Whether an act is permitted or not frequently tuns on whether we intended to do the act or not. Today’s Daf begins with the case of uncooked food on a stove. Cooking is a forbidden labor. Most of our concerns have been around stoking a fire, but cooking is forbidden. Previously we discussed leaving cooked food on the stove. If we place uncooked food on a stove prior to Shabbat, and we leave it there throughout Shabbat, the food will cook, but through no prohibited action on our part. Rabbi Chiya Bar Abba was asked this circumstance by his students. He does not have an immediate answer. He has to think about it overnight. Finally, the next day he concludes that if we inadvertently cooked on Shabbat, we can eat the food, but if we intentionally cooked on Shabbat, we cannot eat the food.

Rabbi Chiya Bar Abba’s ruling is immediately controversial and not universally accepted. At any rate, later too many people took advantage of the loophole and the Rabbis just decreed that even food left unintentionally could not be eaten. Given the time that Rabbi Chiya Bar Abba took to issue his ruling and the debate the ruling sparked, we learn that the rules are complex, highly fact specific and not universally shared. Indeed, there is a debate about whether we can return a pot to the stove if we put it down first, which leads to a debate about whether we hang it on a peg or place it on a bed. I find the incredible diversity of opinion striking. I was brought up to believe there was only one way to do things. I wonder when Judaism became more uniform and less accepting of difference, less open to interpretation.

We get two new Mishnas in today’s Daf. First, we get a Mishnah that discusses rules for various types of ovens. I found this Mishnah and its accompanying discussion interesting in that it gave a glimpse into ancient cooking practices. Second, we get a Mishnah at the end of our Daf that discusses an egg placed next to a heat source (a kettle). We cannot use the heat from a kettle to cook on Shabbat. We can’t use other creative means to cook on Shabbat such as burying food in hot ground. We also learn about the citizens of Tiberias. Tiberias is a city near the Galilee with hot springs. At the time of its founding, Israel was a client-state of Rome and the Jewish King named the city after the Roman emperor. Baths were built and a pipe bringing fresh water was passed through the hot springs so that the springs heated the water flowing through the pipe. The citizens of Tiberias believed that no prohibited labors happened on Shabbat. The Sages set them straight. Since the Daf ends with this Mishnah, I hope we will see commentary on it later.