Hands, touchin' hands
Reachin' out, touchin' me, touchin' you

Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond ran through my head as I read today’s Daf. Of course, in the the days of coronovirus, the lyrics mean something else. Don’t get me started on rational risk reduction and irrational risk reduction, but we may be a little afraid to touch hands today (however, think of how many people have died in Texas this year from coronovirus vs. gun violence or car wrecks and you will understand my point about rational risk reduction vs. irrational risk reduction).

Our Daf begins with the Melachah (forbidden labor) of carrying. In a few months when we learn the list of all 39 forbidden labors, we will find that carrying is the last one listed. However, this labor will dominate the discussion in the tractate. For something to be carrying, certain elements have to be present. We have to have an object move from one domain to another. In addition, the object has to be lifted in one domain and set down in another. If any of these elements are missing, the carrying on Shabbat is not biblically prohibited, but it is rabbinically prohibited. The act is still prohibited, but as we will learn, the method of atonement is different.

Let me set the scene. Imagine a rich homeowner sitting in her house and there is a poor person outside the window. The poor person and the rich homeowner want to exchange something, let’s pretend it is a Challah for Shabbat. Our Daf considers 8 possible exchanges:

1. Our poor man, in a selfless act of charity, takes his Challah and passes it through the window to the rich lady homeowner because he wants the lady to celebrate Shabbat, even though he has little to share. In this case, the poor man has committed the forbidden act of carrying. He has lifted the Challah in the public domain, transferred it to the private domain and placed it in the hands of the lady.
2. Our poor man sees a delicious Challah in the house of the rich lady and he reaches through the window and takes it from the homeonwer’s hands and brings it outside and places it in his cart. We reach the same conclusion as hypothetical one. The only difference is that the poor man has carried from the private domain to the public domain.
3. Our rich lady homeowner sees the poor man and is very concerned that he does not have Challah for Shabbat, so she picks up a Challah from inside and hands it to the poor man outside. The lady has now violated the prohibition against carrying. This is the mirror image of case one.
4. Our rich lady sees that the poor man is offering her his Challah so she reaches through the window and takes it from the poor man and places it on her table (In case 1 the poor man reached into the window, in this case the rich lady reaches out of the window). Here the rich lady has lifted the Challah from the hands of the poor man in the public domain, transferred it to the private domain and set it down. She has committed the prohibited labor of carrying on Shabbat.
5. (A) The poor man takes his Challah from his cart and holds it through the rich ladies window, (B) the rich lady takes the offered Challah and sets it on her table. In this case, neither the lady nor the man has completed all of the elements of carrying. The rabbis prohibit the actions in (A) as an additional prohibition to the biblical prohibition. The rich lady did all of her actions in the private domain, so apparently she does not transgress anything, although this case is not specifically addressed in the Daf.
6. (A) The rich homeowner lifts the Challah from her table and places it into the hands of the poor man who has stuck his hands through her window, (B) the poor man then pulls the Challah out of the window and places it on his cart. The lady has violated the rabbinic prohibition, because she intended the Challah to change domains. The Talmud does not address whether the poor man also violates the rabbinic prohibition in B.
7. (A) The rich homeowner lifts the Challah for her table and extends it out her window, (B) the poor man removes the Challah from the lady’s hand and places the object on his cart. The rich lady has violated the rabbinic prohibition. I think the poor man is just the mirror image of the lady in 5(B).
8. (A) The poor man lifts a Challah from his cart and places it into the lady’s hands that are sticking out of the window, (b) she pulls the Challah in and places it on her table. Here the poor man has violated the rabbinic prohibition on carrying. The Talmud does not address the lady’s actions in (B).

Importantly, in cases 5-8, no one actor completes all of the elements of carrying. Instead, the combined actions of two people contain all the elements.

The Gemara is very troubled by the Mishnah‘s word for “carrying”. The Mishnah uses the Hebrew term “Yetzios” which can mean “taking out”, but the Mishnah speaks of taking an object out of the private domain into the public domain, but also taking an object in from the public domain to the private domain. The Talmud concludes that in both cases we are taking an object out of one domain and placing it in another.

Interestingly, the Talmud speaks of a rich homeowner and a poor man on the outside to illustrate the difference in public and private domains. I am not sure why, but the economic difference adds a whole different feel to the examples. We are reminded of the social inequalities of a time 1500 years ago that persist until today. We are also reminded that there are those who do not have housing. As I read about the poor man outside and the rich homeowner, I found myself naturally wondering why does the homeowner not invite the poor person inside. We would not learn about the changing of domains, but no one would commit a prohibited act and the whole illustration would have a nicer feel.