The consequences of violating a hallowed custom are severe. The Talmud tells us of excommunication, flogging, and the forced destruction of property that resulted from the violation of the strict boundaries of the local custom.
Our Kollel picked up on the sensitivity of the issue of boundary crossing, and responded accordingly. Come and hear our conversation about the margins of a city and where we position ourselves within it, plus a helpful chart to organize the flow of the sugya.
Click here to learn more about this commentary and the Kreuzberg Kollel.
אֲמַר לֵיהּ רַב סָפְרָא לְרַבִּי אַבָּא: כְּגוֹן אֲנַן דְּיָדְעִינַן בִּקְבִיעָא דְיַרְחָא, בַּיִּישּׁוּב לָא עָבֵידְנָא מִפְּנֵי שִׁינּוּי הַמַּחְלוֹקֶת. בַּמִּדְבָּר מַאי? אֲמַר לֵיהּ: הָכִי אָמַר רַב אַמֵּי: בַּיִּישּׁוּב אָסוּר, בַּמִּדְבָּר מוּתָּר.
After discussing stringencies resulting from customs, the Gemara elaborates on the second day of a Festival observed in the Diaspora. Rav Safra said to Rabbi Abba: Communities in a situation like us, who, based on calculations, already know the determination of the month and are no longer concerned lest the Festival be observed on the wrong day, clearly, on the second day of a Festival, we do not perform labor in the settled area due to the need to avoid deviation that causes dispute, as it is the custom in the Diaspora to refrain from performance of labor on those days. However, in the desert outside the Jewish community, what is the halakha? He said to him that this is what Rav Ami said: In a settled area it is prohibited; in the desert it is permitted.
Into the Wild: Minhag and the Other
Josh Weiner
Certain things are only noticeable, perhaps only exist, in transit. An accent, for example, is only relevant when it's different to other forms of speech, it doesn't even exist in a community that all speak similarly. Maybe minhag fits that description too. Our chapter has the refrain makom shenahagu osin, "In a place where X is customary, it is done, where X is not the custom, it is not done." Nobody needs a mishnah to tell them that. In a society where everyone stays within the community boundaries, it's not considered a minhag, it's just reality, what mama and grandma do, as obvious as the rules of grammar and pronunciation. In many ways, the minhag functions like a language that creates the community, not the other way around.
But then comes movement. Someone leaving the community, someone coming in from the outside. Now, normal behaviour is discovered as a minhag, now there's doubt and discord, now there needs to be some rules governing what to do. Which dialect is official and which is vulgar and how to translate between the two. Behind the orderliness of our chapter, there's this anxiety that comes with a realisation that Jews move and that minhag is shaky, seen from the outside. And that Outside is enormous.
אֲמַר לֵיהּ רַב סָפְרָא לְרַבִּי אַבָּא כְּגוֹן אֲנַן דְּיָדְעִינַן בִּקְבִיעָא דְיַרְחָא בַּיִּישּׁוּב לָא עָבֵידְנָא מִפְּנֵי שִׁינּוּי הַמַּחְלוֹקֶת בַּמִּדְבָּר מַאי אֲמַר לֵיהּ הָכִי אָמַר רַב אַמֵּי בַּיִּישּׁוּב אָסוּר בַּמִּדְבָּר מוּתָּר
"Rav Safra said to Rabbi Abba: I know about this minhag to keep two days of the festival in the diaspora, out of doubt. But what about someone like us, who has no doubt? In the cities, I don't work on the second day in order not to cause disputes, when people see me acting differently. But what about in the desert? Can I work on the second day?" Rabbi Abba answered him in the name of Rav Ami: "In the cities, it is forbidden. In the desert, it is permitted." (Pesachim 51b-52a)
Here comes a rabbi who knows how the game works, can see the tricks of normality for what they are. In the Babylonian cities, they keep the festivals for two days, and have done so for generations, a remnant of an ancient doubt about the true calendar emanating from Jerusalem. So be it. But can he escape the game? Is there a place with no rules, no minhag, no accent at all? Yes - "In the desert, all is permitted."
The Greeks, too, distinguished between the polis, a locus of societal agreements in the form of law, and the khôra, the lawless desert outside. The khôra is the wilderness, the open space in which the polis can create itself. The polis with its laws and customs and language can feel the khôra outside, the wild silent place where anything can happen - its existence is exciting and dangerous! The khôra makes language possible, says Rabbi Jacques Derrida. Like the Yom Kippur scapegoat sent out into the wilderness to allow the atonement process to take place, to allow the maintenance of a society of law and language and order; the empty khôra is crucial but ultimately needs to be rejected for the Minhag to become an illusion binding the people of the polis.
