Shabbat II: 39 Melachot

(8) Dissolving vows flies in the air, there is no basis for it. Laws concerning shabbat and festival-offering and stealing from holy-designated things, these are like mountains hung from a hair: they have few verses and many laws. Judgment and service and purity and impurity and improper sexual relations, they have plenty to be based on. They themselves are the body of Torah.

(1) The Supreme Court in Jerusalem represents the essence of the Oral Torah. Its members are the pillars of direction; law and order emanate from them to all of Israel. Concerning them the Torah assures us, as it is written: "You shall act in accordance with the directions they give you" (Deuteronomy 17:11). This is a positive command. Anyone who believes in Moses, our teacher, and in his Torah, must relate religious practices to them and lean upon them.

(2) — — Whether their direction is based upon what they have learned from tradition, referred to as the Oral Torah, or it is derived from what they have independently discovered by means of any of the rules whereby the Torah is interpreted, and meets with their approval, or it is in the form of temporary regulations designed to preserve the biblical laws, measures consisting of decrees and ordinances and customs, we are biblically commanded to obey our sages with regard to any of these three categories. Whoever disregards one of them breaks a prohibitive command.— —

(3) There has never been dissension [among the sages] with regard to laws handed down by tradition. Anything concerning which there has been dissension is certainly not a tradition dating back to Moses, our teacher. Rules derived by rational inference, if sanctioned by all the members of the Supreme Court, are invested with authority indeed; if there is a divergence of opinion among the sages, we follow the majority and formulate the law according to the greater number. The same applies to the decrees, ordinances and customs : if some sages felt that it was appropriate to issue a decree or to enact an ordinance, or that the people should abandon a certain custom, and others felt that it was improper to issue that decree or to enact that ordinance, or that the people should not discontinue that custom, they would debate the subject and follow the majority opinion, formulating the law according to the greater number.

(4) When the Supreme Court was in existence, there was no religious dissension among the people of Israel. If doubt came to the mind of a Jew concerning any law, he consulted the court of his home town. If they knew, they told him; if not, he was joined by that court or its agents and together they went up to Jerusalem where they submitted the question to the court that was situated at the entrance of the Temple Mount. If they knew, they told him; if not, they all proceeded to the court at the entrance of the Temple Court. If they knew, they told them; if not, they all went to the Supreme Court which occupied the chamber of hewn stone, and put the question to the judges. If the law concerning which they were all in doubt was known to the Supreme Court, either from tradition or from a principle of biblical interpretation, they stated it immediately. If the members of the Supreme Court were uncertain about that specific law, they dealt with it in their own time, and debated it until they eventually reached unanimous agreement or passed the measure by vote, following the majority opinion, and told all the questioners: "This is the law." And they went away. When, however, the Supreme Court ceased to exist, religious dissension increased in Israel: one scholar would declare a thing unclean and give a reason for his statement, while another would declare it clean and give a reason for his statement; one would forbid, while the other would permit.

(5) If two scholars, or two courts of law, whether contemporary or not, are in disagreement at a time when a Sanhedrin is nonexistent, or before a specific law has become clear to the Sanhedrin, follow the stringent view with regard to biblical law and the lenient view with regard to rabbinic law, if you do not know which way the law is prone.

(1) In the Torah, it states (Exodus 23:12, et. al.), "you shall rest." [Hence] one is obligated to rest even from things that are not constructive labor (melakha). And there are many things that were forbidden by the Sages and deemed a shevut (a restriction decreed by the Sages regarding Shabbat). Some of them are things forbidden because they are similar to constructive labors, and some of them are things forbidden as a decree lest one go from them to [doing] that which is forbidden [and would result in the punishment] of stoning. And these are them:

(8) Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy.

If the festival of Rosh Hashanah falls on the Sabbath, the shofar is not sounded in every place. [This law was enacted] even though blowing [the shofar] was forbidden only as sh'vut.

It would be appropriate for [the shofar] to be sounded, for a positive commandment of the Torah should supersede sh'vut instituted by the Sages. If so, why is the shofar not sounded?

Because of a decree [of the Sages] lest a person take it in his hands and carry it to a colleague so that the latter can blow for him, and [in the process,] carry it four cubits in the public domain or transfer it from one domain to another, and thus violate a prohibition punishable by being stoned to death. [This is necessary because] all are obligated in the mitzvah of blowing the shofar, but not all are skilled in it.

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