Eruvin – Communal Spaces

• Eruvin – “Community Spaces” – Creating Shared Space.
  • 8/11/20, Page 2 – Chapter 1. Let’s start slightly outside the scope of this page, what is an Eruv? Basically, as we saw in Shabbat, there are a lot of prohibitions on doing things in public spaces on the Sabbath, like carrying and moving things in particular. In considering what life was like at the time, people tended to live in small homes surrounding communal courtyards, and this page starts out with defining the courtyard – homes on three sides, with an opening to the street on the fourth. If, on the Sabbath, people could not exit their homes to go to the synagogue, because they couldn’t carry a prayer book, couldn’t carry the keys to their home, couldn’t push a baby carriage, etc., they would likely just stay home. Plus, they wouldn’t socialize with their neighbors and enjoy the festival (socializing with neighbors, I remember that…). So the rabbis, in their wisdom, declared that each courtyard would be an eruv, a communally owned private space, in which people could exit their homes and do all the things they could do inside, together, as a small community, from socializing to communal meals. Over time that was extended to include streets that led to the temple, and other areas. In fact, some eruvin are huge, a perfect example being most of the island of Manhattan, which is surrounded by a suspended wire from Battery Park to 126th Street (more or less), and is maintained weekly by a specific person whose job it is to go out every Thursday and check that the wire is unbroken and repair it if it isn’t, so that it’s ready for the Sabbath beginning the following night.
  • 8/12/20, Page 3 – Eruvin is, apparently, considered one of the hardest tractates of the Talmud to get through because it is so loaded with dry details and specifications around the communal spaces it defines. Today’s page is focused on the design, size, and placement of the crossbeams and cornices that define the height of the communal space – the limit of “20 cubits”, about 30 feet, picked at a point high enough to be generous, but low enough that it’s noticeable, so people see it, and pay attention. At first thought, that seems odd – shouldn’t this space have “air rights” and go right on up to the heavens? But on reflection, it makes sense to delineate such a shared space, because it makes it clear that it’s a special place where the community comes together as one, and that it isn’t infinite in scope.
  • 8/13/20, Page 4 – Those of you who haven’t been with me since the early days of this journey probably don’t know about the various units of measurement that showed up in Berakhot 37, 39 & 41. We started with volume and the olive bulk, extended to barley grains, date bulks, fig bulks, and a measure of time, the half loaf of bread. They’re back, along with the addition of the pomegranate hole, and an admonition that the measure of time, the half loaf of bread, is specific to wheat bread, as barley bread would create a different unit of time. It puts me in mind of the famous Charles DeGaulle quote, “How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese?”
  • 8/14/20, Page 5 – It’s become clear in this tractate that the gems of interest will likely be in the sidebar conversations. After a long-winded discussion on the placement of side posts in alleyways and courtyards, there’s a declaration that if there is uncertainty in Torah law, i.e., the original written word, err on the side of stringency; when there is uncertainty in Rabbinic law, i.e., legal interpretations, err on the side of leniency. Something to remember in those heated conversations on the internet – where we so often rely on memes, media soundbites, and opinions about “what that person really meant” rather than what they actually did or said. Life tip: when you’re launching into any argument, stop and consider what are the facts, and what are interpretations of the facts.
  • 8/15/20, Page 6 – Ahh, the L-shaped courtyard, that space of mystery. Is it open to the street, making it a public space or is it closed off and still part of our shared communal area? While it may seem obvious to just walk down to the right angle and take a look, at the moment when someone new enters the space, it is for them, unknown, and the rabbinical ruling is to treat it as open, and mark off the shared space at the point the uncertainty starts. It’s worth remembering that when you invite someone new into your circle, they don’t come in with the shared history that you already have with others around you. Or, when you enter into a novel experience. Boundaries aren’t a bad thing while everyone gets their bearings in new territory. You never know what’s lurking around the corner.
  • 8/16/20, Page 7 – While various Rabbis continue to argue over open ended and close ended alleyways and courtyards and tossing in “evidence” that amounts to “God spoke to me and told me I’m right and you’re wrong”, the more wise among them slaps them all down with, “What do the people who live around and share the eruv say? If they say that this whole area, including around the corner, is their shared space, then that’s their shared space. Put up your boundaries around that.” A lesson for leaders, that sometimes, leadership is getting out of the way of people getting things done.
  • 8/17/20, Page 8 – Some things never change when you’re dealing with what, in essence, are “political” parties, e.g., different groups of Rabbis and Sages who see their power being taken away. Following on yesterday’s “let the people decide” moment, immediately, the hackles are raised, and we start with the “But what ifs?” Easily half today’s page is taken up by an argument over “But what if one person in the communal space decides in the future to not share their part of the courtyard anymore?” The pragmatists respond with, “Well then, they’ll change the boundaries of their communal space”. Which, rather than stymieing those who want control over the decisions engenders “But what if they throw some of their trash into the courtyard and it ends up in the communal space? We can’t have privately owned trash in a communal space, only communal trash. It sounds like every modern day town hall meeting I’ve ever seen a recorded clip of.
  • 8/18/20, Page 9 – Today the argument is over the exacting boundaries of communal space, based on how they’re demarcated. Does the defined space extend to the inner face of the signposts, crossbeams, and doorways that surround it, or the outer face. The contention arises from the possibility that a stranger might intentionally or inadvertently become part of the shared space simply because they pass that outer face edge. I have visions of a 10-year old standing at the entryway sticking their finger or toe in, announcing “I’m in”, or “I’m not in”. My gut reaction is, why would it matter? Isn’t this all about creating community? Is this passerby in some way barging in and claiming the status of being a neighbor? It’s not really going to change any interpersonal dynamics of anyone who lives there, nor of the stranger, other than perhaps an exchange of friendly waves and hellos.
  • 8/19/20, Page 10 – In sort of the reverse of page 6, the rabbis turn their attention to not the hidden space around the corner from the communal courtyard, but the visible, yet separate, entryway or alleyway leading into the courtyard. Is, or no, perhaps better, should that space, which bridges the public street to the shared space be considered part of the communal area, or part of the public thoroughfare? In philosophical sci-fi terms, one might ask, does the space within an airlock belong to the spaceship or the vacuum? Does it depend on purpose, timing, or both? No conclusion is reached, as there’s significant disagreement, and logical arguments for each position. Talmudic minds that are far more experienced than mine apparently have explored this one for ages, and come to the idea that sometimes it’s not about the conclusion, but about the exploration of the reasons for the question being asked.
  • 8/20/20, Page 11 – Once again, time for a bit of class conflict. While no one’s revealing their income statements here, it becomes apparent as one group of Rabbis is all, “if they mark off their spaces with sticks and stones, and vines and bits of leftover twine, that’s cool”, while another is like, “Don’t they have Home Depot? Just go buy the crossbeams, lintels, cornices, and side-posts and hire a peasant to install the whole thing.” This difference between the two income classes of Rabbis has come up numerous times before. I wonder if it ever gets resolved? It’s 2020 and it’s still going on, so my guess is, no.
  • 8/21/20, Page 12 – Water. Suddenly, we’re on the water. And the discussion turns to a situation where our shared communal space has an entry into it that’s on a waterway – a river, a stream, a lake, a pond. Surprisingly, there seems to be minimal disagreement, and, then the argument goes a way I didn’t expect. I assumed there would be detailed ways of marking the edge of the space as it reaches the water, but instead, the Rabbis, and Sages, come to the conclusion that water creates its own, mutable boundary, even when man tries to limit it, and that we can just assume that that edge of the space changes with the whims of nature and the movement of the water.
  • 8/22/20, Page 13 – This one is the first “simple” page in this tractate. In a tangent, with numerous examples, from the Torah to a divorce bill, it’s made clear that spelling, capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and even the medium used for writing, are critical to the message, in fact, divine. It brings to mind a long time favorite quote from Milo D. Cooper, “Someone who wants to be heard will want to be understood, and that requires structured thought and communication. There’s no way around it. A few mistakes are forgivable, but come to me with excessive slang or insufficient punctuation or egregiously spelled words or inefficiently communicated ideas, and I’ll treat you like the fourth-rate intellectual slob that you are. Then, I’ll go eat my lunch and do it some more.”
  • 8/23/20, Page 14 – We’re doing geometry today as the Sages give us advice on how to calculate volume from the dimensions of an object, and circumference from diameter. On the latter they admittedly only have it as a rough estimate – “3 handbreadths circumference for every 1 handbreadth of diameter”. It started me wondering though about the actual discovery of “pi”, 3.14…etc. I realized I had no idea how old the concept was, and so a bit of internet dumpster diving ensued. The ancient Babylonians, 4000 years ago, went with the 3:1 ratio, but “later” by about four hundred years, revised it to 3.125. Around the same time the Egyptians went with 3.105. In the 200s BCE, Archimedes went with “between 1/7 and 1/7.1”, 3.1408 and 3.1429, narrowing it down to a fairly accurate estimate. Around the time the Talmud was written a famed Chinese mathematician, Zu Chongzhi, estimated 3.14159292035, using a hand-inscribed 24,576-sided polygon, a feat in itself, and pretty damned close to the actual value of 3.14159265358979… especially for a drawing! The term pi and its associated symbol became the accepted designation in the early 18th century.
