Maseches Shabbos Daf 10-11
May. 25th, 2020 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 10
On Daf 9 we got the new Mishnah about time consuming tasks that you shouldn't start too close to the end of the time you have to say a prayer service, particularly tasks that you shouldn't start in the early afternoon if you haven't said Mincha yet and you might run past Plag Mincha. Why Mincha moreso than Shacharis and Ma'ariv? I think in general the expectation is that you say Shacharis more or less first thing upon waking up, and you can say Ma'ariv basically any time of the night, but Mincha forces you to stop your normal daily activities in order to pray, so the Mishnah is cautioning you to be careful about your time management. Why Mincha at all, given that this is Maseches Shabbos? Because on Daf 11 we're going to get into a similar list of time consuming tasks you should not start Erev Shabbos for similar reasons, and the Mishna likes pairing similar laws together even if they don't connect to the overall topic of the Masechet, for mnemonic reasons.
The Gemara on Daf 9 focuses on some of the technical timekeeping questions about this Mishnah... how long does the time consuming task need to be, how much time do you need to be sure to leave yourself for completing Mincha afterward, etc... ?
Daf 10 is technical but about a bigger thematic question. There's sort of two basic approaches you could take to understanding the Mishna's overall theme. Either the Mishna is giving these cases purely for themselves, to teach that you should not do these specific acts Erev Shabbos: Getting a haircut, going to a bathhouse, having a meal, judging a court case. Or the Mishna is giving these cases as examples of things that might be sufficiently time consuming. In which case you might be fine if you're doing these things in an accelerated way, or you might have a problem with doing some other activity that takes a similar amount of time but isn't contemplated by the Torah.
In any case, the Gemara does some ethnographic study of how these particular tasks were practiced in terms of how long they took, in order I think to find evidence to support ideas about how time-consuming a time-consuming task must be to qualify.
So for example, how long did a judge take to hear cases during a typical day? Well, sometimes Rav Chisda and Rabbah bar Rav Huna sat in judgement all day, even skipping meals to do so, because apparently the need for judgement was so great. But this was unusual, the Gemara brings a drash on the famous story of Moses and his father in law Yitro, where Moses stood in judgement over the people Min Boker ad Erev, until Yitro told him he needed to learn to delegate. The baraisa connects the language of Morning until Evening to the language in Bereishis of Vayehi Erev Vayehi Boker, and concludes that even participating in a shorter act of honest and fair judgement is akin to Hashem's Creation of the World. In practice, says the Gemara, usually judges in Babylon sat in judgement in the morning, presumably from after morning prayers, until the 6th hour of the day, when they had their main meal of the day.
The Gemara then brings another Baraisa about this idea that Torah scholars ate their main meal of the day in the sixth hour of the day, in contrast to other groups of people.
1. The Ludim, who Artscroll says are cannibals but who are at at least a group of gluttonous people, ate their main meal of the day in the first hour of the day, because they couldn't wait.
2. Bandits, who were similarly gluttonous but who were also lazy and maybe were up skulking at night and thus didn't wake up early, and were not yet awake in the first hour of the day, but ate their main meal as soon as they woke, in the second hour of the day.
3. People living off inherited wealth, who don't need to labor and don't appreciate the value of their wealth, eat their main meal in the third hour of the day.
4. Most people eat their main meal of the day in the fourth hour of the day, which I guess is when they're naturally hungry.
5. Physical laborers who have extra hard work that takes longer eat their main meal in the fifth hour of the day.
6. Torah scholars eat their main meal in the sixth hour of the day, possibly because their workload of learning Torah and hearing court cases has taken them extra time, or possibly because waiting until the sixth hour reflects their personal discipline against gluttony. Evidence for the latter theme comes in the next line of the baraisa, which says that waiting to the seventh hour is like "Throwing a stone into a bag", meaning it might seem like it's better than waiting to the sixth hour, but it actually makes no difference.
In any case, I tend to take this as ethnographic rather than prescriptive, the Gemara is trying to get a sense for derivations of absolute times based on time-keeping in the Mishna based on relative times that compare to cultural practices no longer practiced the same way in the Babylonian exile. Nonetheless, some of this eating pattern is captured in the contemporary practice of the three meals on Shabbos being Friday night dinner, Saturday lunch, and Shalosh Seudos, with no contemplation of a Saturday breakfast being one of the significant meals of Shabbos.
Daf 11
Great Talmudic joke:
Rava bar Mechasya said in the name of Rav Chama bar Gurya who said in the name of Rav: Any city whose roofs are higher than the synagogue will be destroyed, because of a certain Torah verse.
