Friday, February 08, 2013

Update on the KGH Eruv


This seems like the same message as earlier, to assume the eruv will be down after time X.

From Rav Marcus…

As per the KGH Eruv hotline, although the eruv is currently up and functional, one may not carry tomorrow due to the likelihood that the storm will bring down critical wires.
Consequently:
1.  Carry your talis to shul tonight or wear it tomorrow while walking to shul and back;
2. If you have lunch plans tomorrow that necessitate carrying or wheeling a stroller, please make alternate arrangements;
3. Do not carry any house keys with you tomorrow.  

I regret the inconvenience this inevitably will cause many of you; bear in mind that this one weekend of inconvenience certainly pales in comparison to the luxury we enjoy every other Shabbos of the year.

21 comments:

Rabbi Joshua Maroof said...

If they were actually keeping שבת and not using an "eruv", they wouldn't have noticed any difference this week...Actually, the snowfall caused them to keep at least one שבת properly, so it was a berakha.

:)

joshwaxman said...

and a Karaite would say that if they were really keeping Shabbos, they wouldn't have noticed a difference, because they would have been huddled, freezing, in the dark, in their houses, refusing to venture outside regardless.

:)

when a rabbi moves into a town, one of his primary obligations is setting up an eruv.

Anonymous said...

Any honest interpretattion of chazal leads to the inescapable conclusion that reshus harrabim is very easy to come by (see e.g. bans of shofar on shabbos, lulav on 1st of sukkos on shabbos, etc.) and not easily circumvented by eruv. EVen more important than building an eruv where on can be built is doing one's utmost to effectively persuade others not to carry where one can't be built.

Funny how the MO emphasis on scholarship comes to grinding halt where its results lead to inconviences (e.g. not carrying on Shabbos, relating to Chrisitans as Ovdei Avoda Zara, etc.)

Yehoash

joshwaxman said...

"EVen more important than building an eruv where on can be built is doing one's utmost to effectively persuade others not to carry where one can't be built."

the KGH eruv was established with the guidance of Rav Moshe Feinstein, if I understand correctly.

see also Yerushalmi Eruvin, 8:8, in the middle, Resh Lakish's opinion that there IS no reshut harabim bizman hazeh:
"Resh Lakish said, 'Indeed there is no reshus harabim until it is mefulash (open on both ends - this means, for example, open-ended on North and South, or alternatively, on East and West) from one end of the world until its (other) end."

He presumably was aware of the bans of shofar on Shabbos (with that reason given for the takkanah). how do you think he resolved it?

look, as "MO", I am willing to reevaluate, and approach from a "Karaitic" perspective to the development of halacha. but given that we are not about to really do that, where people only do this to impose stringencies and not the opposing leniencies, I have a feeling in which direction such an approach will take us -- those who walk in darkness, with the stringencies of Bet Shammai and Bet Hillel.

plus, given that hotzaa is a melacha gerua and carrying four amos is entirely from tradition, rather than a derivation on a pasuk, is there no room for "hem amru vehem amru"?

joshwaxman said...

oops, should've included the continuation of that Yerushalmi, which gives another statement of Resh Lakish:

"This seems the reverse of the opinion of Resh Lakish, who said 'There is no reshus harabim in this world, but there will be in the future to come, as it it said, (Yeshayahu 40:4), "kol gey yinasei," "every valley will be lifted up."

Anonymous said...

Yes, hotza'aha is a melachah gruah, that's why it needs plenty of chizuk. My point is that the "hem amru" here seems to clearly lead to acknowledging that many of the chiddushim said by (mostly) acharonim to whittle down r'shus harrabim to almost nothing are far from what chazal had in mind; Chazal obviously knew from mesorah that the public domain is basically off limits to carrying even as it wasn't entirely clear as to the exact defintions.

I won't pretend that I'm familiar with the meimras of Reish Lakish. They'd be interesting to look into. It would be pretty hard to believe, in any event, that his view would be anything close to a mainstream view of Chazal.