  • 8/24/20, Page 15 – The question before us today is framed around the construction of what are by their nature, temporary eruvin, or communal spaces – defined by trees, rocks, reeds, hedges, even saddlebags. By broader implication, the argument is really about the creation of a transitory group. If you already know that you’re only going to be together for just this one Sabbath – you’re on the road, you’re in temporary quarters, something to that effect – then is the purpose of creating a communal space really about creating community and building relationships, given that you’re all moving on the next day, or is it simply about making your lives easier to move about and do things while you’re there? Much as I enjoy sharing a table with strangers, the naysayers’ argument really resonates. I think about the Zoom chats we’ve all been having these months in quarantine. There’s a difference in intent and quality between those that are invitation-only conversations between friends or colleagues, and an open, anyone can drop in, or out, free-for-all blather session.
  • 8/25/20, Page 16 – Continuing on the discussion of temporary eruvin, but circling back to more permanent structures as well, the wise folk turn their attention to “gaps”. One of their issues with temporary structures is that the spacing is irregular, and in some places there’s more gap than barrier. On permanent structures they examine the same in terms of windows and doors. Unbidden, a picture comes to mind of a teen wearing jeans that have more nothing than denim. Are they still wearing pants?
  • 8/26/20, Page 17 – I suppose if anything can be considered temporary space it would be a military encampment in times of war. Specifically stated as an “optional war”. As opposed to… what? Are there obligatory wars? Either way, in a temporary encampment, four things are permitted according to this page of Talmud that under normal circumstances would not be: stealing firewood regardless of who from; skipping washing ones hands before meals (though it’s still required after meals); no necessity to tithe a part of any crops gathered to feed the troops, and, creating an eruv is unnecessary “within the bounds of the encampment”. That’s to say, the military camp is automatically considered to be a private, shared space for purposes of carrying, etc., for all the people who are part of it. Ah, the exigencies of wartime.
  • 8/27/20, Page 18 – Chapter 2. After all the measuring and design work that we explored in Chapter 1, the Talmud launches into a whole new arena here. The Cliff Notes: Adam and Eve had Cain and Abel, and we know how that turned out. So they took a break from each other. A 130 year break. During their separation, Adam had other kids who turned out to be spirits, demons, and female demons. Then they got back together, had Seth, raised him under the guiding principles that they’d left behind previously in Eden, and he turned out to be the progenitor of the Jewish people. Not exactly the version we were taught in Hebrew School. There are apparently two major schools of thought on this. One, rather literal, has Adam taking up with Lilith (not named on this page), his demon wife, having kids with her while he slept, and that brought demons and spirits into our world, and it wasn’t until he repented and turned back to God and had another child with Eve that things moved along in the right direction. The other, the allegorical, that Adam took up with his mistress(es), had children, ignored them, they grew up into immoral people, and it wasn’t until he got back together with Eve and they raised a child with moral principles that things got back on track. Either version? Good parenting makes a difference.
  • 8/28/20, Page 19 – I have to keep reminding myself as I go through the Talmud of the “process”, of scribes writing down every digression the scholars are making as they have discussions. Yesterday’s page was one. Today, we get a glimpse of Hell, or in Jewish terms, Gehenna. It’s not a concept that is mentioned in the Torah, and I grew up with, more or less, that we don’t have a concept of Hell. But there was an actual place called Gehenna, where the Ammonites sacrificed children to their god Moloch, by fire. And somewhere around 600 BCE, this came to be used as, more or less, a place to which you would be threatened to end up if you “gave yourself over to your evil inclinations” (I hear that as “give in to the dark side”, in Darth Vader’s voice). The story of a fiery afterlife crept in after that, and while the Jewish religion has left it on the metaphorical back-burner, the Christian faith took it out for a full on real estate development. Having grown up near to it, what came to mind was a sort of, this is like that The Bad Place was named after Hell, Michigan, rather than the other way around. And then, just before halfway through this page, we un-digress and they go back to discussing the design of fences to be erected around the water wells in public courtyards.
  • 8/29/20, Page 20 – What do we do when the well runs dry? It’s a part of what’s asked on this page as the Rabbis are addressing the space around the communal water well. If there’s not water anymore, is it still a valid communal space for use on the Sabbath? But then, is dipping water the only reason for the communal space around the well? In modern terms, is gathering around the water cooler really about getting a drink of water? In the end, they settle on “no” – the reason for the existence of the space as a shared one no longer exists, and therefore, it can no longer be part of the eruv. I’m thinking about spaces, ventures, and relationships that people hang onto after their reason for being is gone. It’s hard to let go of something that once had a purpose but no longer does. Sometimes, it’s time to turn out the lights, lower the curtain, and leave the stage.
  • 8/30/20, Page 21 – After a brief discussion of getting water for your cow from the community water well, the Rabbis take off on another tangent. The discussion is around just how comprehensive and vast the knowledge contained in the Torah is, if you truly study it and look for the meaning behind the words. Kind of what this whole Daf Yomi endeavor is all about. As the Torah can be considered an umbrella over everything else, the same can be said about the rest of human knowledge. There’s always something new to study in the world, you will never know everything there is to know about anything. Never Stop Learning.
  • 8/31/20, Page 22 – A somewhat confusing jumble that centers around an adage of, more or less, “Don’t put off to tomorrow what you can do today.” Except that then it seems like they’re only talking about study, and then maybe just Torah study, and that other things can be put off indefinitely. There’s even a bit of a nod to the idea that Torah study should take precedence over things like taking care of your family. There’s not a whole lot of agreement. I have the feeling we’re back in that realm of the rich versus the poor rabbis, the latter who know that there are things that need to be done to survive, and the former who think, “there must be someone who takes care of that for me.”
  • 9/1/20, Page 23 – Today’s page looks at gardens within eruvs and how they affect the communal space. What caught my eye was a paragraph about the situation when one person whose home is on the courtyard chooses not to be part of the community. It’s phrased obliquely, but there’s an implication that, for the Sabbath, his property is ceded to the community and he is prohibited from entering the communal courtyard, while those who are part of the community can freely make use of “his portion”, thus maintaining the continuity of the space for the day. It seems the social contract for community and communal rights was something built in to the system of property ownership at the time. Try to picture that Homeowners’ Association meeting… “every Saturday, your front yard is ours.”
  • 9/2/20, Page 24 – In some places while reading through the Talmud it’s been explicit when there have been differing opinions between the rich rabbis and the poor rabbis. In other places I’m reading into it based on their approaches to things, as I did two days ago on page 22. I’m sure I could research their biographies and find out; the information’s probably readily available. But I’m just going to go on stumbling my way through this. Today’s topic, What to make of an object which has been repaired or patched so many times that, as we might say today, it’s held together by nothing more than duct tape and a prayer? One group of the sages say that the object no longer contains enough of the material from which it was fashioned to remain true to its purpose and intent, and it’s time to replace rather than repair. One of those who disagrees opines, Why not treat it as a whole new creation that is simply constructed of patchwork materials and has its own purpose?
  • 9/3/20, Page 25 – It seems that this theme of socioeconomic class may continue within, at least, this section of the Talmud. I wonder if that’s because we’re dealing with property rights, and so it naturally brings up some class based differences in approaches to ownership, and shared and public usage of space? Today’s page continues discussing gardens and similar parts of shared courtyards, which are at issue because they change the size and configuration of the communal space, in differing ways, depending on whether they’re a garden, an orchard, a stable, a well, or even, it seems, a zoo of sorts. A notable conversation occurs when one of the rabbis offers an opinion and is soundly slapped down by another with what amounts to, “your family has no lineage and comes from the wrong side of the tracks; you have nothing of value to contribute to this topic, so shut up and listen to your betters”.
  • 9/4/20, Page 26 – Somehow, I knew we would circle back to the bit just three days ago on page 23 where someone who chooses not to participate in the eruv and their share of the courtyard becoming community property on the Sabbath. The argument is reminiscent of what’s going on today in some cities in the US. One side arguing that everything should really belong to the community, to the people, and that even the person’s home is fair game, while the other argues that the homeowner can withhold sharing not just their home, but can refuse access to their portion of the shared courtyard space. A third group argues for some sort of in-between compromise, but of course, no one pays attention to anyone being reasonable.
  • 9/5/20, Page 27 – Chapter 3. If there’s one thing that I know about the Jewish people, it’s that we’re all about food. Back in my days of stand-up comedy, I included a joke about how boxes of prepackaged food should be relabeled to indicate, “Serves 4 gentiles or 1 jew”. On today’s page we find that two separate eruvs can be joined together by the passing of food. It’s like food is the key to opening the invisible barrier between them. Carry food, and you can cross the line. Don’t carry food and you can’t carry anything else with you when you do. Water doesn’t count. Salt doesn’t count. Truffles and mushrooms don’t count. I didn’t say that, they did. I used to hate mushrooms when I was growing up, but then later it turned out that real mushrooms and those slimy brownish-grey objects in the can aren’t the same thing and now I love them. I wrote an article about that once. There were two sages, one named Ben Bag Bag and one named Ben He He. Those have to be the two coolest names in all of ancient Jewish texts. I’m on a tangent now. Just carry food with you, it’s the universal key.