Rav Ashi said: I made sure that Masa Mechasya would not be destroyed by making sure its roofs were not higher than the synagogue.
The Gemara objects: But Masa Mechasya was destroyed!
The Gemara answers: Okay, but not because of the height of its roofs!
---
The new Mishnah, as I mentioned, is a number of gezeiros to prevent inadvertent violation of Shabbos, some of which involve doing things Erev Shabbos that are D'oraysa no problem, but if forgotten might lead to a violation of Shabbos. For example, if a tailor is carrying a needle or a scribe is carrying a quill, and they go out walking Erev shabbos, they may forget to set down their needle or quill and end up violating the prohibition of carrying on Shabbos.
The immediate question is why specifically relate this prohibition to the tailor and the scribe. Why not blanket say "Don't go out walking erev Shabbos while carrying something, lest you lose track of time and end up carrying on Shabbos?" The answer is that the Mishna is trying to teach a more specific law.
According to R'Yehudah, the tailor in this example is not going to be carrying the needle in his hand, or even in a pincushion in a bag of sewing supplies. Since this tailor routinely as part of their job needs constant access to their needle, apparently they stick the needle through their garment to have it readily accessible. The Mishna is prohibiting them from doing this practice erev Shabbos, since it's so routine for them that they may easily forget they have the pin in and thus after Shabbos continue to go about with it. In contrast, says the Gemara, if a normal person sticks a pin in their sleeve and goes out erev Shabbos, there's no problem since it's such a weird thing that they'll surely remember to take it out before Shabbos.
According to the Rabbis, the tailor is simply being forbidden to carry the needle in his hand, and the baraisa that R'Yehudah uses as evidence is just teaching that pinning a needle into one's garment still counts as carrying the needle, rather than becoming part of the garment. This leads into further discussion on the rest of the daf about edge cases that might count as as extension of a garment and thus not violate the prohibition on carrying, or else might count as carrying.
For example, apparently a zav, back in the days where there was a concern about tumah and going into the Beis Hamikdash and eating consecrated foods and so on, apparently a zav would wear a cloth pouch over his organ to see if he had another emission, and there was a question of whether this counted as an article of clothing or as a special measuring instrument that counted as carrying. It turns out to depend on the reason why you're wearing the pouch, if you are not using it for observational purposes it may be a piece of clothing.
On Daf 9 we got the new Mishnah about time consuming tasks that you shouldn't start too close to the end of the time you have to say a prayer service, particularly tasks that you shouldn't start in the early afternoon if you haven't said Mincha yet and you might run past Plag Mincha. Why Mincha moreso than Shacharis and Ma'ariv? I think in general the expectation is that you say Shacharis more or less first thing upon waking up, and you can say Ma'ariv basically any time of the night, but Mincha forces you to stop your normal daily activities in order to pray, so the Mishnah is cautioning you to be careful about your time management. Why Mincha at all, given that this is Maseches Shabbos? Because on Daf 11 we're going to get into a similar list of time consuming tasks you should not start Erev Shabbos for similar reasons, and the Mishna likes pairing similar laws together even if they don't connect to the overall topic of the Masechet, for mnemonic reasons.
The Gemara on Daf 9 focuses on some of the technical timekeeping questions about this Mishnah... how long does the time consuming task need to be, how much time do you need to be sure to leave yourself for completing Mincha afterward, etc... ?
Daf 10 is technical but about a bigger thematic question. There's sort of two basic approaches you could take to understanding the Mishna's overall theme. Either the Mishna is giving these cases purely for themselves, to teach that you should not do these specific acts Erev Shabbos: Getting a haircut, going to a bathhouse, having a meal, judging a court case. Or the Mishna is giving these cases as examples of things that might be sufficiently time consuming. In which case you might be fine if you're doing these things in an accelerated way, or you might have a problem with doing some other activity that takes a similar amount of time but isn't contemplated by the Torah.
In any case, the Gemara does some ethnographic study of how these particular tasks were practiced in terms of how long they took, in order I think to find evidence to support ideas about how time-consuming a time-consuming task must be to qualify.
So for example, how long did a judge take to hear cases during a typical day? Well, sometimes Rav Chisda and Rabbah bar Rav Huna sat in judgement all day, even skipping meals to do so, because apparently the need for judgement was so great. But this was unusual, the Gemara brings a drash on the famous story of Moses and his father in law Yitro, where Moses stood in judgement over the people Min Boker ad Erev, until Yitro told him he needed to learn to delegate. The baraisa connects the language of Morning until Evening to the language in Bereishis of Vayehi Erev Vayehi Boker, and concludes that even participating in a shorter act of honest and fair judgement is akin to Hashem's Creation of the World. In practice, says the Gemara, usually judges in Babylon sat in judgement in the morning, presumably from after morning prayers, until the 6th hour of the day, when they had their main meal of the day.
