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.

The pleasure of doing mitzvot - Pesachim 4b

"They asked: What if one rents a house to his neighbour in the presumption of its having been searched, and [the tenant] finds that it has not been searched? Is it as a mistaken agreement or not? — Come and hear! For Abaye said: It is unnecessary of a town, where payment is not made [to others] for searching that a person is pleased to fulfil the mitzvah personally; but even in a town where payment is made for searching [it is okay], because one is pleased to fulfil a precept with his money."
-Pesachim 4b

Abaye divides towns into two types - those who do not pay people to fulfil mitzvot for them, and those who do. One could imagine that this is to say that there are those who love doing God's commandments, and those who find it onerous, or too difficult, and would rather just pay and be done with it.

In fact Abaye is not making this distinction - he assumes that all Jews are excited to fulfil God's word, in this case the commandment to search one's house for chametz, and thus even those who pay for other people to do it for them, are still excited to spend their money in this way.

I like that Abaye does not put a value judgement on paying others to do things for you, but recognises that people live in different socio-economic realities, with different cultural norms about how to fulfil one's obligations. Nevertheless these distinctions don't affect what should be at the heart of every Jewish person - a love of God and God's mitzvot.

While I am among the many people that complain that being Jewish is too expensive (and see my post yesterday about the nature of complaining), I hope that I can live up to Abaye's assumption, and be pleased to use my money for the sake of fulfilling the commandments.

What better use could there be?

Quick thoughts on chapter 6 of Shabbat

I've fallen, shall we say, a little behind in my daf yomi, but now that I'm on holiday I thought I would blitz it. Over several hours (with multiple breaks of course) I learned pages 60-67 today, and scribbled some notes on interesting passages in the margins.

In lieu of a longer post, here are the sections that caught my eye:

•61a - Amulets and charms - how do we know if they work?

•62a - Gender politics - are women 'a nation unto themselves'?

•62b - Swinging - the rabbis frown on partner-swapping.

•63a - The relationship between weapons and the world to come. Decorations or aberrations?

•63a - 'The simple meaning of the text' - but what is it?

•63a - The value of torah study, Resh Lakish uses language of peace. Interesting considering his fall out with Rabbi Yochanan.

•64b - Mar'it ayin - one must avoid doing something because it looks wrong. So can you do it if no one is looking?

•66b - Magic! Abaye's mother must have been a seriously cool woman.

•67a - Incantations against various demons seem to contain nonsense words. In magic (as prayer) it's sometimes better if you don't understand what you're saying.

•67a - Is the magic forbidden? Not if done for the sake of healing.

The learning of youth - Shabbat 21b

Abaye, upon learning a teaching about shabbat and chanukah wicks, responds by wishing he had learnt it before hand.

But what's the difference? asks the gemara, hasn't he learnt it now?

The answer given is that the difference is about the learning of one's youth. Abaye wishes he could have learned this teaching when he was still young, so that, as Rashi explains, it would stick in his mind better.

The power of youth
Not only does our learning when young have the potential to stick with us for the rest of our lives, but it also has the power to alter the way we think for the rest of our lives.

I am eternally grateful to my parents that I was raised in a home dominated by Judaism and yiddishkeit, where Torah was spoken around the dinner table, the language of midrash and kabbalah part of every day life - it has made my rabbinical journey far easier.

Yet there are things I wish I had learnt when I was younger - for example more Hebrew and hilchot shabbat - that would now be enmeshed with who I am.

Living with our past
But there's nothing any of us can do to change what we learned when we were young. Short of the invention of time travel, I cannot make it the case that I learned to speak Hebrew fluently at a young age.

All we can do is plan for our future - try to teach our children, and the children under our care, the things we believe they need to learn when young, the ideas that can change the way they think, and help them grow into thoughtful, compassionate human beings and Jews.