Yesterday we discussed the importance of the public bathhouse. Public bathhouses are public and they imply public nudity, at least single-sex public nudity. If you could not access the public bathhouse, the other option available for bathing was a body of water, which also implies public nudity, and perhaps not single-sex public nudity. Today, in our era of private and palatial bathrooms, we are naked in public far less than our ancestors.

Public nudity posed a challenge for our male Sages. On the one hand, they wanted to be modest. On the other hand they did not want to be seen as ashamed of their circumcision – their covenant with God carved into their flesh. Complicating matters, the Rabbis considered touching their privates (or as the Talmud calls them, their “lower face”) a prohibited act as it may lead to temptation to masturbate and waste sperm.

All of these issues come to play in our Daf as we consider stories of our Rabbis bathing in public. We hear of different practices of schools who would go to the river (naked) to bathe. Some would bend over in modesty. Some would stride confidently and proudly through town to display their covenant with God. Rav Ashi’s academy compromised. They would stand straight up when they walked to the river and away from town and then would bend over when they returned from the river and faced town. Not surprisingly, we hear nothing about the bathing customs of women.

We come to learn much of this because Rabbi Zeira was hiding from his mentor, Rabbi Yehudah. Rabbi Zeira wanted to leave Babylonia and return to Israel. Rabbi Yehudah objected to this plan. Indeed, at he founding of the modern state of Israel, many religious Jews were ambivalent. Some religious Jews, including Rabbi Yehudah, apparently, believe we are commanded to live in exile until God redeems us. Jerimiah 27:22 states, “They shall be brought to Babylon, and there they shall remain until I take note of them – declares the Lord of Hosts – and bring them up and restore then to this place.” For some, voluntary emigration to Israel violates the command that we wait in exile until the actual biblical redemption. Rabbi Zeira finally confronts his master in a public bathhouse where he sees Rabbi Yehuda cover his genitals with his hands – leading to a discussion of when it is appropriate to do so.

We get a very brief Mishnah with almost no commentary about how we may use on Shabbat various cooking implements that appear to be similar to tea kettles. We end with another Mishnah regarding putting cold water into a kettle that was heated before Shabbat. We are concerned with two intertwining rules. First, we have a lot of debate about how hot we can make cold water on Shabbat – back to making it hot versus taking the chill off. We have another concern – steel that is heated and then is immersed in cold water hardens and this may violate another prohibited labor. However, for some Rabbis we need to know our intent in adding the cold water to the kettle. If we are merely warming the water and the steel hardens as an unintended consequence, then we are permitted to proceed. Other Rabbis disagree. Unintended consequences will become a bigger debate in later Dafs.