I am fairly certain that my dry cleaners are not Jewish. For the last 20+ years when I have gone to them, I have been greeted by an inspirational verse from the Christian bible, so I assume that they are not Jewish. (I do hope that at the end of this quarantine they are alright and still in business!) Today, we debate whether I can drop my clothes off a few hours before sundown on Friday, when I am fairly certain that my dry cleaners will do their thing on Shabbat. I will save the Talmud’s answer for later in a cheap ploy to keep you reading.

We left off yesterday with a discussion of what constitutes a roof for purposes of transmitting corpse Tumah to everything under it. By biblical law, to constitute a roof, a covering has to have a width of one Tefach (about 3.5 inches). Rabbi Shammai tried to make a biblical decree that a pole that has a width of 1/3 a Tefach, but a circumference of one Tefach also constituted a roof. Rabbi Shammai was not very popular for this decree. The Rabbis tried modifying it saying it only applied to the person who actually carried a pole that extended over a corpse. Rabbi Tarfon thought even this was ridiculous – people know the difference between area and circumference. Since Rabbi Tarfon objects to this ruling, he does not include it in the Eighteen Enactments. Instead, he counts the ruling about all female Samaritans, no matter how young, are Niddah instead.

We then turn to the twelfth enactment – grapes being harvested for a winepress are susceptible to Tumah. For food to be subject to Tumah, it must be wetted by one of seven liquids (including grape juice), provided the owner wants the liquid to come into contact with the food. We may squeeze some juice out of grapes when we are harvesting them. Normally, this would not make the grapes Tumah because we do not want the liquid to come out and wet the grapes. Shammai holds that because we are intending these grapes for wine, we probably don’t mind the juice. Therefore, he holds that these grapes are subject to Tumah. Hillel (who was the head of the scholarly community) objects to this ruling. Shammi violently defended his position in a way that humiliated Hillel. The Talmud states, “And that day was as grievous to Israel as the day the Golden Calf was made.” Various sages try to come up with the reasoning for this decree, but none are completely satisfying.

The thirteenth enactment covers Terumah (the portion of crops allocated to the priests) and not Tumah (ritual impurity). If we set aside Terumah, then any product of it (such as if we plant the seeds) is also Terumah. The fourteenth decree states that bread, oil, wine and daughters of idolaters are forbidden to Jews. This prohibition was to stop Jews from having friendly social interactions with idolaters.

At this point we stop enumerating the Eighteen Enactments and have a lot a debate about what the actual listing of the Eighteen Enactments is. After all, we have only listed fourteen of the eighteen. Various rabbis include different enactments to complete the list. My favorite is that we have to treat a gentile child like a Zav. According to Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak, we need to make sure we don’t associate with gentile children because we could be tempted to sodomy. I think this says a lot more about the Sages than the gentile children and surely reflects the problems we have with clergy today extend back thousands of years.

We then introduce a new Mishnah. This Mishnah concerns a debate between Shammai and Hillel over whether we can start various activities that will continue through Shabbat without our participation. For instance, Shammai says we cannot start dyeing clothes or soaking beans before Shabbat if the process will not be complete before Shabbat. Hillel agrees that these would be forbidden to undertake on Shabbat, but if our actions are completed before Shabbat, then the process can continue without our intervention during Shabbat. Indeed, Shammai holds that we cannot sell something to a gentile before Shabbat, if the gentile will not finish transporting the article to its new residence prior to Shabbat. Shammi also asks if we can give our clothing to our gentile launderer on Friday afternoon. Hillel allows this activity. We don’t get an answer today. The Daf ends in the middle of the Mishnah. You will have to stay tune to find out if I can go to my dry cleaners on Friday afternoon. I think I tricked you when I promised an answer at the end.