Two weeks ago, Justice Roberts, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, issued a rebuke to Senator Schumer, ” Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All members of the court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.” I do not want to delve into partisan issues. After all, Justice Roberts did not issue a similar warning to Trump for the numerous statements he has made attacking the judiciary. We still have a faint hope that our judiciary is above the political fray, somehow impartially dispensing justice from agreed laws and moral principles. Our political leaders on both sides are doing their best to erode this belief completely, but we all want a non-political, impartial learned judiciary.

The idea of the importance of fairly and accurately judging disputes comes through in today’s Daf. Indeed, we learn that to judge a case is to partner with God in creation, “Any judge who renders a judgment that is absolutely true . . . is considered by scripture as if he became a partner with the Holy One, blessed be He, in the act of creation.” To impartially judge a case is so important that we can interrupt our Torah study to judge. If we lose confidence that our judges are partnering with God in creation, then the whole legitimacy of our political system that values the rule of law crumbles.

We begin today by distinguishing between Minchah, the afternoon service, and Maariv, the evening service. We learned yesterday that we should not start a meal close to the time of Minchah, but if we had started earlier and the time for MInchah arrived, we could finish our meal. For Maariv, we need to interrupt our meal. We also discussed the Babylonian custom of loosening the belt before eating. Discussions of loosened belts and prayer leads to a discussion of what we should wear to pray. We read about the practices of various Rabbis. Rava bar Rav Huna (3rd Century Common Era) wore his finest shoes, as if to meet a king. Rava on the other hand dressed down so that he appeared as a servant addressing a master. Rav Kahana (I can’t tell if this is the first or second Rav Kahana) would dress down for supplications in times of distress and dress up for thanks in times of peace. Prayer is ritualized in Jewish practice with the time and form of prayers highly prescribed. Yet, prayer is still an individual activity and the way Rabbi’s approached prayer shows that it was not just ritual performance, but indeed very personal.

We then investigate when does a trial start. The investigation leads to meditations on the nature of judging and this is where we learn to be a judge is to partner with God. The proof comes from comparing Exodus 18:13 (“Next day, Moses sat as magistrate among the people, while the people stood about Moses from morning until evening.”) with Genesis 1:5 (“God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day.”) Because “morning” and “evening” appears in both verses, we learn that judging is an act of creating. We do learn that we can interrupt judging a case to eat our main meal of the day, which leads to a listing of the time of day when various classes of people eat their main meal (with scholars eating later than everyone because they are so absorbed).

Our Mishnah indicated that we are not allowed to go to the bathhouse shortly before Minchah. Today we discuss where we can pray in a bathhouse and where we cannot pray in a bathhouse. Rooms where people are likely to be naked have the most restrictions, with entrance rooms where people are likely to be dressed having the least restrictions. We also learn that we cannot greet someone in rooms where people are likely to be naked. The Hebrew greeting is the all-purpose word “Shalom“, which can mean “hello”, “goodbye” and “peace”. However, Shalom is also one of the names of God and it would be inappropriate to use God’s name in a place where people are naked (although, God presumably gave us our naked bodies!).

We end with a discussion of giving gifts to friends. If we give a gift to a friend, we need to tell the friend that we gave them a gift. We learn this from Exodus 31:13 (“Speak to the Israelite people and say: Nevertheless, you must keep My sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you throughout the ages, that you may know that I the Lord have consecrated you”). God gave the Jews Shabbat as a gift to make them holy and God made sure the Jews knew who gave them this gift. We learn that we should let our friends know when we give them a gift – no secret Santas!