Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 24a
Aug 1, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Our liturgy is a reflection of our values. On Shabbat, festivals, and Rosh Hodesh (the new moon), we read publicly from the Torah to connect our souls more deeply with God, divine wisdom, and the mitzvot. We also read from the Torah on Mondays and Thursdays so that we never go more than three days without Torah. However, on Shabbat and festivals we read a much larger passage than on Rosh Hodesh. Why?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 22a
Jul 25, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Abbaye (a mid-fourth-century Sage from Babylonia) reports that his teacher and adoptive father, Rabba bar Nachmani, usually followed the rulings of the early-third-century figure Rav. Here, Abbaye also provides us with three areas in which his master departed from Rav’s approach, favoring instead that of Rav’s contemporary, Shemuel. In all three cases, Rabba bar Nachmani, Abbaye reports, followed Shemuel’s more lenient approach. Let us focus on the last of these three, the case of dragging a bench over open ground on Shabbat.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 20b
Jul 18, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Spoken words are central to Jewish thought, religion, and practice. Our Sages believed that the world was created with divine utterances and their Torah was transmitted from mouth to ear. The word mishnah probably means recited teaching. The Mishnah was almost certainly imported to Babylonia in an entirely oral form. But what would happen if the meaning of an obscure Hebrew word in the Mishnah was forgotten? This is exactly the situation that motivates Rabin and Abbaye’s Aramaic dialog in the above conversation.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 18a
Jul 11, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
My selection this week begins with an ellipsis. Preceding this source are a range of regulations allowing passive forms of labor that begin before the commencement of Shabbat to continue throughout Shabbat. For instance, the Talmud allows us to place clothing into a solution of dye or set nets to catch fish just before Shabbat begins and then to reap the rewards of our labors after Shabbat, even though the clothes took the dye and the fish were caught (without human action) on Shabbat. Our source (most likely a second-century text from Eretz Yisra’el) presents an exception to this general rule: One may not place unmilled wheat under the stones prior to Shabbat and allow the water or wind to grind them over Shabbat. The question is why should this be prohibited, when the dye and traps are permitted.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 17b
Jul 4, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
The Sages inherited a system of Shabbat observance that proscribed carrying any item of significance from one domain to another. Money is obviously of great material significance in our lives, and we are to leave it safely at home as we travel on Shabbat. But what if, through no fault of our own, we are still on the road with money in our pockets when Shabbat begins. We have seen the solution before: Mishnah Shabbat 24:1 allows us to place the money with a non-Jewish companion for the duration of the sabbath. In our source above, Ula gives us more information about the origins of this solution.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 44a
Jun 27, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
One of my first memories of Shabbat is a vision of the beauty of the Shabbat candles. Accompanying this memory is the first Shabbat restriction that I recall learning: “We don’t touch the Shabbat candles or move them.” As I noted in an earlier piece, for our Sages, the Shabbat lights are a way of ensuringshalom bayit—household harmony.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 128b
Jun 20, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
As we move into the summer months, I wanted to revisit this source that we saw earlier in the year. As we mentioned the last time we saw it, this source limns the boundaries of our responsibility to protect our animals on Shabbat. According to this source, one may violate a Rabbinic commandment to preserve an animal from suffering on Shabbat. Here we see that the destruction of the blankets and pillows (usually forbidden on Shabbat) is legitimate if the purpose is to preserve the animal from harm.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 12a
Jun 13, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
The two first-century schools of Rabbinic thought, Beit Shamai and Beit Hillel, crop up quite often in the Talmud. Here Rabbi Shimon b. Elazar, an early third-century Sage, quotes their positions. This dispute between the two schools goes to the heart of what the experience of Shabbat should encompass. On the one hand, as I mentioned last week, there is the principle that Shabbat is a time that should be free from worry.
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