Pesachim 12b - Legal vs. Domestic matters

Abaye answered this on Raba's view: "Testimony is committed to men of care, leaven is committed to all."

The discussion on page 12 of Pesachim is about people making mistakes about the time - how much leeway do we give to witnesses who disagree about the time an act took place? To what extent can we say that they are probably referring to the same event but merely making an error about the time? And at what point do we just say they disagree with one another?

And once we know what the rabbis think about testimony, how does this relate to non-legal settings, such as eating chameitz on the 14th of Nissan? Can the same rules about making mistakes over time apply from the legal field to the domestic?

Abaye suggests that we cannot learn from one area to the other, that in legal matters people take great care to ensure that their testimony is accurate, realising that they will be cross-examined, that there is an enormous amount at stake based on their words.

But in matters of chameitz, the domestic life, it's not just careful people that the law has to account for, all Jews must be able to participate in the ritual of pesach, all Jews must consider themselves as if they had been personally redeemed from Egypt. Therefore the law must be stricter, because it must account for all the people, in a way that laws of testimony do not need to.

There is also a tendency, I think, to take legal matters more seriously than domestic rituals - after all, in a court case there are judges asking you questions, checking the facts. Many of us think of the home as a quite different space, the private sphere in which we are not being judged.

Hence we read in Pirkei Avot 2:1 "Contemplate three things, and you will not come to the hands of transgression: Know what is above you: a seeing eye, a listening ear, and all your deeds being inscribed in a scroll."

And yet people make mistakes, forgetting that there is always a Judge that is watching. The law must accommodate this tendency, making stricter regulations for ritual life at home to help people remember.

You may not be testifying before a court, no human being may see you, but what you do at home matters.