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Mar. 24th, 2020 01:58 pmNew Jersey shut down all non-essential retail businesses over the weekend, and generally encouraged people to stay home.
My company is a small manufacturer (~10 people in the whole company). We do not seem to be directly ordered to shut down, as we're not customer facing and a pretty small footprint, and I think if we had to really shut down for a month or more, we might not have the financial wherewithal to re-open, so we are trying to continue as best we can while following wise precautions. It's becoming more and more difficult. About two thirds of the company does work that just can't be done remotely. I'm in a boat where about half of my job can be done remotely, and the other half involves supervising and supporting the people who can't do work remotely. So we decided yesterday that I will spend about half my time working at home, and half my time on-site. And the on-site workers are moving to an every other day, 10 hours a day schedule to minimize the number of people in the building while keeping everyone working enough hours to stay full-time. It's a shitty compromise in all directions, but we'll have to live with all the consequences of that. Thursday will be my first work-from-home day, we'll see how that goes.
Daf 8
Wrapping up the moving objects between domains on Shabbos discussion for the moment with a page full of weird edge cases. The most interesting, I think, is this:
The most well known kind of eruv is the type where you construct a boundary around a public domain such as a whole town so that all the enclosed area is considered a single private domain for purposes of transporting between domains and carrying on Shabbos. But another type of eruv is the eruv techumin, which works like this:
You are not allowed to travel more than 2000 amos outside of city limits on Shabbos, about a half mile. This is regardless of whether or not there's an eruv. But suppose you had a lunch invitation at a place in the next town over, easily walkable but more than a half mile outside city limits. What ridiculous legal workaround can you employ? Well, if you started Shabbos in a place just outside of city limits, within 2000 amos, then you can extend the distance you are allowed to travel because your 2000 amos travel radius is overlaps the city limits, so you can travel to anywhere within city limits, and also anywhere within 2000 amos of the place you started Shabbos.
Now what counts as starting Shabbos in a place? You don't even have to actually be there. If you had food for eating on Shabbos in a place, that counts. So if you place food in a place outside city limits before Shabbos, and you have access to that place should you want to eat the food, then it establishes boundaries for purposes of travel, that's the eruv techumin.
But the key element of Eruv Techumin is that in order to maintain the slightest pretense that this legal fiction is real, you need to actually be able to get to the food. It can't be in a locked house that you don't have the key to, it has to be in a place that, should you actually want to get it, you could. But you don't actually have to eat it.
So on this page the Gemara brings a case where you stashed your eruv techumin food in a pit in a reshus harabim. The Gemara teaches a barqaisa that says if the pit is greater than 4 tefachim by 4 tefachim, and 10 tefachim deep, it's a separate reshus hayachid. And therefore it can't be used as a holding place for your eruv food, since in order to access it you'd have to be mechalel Shabbos and carry out from a reshus hayachid to a reshus harabim. But if the pit is shorter than ten tefachim in depth, it's a valid eruv. But there's a debate about whether such a pit is a karmelis or a part of the bigger public domain. If it's part of the public domain, that's fine, yetzius is not a problem. But if it's part of a karmelis, you're Rabbinically prohibited to transfer from a karmelis to a reshus yarabim, so how do the people who hold it's a karmelis respond to this baraisa?
There are a few answers, but it makes a weird intuitive sense to me that in this case when stacking Rabbinic prohibitions on top of each other, they cancel out. In other words, you're not allowed to transfer between a karmelis and a reshus harabim, but you're not really actually supposed to take the eruv techumin food anyway, it's just a Rabbinic legal fiction, so it doesn't matter that there's a Rabbinic prohibition on taking the food.
Daf 9
Finally, we're done with yetzias for the moment and on to... stuff that has nothing to do with Shabbos. The next Mishnah is about how there are things you shouldn't do right before Shabbos, for fear that you might run long and cross into Shabbos. This Mishnah is a parallel discussion of things you shouldn't do before the time to say weekday Minchah, for fear that they might run long and keep you from saying Minchah.
This is consistent with a broad concern that comes up many times in the Gemara about prioritizing mitzvot. It's important to remember that modern ideas that mitzvot are good things to do, that they lead to self-improvement and closeness to God, definitely exist in the Talmud, but they're second place to the general sense that mitzvot are obligations. You don't say Minchah because it's good to do, you say it because you're obligated to say it. And thus you should not start something not mitzvah related, even if it's good for you, if it could get in the way of you saying Minchah. The examples given include getting a haircut or going to the bathhouse- good for your wellbeing and sense of self, and thus arguably contained within other mitzvot, but not directly mitzvot themselves. But if you did start the haircut, and it becomes the time to say minchah, you can keep going with the haircut.
This seems to be because even though prayer is a d'oraysa obligation, prayer at specific times of the day and in specific formulas is a d'rabbanan obligation. The Mishnah contrasts this to Shema, where if you're in the middle of your haircut when it's time to say Shema, you should interrupt your haircut.
The Gemara digs deeper into what 'the time to say Minchah means'. There's a broad window of several hours in which you can say Minchah, so one wants to interpret this to mean "Don't start something toward the end of that window if it might cause you to miss the window", and that is indeed the first explanation, but two others are offered. One is "Don't start something that will take hours, even at the beginning of the window to say minchah", so a really elaborate haircut, or a whole spa/massage thing. Another is "Don't start something small even at the start of the window, if there's a reasonable possibility that delays will happen that could cause you to miss the window."
