Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 133a
Apr 11, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Some mitzvot require us to violate Shabbat and festivals. For instance, the Torah requires that brit milah, the covenant of circumcision, take place on the eighth day of an Israelite boy’s life. The eighth day is its required time, even though that day may fall on Shabbat or a festival. The same is true with regard to the mitzvah of bringing the Paschal sacrifice—our Israelite ancestors were required to slaughter their Paschal lambs and offer their blood upon the altar on the fourteenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan and eat them on the night of the fifteenth, no matter whether one of these days was Shabbat or not.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 141a
Apr 4, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
We have learned that one is not allowed to carry from a private space (such as a home or synagogue) to a public space (such as a street or walkway) on Shabbat. A range of complex Torah and Rabbinic prohibitions and exceptions are wrapped up in this general mitzvah. Here, Rava presents his vision of one such exception. In his view, the Torah does not prohibit carrying children in and out of doors on Shabbat. However, one may not strap a diaper bag to the child and claim to merely be carrying the child, with the bag along for the ride. Carrying the bag in and out of doors is prohibited, says Rava, regardless of the child’s role. If one carries the child without the bag, one has not violated the Torah’s vision of Shabbat.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 128b
Mar 28, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
As Jews, what are our responsibilities to our animals? The Torah requires that we preserve not only our own animals from pain, but our enemies’ animals as well (Exod. 23:5). Other obligations aside, we are not to pass by a struggling animal without giving assistance. What are the limits of this obligation to prevent animal suffering on Shabbat and festivals? We have seen that we may violate Shabbat for the sake of human life. May we do so for animal life as well?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 122b
Mar 21, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Shemuel visited Avin of Turan’s house. A non-Jewish [acquaintance of Avin’s] came and lit the lamp [on Shabbat]. Shemuel turned his face away [from the light]. When he saw that [the non-Jew] had brought a document and was reading it, [Shemuel] said, “He lit it for his own benefit!” So he turned his face back towards the lamp.
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Mishnah Yoma 8:5
Mar 14, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
This passage comes from Yoma, the tractate dealing with the laws of Yom Kippur. The prohibitions against work on Yom Kippur are very similar to the prohibitions against work on Shabbat. The forbidden labors for both of these days are divided into the thirty-nine Torah-prohibited categories we saw in Mishnah Shabbat 7:3 called אבות מלאכות (avot melakhot). Excavating a ruin would ordinarily be forbidden on Shabbat and Yom Kippur. The specific category under which it would be forbidden might vary, depending on the intent of the excavator (as we have seen in our discussions of intent). If one is actually doing the demolishing, it would fall under the category of soter (סותר or demolishing). If one were cleaning or leveling an already demolished building, it would fall under the category of boneh(בונה or building).
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 103a
Mar 7, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
I have mentioned previously that the thirty-nine Torah-prohibited categories of labor (the avot melakhot) assume their meaning based on conventional definitions of the act they describe. For example, though cooking is prohibited as one of these thirty-nine categories, frying an egg on the hood of a car on a hot summer day would not be a Torah-prohibited act, since people do not conventionally define this as an act of cooking.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 113a
Feb 28, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Some of our Sages felt that objects which could not be used on Shabbat in any permitted way should be utterly outlawed for the entire twenty-five-hour period of Shabbat. This prohibition, termed by the Talmud, Issur Tilltul (the prohibition on moving an object), eventually came to be known as muktzeh(things placed to the side). If an object has no use on Shabbat, it is in this category and, generally, may not be picked up and moved to another location on Shabbat.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 102b
Feb 21, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Of the thirty-nine categories of prohibited labor that the Mishnah lists, one of the most puzzling is “the hammer blow.” Often this category is invoked to demonstrate that the final act of production of an object is an act forbidden in its own right—in other words, it is the final hammer blow that this category prohibits. But in this text we see quite a different understanding of this prohibition. Here the act of knapping away at a piece of marble is seen as violating the category of the hammer blow. This is likely because the act is literally taking blows at a chisel with hammer, even though no actual blow of the hammer finishes the marble sculpture: the smoothing and sanding process does that.
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