  • 9/6/20, Page 28 – Quite the pantry of ingredients are discussed on today’s page, all centered around what foods are acceptable for the whole bridging of eruvs from yesterday’s page. It’s interesting that yesterday started with a statement of “all food is acceptable except water and salt”, and then did a whole “oh yeah, and truffles and mushrooms”. Today’s goes full Columbo on us (some of you will get that) with a litany of more, “oh, one more thing…” ingredients, most of which relate to plants that are not normally grown as crops, but are sometimes used in certain dishes. “Oh, and also… insects”. But then, insects aren’t kosher, except certain ones, so that’s almost a given. Did you know that arugula seeds were used as a substitute for expensive peppercorns? I didn’t. Now I have to go find some arugula seeds to try that out.
  • 9/7/20, Page 29 – Having spent the last 15+ years living in South America, and on and off having a fair amount of contact with people who live in, let’s call it, less than modern circumstances, I’ve run across my share of food and health related myths. I’m not talking about native plant cures for things, which often really do seem to work and are probably worth investigating, but of just odd “statements of fact” about eating certain things that are complete nonsense. So it comes as no surprise that a nearly 2000 year old culture would have beliefs like raw beets or onions being deadly toxic, though cooked they’re fine. Nor that if you find yourself having eaten one or the other, your only “out” is to quickly drink “two-quarters of a log of beer or wine”. Why not half a log? Isn’t that what two-quarters is? Oh, and a log is defined as the volume of six eggs. It’s just odd to see these sorts of things spelled out in the Talmud.
  • 9/8/20, Page 30 – How much food do you need to carry when creating the new boundary of our eruv, our shared communal space? We’ve looked already in this chapter at some of the ingredients that are not considered sufficient – water, salt, truffles, mushrooms, raw beets, raw onions, this page adds in a scattered few. But, what quantity? The rabbis settle on an amount sufficient to be considered two meals by and for an average person. So, that casserole, fine. For those of you who always show up with a bag of chips or a bottle of soda and announce “I brought food”? Not so much. You know who you are.
  • 9/9/20, Page 31 – Today’s page goes a step beyond establishing eruvs with food, in looking at who is involved in the establishment. Part of the creation of the communal space is founded on the idea that those who are doing so have the agency, the legal right to make decisions about the properties involved. As such, those who are deemed “incompetent”, which is first defined as “deaf-mutes, imbeciles, and minors” (a trio we’ve seen before in other Talmudic passages), is then, probably sarcastically from the phrasing, extended to include elephants and monkeys. Their part is only allowed in the carrying of food for creating an eruv if, and only if, there is a designated person of agency to receive them, at a specific time and place. It touched off a debate, particularly about minors (keeping in mind that in Jewish tradition that means under the age of 13) and responsibility, tempered with supervision. Let kids help, just make sure someone reliable keeps an eye on them.
  • 9/10/20, Page 32 – Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? An old Latin phrase that basically translates to Who watches the Watchers? Often attributed to Plato, it’s actually not from him, but from the Satires of Juvenal. In pop culture, it shows up in the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation and The Watchmen. Today’s page focuses on the people of agency we saw yesterday, the ones deemed responsible to receive offerings of food from those who are not responsible. But who, the rabbis ask, is making sure that those people are actually doing what they’re supposed to? You’ve entrusted a task to someone who has already been deemed incompetent by your community. You’re trusting, you’re going on faith, that all will be well, and while the rabbis note that there are those who watch over responsible agents, in the end, trust and faith in your fellow man play a huge part in the building of a shared community.
  • 9/11/20, Page 33 – I assumed in reading these various passages in this chapter of Eruvin that the whole bringing of food and using of different ingredients, was to share them with each other in the community. You know, bring a casserole, a side dish, bread, something. But it seems I have misunderstood. The food in question is apparently being used to stake out the space, as sort of place markers instead of things like crossbeams and posts. If I’m gleaning the info correctly now, there’s a sort of tacit understanding that it gets left in place throughout the Sabbath, and then, perhaps it gets shared, perhaps you just take it back home with you and eat it. This comes to fore in today’s discussion of what sorts of things you can lock your food away in at the various corners of the eruv to prevent anyone else from getting to it. And here I thought it was all about sharing food with your community. Like showing up at a picnic but everyone eats only what they themselves brought, with no interchange. Color me disappointed.
  • 9/12/20, Page 34 – Today feels like a throwaway page as it just continues and sums up the conversation from yesterday’s on temporary placement of foods that mark the boundaries of the communal space, how to place them, particularly in regard to food in baskets, and then taking the food home again after the Sabbath to eat. I’m not liking this no sharing thing. I mean, it’s not like they’re living in the social distancing pandemic world that we are right now. Wow, I just had a thought, this is a 7-1/2 year project. What will life be like when I get to the end of the daf yomi cycle?
  • 9/13/20, Page 35 – Schrodinger’s Eruv. That’s what I’m calling today’s page. The arguments are based around whether an eruv continues to exist if you no longer have access to the food, or other items, that you used to create the boundaries. You lost the key to the cupboard where it’s locked away, a rock has rolled in front of it and you can’t tell if it’s still there, you balanced it on top of a reed which somehow is now 100 cubits high (150 feet, roughly), and can’t see it anymore. Does your eruv still exist when you don’t know if the boundary item still exists? As with the proverbial living or dead cat, no decision is reached.
  • 9/14/20, Page 36 – Although not unanimous, there is a decision of sorts reached on yesterday’s question of what to do when you don’t know if your boundary markers are still in place. The general consensus, not unanimous, is that until proven otherwise, it should be assumed that yes, they are. The arguments strike me a bit like the recent comment of the U.S.’ president, “If we don’t test, we won’t have as many cases”. At the same time, there’s a level of practicality – you can’t constantly be monitoring every boundary marker surrounding an eruv to make sure it’s in place. As we saw at the beginning of this tractate, for example, the Manhattan eruv is checked once a week, but between checks it’s assumed to be intact. This leads to an interesting discussion about distance traveling, with markers setup to travel and carry between neighboring towns, and the assertion that if, at some point in the past, you setup boundaries creating a travel corridor, you can assume, until proven otherwise, that they are there and that you can travel without issue. I’m pretty sure that that’s how numerous space ships in both Star Trek and Star Wars have come to a bad end.
  • 9/15/20, Page 37 – The idea of an established route with eruv markers to make it appropriate to travel on comes into question. Not because of the validity of the markers as was discussed yesterday, but the question of its existence. Since the purpose of establishing an eruv is to have an area in which things like carrying are permitted on the Sabbath, as in your own home, can you create this area which you may or may not use? And if you create more than one in different directions, you might or might not use one but not another. Since you don’t have “intent” to definitely use any particular travel corridor, many of the rabbis argue that they’re not valid eruvs. Others argue for what they call “retroactive designation”, i.e., that after you use one of the routes, that act makes it an eruv on the premise that somewhere within you, the universe, or fate, it was your intended choice. I didn’t make a wrong turn, I meant to go this way….
  • 9/16/20, Page 38 – The problem, you see, opine many, though not all of the rabbis, in regard to yesterday’s idea of having two different eruvs, in different directions, is the pull in different directions. They poo-poo the idea of Retroactive Designation, as many might. No, they say, you make a decision, you commit, and you follow through. But what, cry the RD fans, are we to do, when there are potential commitments in different directions, when we don’t know the circumstances that may come and push or pull us towards one or the other? Bah, you indecisive wimps, retort the first group. Show some courage, get a spine, make a choice, or in the words of the EST Training, “Chocolate or vanilla, choose”. And if you don’t, you are stuck right where you started, the opportunity for choice having passed. An apt metaphor for life.
  • 9/17/20, Page 39 – Eruvs are not just established for the Sabbath, but for certain other holidays as well. Today, the rabbis discuss the difference between the first and second day of the New Year, which, by tradition, outside of Israel, is celebrated for two days, as are other major holidays. Why, you might ask? Because back in the day, no one outside of Israel was quite sure of exactly when the holiday started at “The Temple”, so to be sure, they bracketed the time period with a two day celebration. Within Israel, the same holidays are only celebrated for one day, based on the lunar cycle. Now, 1500+ years ago the rabbis were not arguing this point, but today, when we can look at a phone app and know exactly what the time is in Israel, why do we continue this practice? We long ago adapted celebrations to our own local sunset times, not Israel’s. So, is it a tradition worth keeping simply because it is traditional, or is it time to change it?
  • 9/18/20, Page 40 – Know your market. Know who you’re selling to, why they buy, and what might stop them from buying. Today’s page opens with a story of an ancient marketplace, where one of the rabbis notes, just before the start of the Sabbath, that there’s a huge pile of turnips available for sale at a cheap price. He spreads the word – ‘great opportunity to buy turnips before the Sabbath starts, and you’ll have them for eating’. Now, there’s a rule about when you can buy things and designate them for eating on the Sabbath, part based on intentionality and part based on happenstance. In the latter case, it’s much more lax, and if something just happens to be available, you can snap it up. The merchant, not knowing this rule, shows up the next Friday with a huge load of turnips and offers them as a special to the Jewish community for the Sabbath. But, the rules of intentionality now apply, and the rabbi decrees, no one can buy those turnips. The merchant takes a loss, because he didn’t research his market.
