Masechet Chullin Daf 131

Daf 131

Is Mateh Levi one of the twelve tribes? Well, sort of. Anytime the Torah lists the tribes of Israel, it lists twelve tribes. Sometimes it includes Levi in the count, and leaves out one of the other tribes. Other times, it leaves Levi out of the count and adds back in that other tribe. Levi has a special status among the tribes because of its consecration to the Temple service. So when the Torah uses the term 'ha'am', does it include Levi?

Reply hazy. Try again.


Rav asks the question of whether Levites are obligated in the matanos. The matanos are special gifts to the kohanim, but they're chullin, not kodshin, that's the whole point of the first Mishnah. So you'd think sure, of course the Leviim have to give the matanos to kohanim, they're not kohanim. Obviously they have to give them.

The problem is that there's a lot of gifts that are owed to the kohanim, and less but still a few gifts that are owed to the Leviim, and they all have slightly different language in the psukim discussing them in the Torah, but the Mishnayos are trying to come up with somewhat more standardized rules for all these gifts. So Rav brings down a few different baraisos about the gifts that send mixed messages about what exactly the Leviim are chiyuv in as far as gifts to kohanim, and gifts to other Leviim.

In particular, in a baraisa about the matanos, it says "Kohanim do not give to Kohanim, and Leviim don't give to Leviim". Obviously, the latter part of the baraisa can't be about the matanos, because the Leviim are't owed the matanos, so the baraisa must be talking about some other thing that the Leviim are owed, probably the maaser rishon. But it's precisely this ambiguity that puzzles Rav. The language of "Kohanim don't give to Kohanim, and Leviim don't give to Leviim, suggests that there is some case where the Leviim do have to give to the Kohanim." Otherwise the baraisa could have said "Kohanim don't give to Kohanim, and Leviim don't give to Kohanim", and by kal vachomer we could have derived Leviim don't give to Leviim. Perhaps this is in reference to first shearings, which are also owed to Kohanim, but the most obvious implication is that it's about the matanos.

But the problem is that there is evidence both in the Torah literature and in the Mishnaic literature that uses 'ha'am' to include Leviim, and so Rav is uncertain about whether the Leviim should be considered part of the people for purposes of the matanos, because of the contradictory evidence.

Because of this safek, and because matanos is considered a monetary obligation rather than a matter of kedusha and mitzvah obligation (c.f. yesterday's thing about Rav Chisda's leniency, which seems to come from the same place), we are lenient and don't obligate the Leviim.

(no subject)

Drawing the Line by Edwin Danson


A really neat, incredibly nerdy book about the construction of the Mason Dixon line. It mentions the Civil War and slavery perhaps twice in the whole book. Because it is not a book about the cultural significance of the Mason Dixon line. Danson is a surveyer, and Drawing the Line is quite literally about drawing the line, the technical and political and physical challenges involved in the creation of the Mason-Dixon line, which after nearly a century of political and legal wrangling settled decisively the boundary between the Pennsylvania colony and the Maryland Colony, a scant few years before the American Revolution.

The important context for Danson is the massive leaps forward in surveying technology in the mid 18th century associated with the development of telescope technology, measurement instrument technology, and Earth exploration. A lot of this was tied up with the so-called 'Longitude problem', how to inexpensively and straightforwardly calculated one's latitude at sea, quick enough and accurately enough to be useful for navigation. Before he was sent to America, Charles Mason was deeply involved at the Greenwich Observatory in one of the most significant efforts to solve the longitude problem, the cheaper but less accurate method known as the Method of Lunar Distances.

And so with the enhanced capabilities for surveying and generally for knowing where the hell on Earth one was at any given moment, the possibility for more accurately resolving boundaries in dispute was greatly expanded. Danson rarely steps back and thinks about the bigger picture of his story in any other than technical terms, but a boundary like the Mason-Dixon line was not really feasible before this moment in history. If you wanted a real boundary that everyone understood, you either needed a body of water in between, or you needed a wall- a boundary negotiated not on paper but by the actual physical markers. What Mason and Dixon accomplished was to resolve a boundary dispute arising from a theoretical boundary written on a piece of paper, by actually fully mapping the theoretically defined parallels and tangent lines of the legal proclamations, so accurately that nobody could argue.

It took them several years of painstakingly 'chaining' their way across the Mid-Atlantic, which means what it sounds like. Crews under Mason and Dixon's command had carefully calibrated chains of precise length and they would stretch the chain out on the ground in the specified direct and then mark the spot and bring over the next chain to continue the line. They did this for hundreds of miles, stopping every ten miles or so to take painstakingly precise astronomical measurements to confirm their physical location and adjust for errors in the chaining process with offset tables. After the chaining was done, Mason and Dixon would double back along the line they'd marked, fixing marked spots based on their offset tables, and permanently mark their lines.

The calibrations of the chains were variable with temperature and wear and tear, and subject to dozens of human errors in measurements, but per Danson (and I trust Danson, because the technical language of surveying he uses is so complicated that I have no choice but to accept his word) Mason and Dixon's line was remarkably straight.

The most exciting part of the story comes toward the end. The Proclamation of 1763, a British response to the economically and militarily costly Pontiac rebellion after the French and Indian war, forbid American colonists past the Alleghenies, to avoid antagonizing the Iroquois Confederacy and some of the other tribes of the area. But the lines on paper in the charters of Pennsylvania and Maryland extended about a hundred miles past that boundary. The colony governors sent representatives to negotiate with the native tribes to allow the surveyors to continue their work to the end of the line. The leaders of the confederacy were not stupid- it seems clear they recognized that the only possible intention of this survey was to pave the ground for later expansion of the colonies past the 1763 line, so they had armed detachments accompany the survey, both to make sure that tribes not affiliated with the Iroquois would not harass Mason and Dixon, and to make sure that the surveyors did not push too far into Iroquois territory. Ultimately, they stopped the survey thirty or forty miles short of its targeted goal. Danson suggests this was the result of confusion or misrepresentation by the colonial negotiators, that the natives did not have a clear comprehension of what '100 miles past the 1763 line' was and the negotiators had as a clarifier suggested that the survey extend to a particular river as the boundary, in congruence with what I mentioned above about how pre-Mason and Dixon boundaries were dependent on physical lines to define their meaning. But I think it's also possible from Danson's account that the Iroquois refusal to let Mason and Dixon complete their survey was about asserting their dominance and refusing to let the British colonists establish the foothold they desired beyond the 1763 line. Danson does a good job of conjuring up the tension of the situation as the surveyors pushed increasingly deep into forbidden territory.


In any case, the other story Danson tells well, because he was blessed with Charles Mason's fabulously detailed journals of his surveying adventures, is the story of Mason falling in love with the Maryland/Pennsylvania countryside and falling in love with America as he surveys the land. Many of my favorite passages in the book are preceded by Danson's mention again of Mason's restlessness, which always leads to him grabbing a horse and riding off on an adventure- to Virginia, to New York, to Philadelphia, always meeting new and interesting people to talk math and astronomy with. Sadly, Danson's documentation on Dixon is far sketchier, leading him to dismiss him as fascinating but mysterious.

But if you want to read 200 pages of blow by blow summaries of an incredibly historically significant surveying expedition, you'll enjoy this book. I recognize that might be a small subset of people.