Masechet Pesachim 5
Nov. 26th, 2020 01:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretDaf 5
The Torah says in Exodus 12:19, as I mentioned yesterday, "No leaven shall be found in your houses for seven days." And then in the next chapter, 13:7, "No leavened bread shall be found with you, and no leaven shall be found in all your territory."
This is duplicative, the general principle of the Talmud is that if the Torah states the same prohibition multiple times it must be actually teaching two prohibitions, or teaching some particular details about the prohibition. Much of this daf is trying to figure out what the reason for the duplication is.
A baraisa teaches that the second verse clarifies, with "found with you", that you can't see any chametz belonging to you, but you can see chametz belonging to non-Jews who live among you. Therefore "No leaven shall be found" teaches that although you're allowed to see chametz belonging to non-Jews, you can't stash a non-Jew's chametz in your home.
Mar, which I think usually means R' Yehuda HaNasi, says that he thinks that the rule is more lenient than the obvious reading of the baraisa. He thinks that when the baraisa teaches that you can't stash a non-Jew's chametz in your house, it only means that you can't stash it in your house if you guarantee to replace the chametz if it gets destroyed, because then you maintain some partial ownership connection to the chametz which is forbidden. But if it's in your house but belongs entirely to the non-Jew and you have no responsibility for it, it's okay. I think. There's a lot of formal legal language here I don't know Talmudic contract law well enough to be able to fully explain. Something about whether an exchange of good that have monetary value but which one is not entitled to derive benefit from is equivalent to an exchange of money.
This is of course important because many if not most observant Jew nowadays avails themselves of a leniency that involves selling chametz to a non-Jew for the duration of Pesach in order to keep it, locked away inaccessibly, in one's own home. Selling the chametz is universally intermediated by a Rabbi because clearly the terms of the sale contract and what rights are or aren't negotiated are highly important.
This leniency is, I think, a bigger deal today than it was in Talmudic times, because we have refrigerators and chemically engineered preservatives and complicated processed foods with chametz in them, and our whole system of domestic planning expects the maintenance of a stock of chametzdik pantry food for much longer than a week, so it's a lot harder and more expensive to throw out all our chametz these days than it was in the days of the Talmud.
The Torah says in Exodus 12:19, as I mentioned yesterday, "No leaven shall be found in your houses for seven days." And then in the next chapter, 13:7, "No leavened bread shall be found with you, and no leaven shall be found in all your territory."
This is duplicative, the general principle of the Talmud is that if the Torah states the same prohibition multiple times it must be actually teaching two prohibitions, or teaching some particular details about the prohibition. Much of this daf is trying to figure out what the reason for the duplication is.
A baraisa teaches that the second verse clarifies, with "found with you", that you can't see any chametz belonging to you, but you can see chametz belonging to non-Jews who live among you. Therefore "No leaven shall be found" teaches that although you're allowed to see chametz belonging to non-Jews, you can't stash a non-Jew's chametz in your home.
Mar, which I think usually means R' Yehuda HaNasi, says that he thinks that the rule is more lenient than the obvious reading of the baraisa. He thinks that when the baraisa teaches that you can't stash a non-Jew's chametz in your house, it only means that you can't stash it in your house if you guarantee to replace the chametz if it gets destroyed, because then you maintain some partial ownership connection to the chametz which is forbidden. But if it's in your house but belongs entirely to the non-Jew and you have no responsibility for it, it's okay. I think. There's a lot of formal legal language here I don't know Talmudic contract law well enough to be able to fully explain. Something about whether an exchange of good that have monetary value but which one is not entitled to derive benefit from is equivalent to an exchange of money.
This is of course important because many if not most observant Jew nowadays avails themselves of a leniency that involves selling chametz to a non-Jew for the duration of Pesach in order to keep it, locked away inaccessibly, in one's own home. Selling the chametz is universally intermediated by a Rabbi because clearly the terms of the sale contract and what rights are or aren't negotiated are highly important.
This leniency is, I think, a bigger deal today than it was in Talmudic times, because we have refrigerators and chemically engineered preservatives and complicated processed foods with chametz in them, and our whole system of domestic planning expects the maintenance of a stock of chametzdik pantry food for much longer than a week, so it's a lot harder and more expensive to throw out all our chametz these days than it was in the days of the Talmud.
(no subject)
Date: 2020-11-26 07:55 pm (UTC)Plus the importance of making sure you're selling it to a goy; I recall being told an anecdote by someone who used to sell their chometz themselves to a neighbor and then discovered later the neighbor's mother had very likely been Jewish and hid it because their neighborhood had Nazis.