  • 9/19/20, Page 41 – First, Happy 5781! May it be a lot better than 5780, which faded out with the cliffhanger death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, depriving her of tzaddik-hood by a few hours. Today’s page is the final one of chapter 3, and we’re off on a tangent about fasts. First off, I didn’t know that fasting was not permitted on the Sabbath. I don’t remember that ever coming up in my Jewish education, then again, having been brought up more towards the Reform end of things, our only fast was Yom Kippur. The rabbis discuss when the Sabbath overlaps with a holiday that requires fasting, and come down on the side of delaying the fast until after the Sabbath or completing it beforehand. The reason is to not mar a joyous holiday, the Sabbath, which is mandated to include eating and drinking, with negativity. The one exception is Yom Kippur, which supersedes it on the premise that you are fulfilling those mandates spiritually rather corporeally – also, Yom Kippur is the only fast day mentioned in the Torah, i.e., the other fast days were created by rabbis later on down the road. They also discuss partial day fasts, which I assume means, “I skipped lunch”.
  • 9/20/20, Page 42 – Chapter 4. Carrying over a discussion started at the end of yesterday’s page, the rabbis are discussing what might be called moving eruvs on today’s page. Specifically, two types of situations. The first is one of where a person has been moved against their will, specifically either “by Gentiles” or by possession of an “evil spirit”. The former is probably a situation that occurred somewhat regularly in history as people were summoned to appear before a local authority, or forced into performing a certain task somewhere other than their home. The latter seems to be a sort of “take leave of one’s senses”, without much of a definition, which probably allowed more than one person to get away with a pretense in order to move around. In either case, if you are returned home on the Sabbath by said entity, you can proceed as if you’d never left. If you return on your own, you have to, what we’d call these days, socially isolate, until the Sabbath is over. And, if you’re not returned home, you can pretend that wherever you are is home and act accordingly. The other situation is where you’re on a boat, which they spend quite a bit of time on, the upshot being that the boat is your home for the time being, and your eruv moves with you, as long as you’ve established its parameters on the boat itself. Thus allowing Orthodox Jews to go on cruises.
  • 9/21/20, Page 43 – The discussion turns to a person, a student in this case, who by accident has strayed too far outside the proscribed radius of travel (2000 cubits, or roughly 3000 feet) from his home on the Sabbath, or has not returned before nightfall, and by ruling, cannot re-enter the eruv. How to help him return to his loved ones? One of the elder rabbis, Rav Nahman, puts forth a unique solution… form a human corridor, made up of his family and friends, that extends from his home to where he is, and create an eruv pathway for him to return home to them. Something that might well be a metaphor for when a family member or friend has “strayed too far from home”, literally or figuratively.
  • 9/22/20, Page 44 – A short thought today on a small section of today’s page. Those who go out to battle on behalf of their community, or their nation, may return to the Sabbath eruv without having to be “brought back in”, regardless of the hour of their return. They should always be welcomed home.
  • 9/23/20, Page 45 – Just as those who defend their community on the battlefield are allowed to bend or break the rules of the Sabbath, those who defend their communities’ lives, be it in the form of rescue or treatment, in regard to life threatening situations, are allowed the same leeway. Preservation of life triumphs over following the rules of restricted movement and carrying. Also, a debate among the rabbis over whether the rain that falls to the ground “resides” in the clouds from which it falls, or in its origin point of the ocean. It is not clear to me why we need to know the home address of a raindrop.
  • 9/24/20, Page 46 – Aha! We have the answer to the rain question from yesterday’s page. Why do we need to decide if rain “resides” in a cloud or the ocean? If its origin is considered the cloud, then it existed in a different physical state, i.e., as vapor, and therefore “came into being” as water when it falls from the sky. Since things that are created or come into being on the Sabbath are not permitted to be carried, you therefore couldn’t transport rainwater from one place to another. If, however, its origin is considered the ocean, which is constantly in motion, just as rivers, and people, are, then it merely passed through the clouds, regardless of what form it took, and when it falls as rain it can be transported from one spot to another within the eruv. The disagreement over which it is leads to a protracted discussion over who to listen to when one authority disagrees with another, or several others. At first, the general consensus is to give more weight to those who are considered wiser, but this is crushed under the question of what if there’s a disagreement over who’s wiser, leading this into a circular loop.
  • 9/25/20, Page 47 – A woman who is just widowed or divorced must wait three months before she can get remarried. Why? Because that way if it becomes clear that she is pregnant during those three months, we can 100% establish paternity. She can even get engaged during those three months, just not married, because, as we all know, women will not sleep with their fiancés until after marriage, nor will they cheat on their husbands while married. Except women from Judea. We all know how they are.
  • 9/26/20, Page 48 – Boundaries that overlap. It’s the classic Venn diagram, circles that overlap each other. In this case, however, they’re different eruvs, common spaces, that share some form of space because of the measurements of how far from the center point is considered private versus public space. Or, perhaps a shared stream, ditch, or well for water. The rabbis argue over whether those from each space can meet in the common area and share meals, whether there should be a barrier set-up to designate this is ours, this is yours, and more. What came to mind is a different topic, where two people are sharing a meal at a table, but one is eating a dairy based meal, the other a meat based meal (not allowed to mix the two in a single meal under kosher law), and so they share the table, but line up things like the salt and pepper shakers, sugar packets, or their cellphones in the middle and designate those as a the red line, across which milk, meat, and silverware do not cross.
  • 9/27/20, Page 49 – Most of this tractate has been about establishing an eruv around a group of homes. But here and there have been forays into the “but what about when you’re not at home?” realm – on a boat, or a group who are traveling together and setup camp, or someone who has strayed outside of city boundaries. But what about the person who chooses to not be at home, and not be part of a group? The example used is someone who simply declares, as they are out and about, that a tree is their home for the Sabbath, and that having declared it, and marked off boundaries around it, they are allowed to consider that a personal eruv for carrying purposes. This sets off an argument over whether the eruv can be created for just one person, or must be for communal use. All I can hear is Buckaroo Bonzai, “No matter where you go… there you are.”
  • 9/28/20, Page 50 – Intention and limitation. These have cropped up over and over again in Eruvin, as we’ve seen detailed dimensions of courtyards and placement of markers. For the moment, and I don’t expect it will be left so in upcoming pages, the rabbis set aside the question of whether or not an eruv must be a shared space or can it be individual, and turn to the subject of how one could even define a space out in nature. If your temporary residence is a tree, do you measure the boundaries from the heart of the trunk, from the surface of the trunk, from the tips of its branches? If it is not even a tree, but somewhere out in a vast plain, how do you mark its central point and outer edges? It seems pedantic, and perhaps is, but is an interesting compromise from the hardliners, if we accept your intent, you have to accept our limits.
  • 9/29/20, Page 51 – I haven’t been zeroed in on the numbers of eruv limits in my comments, but the designated home for an eruv is a 4 cubit (6′) radius circle of personal space around a center point, and from there, the eruv is limited to 2000 cubits (3000′) in any direction. Someone finally asked, “these two numbers aren’t in the Torah, so why 4 and 2000?” The verbal gymnastics that follow on today’s page make it eminently clear that some group of rabbis at some point in the past simply made them up, based on the similarity of the Hebrew words for different things. An English analogy might be something like “because yardstick and backyard start from the same root word, we have decided that all patios are limited to 6′ across”. The scary part of this is that generations of Jews have been stuck with a rule made up by this twisted logic.
  • 9/30/20, Page 52 – A single step. A single step is the start of a journey. A single step outside your home with intention to spend the Sabbath elsewhere not just starts that journey, but commits you to your destination as your new home for the Sabbath. A single step can cross a frontier, a boundary, and move you outside your eruv, your shared, communal space. A single step can make or break a rule. A single step is intention. A single step creates a new future.
  • 10/1/20, Page 53 – Chapter 5. This chapter starts with what I’m guessing will be the overarching topic to come, the boundaries of cities. It opens with the idea that cities expand a little bit in each of many directions as people build on its fringes, and that the wise city planner will expand the city to encompass those areas, incorporating them into the whole. They then tie this in to methods of learning. Is it better to learn a bit from each of numerous teachers or to pick one and focus all your energies there? We all know people who fit the stereotypes of the “jack of all trades, master of none” as well as the “brilliant in his field, clueless about anything else”. The tie-in to city planning is that if you start by learning a little bit of this way, and a little bit that way, you create a sufficient base on which, when you do find the right path, teacher, or mentor, you can then steadily expand your own boundaries in the direction you’ve chosen, with a solid, broad foundation on which to build.
  • 10/2/20, Page 54 – Today’s page continues in the realm of study, not the direction I thought we were going to head in Eruvin. If you’ve ever seen a movie with Jewish boys studying in a Yeshivah, arguing points of Torah out loud, carrying on those arguments over a meal, this is where that approach is laid out, in detail. Torah and Talmud study is about gaining both knowledge, and wisdom. And on this page, simple ideas are spelled out for each. To gain knowledge, study a little at a time, study it over and over (four times minimum is posited), because if you take on too much at once, or gloss over it, it won’t stick. To gain wisdom, study out loud, with others, discussing, arguing, delving into a topic, because without that examination, the details of your study will never reveal themselves. And, while you study, embrace life – eat, drink, and be merry, because you only get one shot at this.
  • 10/3/20, Page 55 – In my mind, it seems natural that as a city expands (we’re back to cities), it will roughly expand in a sort of circular fashion. But that, according to our Sages and Rabbis, is not okay. City boundaries have to be squared off (squares or rectangles), even if it means laying them out across areas where there are no buildings. They even discuss a “gamma shaped” (L-shaped, just upside down) city, for which the boundaries are drawn as if all the empty space bounded on two sides was actually four sided. No real reason is given other than a vague allusion to having city lines facing in each of the four cardinal directions, but as to why, it’s not made clear. Modern urban planners refer to this layout, I believe, as rationalist urban centers. I await more explanation in further pages. I will be very disappointed if they don’t address this.
