Shabbat 145 - Squeezing grapes, honeycomb, and cooked vegetables - and Rabbi Yochanan drifting

Squeezing grapes, honeycomb, and cooked vegetables look similar, but they are not the same.

Rabbi Yochanan was drifting while his two students discussed nature.

Shabbat 100 - A nut on the water in a box in a cistern

In order to transgress Shabbat by "carrying," one must pick the object up in one place, move it four steps, and lay it at rest in a new place. Since one should not carry on Shabbat, one should NOT do so; thus, we have defined what one should NOT do.

If one takes water from a container with water, he has picked the water up from its (water's) natural resting place. That is an honest "picking up", and for that he will be liable on Shabbat. 

If one picks up a nut (I am thinking walnut) that is floating on the surface of the water, then he has not violated Shabbat because this is not the nut's natural resting place.

What is that nut is floating on the water that is in a box, and the box is floating on the water in its turn? The nut is at rest in the vessel, and he is liable? Or maybe we look at the box and see it floating on the water, and he is not liable?

The answer is "silence" or "teiku." Some say that the four letters of teiku stand for "Tishby iteretz kushiot veibayot", that is, "Eliyahu will explain all hard places and questions."

Art: Still Life of Fruit and Nuts by Giuseppe Ruoppolo

Shabbat 99 - Creating new areas on Shabbat

On Shabbat, there is a public area, like a street, and a private area, like a home, and one is prohibited from carrying objects from one to the other. Bringing into the house is forbidden, and taking out is forbidden. There are precise definitions of what a public area is, but you can think of it as a desert where Jews lived.

There are thus two major types of areas: public and private. In addition, there are many areas that are not as populous as a public area in the desert, but the Sages prohibited carrying there, because one might then come carry in a real public area. These are called "Karmelit." The root of this word is "Karmel," which means a field, cultivated or not.

To make yourself work hard, you can think of the following question. If you have a ditch nine tefachim (handbreadth) deep, it is not yet a real private area. One is allowed to carry things there. However, if he takes earth from that pit, he makes it into a private place. Has he violated Shabbat? When he started digging, it was not a private area, but by the time he finished, it was! The major question is when the area acquires the new status.

Art: Peasant Woman Digging by Van Gogh

Shabbat 98 - What precisely is allowed on Shabbat and what not?

When we derive Shabbat laws, for example, what and how we can carry on Shabbat, we compare everything to the building of the Temple. But why the Temple, of all things? The Temple existed to rectify all of Creation. Study its laws and their deeper meaning, and you will see it - but for now, you will have to take my word for it.

For example, at first it seems obvious to the Talmud that if one wanted to throw something eight amot in the public area (amot means elbows), and threw only four amot, then it is the same as if one wanted to write the name Shimon, and wrote only Shem, which is also a name, then he has violated Shabbat.

Many things require explanation here. What is a public area? That is similar to the Temple building site, which is visited by 600,000 people daily and has no roof or walls. And where did they throw objects when building the Temple? That is what they did with construction materials. And what is the size of the public area? - Sixteen amot, just as the size of the construction site that could fit the carriages used by the Levites.

But later, the Talmud changes its mind about what it thought was obvious. It has to define "carrying" or "throwing" as a sequence of two acts: picking up the object in one place and then letting it land in another. With this definition of carrying, logic becomes much clearer.

Art: Peasant Women with Brushwood by Jean-Francois Millet