As to the KGH eruv being approved by Rav Moshe Feinstein, KGH then is not KGH now, and there;s no reason to beleive Rav Mshe would endorse an eruv in KGH in 2013 (l'mispsaram). And Rav Moshe was relying on shishim ribbo and other kulos concerning which my point above is that a Jew committed to real scholarship has no business relying on. We're certainly not going into darkness if we limit ourselves to cases where many rishonim already endorsed the scholarship view. I would have no qualms if you were "lenient" in not eating a ton of matza at the seder. Much more pleasing to Hashem than erasing a melacha that carries issur skila from the map but gaining atonement through eating 24 kzeisei matza at the seder.

Yehoash

joshwaxman said...

i can't promise a response to the above, based on limitations on my time.

but iiuc, while KGH has expanded, the original eruv and its lines remains in place. so i think there is reason to believe he would endorse such an eruv in 2013.

and re:
"We're certainly not going into darkness if we limit ourselves to cases"

I am talking about as a society. the hamon am aren't going to be accepted anything in its entirety. and this (in the post) is a message from a not particularly MO-rabbi to a not particularly MO-congregation. we are not talking about setting restrictions for ourselves. we are talking about proselytizing the chumra to the Jewish world in general, which indeed loves to seize upon chumrot.

random observations, both pro and con, off the cuff:
resh lakish is arguing with his rebbe, rabbi yochanan, in this. see inside.

the development of the shishim ribo kula is obviously indep of knowledge of this shitta of resh lakish, in an obscure yerushalmi. but perhaps represents the same trend, present even in the days of chazal.

continental shelf, now that we know about it, should establish borders around every continent. as another avenue of leniency.

would "scholarship" agree that "Chazal obviously knew from mesorah"? i think it is debatable, and depends on which scholarship...

our city designs are quite diff from the city designs in the time of Chazal. within their chatzer and mavoy, which was the problem presented to them, they indeed defined ways in which carrying would be permissible (eruv and shittuf), and indeed there was a religious imperative in doing so. as the gemara itself says, in order to foster closeness between people.

maybe you would deem this heretical, but i strongly suspect that had cities and towns instead had our own designs, there would have been a parallel but alternate development, even in the days of Chazal, to establish ways in which neighbors could still have this sense of community. and in which women with small children are not chained at home. indeed, when nature changed -- nishtaneh hateva -- the later authorities who had to deal with the reality of Jewish living continued in the same *pattern* established by Chazal. even if you consider the specifics of the kulot to be a stretch, based on only the raw materials available to them, in spirit, these Rishonim and Acharonim are following Chazal, who (rather then Shlomo Hamelech) established eruv chatzerot and shitufei muvoat.

Anonymous said...

I tried to post last night, but somehow my comment didn't go through. I apologize in advance for the inferiority of this comment as rewrites are never as good as the original :)

Rav Moshe held that when the requisite population and interconnectivity criteria are met, most or all streets in the area get the halachos of reshus harrabim and can't be matir'ed by cordoning off a subset of them with a standard eruv. So the fact the eruv lines are the same as before is beside the point.

If by "chumrot" you mean adopting an honest application of chazal's conception of reshus harabim, such "proselytizing" (you come across as sounding like that hysterical Great Neck principal- I don't know why you choose to use a word with a pejorative connotation) should be a good thing, being mashpia upon people to properly keep shabbos and perhaps at the expense of some other true chumra, likely a chumra which has little basis in halacha. What's so scary about that?

Regarding the Yerushalmi, Reish Lakish's statement is a patently obvious hyperbole, and bans on shofar and lulav only underscore the point.

Your point about continental shelf looks like yet another example of the willingness of some to use scholarship only when it's convenient. After all I'm sure you drink (at least) copepod-free water. But what about the much smaller invisible, but biologically indisputable, animals that live in most drinking water all over the world. You have no problem drinking them up, because the fact that they exited when the Torah was given yet the Torah allowed drinking water in spite of them forces us to conclude that these microscopic creatures don't count, whether because they are invisible, or for some other similar reason. Yet you wouldn't apply the same logic to exclude continental shelf from affecting the presence of r'shus harabbim, even though the fact that the Torah prohibited carrying in an otherwise qualifying public street despite the presence of the continental shelf makes it obvious that that geological feature doesn't take away from a reshus harabbim. (And I won't even go into dalsos ne'ulos balaila, etc.) Puzzling how you seemed to be very concerned about sitting in the dark keeping the chumros of both beis shammai and beis hillel but don't seemed to be worried about being a rasha lifeni Hamakom by adhering to the kulos of both sides.