Anyway, all of this is very interesting but feels more like a continuation of Maseches Berachos than part of Maseches Shabbos.
My company is a small manufacturer (~10 people in the whole company). We do not seem to be directly ordered to shut down, as we're not customer facing and a pretty small footprint, and I think if we had to really shut down for a month or more, we might not have the financial wherewithal to re-open, so we are trying to continue as best we can while following wise precautions. It's becoming more and more difficult. About two thirds of the company does work that just can't be done remotely. I'm in a boat where about half of my job can be done remotely, and the other half involves supervising and supporting the people who can't do work remotely. So we decided yesterday that I will spend about half my time working at home, and half my time on-site. And the on-site workers are moving to an every other day, 10 hours a day schedule to minimize the number of people in the building while keeping everyone working enough hours to stay full-time. It's a shitty compromise in all directions, but we'll have to live with all the consequences of that. Thursday will be my first work-from-home day, we'll see how that goes.
Daf 8
Wrapping up the moving objects between domains on Shabbos discussion for the moment with a page full of weird edge cases. The most interesting, I think, is this:
The most well known kind of eruv is the type where you construct a boundary around a public domain such as a whole town so that all the enclosed area is considered a single private domain for purposes of transporting between domains and carrying on Shabbos. But another type of eruv is the eruv techumin, which works like this:
You are not allowed to travel more than 2000 amos outside of city limits on Shabbos, about a half mile. This is regardless of whether or not there's an eruv. But suppose you had a lunch invitation at a place in the next town over, easily walkable but more than a half mile outside city limits. What ridiculous legal workaround can you employ? Well, if you started Shabbos in a place just outside of city limits, within 2000 amos, then you can extend the distance you are allowed to travel because your 2000 amos travel radius is overlaps the city limits, so you can travel to anywhere within city limits, and also anywhere within 2000 amos of the place you started Shabbos.
Now what counts as starting Shabbos in a place? You don't even have to actually be there. If you had food for eating on Shabbos in a place, that counts. So if you place food in a place outside city limits before Shabbos, and you have access to that place should you want to eat the food, then it establishes boundaries for purposes of travel, that's the eruv techumin.
But the key element of Eruv Techumin is that in order to maintain the slightest pretense that this legal fiction is real, you need to actually be able to get to the food. It can't be in a locked house that you don't have the key to, it has to be in a place that, should you actually want to get it, you could. But you don't actually have to eat it.
So on this page the Gemara brings a case where you stashed your eruv techumin food in a pit in a reshus harabim. The Gemara teaches a barqaisa that says if the pit is greater than 4 tefachim by 4 tefachim, and 10 tefachim deep, it's a separate reshus hayachid. And therefore it can't be used as a holding place for your eruv food, since in order to access it you'd have to be mechalel Shabbos and carry out from a reshus hayachid to a reshus harabim. But if the pit is shorter than ten tefachim in depth, it's a valid eruv. But there's a debate about whether such a pit is a karmelis or a part of the bigger public domain. If it's part of the public domain, that's fine, yetzius is not a problem. But if it's part of a karmelis, you're Rabbinically prohibited to transfer from a karmelis to a reshus yarabim, so how do the people who hold it's a karmelis respond to this baraisa?
There are a few answers, but it makes a weird intuitive sense to me that in this case when stacking Rabbinic prohibitions on top of each other, they cancel out. In other words, you're not allowed to transfer between a karmelis and a reshus harabim, but you're not really actually supposed to take the eruv techumin food anyway, it's just a Rabbinic legal fiction, so it doesn't matter that there's a Rabbinic prohibition on taking the food.
Daf 9
Finally, we're done with yetzias for the moment and on to... stuff that has nothing to do with Shabbos. The next Mishnah is about how there are things you shouldn't do right before Shabbos, for fear that you might run long and cross into Shabbos. This Mishnah is a parallel discussion of things you shouldn't do before the time to say weekday Minchah, for fear that they might run long and keep you from saying Minchah.
This is consistent with a broad concern that comes up many times in the Gemara about prioritizing mitzvot. It's important to remember that modern ideas that mitzvot are good things to do, that they lead to self-improvement and closeness to God, definitely exist in the Talmud, but they're second place to the general sense that mitzvot are obligations. You don't say Minchah because it's good to do, you say it because you're obligated to say it. And thus you should not start something not mitzvah related, even if it's good for you, if it could get in the way of you saying Minchah. The examples given include getting a haircut or going to the bathhouse- good for your wellbeing and sense of self, and thus arguably contained within other mitzvot, but not directly mitzvot themselves. But if you did start the haircut, and it becomes the time to say minchah, you can keep going with the haircut.
This seems to be because even though prayer is a d'oraysa obligation, prayer at specific times of the day and in specific formulas is a d'rabbanan obligation. The Mishnah contrasts this to Shema, where if you're in the middle of your haircut when it's time to say Shema, you should interrupt your haircut.
The Gemara digs deeper into what 'the time to say Minchah means'. There's a broad window of several hours in which you can say Minchah, so one wants to interpret this to mean "Don't start something toward the end of that window if it might cause you to miss the window", and that is indeed the first explanation, but two others are offered. One is "Don't start something that will take hours, even at the beginning of the window to say minchah", so a really elaborate haircut, or a whole spa/massage thing. Another is "Don't start something small even at the start of the window, if there's a reasonable possibility that delays will happen that could cause you to miss the window."
Anyway, all of this is very interesting but feels more like a continuation of Maseches Berachos than part of Maseches Shabbos.