  • 10/4/20, Page 56 – Most of today’s page is devoted to the math calculations that show how much additional land a city’s government acquires by squaring off a circle, which, despite all the references to cardinal directions, zodiac signs, sunrise and sunset, and making it easy to determine boundaries, turns out to be what squaring a circle is really all about. It also becomes clear that this idea comes from the temple priests, who get a tithe from the extra land in their coffers. But it also opens with one of those quirky tangents I’ve come to enjoy, when a couple of the rabbis go off on “three things that increase your waste (yes, waste, not waist), cause you to stoop, and dim your eyesight” being whole grain bread, vegetables, and unaged beer. That’s not going to square well with today’s health advocates. Also, that living in a city will cause you to age prematurely, not because, as one might suspect, of urban pressures and such, but because it forces you to walk up and down hills and staircases, and such exercise is deleterious to the aging process. Also not so much in keeping with today’s wisdom.
  • 10/5/20, Page 57 – Those temple priests and city officials are really going to town on this land grab scheme that they were upfront about on yesterday’s page. Now we’ve got two, or even three, villages that are simply close enough together that you could draw a square or rectangle around them and subsume all the land between them into one whole for purposes of… not surprisingly, tithing, i.e., taxation. They’re not even pretending it’s for something else like “the common good” or “the common defense”. They just want their cut, and they’ve got the rabbis and sages to go along with it. Want to bet who else is getting a piece of the action?
  • 10/6/20, Page 58 – We’re back on familiar ground today, measurements. Not, surprisingly, measurements of those cities we spent the last two days encapsulating in their rectangles, but the height and width of a doorway, the bounds of a courtyard eruv, and the length of a Sabbath travel zone. The question today is over what should be used to measure these, and the answer, given the precision spelled out on the last 50+ pages, is unusual. Not a pre-measured iron chain or wooden staff, but rather ropes made of plant fibers. Inexact, subject to stretching or sagging, but… a part of nature. A metaphor for living. When you hold up your internal yardstick to measure the worth of something or someone, you should measure them against all the inexactitudes of life and experience, not a rigid, immutable standard.
  • 10/7/20, Page 59 – Public vs. private cities is the topic up for examination. We all know of the concept of a private city, even if we’ve not been to one. From gated communities to cult camps to towns that try to “allow” only people of a certain religion to reside there. In the context of eruvs, the sages establish that the entire community can basically be considered one, as long as, it more or less comes down to, they’re really private, with no public thoroughfares or services. If outsiders can enter on the Sabbath, it’s no longer private space and the eruv is invalidated. Opening up a community (or vice versa, closing off a public one to become private) comes with both benefits and costs, which affect both members and outsiders. Likewise, an individual must weigh the same for both the privacy and publicity of their own life. Something to think about in our era of rampant social media.
  • 10/8/20, Page 60 – In a follow on from yesterday, we find the rabbis thinking through the logic of having a private city, a gated community, that is totally self-reliant, versus the need to have a public thoroughfare or square. It has, apparently, become clear to them that a) 100% self-sufficiency probably isn’t realistic, and b) there may be one or more outsiders, or even members who don’t agree with turning the entire community into a Sabbath eruv. They settle on that any eruv which is intended to encompass an entire town must include a public carve-out that isn’t part of the eruv that’s sufficient area for 50 people to live, work, and play in. And, probably to get your Amazon Prime deliveries.
  • 10/9/20, Page 61 – Once again, classism rears its ugly head, and given the topic of this chapter, we return to the whole idea of two cities which have been bound together for one giant eruv, which, as we saw at the beginning of the chapter, is all really a tax scam. We now find that even though we have two cities with, in essence, overlapping communal areas, it depends on just what those cities are like as to whether the residents can walk into each other’s towns on the Sabbath with no issues. You see, there are those small towns, no, not all of them, but you know, like “those” small towns, whose residents are “like dogs”, prone to drink, prone to fight, and all that, and are likely a threat to public safety and welfare if just let them walk around in the big city. So, while those of us who live in the right areas are free to walk around wherever within the overlapping eruv, “those” people are limited to stay within the more usual 2000 cubits (3000 feet) of their personal homes and cannot walk around the entire eruv. Some things never change.
  • 10/10/20, Page 62 – Chapter 6. It’s all politics. The rabbis begin to layout the rules for eruvs when not everyone sharing the courtyard is Jewish. First, they deal almost dismissively with the idea of a single Jew and a single gentile sharing one courtyard as such a preposterously unsound idea that it’s of virtually no concern (gentiles being bloodthirsty and dangerous, who would choose to live solo next to one?), but, if it does happen, the Jew can establish his personal eruv. Second, they deal with a single gentile who happens to share a courtyard within a community of Jews (ah, protection, banding together). Here, an eruv can’t be established without negotiating of rental contracts whereby the gentile temporarily gives up rights to the usage of the courtyard and/or goes away for the Sabbath. I predict this is a start to a chapter on the politics of living amongst “others”, and the ability to negotiate the existence of an eruv being a part of the determination of where and how Jews might setup residence, something that still happens in modern times with orthodox communities.
  • 10/11/20, Page 63 – First, a long discussion on student-teacher relations (no, not that kind). Second, a short discussion on being a third wheel around husband-wife relations (yes, that kind). Then, on topic for the chapter, what to do in the situation launched yesterday of a gentile sharing a courtyard with a group of Jewish families, in this case, who flat out refuses to negotiate away his rights to sharing the courtyard on the Sabbath. Rabbi Abbaye offers the creative solution that all the families should get together, pick one of their number, sign their rights to the courtyard over to him for the Sabbath and then it will be “just like there is only one Jew and one gentile living on the courtyard together, a situation so unlikely that there’s no rule preventing creating an eruv.” It’s always the guys who write the rules who’ve already got the loophole figured out.
  • 10/12/20, Page 64 – No surprise that Abbaye’s proposal on the previous page drew some flack. Other rabbis come down pretty solidly against his idea. “What about appearances? Other people will see that we’ve established an eruv in a courtyard with a gentile against his wishes and think that’s okay.” “Well, we’ll make a public announcement about the way we did it.” “That’ll be all well and good for adults who can understand it, but what about children? They’re going to grow up and all they’ll know is that there are eruvs with gentiles sharing them, and think that’s okay.” “Umm, I’ve got nothing.” This launches a discussion on how much wine to drink before issuing rabbinical decisions. It’s agreed all around that you have to drink at least a couple of glasses to “clear your mind”, but not so much that you’re incoherent. This may explain a lot. Oh, and careful with the Italian wine, it’s strong.
  • 10/13/20, Page 65 – Picking up the thread from yesterday’s discussion of clarity of mind when issuing rulings, the rabbis bounce from topic to topic, be it drinking, anger, moments of arrogance, bad weather, or even weariness. The last engenders a tangent on how much sleep one needs, and like people anywhere, some rabbis go for a full night’s rest no matter what, some for sleep when tired, and some take scheduled naps. The general agreement is that if you’re undertaking to issue a rabbinical decree, i.e., make law, you should be sufficiently rested, have clarity of thought, your mind calm, and your personal distractions handled, so that you can focus on the decision to be made. Lawmakers of today could well be advised to take this approach.
  • 10/14/20, Page 66 – Most of today’s page is taken up by an intricate discussion of the ins and outs of sharing two neighboring courtyard eruvs, when there is one or more gentile living on one of them. But what stood out to me was the opening section, where it is asserted that if a gentile shares a courtyard with Jews, and has chosen not to cede his rights to the community for the Sabbath, but… happens to be away on the weekends… it’s considered acceptable to “rent” his rights to the courtyard from any one of his servants without his knowledge. If the cat’s away, the mice will play?
  • 10/15/20, Page 67 – Oh yeah? But what about if you’re on a rock in the sea? A big rock in the sea? A really big rock in the sea? Yeah? What about then? What are the rules about carrying things on the Sabbath to, from, and around on that rock? I’m not sure how we got to this long-winded discussion about the rules for carrying on Sabbath if you happen to find yourself on a big rock… well, yes I am, because rabbi Huna bar Hinnana asked the question… but here we are. I’m wondering if we’re back in the realm of rabbinical discussions after someone’s had a few too many cups of wine.
  • 10/16/20, Page 68 – Pharisees, Sadducees, Boethusians, and Essenes, oh my! A question regards the middle two of those, as to whether they are to be considered like gentiles? The general rabbinical take is no; though they’re a bit heretical, they’re still Jewish. But who were they? I knew nothing about them. I think I’ve got this correct: Pharisees were the majority, who believed in both written and oral law – the Torah and rabbinical interpretations, and in doing good works on earth in order to earn your place in heaven, and were the progenitors of modern Judaism. Sadducees, aristocratic followers of the priest Zadok, believed in both types of law, but not an afterlife, and doing good works and accumulating wealth, both for their own sakes, because this life is all you get. Boethusians, followers of the priest Boethus, believed the same, though there are differing opinions that place them as more middle class, or in contrast, uber-wealthy. Essenes jumped in as the “originalists”, believing in only the Torah as written, rejecting rabbinical interpretation and materialism, and leading ascetic lifestyles dedicated to study and prayer in order to reach Heaven. The latter three sects all disappeared around 70CE after the burning of the Second Temple.