The only scholarship that doesn't lead to an inescapable conclusion that Chazal knew from Mesorah that carrying in the public domain is forbidden is scholarship built on premises irreconcilable with the tenants of our דת. Such "scholarship" cannot possibly be meaningful for our purposes. Since you indicated earlier that you won't use shittos of the Karaites as a tzrruf in determining halacha, the views of modern historical criticism don't count as a tziruf either.

CON'T on next comment
Yehoash

Anonymous said...

CON'T from prev. comment:

Already enclosed areas prohibited midrabanan from intre- and inter- carrying certainly have an obligation to be me'arev and m'shattef in order to foster closeness and harmony/shalom. It's certainly possible that building legitimate physical connections connecting non-connected separately enclosed areas should be done for the purposes of shalom where doing so doesn't run a very high risk of causing chillul shabbos, equivalent to violating kol hatorah kullah. But the ethos you radiate seems to seriously undervalue concerns that burying the deoraisa abstention of carrying under the rug quite possibly is erasing a very strong ikkur of the torah. Chazal seemed to have shown their sensitivity for this in many, many ways, and the need for this sensitivity was so obvious to them that they felt Yirmyahu and Nechemia's campaigns against carrying a burden on shabbos were primarily focused on the hotza'ah aspect. This doesn't make any sense at all unless you adopt the premise that hotza'ah is a very serious concern to reckon with that likley has frequent-real life applications. Indeed, many have said that the Talmud Bavli dedeicates more space to this topic than to any other.

Accepting you premise of the last paragraph, the right approach would be that Chazal might have found some way to permit carrying on side streets, keeping the same "pattern" or "spirit" as before, while making sure the issur deoraisa of hotza'ah would be alive and well on at least public commercial thoroughfares, such as Main Street in KGH. There would still be a limited ability to go out, etc. without encroaching on the public domain.
(I suspect that the overwhelming majority of women in Brooklyn and Manhattan not carrying on Shabbos likely view it as an inconvenience, but having been accustomed to and in many cases grown up with that situation don't feel "chained" at all. And I know for a fact that some of the more yirot shamayim shebbahem who realize that it can be done continue to be nizharot even when they move to other communities. But I digress.) Chazal were making a point by starting off Maseches Shabbos with the example of the poor man who did a melacha gruah in order to get a loaf of bread who nonetheless is chayyav. The point shouldn't be lost on all who would look for every way to erase the issur of hotza'ah from the map.

Yehoash

joshwaxman said...

again, i apologize that i won't be able to respond in full. i don't have the time for it.

but a few points:
"After all I'm sure you drink (at least) copepod-free water."
Don't be so sure. While I wrote a series of post in defense of those who would forbid NYC water because of copepods, personally, I hold like Rav Belsky and Rav Bleich, who permit.

Nor, btw, do I eat an exceptionally small kezayis, as you seemed to suggest earlier. I eat matza like one regularly eats matza, based on my family's tradition.

but copepods, and worms in fish, is a good example of people in modern times trying to impose a chumra by looking at only half the picture, e.g. finding reasons to forbid and ignoring or discounting reasons in Chazal to permit. i think Chazal would have drank NYC water without a second thought.

In terms of adopting the kulos of both sides, don't you worry about my personal conduct and its repercussions. My concern here is for what will be the practice of the hamon am.

Anonymous said...

My apologies, I really did a terrible job conveying my point. When I said that I'm sure you drink at least copepod-free water, i wasn't saying that I think you're makpid on it! On the contrary, my point was that you'll definitely drink it if it does not contain copepods, not worrying about the truly microscopic animals much smaller than copepods present in most sources around the world (some microscopic animal beginning with an "r" iirc). I was trying to show that that hanhaga l'hokel is inconsistent with your continental shelf argument.

