If I am in synagogue and I need to go to the bathroom, I walk out of the sanctuary and go to a clean bathroom with indoor plumbing and then go back into the sanctuary. For most of human history, this was not the case. In the time of the Talmud, apparently people mostly relieved themselves in fields. Sometimes there was an established place where people tended to defecate. Sometimes when they needed to urinate, they just found whatever convenient place was around.

Yesterday, we spent much of the day with rules about what men could and could not do after ejaculating before they could purify themselves. Today, we deal with the very human need of needing to go to the bathroom. Because this is a human need, there is a physical aspect and a spiritual aspect. For the Rabbis, the question was what were the rules of going to the bathroom so as to elevate our lives spiritually – or in this case, how to prevent a normal bodily function from dragging down our spiritual elevation. The point I am trying to make is that the Rabbis did not shy away from any function, no matter how prurient or scatological we may consider it today. Every function was an opportunity to separate the sacred and the profane.

While going to the bathroom has become a lot more sanitary, the rules established still guide us today. At most synagogues, there is a sign posted asking folks to take off their tallit (prayer shawl) before entering the bathroom. Today, we will talk a lot about the rules of what to do with tefillin when we need to use the bathroom.

We start today with the rules about where to return in our prayers if we interrupt them to go to the bathroom. Can we go back to the place we stopped or do we need to return to the beginning. There are, of course, lots of opinions, mostly around how long we stop before we need to return to the beginning. There is then a discussion if our prayer is even valid if we are holding the need to go to the bathroom while we pray. This debate revolves around interpretation of Ecclesiastes 4:17 (“Guard your foot when you go to the House of God; and be ready to hearken, rather than to offer a sacrifice of fools, for they do not know to do evil.”) Two interpretations are possible – either it refers to those who do not know enough to know if they have sinned or not. Therefore, they do not know if there offering is an offering of thanksgiving or an offering of repentance. Alternatively, the verse could refer to one who brings an offering of repentance, but is not truly repentant.

We then launch into a discussion of what to do if we are wearing tefillin and we need to use the bathroom. Do we take them off? Does it matter if we have to urinate or have a bowel movement? If we have to take our tefillin off, do we have to leave them outside the bathroom or do we bring them in with us? If we want to store the tefillin in a nook in the bathroom, should the nook face outward to the public or inward to the bathroom?

All of these concerns reflect our need to find the way to change a normal animal function into something holier. Unfortunately, as we learn, there is an earthly issue that needs to be considered too. If we store our tefillin in an area available to the public while we go to the bathroom, someone could steal them. The Talmud relates the story of a student who left his tefillin in a nook available to the public while he went to the bathroom. While he was in the bathroom, a prostitute came and took his tefillin. Later she brought the tefillin to the study hall and publicly accused the student of giving the tefillin to her as payment. The student was so distressed, he went up to the roof and committed suicide (or inadvertently fell).

One solution, is to store our tefillin in a container while we use the restroom. The container has to be large enough to be considered a container, not a mere wrapper, or we do not really protect the tefillin from the disrespect. A contrary opinion is expressed by Rabbi Yochanan, who would not carry a book with words of Torah into the bathroom with him, but would carry (not wear) his tefillin into the bathroom, because he thought they offered him protection.

Hillel allowed a person to hold his tefillin while he had a bowel movement, but not while he urinated. The Talmud is very troubled by this ruling, as we would naturally think just the opposite. Ultimately, the Talmud says we stand while we urinate and we may have to wipe urine off our feet afterwards. We sit while we have a bowel movement, so we do not have that danger.

We then consider whether we can use a tefillin case for holding money (i.e., for a non-religious purpose). There is a commandment not to use accessories to a religious article for a mundane purpose. A tefillin case, or any other accessory, does not come under this rule unless the item was both intended to be an accessory to a religious item and actually used for that purpose. Finally, there is a general rule that we cannot put our tefillin, even in a case, under our feet while we sleep. The Talmud wants to know if we can put the tefillin under our pillow. What if our wife is in bed with us and we may engage in intercourse? Ultimately, we learn that we can put our tefillin under our pillow while we sleep, even if our wife is in bed with us.

There is one piece of practical, not religious, advice in today’s Daf. Sometimes we are invited to a fancy dinner. We may want to go to the bathroom before we arrive at the dinner so we don’t have the embarrassment of having to excuse ourselves to go in the middle of the dinner. The Rabbis recommend short repeated walks to make ourselves go before we go to the dinner!