  • 10/17/20, Page 69 – Not that having the four sects I talked about yesterday is simple, but today, we’re going one step further. While the general ruling of the rabbis was that members of those sects are still Jewish, not gentiles, at what point of heresy against the orthodoxy (in this case of the rabbis at the top of the heap), or the written word, is it just a step too far (phrased as “a brazen-faced apostate” on today’s page). Because being Jewish is like being an American – it’s near impossible to give up your citizenship. Even if you violate the core tenets – belief in a single god, no worshiping idols, keeping the Sabbath; even if you renounce your Judaism for another religion; you’re still considered Jewish. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t lose some privileges… like being considered one of the ten necessary for declaring a minyan (essentially a quorum) for holding prayer services; or being allowed to publicly read from the Torah; or… germane to this chapter, to be considered “Jewish enough” to not be considered outside the community, in essence a gentile, when it comes to establishing an eruv. Jewish with a suspended license.
  • 10/18/20, Page 70 – I can’t decide if Rabbi Abbaye, the guy from back on page 63 who gave us that signing rights loophole, is just a dog with a bone on his idea after it got trashed by everyone else, if he’s just dedicated to exploring every possible angle, or if he’s just riffing. Apparently, Abbaye didn’t drink, so we can’t chalk it up to one cup too many. The rabbis spend today’s page arguing various what-ifs related to a gentile who shares the courtyard who dies either before or during the Sabbath, how the timing affects who has to agree to what (heirs, realtors, and roommates are considered) and whether signing rights are still needed to fit his original loophole idea. The only thing agreed on is that even if a Jew signs over their rights to another Jew for the Sabbath, they still have to show up with food. That’s my people.
  • 10/19/20, Page 71 – After a long-winded discursion into establishing eruv rights with wine, oil, or bread, and particularly in cases where one or the other is “jointly owned” by more than one person, e.g., two people have gone halfsies on a barrel of wine or oil, a question arises that many of you, as well as I, have probably been thinking. Why? Why are we getting into all this tangential minutiae of what-ifs and unlikely scenarios? I brought it up yesterday in regard to Rabbi Abbaye’s reasons for delving deep into what I called signing rights. It brings the conversation to a screeching halt, before Rabbi Meir tosses a little bombshell into room. It’s not, he opines, because we really have any need to pack tradition and law with all these technicalities, but that by demonstrating our passion and commitment to them, we teach the children of our community the importance of paying attention to the little stuff. God is in the details.
  • 10/20/20, Page 72 – What about… hotels, motels, and apartment buildings that are not located within a community-wide eruv? This gets fairly intricate, and while only a few permutations are discussed on this page, believe me, it has been fodder for zillions of rabbinical discussions about how to handle these sorts of spaces. The basic determinations? If you’re the only religious Jew in the building, you can establish your own personal eruv for your apartment or room. If, however, there are others, you need to create a community eruv, turning the common areas – hallways, lobbies, etc., into part of that, with all of the other religious Jews in the building. Motels, if I follow the logic, would allow you to create a personal eruv for your room, because you have your own entrance to the outside, rather than into a common area. But then, we get into all amenities that hotels and motels might provide that might trigger other issues, like electronic locks, motion sensors, and mini-bars (see page 126 of tractate Shabbat), as well as toilet paper. I didn’t know that toilet paper has to be pre-torn for the Sabbath, so that you don’t engage in the action of tearing….
  • 10/21/20, Page 73 – Remember fig cakes? Back in our halcyon days of working our way through Masekhot Shabbat, fig cakes came up repeatedly. Never underestimate the value of a fig. Because we have Fig Watchmen. Yes, it’s a bona fide job title, and one important enough that the fig orchards are considered their home during the sabbath, and they can establish an eruv around their Fig Watchmen’s Hut. In other news… establishing eruvs for people who aren’t immediate family, i.e., parents and their children, but live, or happen to be, under the same roof for the sabbath, “breaking bread” with each other, be they other relatives, teacher and students, master and servants, or a group of close friends. Are they treated as family for the purposes of establishing the eruv or do they each need to contribute in order to create it? The answer is contained with the relationship itself. Sometimes family is created by other means than genetic lineage. Are they “your family”?
  • 10/22/20, Page 74 – Much of the discussion about Fig Watchmen, Synagogue Attendants and similar folk is about what is necessary to claim “residence” for carrying on the Sabbath when the place you’re at is not your personal home. The two primary candidates are the place where you sleep and the place where you break bread, i.e., eat. This harkens to a long standing disagreement with my youngest brother, Jeff, who contends that in the course of travels, in order to count somewhere as a place you’ve visited, you have to have slept there, and apparently airport naps don’t count, while my contention is that sleep is overrated and anywhere I’ve had an actual meal outside of the airport is fair play. At the least, we agree that things that happen in airports don’t count.
  • 10/23/20, Page 75 – Innies and Outies… I’m not talking belly-buttons, but courtyards. What happens when one residential space is subsumed within another? Can an eruv be established in just an inner or outer courtyard? The nutshell is that one can establish an inner eruv on its own, but not an outer. The reasoning given is the non-necessity of outer courtyard residents to enter the inner one, while still having access to the public domain, while those in the inner courtyard need to pass through the outer in order to access public streets. I understand the logic, but not the ruling, as nowhere have we seen that eruvs must be closed off to non-residents. Or, so I’ve thought. It seems more as if the inner courtyard is like a hole in the middle of the outer, rendering it in some way contaminated, and not whole. One can defend against a threat from outside the walls far easier than one within.
  • 10/24/20, Page 76 – Chapter 7. While ostensibly about how big a window between two courtyards (yes, a window, not a door or archway) needs to be in order to have them be considered as one for purposes of creating an eruv, most of the opening page to this chapter is a math lesson. It reminds me of days long, long ago when we’d get the answer right on a math test but get docked points because “you didn’t show your work”. The rabbis are discussing the difference in surface area of circular and square windows of the same diameter, and then of those that are circumscribed one within the other, either way. They’re not in disagreement over the results, but they take turns explaining how they arrived at the correct answer. Oh yes, there are math teachers smiling happily today.
  • 10/25/20, Page 77 – Food can be passed down a rope from a higher elevation to a lower elevation on the Sabbath, as it works by gravity, but can’t be sent up the rope from a lower to a higher one because of the work required. Immediately came to mind some of these new setups during the pandemic of little hole-in-the-wall restaurants that are in essence delivering pickup food that way from behind closed doors. Also, in case you ever find yourself in the hardware store and needing to know the difference, Egyptian ladders have three rungs or fewer, Tyrian ladders have four rungs or more.
  • 10/26/20, Page 78 – We’re still on ladders today, but now we have Babylonian ladders made of palm tree trunks that are so heavy they can’t be moved, and rope ladders made of woven straw that are barely able to support a person’s weight. The discussion, along with yesterday’s ladders, is on connecting two eruvs on different elevations, and whether a ladder constitutes a permanent passageway between them or not. It ends up relating to tree climbing, for which there’s disagreement about whether one can climb a tree on the Sabbath (it’s a rabbinic prohibition, not one found in the Torah). But, my favorite bit is the imagery of a metaphor about whether using something related to a tree is an impediment to a ladder being a passageway – one of the rabbis notes: just because there’s a lion guarding in front of a door, doesn’t mean it’s not a door.
  • 10/27/20, Page 79 – Is, or is not, a plank laid between two balconies, high above the ground, an “entrance”, and therefore subject to rules of carrying on the Sabbath. “It’s too dangerous to be a viable entrance” decry several rabbis. Where were they yesterday when we were talking about lions in front of the doorway? There’s a lot about hay on today’s page, first about whether it is considered a material sufficient to be used to fill in a ditch – no, because it’s too impermanent, better to use rocks and pebbles. Second, whether it creates a partition between two areas – maybe, depends on how wide, how tall, how densely packed it is, and why it’s there in the first place. I’m still stuck on the plank. What if, say, we put a lion on the plank between the two balconies? Is it an entrance now?
  • 10/28/20, Page 80 – In a bizarre, seemingly backward, and unexplained passage that is guaranteed not to promote marital harmony, the rabbis opine that in the situation where a gentile would willingly “rent” his usage rights to a courtyard for the Sabbath, you must deal directly with him, and not his wife…. However, if he would refuse to grant those rights, it’s totally acceptable to make a surreptitious deal for them with his wife and without his knowledge. We are also introduced to Rav Ya’akov bar Idi, a sage who lived, apparently, at the top of the “Ladder of Tyre”, in northern Israel, who was, I gather, the sort of sage of all sages. The introduction comes when there is an unsettled dispute between rabbis, and they are directed to go to this mountaintop retreat and put their question to him to settle it once and for all. The cliché is not limited to ancient Chinese or Japanese hermits.