And I certainly didn't suggest you eat a small kzayis at all; my point was just the opposite, that Hashem would be much happier with you (and, most importantly, the hamon am) not carrying on the streets of KGH or other city streets than with you, or the hamon am, carrying, but "making up for it" by eating 24 or more kzeisei matza at the seder!

I hope I made myself more clear.

Yehoash

joshwaxman said...

Reish Lakish's statement is a patently obvious hyperbole, and bans on shofar and lulav only underscore the point.
in terms of carrying a shofar, i know what the gemara in Rosh Hashana 29 says, lest one carry it to an expert to learn. דאמר רבה הכל חייבין בתקיעת שופר ואין הכל בקיעין בתקיעת שופר גזירה שמא יטלנו בידו וילך אצל הבקי ללמוד ויעבירנו ד' אמות ברה"ר.

are you so sure that this is the only possible explanation, such that Resh Lakish must agree to it?

is it *possible* that Resh Lakish, who was an Amora of Eretz Yisrael, did not hold like the Babylonian Amora named Rabba, but rather held like the Palestinian Amora mentioned just above in the same gemara, that it is a derasha in a pasuk, excluding Shabbos from the obligation to blow? אמר רבי לוי בר לחמא אמר רבי חמא בר חנינא כתוב אחד אומר (ויקרא כג, כד) שבתון זכרון תרועה וכתוב אחד אומר (במדבר כט, א) יום תרועה יהיה לכם לא קשיא כאן ביו"ט שחל להיות בשבת כאן ביום טוב שחל להיות בחול.

That seems to me more likely. And it seems like "scholarship". don't assume that your reading of the gemara must be the beginning and end of scholarship.

joshwaxman said...

besides that, how about, e.g., the following. it is one alternate analysis among many:
the Biblical obligation of shofar is only in the Temple. post-Temple, as part of a general trend of moving temple practice to rabbi-centric practice, so as not to lose Judaism, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai established to blow it wherever a bet din (or Sanhedrin) was present. and this rabbinic Zecher, remembrance, was even on Shabbos, in front of a court, which is how we pasken.

meanwhile, there is a preexisting prohibition of sounding a musical instrument on Shabbos, lest you come to fix it. no one will "fix" a shofar but this is a general enactment, and lo plug rabanan. and where these two rabbinic laws clash, the general takana was to supercede. the only reason it is not so in front of a Sanhedrin is that this is a super-zecher, to establish a Sanhedrin as a bet hamikdash.

(note, in favor of this "conspiracy theory" or one like it, that lulav the other days aside from the first is a zecher.)

I think Resh Lakish meant it absolutely seriously. At the very least, in his first statement.
_____

In terms of the "ethos" I seem to be radiating, this might be useful reading. (My previous formulation was deliberately more radical, to make a point, that might have missed its mark.) A fundamental definition of melacha. I suggest there, based on sources, that Chazal basically saw that "melacha" was Biblically forbidden and then assessed the metzius around them to see what should qualify as a melacha. Thus, cholev, milking, is really assur because of cholev, NOT because of mefarek, a toldah of dash. They categorized these into convenient categories based on the activities in the Mishkan.

and had they lived with different city structure than they had, their analysis would have been different. and different things would rabbinically (al pi hatorah asher yorucha) have been established as deoraysa, and different associated acts would have been rabbinically established as derabbanan.

this is if one wants to play the game on the "scholarship" level.

if one wants to play by the accepted rules of how halacha has developed, there is plenty cause to accept this halachic determination.

in this and many other facets of Jewish life, people want to be neo-Karaites, and re-establish what they envision as what Chazal would have done. (neo-Karaite by taking the gemara as text, and ignoring the Rishonim. not that I am not necessarily often a neo-Karaite in this respect.) but they seize upon only one aspect of that system. it just happens to work out that only the chumra, reshus harabbim, will apply bezman hazeh, and not the "kulla", namely fixing a chatzer and mavoy. since we don't really have a chatzer and mavoy, in the same sociological sense.