מְנָא הָנֵי מִילֵּי אָמַר רַב חָמָא בַּר עוּקְבָא אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹסֵי בַּר חֲנִינָא אָמַר קְרָא וְלִבְהֶמְתְּךָ וְלַחַיָּה אֲשֶׁר בְּאַרְצֶךָ כׇּל זְמַן שֶׁחַיָּה אוֹכֶלֶת מִן הַשָּׂדֶה הַאֲכֵל לַבְּהֵמָה שֶׁבַּבַּיִת כָּלָה לְחַיָּה אֲשֶׁר בַּשָּׂדֶה כַּלֵּה לִבְהֶמְתְּךָ מִן הַבַּיִת
Rav Ḥama bar Ukva said that Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥanina said: The Torah speaks thus: “And for the cattle and the beasts that are in your land, all its produce may be eaten” (Leviticus 25:7), meaning -- As long as wild animals eat a type of produce from the field, one may feed that type to the domesticated animal in the house. If that type of produce has ceased for the wild animals in the field, cease providing it to your domesticated animal in the house. (Pesachim 52b.3)
Every seven years, the normal domestic order is shaken. The shemitah year is a ritual that makes one take notice of the system of rituals itself: agricultural work stops. Like Shabbat on the seventh day of the week, like Pesach in the seventh month, the Shemitah in the seventh year is a forced rest that puts all work into a new perspective. Not that rest is good and work is bad, nor the other way around. Both are sacred and both are human constructs, like all systems. But the laws of Shemitah are peculiar in that they take the wilderness into consideration. It's wild animals who decide what can be eaten in the home, the chaos and lawlessness of the khôra break into the laws of the Polis. This intrusion of the wilderness, of "the Real" in Lacanian terms, makes one take notice of a natural cycle of growth that has nothing to do with human endeavours or agreements or rituals. The food at home has to mimic the food of the wild.
יוֹצְאִים בְּקוֹרְדָּקֵיסוֹן בַּשַּׁבָּת וְאֵין יוֹצְאִין בְּקוֹרְדָּקֵיסוֹן בַּשַּׁבָּת בְּבֵירֵי וּמַעֲשֶׂה בִּיהוּדָה וְהִלֵּל בָּנָיו שֶׁל רַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל שֶׁיָּצְאוּ בְּקוֹרְדָּקֵיסוֹן בַּשַּׁבָּת בְּבֵירֵי וְלָעֲזָה עֲלֵיהֶן הַמְּדִינָה וְאָמְרוּ מִיָּמֵינוּ לֹא רָאִינוּ כָּךְ וּשְׁמָטוּם וּנְתָנוּם לְעַבְדֵיהֶן וְלֹא רָצוּ לוֹמַר לָהֶן מוּתָּרִין אַתֶּם
One may go out with wide slippers on Shabbat; however, one does not go out with wide shoes in the city of Birei. Once Yehuda and Hillel, sons of Rabban Gamliel, went out with wide shoes in Birei, and the people of the city mocked them and said: In all our days we have never seen such behaviour! And Yehuda and Hillel removed their shoes, and gave them to their servants, rather than tell the residents of the city: You are permitted to go out with wide shoes on Shabbat. (Pesachim 51a:4)
Minhag doesn't make sense, and God forbid it should make sense. We observe fast days (or not), work days and holidays (or not), eat special foods at special times and sing funny songs that we think our grandparents also sung (or not). A hundred minhagim shape our rhythm of living, Jewish minhagim and plenty of others. They keep us rooted, our behaviour creates the roots that create the behaviour. It's not the halacha or logic or lawbooks that drive Jewish life, but the strange and contradictory minhagim decided upon by the collective Jewish unconscious. And we can't help but encounter the Other, the Outside, the Wild. Each of these encounters shake and change our minhag, but if we survive these encounters, the roots are deepened. Even in our strange inverted liminal Berlin landscape, where the law and the halacha form our wilderness, where it's sometimes the tradition and conformism which are exotic and exciting and Other - it's the encounter that matters, it's the encounter that makes us rooted. Maybe some of that occurred in Kreuzberg this year.
Josh W.
Rosh Hashana is mentioned only twice in the Torah, and not by name, and it doesn't tell us what or why to celebrate. Just the date.
כיוצא בו המוליך פירות שביעית וכו׳: ולית ליה לרבי יהודה הא דתנן נותנין עליו חומרי המקום שיצא משם וחומרי המקום שהלך לשם אמר רב שישא בריה דרב אידי מילתא אחריתי קאמר רבי יהודה והכי קאמר או ממקום שלא כלו למקום שלא כלו ושמע שכלו במקומו חייב לבער רבי יהודה אומר צא והבא לך אף אתה מהיכא דאייתינהו והא לא כלו להו
We learned in the mishna: "Similarly, one who transports Sabbatical Year produce, etc." And is Rabbi Yehuda not in agreement with that which we learned in the mishna: "The Sages impose upon him the stringencies of both the place from which he left and the stringencies of the place to which he went?"