  • 10/29/20, Page 81 – Three big topics on today’s page, I’m focused on the bread you bring to the table for the creation of an eruv. First, a whole loaf, not one partially eaten, or a slice, and while not explicitly stated, I’d say this extends to other foods – this is not the place to dump your leftovers. Second, of decent quality, something good enough to share, and not something “even a dog wouldn’t touch”. This puts me in mind of when we opened our shared table restaurant, and initially set it up that people brought their own wine. Some people would bring a great bottle. Some people would show up with swill. What used to perplex and annoy me, and a big part of why we changed to a wine inclusive meal and no longer allow people to bring their own, was that we would get slammed both in follow-up responses and social media/reviews, by both types – those who brought the good stuff for “allowing” someone else to bring cheap stuff to the table, and the latter for “allowing” people to bring wines to the table that made them feel inadequate.
  • 10/30/20, Page 82 – Chapter 8. Today’s page starts with a tangent – a discussion of whether people who make their living by the misfortune of others, specifically spelled out as a) those who gamble with dice, b) those who lend money at high interest rates, and c) those who competitively race pigeons (I didn’t make the list), are qualified to give testimony in disputed matters. The sages decide that if they also have a legitimate source of income that contributes to the good of society, then yes, if not, then no. The new chapter really starts with a discussion that highlights the difference in parental roles. At what age does a boy stop needing his mother for comfort and start needing his father for guidance? The specific age is left indeterminate, because the rabbis note that different children mature at different rates. Why does it matter in the context of Eruvin? Because if the mother and father happen to be in different eruvs on the Sabbath, the boy should be in the eruv with the one who he is currently most in need of.
  • 10/31/20, Page 83 – The “egg bulk” volume measurement is back. Half a peras is either 2 large eggs minus “a little”, later defined as 1/20 of an egg, or, it’s 2 eggs slightly larger than average. A Na’usa se’a is equivalent to 217 eggs, but a wilderness se’a is equal to only 144 eggs, and further, a Jerusalem se’a comes in at 173 eggs, but wait, a Tzippori se’a is a solid 207 eggs. And a halla is 1/24 of a Tzippori se’a or 8 eggs… wait, that can’t be right, 8 x 24 can’t be an odd number…. 1/24 of 207 is 8.625, closer to 9 than 8. We are, by the way, on a tangent, apparently discussing making the dough for the bread obligated as a “gift for the Lord” in Numbers 15. Which, by the way, has no details other than that it is a part of the first bread the Israelites eat on entering the Promised Land. I have said it before and I’ll say it again, most of these rabbis shouldn’t be allowed in a kitchen. Is it any wonder that French vicar Gabriel Mouton, on reading stuff like this, threw up his hands and created the metric system?
  • 11/1/20, Page 84 – Balconies, ledges, and rooftops are on today’s discussion menu. Are they a part of the courtyard eruv over which they protrude? If they have a permanent ladder from the courtyard to them, yes, if they require some sort of temporary ladder or access, no. What catches my eye? A brief passage on if the balcony or ledge protrudes over a body of water – which as you may remember has its own set of very flexible rules because of being part of nature… what if, the rabbis wonder, what if, the homeowner cuts a hole in the floor of his balcony in order to draw up water, things, or other activities? Is that an exemption from the rules of carrying on the Sabbath? It’s left unresolved, but leaves me wondering, who cuts a hole in the floor of the balcony instead of bringing something over the side? I suppose because it’s outside of the physical bounds of the balcony – but, it’s still over the water, no?
  • 11/2/20, Page 85 – We’re getting down into the final points, the what ifs, of eruvs as we get close to the end of the tractate. Today is focused on what if you rent a room, a carriage house, a space, to someone who does not choose to participate in the eruv, but who has direct access to it. Do they negate the use of the eruv for everyone? It depends, decide the rabbis. If the person has, in essence, sole possession of the space, with direct access to the shared courtyard, then yes, they negate the eruv. However, if you, as the owner, maintain personal things in their space, and have free access to enter the space, then they are considered a guest or family member, and they do not negate the eruv. It’s the difference between “whole space” and “shared space” options on Airbnb; or individual offices vs. co-working spaces.
  • 11/3/20, Page 86 – The discussion is on whether a father going to visit one of his children on the Sabbath will spend the night with them rather than returning home – because his absence, or not, affects the eruv at his home (if he’s absent, he can sign his rights away for the day, if he’s not, he has to contribute food, but that can only be done before the Sabbath starts, and only if he’s going to be there…). The rabbis make the assumption that if he visits his daughter he will stay the night, because she rules in her household, even over the objections of her husband, the son-in-law. But if he visits his son, it has to be assumed he might not stay the night, because his daughter-in-law may want him to leave, despite the entreaties of her husband, the son. In a crude, and to modern sensibilities, sexist metaphor: “If a dog barks at you, enter; if a female dog barks at you, leave.” But let’s give that a positive spin with a shout-out to “Girl Power!”… or, more appropriately, “Women Power!”
  • 11/4/20, Page 87 – Picture two neighboring courtyards that are back to back, with a wall between, entered from parallel streets a block apart, and each has been designated an eruv. Because of the wall, they cannot be combined as one, and it makes sense, as although the different groups of people who lived on each courtyard were near to each other, they didn’t share common space, and wouldn’t have been “close” neighbors. Still, they were close enough that they might well want to share the Sabbath across the divide. The rabbis’ decision, allowing for both maintaining a designated separateness, while still promoting community, was that the residents of both courtyards were welcome to scale the wall, sit atop it, and share the experience of being and eating together, but, could not share food from one courtyard to the other. No trading half your PBJ for half a tuna salad. There’s something metaphorically poignant about this today as we all await the results of the US election; about coming together atop the wall between us as a community, while still maintaining those cultural differences that divide us.
  • 11/5/20, Page 88 – The rabbis turn to a discussion of abandoned properties. The question before them is, if there is an abandoned property on your courtyard, and the owner has not signed over his rights to it for the Sabbath, nor participates with the community himself, can you create an eruv in that courtyard? The nutshell answer is “no”. But it’s the reasoning that they use that I find perplexing. They apply the rabbinical laws against theft to the usage of the abandoned property and determine that because there is no permission from the owner, it invalidates creating an eruv as it involves theft of ownership rights. The part that I find disturbing is that they’re quite specific that this applies to the creation of an eruv for Sabbath purposes, and not to “the ordinary use” of the abandoned property on other days, for say, storage, or holding a rave. Why is that not theft of usage rights as well?
  • 11/6/20, Page 89 – Chapter 9. All the rooftops of a city are one, single, separate domain, apart from the domain of those below. Therefore, movement and carrying from rooftop to rooftop is permitted on the Sabbath. Needless to say, there’s much argument over the logistics of this and various rabbis try to impose limits on the Mishna, the Torah law in this case. I’m hearing Chim Chim Cher-ee echoing through the night….
  • 11/7/20, Page 90 – Way back on page 42 we established that if you’re on a boat, the whole boat can be considered one domain for purposes of creating an eruv, a communal space, as it moves about on the ocean. Today we find out that if the boat is upside down, in drydock, it’s assumed that no one would choose to call it a residence, and therefore, no eruvs in upside down boats on land. This is one of those moments when my eclectic reading habits comes to fore, and I immediately think of the French village of Équihen-Plage. Okay rabbis, what say you now?
  • 11/8/20, Page 91 – Back up on the rooftops, and one thing I didn’t note two days ago. Because rooftops are not living space, and being considered, in essence unowned, and yet not a public thoroughfare, there’s no need to create an eruv to move things from one to another. On today’s page the rabbis discuss several examples, from the mundane of carrying a towel and moisturizing oils to get to the bathhouse, to the sacred, carrying a Torah scroll from one place of worship to another, all via rooftop. They don’t seem to have any justification for this, but they all agree. In essence, they’ve created a Sabbath wormhole used to get around the city, carrying objects that they otherwise wouldn’t be allowed to.
  • 11/9/20, Page 92 – Today’s page looks at what one might call an annex, where a rectangular space has a second, smaller space sticking out of one side, completely open to the larger space. The situation is one where the residents around the smaller space choose not to participate in the eruv with the larger space or vice versa. The rabbis decide that those in the larger space can make their own decisions, and consider the smaller space to be partitioned off and therefore not having an effect on them. However, the reverse isn’t true. Those in the smaller space, reliant on access through the larger, are limited in decision making based on options left to them due to decisions in the larger space. Voting rights by property ownership. Not unusual way back then and not unheard of today. Even in the US, voting rights were limited by property ownership (and therefore mostly just white men of means) pretty much across the board until New Hampshire became the first state to eliminate that requirement, in 1792.
  • 11/10/20, Page 93 – Although set against a backdrop of a couple of “what-ifs” in regard to partitions and entryways to courtyards, today’s page is focused on an age-old question for all of us. What do you do about uninvited and/or unexpected guests? The details of the argument aren’t important – the rabbis explore the timing of the arrival (before or after the Sabbath starts), and from where and why they’ve arrived – how different scenarios affect the rules of your eruv, what are the compromises that must be made since they didn’t participate in the creation of it, is there an opportunity to re-create a new eruv that includes them, etc.? What’s key is that there’s no suggestion to turn away surprise guests, but rather an exploration of how a community and the guests come together and adapt to make it all work.
  • 11/11/20, Page 94 – What happens to an eruv when it becomes a part of a public thoroughfare? Pre-known public access can be built into an eruv, take for example, the eruv on the isle of Manhattan, which is virtually 100% public, versus a private space that suddenly becomes open to the public. The arguments, unresolved, come from opposing ends. One is the public right to make use of what would have otherwise been a private domain. That brings to mind the famous Public Rights of Way in the UK, where private landowners must allow public access along footpaths that are designated by the government, or simply a public access order from any municipality. The other end is that if you’ve opened up your private space to public view, you have no right to expect privacy… which in modern life might be extended onto our lives on the internet, and something I’ve long said to friends who post every detail of their lives and then are shocked to find out that their news or photos have spread beyond their inner circle. If you don’t want it out there, don’t put it out there.