Chazal were making a point by starting off Maseches Shabbos with the example of the poor man who did a melacha gruah in order to get a loaf of bread who nonetheless is chayyav.
no, that is homiletics. one could just as easily have said that they chose this in order to reinforce the mitzvah of giving tzedaka, and so used that, while transporting it over to Shabbat for the sake of technical halachic analysis.

joshwaxman said...

we don't erase hotza'a and carrying bereshus harabbim, btw, any more than they did in Yerushalayim when they closed the doors.

despite the existence of the KGH eruv, there are periodic storms where the eruv goes down. this is not the first time, or the third time, in several years.

and people within the eruv know the limits of the eruv. i know i cannot visit Forest Hills from Kew Gardens Hills while pushing a stroller, even though I would like to do so.

this might, or might not, match the exact contours Chazal would have set had they been around. but it matches the contours that the Rishonim and Acharonim set.

And I think that if God is upset with the Jewish community who does not know better, and trusts (say incorrectly, if you want) in their masorah, in the current halachic process, and in what their rabbis have told them, then God can be upset. vesalachta la'avoneinu, ki RAV hu.

joshwaxman said...

thanks for the clarification.

one final point, just to illustrate what "scholarship" might have to say.

look at that statement by Rabba. I suspect that there is some input by the setama degemara in play, weaving together Rava's statement with Rabba's statement.

if we consider Rabba's statement by itself, דאמר רבה הכל חייבין בתקיעת שופר ואין הכל בקיעין בתקיעת שופר, is there anything else in the context that that could relate to?

How about this immediately preceding statement?
דתנא דבי שמואל: כל מלאכת עבדה לא תעשו יצתה תקיעת שופר ורדיית הפת, שהיא חכמה ואינה מלאכה.

by saying that this is a skill that not everyone knows, it reinforces the idea that it is a chochma rather than a melacha.

and then, the original function of Rabba's statement is different.

and then, rava's statement would be different as well. perhaps the general injunction against playing musical instruments.

and then, the named Amoraim (meaning Chazal) wouldn't be proffering this reason of carrying at all for shofar.

good night,
josh

Anonymous said...

Yeah, academic Talmud can sometimes provide valuable insights but suffer from a whole lot of problems, only one of which is a tendency to dismiss out of hand explanations offered by the stama degmara and replace them with often downright silly suggestions. There is no way Chazal would be oker tekias shofar on shabbos out of concern of playing muscial instruments or any other shvus of similar grounds. The carrying reason, both by shofar and lulav, fits very well with the context of the mishnayos. In addition, the phraseology of the gzaira as worded in the gemara sounds like an oral mesorah as opposed to a later explanation or conjecture. One sign of an academic critical method going awry is when the leading people employing it are not even able to realize its excesses. (And yes, this undoubtedly applies, albeit in a different sort of way, to various traditional learning methods, as well.)

Yehoash

Anonymous said...

As for the derasha of Yom Teruah/ Zichron Teruah, it's certainly possible that some held it was a derasha gemura, and while it's possible to explain it in such away as not to affect mikdash, it's not very likely. But more to the point, there has to be an underlying reason for making such a drasha; the only reasonable distinctions would fall along the lines of shvus, which don't cut at all in favor a drasha gmura. Furthermore, maybe you are, but I'm not aware of any similar "drasha" l'gabbei lulav.

There is no reason to believe that either of Reish Lakish's statements were meant literally, and you don't need shofar and lulav to be able to see from the shitchius of the Tannaiatic (and Amoraic) corpus that r'shus harabbim was avery real and much more than a theoretical concept to them.

You're very likely right that melachos were not determined by pigeon-holing them into 39 accepted categories. After all there wasn't even an uncontested mesorah of 39! But there was definitely an acceptance (and I would argue mesorah) of carrying in a public domain as an absolute no-no, and Chazal were absolutely sure of its gravity that they explained Yirmyahu and Nechemia's critiques about bearing burdens on Shabbos to be focused mostly on carrying.