Rav Sheisha, son of Rav Idi, said: Rabbi Yehuda is stating a different matter, and this is what the mishna is saying: Or if one went from a place where a crop has not ceased in the fields to a place where it has also not ceased in the fields, and he heard that it now ceased in the fields in his original location, he is then required to remove the fruits from his possession. Rabbi Yehuda says: He need not remove it and can say to the people of his location of origin: You, too, go out and bring these fruits from a place where they remain in the field, as they have not ceased in the fields here, and I may continue eating this produce.
Is that to say that Rabbi Yehuda is stating his opinion as a leniency in his dispute with the Rabbis? Didn’t Rabbi Elazar say: Rabbi Yehuda stated his opinion as a stringency? Rather, reverse the statements in the mishna: If one travels from a place where a crop has not ceased in the fields to another place where it has not ceased in the fields, and hears that it has ceased in the fields in his original location, he is not required to remove that produce from his house. Rabbi Yehuda says: You, too, go out and bring these fruits from the place where I brought them, and the crop has ceased in the fields there, and therefore he is required to remove the produce from his house.
Rav Ashi strongly objects to this: Is that to say that, according to Rabbi Yehuda, did the back of the donkey absorb these fruits?
Rather, Rav Ashi said: The dispute between the Rabbis and Rabbi Yehuda is parallel to the dispute of these tanna’im, as we learned in a mishna:
"With regard to one who preserves three types of vegetable preserves in one barrel during the Sabbatical Year, Rabbi Eliezer says: One may eat all three vegetables based on the status of the first. One may eat all three only until the date that the first of those vegetables ceases in the field. Thereafter, he is required to remove all the vegetables because they form a mixture of the prohibited and the permitted. Rabbi Yehoshua says: One may even continue eating all of them based on the status of the final type of those vegetables, until it is no longer present in the field. Rabban Gamliel says: Any of the vegetables whose type has ceased from the field, he will remove its type from the barrel and it may not be eaten; and the halakha is in accordance with his statement."
A brief chart explaining the various positions on what Rabbi Yehuda was actually saying!
| Yehuda | Notes | ||
| Base Reading | Maybe: It's permissable- you do you, but privately | Not possible if you have to read Yehuda as stringent | |
| 2nd Reading | You go check, in the meantime, I will eat it | Semi-stringent- I have to destroy it based on your evidence | |
| 3rd | It is based on the origin of the fruit - you cannot replicate your jam, so you cannot eat it (destroy it) | ||
| 4th | The origin of the person matters, not of the fruit. You came from a place where it is gone from the field, so you must destroy it | ||
| 5th | Ashi thinks that Eliezer is most stringent and should be how we read Yehudah- the strawberries are not in a field somewhere so destroy them. | Spoiler- the halacha is with Gamliel (most lenient), not Eliezer/Yehuda | |
| 6th | Ravina thinks the stringency of Shimon ben Gamliel parallels Yehuda: if the fruit is accessible (where you are, and can animals still also easily eat), you can eat it. If not, then you destroy it | Spoiler- halacha is with the tana kama- if there are still dates in Tzoar, you can eat in all of Yehuda (i.e. your field doesn't matter. The fields where you are don't matter. Somewhere in Judah, there are dates, so you can eat.) |
Anna S.
why do they STILL engage with these texts? they're not actually eating this stuff. is it about ego? individual vs. community
Rina S.
all these details? is it to establish principles to use later? is there a legal consequence?
We learned there in a mishna: Eretz Yisrael is divided into three separate lands with regard to removal, Judea, Transjordan, and the Galilee. And there are three lands in each and every one of them. And why did the Sages say that there are three lands with regard to removal if those lands themselves are further divided? So that people may eat in each and every one until a certain crop ceases from the field in the last of the regions that comprise it.
From where are these matters derived? [mena hanei milei?] Rav Ḥama bar Ukva said that Rabbi Yosei bar Ḥanina said: The verse says with regard to land during the Sabbatical Year: “And for the cattle and the beasts that are in your land, all its produce may be eaten” (Leviticus 25:7), from which it is derived: As long as the undomesticated animals eat a type of produce from the field, one may feed that type to the domesticated animal in his house. If it has ceased for the undomesticated animals in the field, cease providing it to your domesticated animal in the house.
And we learned as a tradition [gemirei] that an undomesticated animal in Judea does not develop on the produce of the Galilee, and an undomesticated animal in the Galilee does not develop on the fruits of Judea.
The Sages taught: Sabbatical Year fruits that left Eretz Yisrael and went to the Diaspora must be 'removed' [=destroyed/burned/biur] in any place that they are located. Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar says: That is not so. Rather, the fruits should return to their place of origin in Eretz Yisrael and be removed there, because it is stated: “In your land.”