The Gemara then brings another Baraisa about this idea that Torah scholars ate their main meal of the day in the sixth hour of the day, in contrast to other groups of people.
1. The Ludim, who Artscroll says are cannibals but who are at at least a group of gluttonous people, ate their main meal of the day in the first hour of the day, because they couldn't wait.
2. Bandits, who were similarly gluttonous but who were also lazy and maybe were up skulking at night and thus didn't wake up early, and were not yet awake in the first hour of the day, but ate their main meal as soon as they woke, in the second hour of the day.
3. People living off inherited wealth, who don't need to labor and don't appreciate the value of their wealth, eat their main meal in the third hour of the day.
4. Most people eat their main meal of the day in the fourth hour of the day, which I guess is when they're naturally hungry.
5. Physical laborers who have extra hard work that takes longer eat their main meal in the fifth hour of the day.
6. Torah scholars eat their main meal in the sixth hour of the day, possibly because their workload of learning Torah and hearing court cases has taken them extra time, or possibly because waiting until the sixth hour reflects their personal discipline against gluttony. Evidence for the latter theme comes in the next line of the baraisa, which says that waiting to the seventh hour is like "Throwing a stone into a bag", meaning it might seem like it's better than waiting to the sixth hour, but it actually makes no difference.
In any case, I tend to take this as ethnographic rather than prescriptive, the Gemara is trying to get a sense for derivations of absolute times based on time-keeping in the Mishna based on relative times that compare to cultural practices no longer practiced the same way in the Babylonian exile. Nonetheless, some of this eating pattern is captured in the contemporary practice of the three meals on Shabbos being Friday night dinner, Saturday lunch, and Shalosh Seudos, with no contemplation of a Saturday breakfast being one of the significant meals of Shabbos.
Daf 11
Great Talmudic joke:
Rava bar Mechasya said in the name of Rav Chama bar Gurya who said in the name of Rav: Any city whose roofs are higher than the synagogue will be destroyed, because of a certain Torah verse.
Rav Ashi said: I made sure that Masa Mechasya would not be destroyed by making sure its roofs were not higher than the synagogue.
The Gemara objects: But Masa Mechasya was destroyed!
The Gemara answers: Okay, but not because of the height of its roofs!
---
The new Mishnah, as I mentioned, is a number of gezeiros to prevent inadvertent violation of Shabbos, some of which involve doing things Erev Shabbos that are D'oraysa no problem, but if forgotten might lead to a violation of Shabbos. For example, if a tailor is carrying a needle or a scribe is carrying a quill, and they go out walking Erev shabbos, they may forget to set down their needle or quill and end up violating the prohibition of carrying on Shabbos.
The immediate question is why specifically relate this prohibition to the tailor and the scribe. Why not blanket say "Don't go out walking erev Shabbos while carrying something, lest you lose track of time and end up carrying on Shabbos?" The answer is that the Mishna is trying to teach a more specific law.
According to R'Yehudah, the tailor in this example is not going to be carrying the needle in his hand, or even in a pincushion in a bag of sewing supplies. Since this tailor routinely as part of their job needs constant access to their needle, apparently they stick the needle through their garment to have it readily accessible. The Mishna is prohibiting them from doing this practice erev Shabbos, since it's so routine for them that they may easily forget they have the pin in and thus after Shabbos continue to go about with it. In contrast, says the Gemara, if a normal person sticks a pin in their sleeve and goes out erev Shabbos, there's no problem since it's such a weird thing that they'll surely remember to take it out before Shabbos.
According to the Rabbis, the tailor is simply being forbidden to carry the needle in his hand, and the baraisa that R'Yehudah uses as evidence is just teaching that pinning a needle into one's garment still counts as carrying the needle, rather than becoming part of the garment. This leads into further discussion on the rest of the daf about edge cases that might count as as extension of a garment and thus not violate the prohibition on carrying, or else might count as carrying.
For example, apparently a zav, back in the days where there was a concern about tumah and going into the Beis Hamikdash and eating consecrated foods and so on, apparently a zav would wear a cloth pouch over his organ to see if he had another emission, and there was a question of whether this counted as an article of clothing or as a special measuring instrument that counted as carrying. It turns out to depend on the reason why you're wearing the pouch, if you are not using it for observational purposes it may be a piece of clothing.