You keep setting up dichotimies between the sophistric leaning of the excesses of modern critical analysis and the "traditional" (in your view) basically carry anywhere you want as long as you have some kind of "eruv". We need to be faithful to the Torah shb'al peh and not ignore the unmistaken conclusion that wholesale carrying in the street is totally out of bounds. This is not "neo-Karaism". (I hope) we are not UTJ/ Halivni types who basically deny almost the entire traditional account of the developement of Torah shebb'al peh (I'm purposely ignoring their Torah shebbichsav beliefs now as they are not relevant to our discussion) while simultaneously affirming the validity of halacha by redefining the Talmudim, tosefta, and midrashei Halacha to be a new Canon which we must slavishly adhere to at the same time all while denying the theoretical basis of it. Our practice of halacha should be borne out of a whole-hearted embrace of Torah shebb'al peh as toras emes, not out of a feeling that avodas Hashem is based on nothing more than copying what we see others around us doing and paying lip service.
The torah shebb'al embraces much more than a dead canon. But a healthy respect for it requires an acceptance that its basic outlines (if not all the details) are an historically accurate application of the commands of the Torah shebbichsav. Only by viewing its rules it as essentially made up from beginning to end can one be led to the approach that accepting some contemporary "interpretations" of the melacha of hotzaah are nothing more than a torah sheb'al peh upon the torah sheb'al peh. This is confusing the living ongoing interpretation component of Torah Shebb'al peh with the mesorah of many of its basic rules, and I submit to you that rejecting the latter component of Torah shebb'al peh in favor of the former is actually a better fit for the term "neo-Karaism". (Much Karaite practice in many Kariaite communities eventaully developed a torah sheb'al peh of its own, differing chiefly in that the interpreations differed from those of the perushim.)

Once again, I think if you wanted to apply the "spirit" of Chazal you could possibly make an argument for carrying on some side streets, but definitely not through main public thoroughfares.

Starting off a mesechta with stoning or taking away all of a poor man's assets in order to pay for a cow is not a very good fit for emphasizing the mitzvah of tzedaka, but is a very good fit for a memoriable lesson of teaching the seriousness of Shabbos, and mleches hotza'ah in particular.

Yehoash

joshwaxman said...

the Yerushalmi in question begins:
"R Leizar asked R Yochanan, those cities surrounded by mountains, may one throw from it to reshus harabbim (public domain), or from reshus harabbim into it? He said to him, by your reasoning, there would never be any reshus harabim in the world!"

"Resh Lakish said, 'Indeed there is no reshus harabim until it is mefulash (open on both ends - this means, for example, open-ended on North and South, or alternatively, on East and West) from one end of the world until its (other) end."


Resh Lakish is NOT talking literally here, in that mountain ranges would prevent something from being mefulash, and to a greater extent than that specified by Rabbi Leizer? I don't find that reasonable.

Should we also say that "there is [t]here is no reason to believe that" lo tirtzach was "meant literally"?

Starting off a mesechta with stoning or taking away all of a poor man's assets in order to pay for a cow
The masechta does not start off with that. All it says is chayav or patur. With dibra Torah behoveh, such that an ani would be standing outside and a houseowner would be in his house. You are the one reading this homily into the mishna, and then pretending that this is Chazal's intent.

joshwaxman said...

Finally, in terms of this:

As for the derasha of Yom Teruah/ Zichron Teruah, it's certainly possible that some held it was a derasha gemura, and while it's possible to explain it in such away as not to affect mikdash, it's not very likely. But more to the point, there has to be an underlying reason for making such a drasha; the only reasonable distinctions would fall along the lines of shvus, which don't cut at all in favor a drasha gmura.

It would simply be a gzeirat hakatuv. Ours is not necessarily to reason why. The Torah wanted it one day to be a rememberance and another day to be the real blowing. There might be some deeper significance / ramification of blowing which we are not privy to.

If you want to see that Resh Lakish and Rabbi Yochanan actually held by the reason put forth by the Palestinian Amora, and no mention is made of the idea of Rava and Rabba, look no further than the parallel Yerushalmi, 18b, where Resh Lakish is mentioned:

ר' אבא בר פפא א"ר יוחנן ורשב"ל הוון יתיבון מקשיי אמרין תנינן י"ט של ר"ה שחל להיות בשבת במקדש היו תוקעין אבל לא במדינה אין דבר תורה הוא אף בגבולין ידחה אין לית הוא דבר תורה אף במקדש לא ידחה עבר כהנא אמרין הא גברא רבה דנישאול ליה. אתון שאלון ליה אמר לון כתוב אחד אומר (במדבר כט) יום תרועה וכתוב אחד אומר (ויקרא לג) זכרון תרועה הא כיצד בשעה שהוא חל בחול יום תרועה בשעה שהוא חל בשבת זכרון תרועה מזכירין אבל לא תוקעין.

