Saturday, March 10, 2007

Daf Yomi Megillah 28a-b: Levity In Shul -- Followup and Counterpoint

As a follow up to the previous post, I thought I would present a counterpoint, to show why my last point, in particular, is not so convincing.

Firstly, cheshbonot and lachashov cheshbonot occurs elsewhere in Shas {in Shabbat 150a and Ketubot 5a}, where the context is clearly doing these sorts of accounting. Thus, י והא רב חסדא ורב המנונא דאמרי תרוייהו חשבונות של מצוה מותר לחשבן בשבת.

We can then say that cheshbonot are mundane and thus should not be performed on Shabbat and likewise should not be performed in shul.

What of the connection to Avodah Zara? I could still stand by my definition there, as regards to the permissibility of circuses. Where it said ובלבד שלא יחשב עמהם, we need not cast being a jester as being within the semantic inventory of חשב. Instead, we read יחשב as the niphal, as shelo yeichasheiv imahem, that you are not considered one of them, one of the performers, and thus are not in violation of moshav leiztim. This then bears no relation to our gemara in Megillah, occurrence of the phrase kallut rosh in Megillah. The halachic fallout would then need to be recalculated, but I cannot type this out at the moment, because I have a baby to put to bed.

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