances. Yet for rabbinic theology, women dying in childbirth must have done something wrong to deserve it! A Mishnah text cited at the end of the previous page and discussed in today’s daf jumps out at us – “for three sins women die in childbirth: not being careful in niddah [menstrual impurity], khallah [offerings from bread], and lighting Shabbat candles.” As our page tells it – “the soul in you is called a ner [lamp], thus I warned you about the ner (of Shabbat). . .if you neglect it, I will take your souls.” Whatever consolation we can derive from the important position of women with regard to these responsibilities is negated by their condemnation.

Why in childbirth, the rabbis ask? Several sayings are brought to make the point that times of danger are when actions are judged: “leave the drunkard alone – he will fall of himself.” And so the next question is: when are men judged? The answer: when crossing a bridge. For this reason, Rab would not cross a bridge where a non-Jew sat, lest the non-Jew be judged and he be caught up in the tragedy! A more sober conclusion was reached by Rabbi Yannai, who proclaimed that “one should never stand in a dangerous place and expect a miracle, lest it not happen.” And, continued Yannai, even if one does happen, it’s deducted from your total of merit so don’t feel so good about yourself!

Indeed, even falling seriously ill is considered to be under death sentence – when you go in the street you’re arrested, when you have a headache you’re in chains, and taking to bed is like going to the gallows. What are the best advocates for clemency? Teshuva u’ma’asim tovim – repentance and good deeds. There are still more tragedies to explain: some women die from their husband’s unfulfilled vows, but others argue that unfulfilled vows cause one’s children to die instead. Or perhaps the latter tragedy is for neglect of Torah study, or of the mezuzah [doorpost], or tzitzit [fringes]. I suspect that few of these explanations do anything to really address the agonizing pain of losing a child, other than to add guilt to injury.

We also learn that ame’ ha-aretz [the ignorant] die for two reasons: calling the aron ha-kodesh [holy ark where the Torah is kept] an arna [chest – same word but in Aramaic], and for calling a beit kenesset [synagogue] a beit am [house of the people]. Heaven forbid that elements of rabbinic culture be more closely connected to the people’s life by using their own words and changing to focus of the synagogue from the supernatural to the human! To my mind, the synagogue should be a house of the people, by the people and for the people that it claims to serve.

Rabbi Adam Chalom
www.kolhadash.com