Furthermore, maybe you are, but I'm not aware of any similar "drasha" l'gabbei lulav.
Indeed, the place to look for such a derasha is in the Yerushalmi. And indeed, that is where you find it, Yerushalmi Succah 17a.

Anonymous said...

Contrary to the translation you provide, Reish Lakish in Eiruvin is not responding to the previous discussion. The Yerushlami brings him in because his meimra is making a statement limiting the application of r'shus harrabim, which is similar to Rabbi Yochanan's point that would entirely eliminate r'shus harrabim. Rabbi Yochanan felt that the logic of the one tzad in Rabbi לעזר's question could be reduced ad absurdum to refute it. R לעזר obviously didn't feel that way- and then the Yerushalmi brings a shitta of Reish Lakish which requires a r'shus harrabim to be m'fullash thorughout, a necessary prerequisite to R' לעזר's tzad that Rabbi Yochanan rejected. It's certainly possible that Reish Lakish had mountains in mind- all that indicates is he didn't feel that the requirement could be reduced ad absurdum. The extent of Reish lakish's statement really depends on what he meant by mfulash, but no three of the Amoraim did (or could) take seriously the possibilty that r'shus harrabim is only a theoretical construct. And the Yerushalmi makes sure to illustrate the point by pointing out that the mishna is very clear that a literal reading of Reish Lakish's second statement is not true.

My point above concerning a gzairas hakasuv is that that interpretation of the drasha- that is indeed a gzerias hakkasuv- is highly unlikely to be correct in the absence of a clear sensible reason to say that the Torah made such a distinction. The pesukim cited in the Yerushalmi in Rosh Hashana say nothing at all about shabbos. The pesukim are said to mean that the mitzvah of teruah can sometimes be fulfilled outside the mikdash by mentioning it. It is indeed possible that the staements about shabbos were drasha gemurah, but this would be be going againtst the normal trend of reconciling different pesukim by disctinctions that either have a readily apparent source or a clear logical basis. As both are absent here, one doesn't get the impression that the dorshim were saying that Torah is telling us that shofar on Rosh Hashana doesn't apply on Shabbos (bigvulin). Rather, there is a known background reason why Chazal didn't want the Shofar to be blown on Shabbos, and they found in the Torah support to suspend it on Rosh Hashana outside the Mikdash.

Thanks for the citation concerning lulav. Note that the drasha doesn't exclude shabbos; it eeaches you that unlike the seven days of korbanos on pesach, the seven days of lulav on sukkos need not actually take place on all seven of those days, with only the first being non-negotiable. An affirmative reason for not taking lulav on Shabbos is still needed. And we don't have to violate the cardinal no-no of academics and rely in toto on the Bavli amoraim or stamoim to help us understand the Yerushalmi. The Yerushalmi itself (admittedly based on the Mishna) almost immediately afterwards connects the potential problem of taking lulav on Shabbos with hotaza. While there isn't a proof here, it certainly raises the likelihood that the hotza'ah issue was lurking in the background, and the Yerushalmi was m'katzer k'darko.

Intent is a very amorphous concept. However you want to understand intent, one can be sure that the m'sader of the mishna could (and presumably did) readily forsee the impression on the reader who starts learning maseches shabbos with by reading cases that include chiyyuv for hotza'ah (and everybody learning the mishna is fully aware that chiyyuv means skila or an expensive korban chattas)even in the context of performing a mitzva (as opposed, for instance to the pt'ur bshogeg accrding to Rabbi Yehoshua for hotaza'as lulav b'yom rishon shel chag). At the very least, it conveys the message that hotza'ah is something very serious to be reckoned with.

Yehoash

joshwaxman said...

explain it as you wish. we're going to have to agree to disagree, on all of this. as i stated at the outset, i don't really have the time for this.

kol tuv,
josh

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