Talmud is a record of debates about the law and the meaning of sacred texts. These debates did not happen like a presidential debate with everyone standing on the same stage, responding in real time to one another. Instead, these debates occurred across generations and from many different places. Our Rabbis reacted to the statements of other Rabbis, which may have been made hundreds of years earlier in a different land (indeed, in a different language since the Talmud is written in both Hebrew and Aramaic). Additionally, the statements of Rabbis were only recorded in abbreviated form. There was no live video or audio recording. Paper was a rarity. Really the debates were memorized and repeated from one person to the next. What ends up written are key words and sentence fragments.

The Talmud becomes difficult, but also interesting, because the available technology for recording debates was very imprecise, even though the debates were highly detailed and technical. We have to fill in the space between the key words and sometimes the original meaning of the quoted speaker gets lost. Since the speaker may have been dead for generations or may live hundreds of miles away, we cannot question him about what he meant or how he derived his views. In fact, the Talmud has many debates about what was debated in the past or who took what position.

Today’s Daf is a prime example of this phenomenon. We are uncertain who took what positions. We attribute certain positions to a scholar, but then have trouble reconciling that position with other positions purportedly taken by the same scholar. As a law school professor of mine said, “We are slicing the baloney ever thinner.” He meant we are getting very far into the minutiae. In this case, however, we only have a very dull knife to help us.

We begin with our poor man outside the house from Shabbat 2. If our fellow takes a Challah and sticks it through the window intending to give it to our rich lady homeowner and then realizes its Shabbat, can he pull it back? Can he drop the Challah in the house? We conclude that he can pull it back without violating the prohibition because he did not complete his intended act. He cannot drop the Challah in the house, because that would complete his intended act.

Now things get complicated. In ancient times, bread was baked by sticking the dough to the walls of a clay oven. Baking is a biblically prohibited act on Shabbat. Removing dough from the walls of an oven is a Rabbinically prohibited act. If we place dough on an oven wall on Shabbat, can we remove it before it bakes? If the baking was inadvertent, then the baker must bring a sin offering. If the baker realizes before the baking is completed, can he remove the dough? Actually, in this case the baker does not have to bring a sin offering, because that only covers a person who started and completed a misdeed inadvertently. In this case, the completion was not inadvertent. If the baker intended to sin, and then changed his mind, he is not actually liable to bring a sin offering, but because he transgressed deliberately a biblical prohibition, he would be liable to death by stoning! Fortunately, we learn that we are permitted to violate the rabbinic prohibition and remove the bread so we are not stoned for deliberately violating the biblical prohibition.

We then return to our very first hypothetical in Shabbat 2. Our poor man standing outside takes a Challah from his cart and hands it through the window to the rich lady homeowner. We know from our Mishnah that this man must bring a sin offering (assuming he is not stoned for doing the act deliberately!). The Talmud now embarks on a long consideration of why is he liable. Several previous opinions of various Rabbis are considered, but in the murkiness of time we have trouble determining which Rabbi held which position. We test theories of who held the opinion by considering if the attributed opinions are consistent with other known opinions. On this page, at least, we do not come to any conclusions. Therefore, the debate can feel very confusing.

We are unsure why the poor man is liable because of another rule. In order to be a lifting or placing down, which are elements of carrying, the object must have been lifted from or placed upon an area of at least four Tefachim. If the area is smaller than this, then the area is not significant. According to Aiding Talmud Study by Aryeh Carmell, four Tefachim, would be about 14 inches square. The notes in the Schottenstein Edition of the Talmud indicate that the source of this rule is unknown. In our hypothetical, the poor man gives his Challah into the hands of the rich lady. Therefore, he does not put the Challah into a qualifying space.

The first potential explanation for the man’s liability comes from Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva subscribes to an opinion, not generally accepted, that if you throw an object from a private domain, over a public domain, into another private domain, the carrying has occurred because the object is deemed to have come to rest in the public domain. This concept is known as Kelutah and only applies if the object is in the airspace of the public domain. The airspace of the public domain extends 10 Tefrachim from the ground (about 3 feet). Anything above this height is not in the airspace of the public domain and is exempt. The Talmud tries to understand the difference between Rabbi Akiva and the holders of the majority opinion and considers numerous possibilities. Since neither Rabbi Akiva or his contemporaries are around to explain, the Talmud even tries to determine if Rabbi Akiva is the author of the opinion in the first place.

The Talmud then tries to determine the contours of the rule that the place of lifting and the place of resting must be at least 4 Tefrachim in order to have a carrying. The Talmud believes that if Rabbi Akiva is right, then the lifting requires an area of 4 Tefrachim, but the placing down does not, since Rabbi Akiva regards the object as “placed in” the public domain as it passes over. The Talmud finds a statement of Rebbi that seems to agree with this interpretation. However, the Talmud rejects this interpretation of the statement based on another statement that considers a tree with its trunk in a private domain and its branches in a public domain. Indeed, other statements of Rebbi seem to indicate that the size of the area from which the lifting or the placing down do not matter at all.

Please remember that a Daf is one page of Talmud. However, the pagination is rather arbitrary. Complete arguments are not contained in one page. Our debate ends rather abruptly because we come to the end of the page. Perhaps in the pages to come we will get clarity and closure. We shall see.

One technical note. I love your comments, particularly when they are suggestions for improvement. Several people have commented that the blog is hard to read because the type is too light. I am working in WordPress, but I don’t really know what I am doing. I cannot change the color of the print, but I can change the background color. I have done this and hopefully that makes things easier to read. If anyone knows how to change the color of the actual type, please let me know and I will try to improve the readability.

If you are Jewish, today is Purim and I wish you a happy Purim. If you are not Jewish, I wish you a happy Purim anyway!