  • 11/12/20, Page 95 – First the wind-up of chapter 9, and an admonition that can be paraphrased: “If you’re doing something that will only have a positive outcome for someone else, you can do it without their knowledge. If you’re doing something that can have negative consequences for that person, even in part, you should only do it with their knowledge and consent.” Worth considering when you decide to do something “in someone’s best interests”. The start of Chapter 10 harkens way back to page 120 of Masekhot Shabbat, the previous tractate. There, in a discussion about saving personal items from a house fire, we are told that you can save only 18 items of clothing (remember, it’s the Sabbath, so “carrying” is restricted). I made fun of having to select outfits as the house burns down around you. But, let’s make it weird. On today’s page, we are told, you can save as many items of clothing as you want, as long as you a) put them on as you would normally wear them, b) run to a safe distance away, c) remove all the clothes, d) return to the burning house and repeat. Just take a moment to picture that process. I think I’ll stick with grabbing the first 18 items that catch my eye.
  • 11/13/20, Page 96 – The theme today is that of taking on more obligation than required. The focus is around mitzvot, or Torah commandments, most of which are specific to men, while women, children, and slaves are either not mentioned or specifically exempted. If a man goes for extra credit; if a woman, child, or slave performs one that they’re not required to, the question is “Does it matter?”. And it arises in both senses: 1) Does it accomplish anything? and/or 2) Does it violate anything? The former is generally agreed on that the performance of mitzvot, regardless of by whom, adds to the good in the world, but cautions overdoing it, making something special seem a mundane task. The latter, however, is fodder for arguments that continue to this day, between those who contend that “not commanded and/or specifically exempted” either does or does not mean “forbidden”.
  • 11/14/20, Page 97 – Back on page 43 of Eruvin, we had a discussion about a student who has strayed outside the proscribed limits and the idea of bringing him home via a conduit of his family and friends, sort of passing him from one to the other and bringing him back to the community. Something similar is broached on today’s page, but in regard to the moving of a person who is helpless – either ill in bed, or a newborn baby. Is it better, in moving them from one place to another on the Sabbath, to be more concerned with their comfort than with adherence to carrying laws, and have one person move them; or, is it more important to adhere to the rules, and less with their comfort, and pass them from one person to another, each only carrying them the proscribed limit? No determination is reached, but I’m reminded of the paradox of the two iconic scenes from Star Trek movies with “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one” vs “the needs of the one outweigh the needs of the many”.
  • 11/15/20, Page 98 – Most of today’s page boils down to a simple admonition – respect for books. Take care to not let them fall on the ground, to get dirty, to be left lying around open. Granted, at the time, they were dealing with books in scroll form, but the care they take makes it clear they’d never condone leaving a book face down, “cracking the spine”, as my parents or teachers might have put it. I’m wondering what the sages would make of e-books? Does reading e-books lead to a lack of respect for them, and further on, for books in general? How might one care for, and respect an e-book, versus the e-reader itself? Also, don’t piss over the line between public and private spaces, either direction. Not sure why that got thrown in at the end of the discussion, but it did, and here we are.
  • 11/16/20, Page 99 – Today’s page continues the conversation started at the end of yesterday’s, on pissing, and spitting, as well as a few other things involving liquids, like getting wine from a press that’s across “the line”, to drinking or collecting rainwater from a spout that might have originated “on the other side”, and a couple of other examples. The devil is in the details, they say, and the details here are that the rabbis question the size of the sources of liquid, since “carrying” prohibitions only apply when the vessel involved is of a sufficient volume. Rava, one of the most cited rabbis in the Talmud, slyly tosses a bit of shade by more or less noting that none of his colleagues has either a mouth or a “member” that even approaches the minimum size. Yes, dick jokes in the Talmud. And, the question is left “unresolved”.
  • 11/17/20, Page 100 – Today’s page roller coasters us from the bucolic to the darkly philosophical, very quickly. First, a discussion about climbing trees and walking on grass, with detours into how big the tree is, to how green or dry it is, and the latter as well with the grass. Then suddenly, we’re in a conversation on spousal rape. Possibly one of the world’s first admonitions against a husband forcing himself on his wife, it’s not phrased in legalistic terms, but rather in spiritual ones. The rabbis contend that the offspring of forced sex will be born with damaged souls and will never be decent human beings, playing to animistic fears rather than legal ones. Nonetheless, this passage along with other traditional writings was used as the core of Israel’s anti-spousal rape law… in 1980. That’s not as far behind as you might think – in the US it was not until 1993 that all 50 states removed the spousal rape exemption from their rape laws, and several states still maintain lower penalties on their books! Interestingly, in this same discussion, the reverse is not held in the same regard, a wife forcing her husband into sex is considered not only positively, but with the outcome that the offspring will be blessed with wisdom and virtue.
  • 11/18/20, Page 101 – Initially, I thought today’s page was just getting into nitpicking with final details of eruvs. A long discussion on what constitutes an already existing door versus a temporary one, the latter not permitted to be erected on the Sabbath, and another on unlocking doors when passing from public to private domain or the reverse (because the key is being moved from one to the other). But as those two conversations, and then a series of examples about how to perform daily tasks went on, I saw that the common thread reminded me of the later parts of Masekhot Shabbat, specifically passages like pages 141 and 143 – the idea of doing things differently on the Sabbath. The thoughts being presented on today’s page are about not doing things the way you’d do them on any other day, but coming up with a workaround, even, if you will, a cheat, but some way that differentiates your approach to daily tasks from what your normal custom or habit is.
  • 11/19/29, Page 102 – Attachments. Not the psychological sort, but the physical. Is the bolt or the door bar permanently affixed to the doorframe, or is it only loosely tied. Has a tent been hastily raised as an after-thought or is it a well situated and established structure? Is the hat on your head one that fits snugly, or is it more like a throw on, a floppy affair, a cape – or modern day’s version, a hoodie? Even, is the bandage on your wound which has moved, still well in contact with your body and just needing adjustment, or is it in danger of falling, or has actually fallen off? When it comes to usage and adjustments on the Sabbath, no surprise that the temporary, the hasty, the “let me just stick this there” approach is prohibited, while those that have taken some thought, that are properly sized, shaped, fitted, and fastened, are allowed.
  • 11/20/20, Page 103 – Content or framework. Those are my choices today. Content? Icky. Skip the next sentence if you don’t like icky. Priests can’t have a wart on their body when they lead a Sabbath service, and you can’t use a knife or scissors on the Sabbath – options given are to either scratch it out with your fingernails or bite it off (and one priest can do this for another if it’s in a place the affected one can’t get his fingers or teeth to). Yuck. Everyone else just waits until Sunday and uses a scalpel. Framework. A return to something I’ve brought up on and off on these pages, that those in power get away with a lot more than everyone else. The discussion is around the fact that priests in “The Temple”, i.e., the high priests of Judaism, are only subject to Torah law, not to Rabbinic law, which everyone else has to follow. So, many things that the average person is forbidden to do on the Sabbath, the high priests can blithely go about doing. Kind of brings to mind a lot of news reports around the world of governmental leaders not following pandemic restrictions they themselves have imposed on everyone else, no?
  • 11/21/20, Page 104 – In the latter part of today’s page we hit on a topic that’s controversial within Judaism, music on the Sabbath. The Torah, at different times touts tambourines, drums, trumpets, harps, and more for celebrating the Sabbath. But our Talmudic rabbis are kind of control freaks. In twists of logic, they decide that if you start to sing, you might decide to play an instrument, which might cause a string or reed to break, and since repairing things is prohibited on the Sabbath, still you might be tempted into doing so, therefore we prohibit all music. And that’s kind of where it stands for the Orthodox. The Chasidic end of the spectrum, which came later, said, you’ve gone too far, okay, no instruments, but music is integral to celebrating the Sabbath, so, we’re going to sing and dance. The Reform end of things said you’ve made worship into a chore rather than a joy and we’re all adults here, and if something breaks, we’ll just leave the fixing of it until after the Sabbath, so we’re going to play musical instruments.
  • 11/22/20, Page 105 – The last page of Eruvin sums up with a reminder of the differences between regular folk and a small priestly caste. Yes, Judaism, at the time, had a caste of high priests of The Temple, subject to purity and image tests; and they were a subset of the Levites, the priest’s tribe, who were only subject to the tests if they had to enter The Temple to help the priests; and they were a subset of all the rest of us, the Israelites, who likewise were only subject to the tests if we had to enter The Temple to fix things the priests and Levites couldn’t handle. But here’s the thing. While within the walls of The Temple, the priest caste had extra freedoms, they were responsible for maintaining every aspect of The Temple, and basically, locked away there for life, dependent on the largesse of the community to survive. The rest of us, subject to doing our best to follow the rules of the Torah and Talmudic rabbis, were free to live our lives with our friends and families, free to travel, free to learn, free to work, and, maybe most importantly, free to make mistakes as we make our way through the world.

Go back to Shabbat/Sabbath

Go forward to Pesachim/Passover

Go back to Main Page