Doing the Daf summary #8

To see this picture debunked, see here

Here are some recent posts at my Daf Yomi blog you may have missed.

Finishing up Berachot:

On Berachot 61-62, Rabbi Akiva forbids in every place. I suggest that this does not mean every location, but in every instance, and this leads to a reparse of the brayta and associated gemaras.

On Berachot 63, must we follow the pesak of Gedolim in Eretz Yisrael, under the theory of ki mitzion teitzei Torah udvar Hashem miyrushalayim, and in light of the fight for establishing the Jewish calendar inside and outside Eretz Yisrael. First I present the parallel Yerushalmi. Then I give some reasons one might distinguish between the cases.

On Berachot 64, Fate and Rabbinic leadership, I suggest that Rav Yosef did not avoid summoning the bloodletter to his home so as to avoid assuming any sort of power, but because he did not need to worry about his health so long as Rabba was in charge of the academy.

Then, we started masechet Shabbat.

On Shabbat daf 2 (and on), I consider the parallel "two which are four" in Shabbos and Shevuos, and whether they must be referring to the same set. I also begin the discussion of the identity of the four domains of Shabbat.

On daf 6, I continue the discussion of that identity in greater detail. Yerushalmi substitutes "closed alleyway" for mekom petur, with the rest of the brayta the same. Which fourth item reads better into the flow of the brayta. I also try to account for the usage of the word gemura (complete) on a peshat level. Either because what one might imagine is a complete private domain, an enclosed house, is left implicit, or because the very point is to contrast to a karmelit.

On daf 6-7, I consider the karmelit as the name of a class and the name of a specific domain. I believe it started as a known specific domain example, and was seized upon as a name for the class. Its identity as a class likely caused the forgetting of its precise identity. We can see Rabbi Yochanan in both Bavli and Yerushalmi giving a definition, and perhaps this is not then a relisting of karmelit in the brayta to include (in which case, as Tosafot asks, why not include tzidei reshut harabbim) but a definition. Finally, where Rabbi Yochanan identifies it as the chanut of bar Yustini, I venture a guess as to just what that is.

On daf 9, Bavel vs. Eretz Yisrael regarding the start of the meal, I consider in the ha lan ha lehu which is the practice of Bavel and which of Eretz Yisrael. It certainly makes more sense that the Babylonian practice was the girdle.

Related, on daf 10, girding oneself for prayer as a Zoroastrian practice picked up by Babylonian Amoraim.

On daf 10-11, Rava bar Mechasia, locating him in time and place. Was there some motivator to his collection of statements of Rav? Was he called bar Mechasia because he lived in Mata Mechasia? If the setama degemara disagrees with Rav Ashi and notes that Mata Mechasya was indeed destroyed, and we know that Mata Mechasia was still standing in the second half of the 7th century, does that provide an indication as to the late authorship of that particular setama degemara?