Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 12a-b
Jun 6, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Shabbat and prayer are deeply connected in the mind of the contemporary Jew. Shabbat is the time when many of us engage in public prayer each week. Though most Conservative synagogues have a weekday minyan, usually its attendance is much smaller than that of the Shabbat service. So it is surprising when we discover that our Sages frowned on the practice of making personal requests of God on Shabbat.
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Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 20a
May 30, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
We’ve seen the idea that carrying from one domain to another is prohibited on Shabbat. This idea is usually (though not always) expressed as “carrying from a public to a private domain” or vice versa. Here we see an additional question rising out of this basic law: What if one stands in one domain and imbibes water from another domain? Is one’s body another domain? Is it part of the domain that one’s feet are in? Is it part of the domain that one’s head is in? Perhaps the Shabbat domains end altogether at one’s lips? And what is the spiritual message about the Shabbat and the body that we are supposed to take away from this?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 86b
May 23, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
On Shavu’ot we recreate the revelation of Torah. Though we see in the Torah that revelation occurs over a long period, and in many places in the wanderings of the Israelites, nonetheless, the ultimate revelatory model in the Bible is the giving of Torah at Mount Sinai / Horeb in Exodus 20. It is this revelation we seek to commemorate on Shavu’ot. However, there are two unexpected things about this festival. It has no fixed date in the Torah—instead it is linked with the barley harvest; and second, the Torah never explicitly connects it with the Sinai event—though when we calculate the dates given in Exodus 19, the revelation at Sinai (or at least the surrounding events) must have coincided with the regular dates of the festival, early in the month of Sivan, at the time of the barley harvest.
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 113a
May 16, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
We have seen this source before. When last we saw it, I mentioned that 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 is the prohibition that 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. This is different than the prohibition on carrying from one domain to another, which we have been discussing the last few weeks. This later prohibition, termed hotza’ah (literally, carrying out), applies to all objects.
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Mishnah Eruvin 10:1
May 9, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
Our Sages considered it proscribed labor to carry any burden of value from one domain to another on Shabbat. As we noted last time, it is not the weight of an item that constitutes its significance in the Rabbinic mind, but the value that people ascribe to it. Some items have value because of their utility (food, for example), while others have value due to their sacred nature. One such sacred item is a pair of tefillin. In this mishnah, we see that one is prohibited from carrying tefillin from one domain to another (here, from the outdoors to indoors) on Shabbat, even to protect them from harm. Rather, the mishnah suggests, put on the tefillin and walk indoors. In this way, one preserves the sacred object without violating Shabbat.
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Mishnah Shabbat 7:3
May 2, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
I mentioned last week, in passing, that one violates the prohibition of carrying from domain to domain on Shabbat if one carries an object of value. How do we measure the value of objects?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 153a
Apr 25, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
If I am traveling on Friday afternoon and am unable to reach my home before Shabbat begins, what am I to do with my burdens? I am not allowed to carry in a public domain on Shabbat, as we have seen previously. As far as the Talmud is concerned, carrying anything of value constitutes labor. So, should I lay my burdens down and lose all the valuables I was carrying when Shabbat began? Is this some kind of “punishment” for not having planned my trip more carefully?
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Babylonian Talmud Shabbat 2b
Apr 18, 2009 By Marcus Mordecai Schwartz | Text Study
The Tosefta above is an odd text. It tells us that there are four Shabbat domains. We are prohibited from carrying from one type of domain to another on Shabbat. For instance, we may not carry anything of significance from our house (a “private domain”) to a major street (a “public domain”) on Shabbat. So far, so good. The odd thing here is that the Tosefta seems to provide only two of its four domains. Are there not two more domains that the Tosefta omits?
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