Shabbat 147 - Wet clothes, wet towels

If your clothes got wet on Shabbat, you can continue walking in them. You do not have to worry that people will suspect you of having washed your clothes on Shabbat. Neither are the Sages concerned that you may come to wring them dry, out of respect for human dignity. However, once you arrive at a safe place, you should take them off, and you can spread them in the sun to dry - but not in front of people.

If you bathe on Shabbat and dry yourself, you should not carry the towels back to your home, lest you squeeze them, even if you used ten towels. However, if there were ten people bathing, it would be the opposite: they could carry the towels back home, even if they all used the same towel. They will remind each other not to squeeze the towel.

Shabbat 146 - How to open coke on Shabbat and other sundry issues

Let's say you have a cask of dried figs on Shabbat. You can open it and take out figs, but you should not plan to use this cask for storage afterward. You might think that making an opening somehow violates Shabbat, but in truth, it does not because you need the food, and for that, even destructive acts are permitted.

Similarly, you can open a Coke can on Shabbat. And yet, very careful people may squash the can afterward. 

Why did our rule mention dry figs? It wanted to address a complication we would otherwise not have guessed. Dried figs were usually pressed into a cake, and one would need a knife or a sword to cut them. Since he is allowed to use the knife to cut the figs, he would also be allowed to use it to open the barrel. However, this was a stringent position of only one Sage, Rabbi Nechemia, and therefore would not represent the final law. The Talmud derives this from the ruling and goes on to draw many other subtle observations.

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

Squeezing grapes for grape juice is prohibited on Shabbat because it was done in the Temple. You might think that squeezing grapes, honeycomb, and cooked vegetables follow the same law, but they do not. For example, squeezing cooked vegetables to make them taste better is completely permitted, but getting their juice might be prohibited by the Sages.

Rabbi Yochanan was dozing off while his two students discussed their questions. However, their answers were based on logic. For example, they asked, why are Holidays in Babylon more joyous than in Israel? Because they are poor and reserve celebrations for the Holidays, and so on.

At that, Rabbi Yochanan awoke and said, "Children! If something is clear, certain, and wise, say it. If not - do not say." Then he gave the Torah explanations. For example, the Holidays in Babylon are joyous because they were not included in the curse of "Your new moons and Holidays My soul hates - says the Holy One." That applied only to Israel but not to Babylon.

Art: Still Life with Four Bunches of Grapes by Juan Fernandez

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

Shabbat 97 - What Tzelafchad did on Shabbat

"And while the children of Israel were in the wilderness, they found a man gathering sticks upon the sabbath day." - Who was he, and what exactly was he doing? He could be carrying the wood, cutting it, or tying it into sheaves, which would all be prohibited labor on Shabbat. But what does it matter to us now? Well, it does matter. Of 39 labors, one is really not so strict - there was such a tradition. Since they did execute him in the end, the above is not non-strict.

Rabbi Akiba deduced that this man was Tzelafchad. Rabbi Yehudah ben Beteira rebuked him on two accounts. If it was Tzelafchad, why did you, Akiba, reveal what the Torah wanted to hide? And if it was not him, you are maligning a righteous person. By the way, you should not suspect good people of wrongdoing. What if you did? - Give them a blessing.

The Talmud discusses various ways of prohibited throwing on Shabbat: from a house to a house with a street in between, or from a street to another street with a house in between. It makes a difference if we look at the object flying through the street as temporarily resting there. We might also consider a house as if fully filled with soil,  and view the object as landing in the house.

Art: Man Carrying Sticks by Louisa Anne Beresford