Didn’t you derive from this verse that each of the three lands in Eretz Yisrael has a different halakhic status? The Gemara answers: Read the phrase as both 'in the land' and 'in your land'. Alternatively, the second halakha can be derived from: “That are in your land.”
רב ספרא נפק מארץ ישראל לחוצה לארץ הוה בהדיה גרבא דחמרא דשביעית לוו בהדיה רב הונא בריה דרב איקא ורב כהנא אמר להו איכא דשמיע ליה מיניה דרבי אבהו הלכה כרבי שמעון בן אלעזר או לא אמר ליה רב כהנא הכי אמר רבי אבהו הלכה כרבי שמעון בן אלעזר אמר ליה רב הונא בריה דרב איקא הכי אמר רבי אבהו אין הלכה כרבי שמעון בן אלעזר
Rav Safra left Eretz Yisrael and went to the Diaspora, and he had with him a jug of Sabbatical Year wine. Rav Huna, son of Rav Ika, and Rav Kahana accompanied him. He said to them: Is there anyone who heard from Rabbi Abbahu whether the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar or not? Rav Kahana said to him that this is what Rabbi Abbahu said: The halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar. Rav Huna, son of Rav Ika, said that this is what Rabbi Abbahu said: The halakha is not in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar.
Rav Safra said: Take that principle of Rav Huna in your hand, i.e., rely on it, as he is scrupulous and he learned the halakha well from the mouth of its originator, as the Sage Raḥava from the city of Pumbedita would do. (Raḥava was famous for the precision with which he would transmit material that he learned from his teacher.)
For example: Raḥava said that Rav Yehuda said: The Temple Mount was a double colonnade [stav], as there was a colonnade within a colonnade there. Here Raḥava used his teacher’s language in describing the structure of the Temple and the rows of columns. He did not employ the common term used for a colonnade, itztaba, but rather stav, using the language he heard from his teacher.
Rav Yosef mockingly read the verse: “My nation ask counsel of their stock, and its staff [maklo] tells to them” (Hosea 4:12) and interpreted it with regard to Rav Safra: Anyone who is lenient [mekel] tells him the halakha. He listens to the opinion of only the Sage who rules leniently.
Rav Safra the Babylonian
By Jeremy Borovitz
Rav Safra was a Babylonian, through and through. But he frequently made trips to the land of Israel, mostly for business. In Babylonia, he was a scholar; when he died, Abaye mandated that the whole community engage in the act of Kriya, tearing their clothes, to mourn his passing (Moed Katan 25a:7). In the land of Israel, he was a businessman. And someone sold him Sabbatical wine.
I have so many questions about this passage. Why would he have purchased the sabbatical wine to begin with? And who would have sold it to him? And how did he find out that he had it?
A further problem arises: Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar said that any Sabbatical produce must be destroyed in the land of Israel itself. And anything taken out must be returned and destroyed.
Suddenly this measly jug of wine that was accidentally packed away to Bavel has become the one ring to rule them all, and a separate journey must be undertaken in order to toss it into the cracks of doom.
Luckily, as the Tosafist Rav Shimshon of Shantz tells us, the Halacha is not like Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar.
When my grandfather died, I inherited his alcohol. He had some nice stuff, including an incredibly expensive bottle of non-Kosher cognac. I was still at the beginning of my religious journey when I was first confronted with the question: to drink or not to drink?
Spoiler alert: I didn’t drink it. But I shared it with some friends. And I can’t help but wonder if the honest and gregarious Rav Safra might not have done something similar.
Tal S.
I think what I learned today, combining Rina's lesson with our sugya, is that if you can tell a compelling story about where you learned something or received a tradition, you are correct, until/unless proven otherwise
Thoughts from Shiur
Neta Revii - leviticus 19:23-25 - does this apply only to fruit, or to all crops?
Is there an ecological argument for this?
*crop rotation
Note: the jubilee year is the 50th year - the shmitta/sheviit is the 7th year
ומאן שמעת ליה דאמר בוסר אין סמדר לא רבנן וקתני שאר כל האילנות משיוציאו אלא רבי אילעאי בדניסחני קץ
In any case, whom did you hear that said: An unripe grape, yes, is considered fruit, while a grape bud, no, it is not considered fruit? Wasn’t it the Rabbis, who disagree with Rabbi Yosei? And it is taught that, according to the Rabbis, it is prohibited to chop down all other trees from when they produce fruit. This indicates that unripe dates have the same status as ordinary dates. Rather, the Gemara retracts its previous answer and explains that Rabbi Elai chopped down a palm tree with stunted dates, which never ripen on the tree. It was permitted to chop down the tree because the dates can be ripened only after they are removed from the tree.
Shoshana R.
Who is Rabbi Elai? He must be an important person. He is not once critisized for cutting a tree (!!) - quite the contrary: the rabbis probably even try to find justifications for his action.
