Thursday, July 11, 2013

Pesachim 15 – Rabbi Meir learns "from their words”

Previously we learned the testimony of Rabbi Chanina that when food is anyway being destroyed for some reason, then one can mix together foods of different degrees of ritual impurity. Even though normally one is forbidden to make foods impure, it is permissible to do so for the last few moments before it is finally destroyed.

Rabbi Akiva later added to this testimony, and Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua disagreed on a related topic. Rabbi Meir makes this relevant to Passover by stating, “from their words we can learn that on Passover when one is destroying chametz, he can burn the Kohen’s portion of the food, the pure and impure together.”

The problem is that Rabbi Meir did not specify whose words he had in mind. The Talmud considers what exactly did Rabbi Akiva add, and whose words did Rabbi Meir learn from. It is possible to understand the words of Rabbi Meir in many ways. Examples of such understanding will be given on the following pages.

Art: A Franciscan monk distributing food to the poor by Jan Miel

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