daf bit: Avodah Zarah 69

[cellio]

The rabbis are concerned that Jews not drink wine from which a heathen has poured a libation. The mishna discusses some of the conditions under which we do or don't trust non-Jews with wine. If a heathen and a Jew are conveying the latter's wine together, it is presumed that the wine is under supervision and the wine is permitted. If the Jew leaves his wine in a wagon for a time, takes a shortcut to a nearby town, bathes, and returns, it is permitted; however, if he told the heathen that he was going to do so, and there was enough time for the heathen to bore a hole, take wine, seal it, and have the clay dry, the wine is forbidden. (69a)

It's not discussed here, but it appears that if he left but there was not enough time for the heathen to do anything to the wine, the wine is still permitted. Sometime between mishnaic times and now the rabbis got a lot more cautious, to the point of forbidding wine that has been so much as touched by gentiles unless precautions are taken. I am mildly curious about when and how that happened. (Note to my non-Jewish friends: I hold more liberally than that, though I'm cautious in SCA or fannish settings because there are actually pagans in some numbers in those communities.)

(Today's daf is actually 68 but doesn't distill well.)

Edit 2011-11-21: This entry seems to have become a spammer favorite, so I'm disabling further comments. Those of you who are real people know where to find similar posts and how to get in touch with me.

Comments

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

Although I have a general distrust of people until I know them better, this seems a little excessive. From your description it almost sounds like the rabbis were worried about gentiles and heathens having wine cooties or something.... I think I need to understand the historical context a little better--was there such prevelant prejudice and animosity from that time that the rabbis were worried about people being poisoned? Or is it more along the lines of keeping kosher?

If the latter, what constitutes "touching" the wine? Picking the grapes? Being involved in the vinting process? Handing you the bottle? Pouring the wine itself? I'm pretty sticking a finger in the wine counts.... When it comes to homebrew, I'm guessing that the process of grating the orange zest in making mead involves me touching the ingredients. Does the boiling of the must not constitute an act of purification (from a scientific standpoint, it does, but faith =/= science)?

[siderea]

From the OP:

The rabbis are concerned that Jews not drink wine from which a heathen has poured a libation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/libation

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

OK, the definition of "libation" is what tripped me up. Thanks! Now I understand. The issue is that the wine in question had been offered in part to another deity. That makes a lot more sense to me now.

The later prohibition about gentile wine cooties still seems a little excessive and the rest of my question still stands, though.

Edit Fixed grammar. Today, my ability to type is weak.

[cellio]

The issue is that the wine in question had been offered in part to another deity.

And participating in any way in idolatry is a really really big deal. Idolatry is one of only three transgressions that you are supposed to die instead of doing. Violate Shabbat or kashrut under duress? Yes, if necessary. Drink to Bacchus? No.

(By the way, a good chunk of this tractate discusses wine preparation in all its stages with respect to who can participate how much. It's not complete separation; you can hire gentiles to stomp your grapes and stuff like that. But there are both limits and requirements for supervision.)

I, too, have trouble relating to the "cooties" idea in general, just from a gentile touching a bottle. But if an unknown-to-me fan comes up to me at a con with a goblet of wine and says "this is good, try it", I will also pass, because he might have done more than touch it.

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

Right. I didn't complete my thought, but that captures the essence of it.

[siderea]

Thought that might be the case. I think of it less "gentile wine cooties" than "gentile spiritual backsplash". You know, the way if you try to pour lighter fluid on a fire, the fire will travel back up the flow of fluid to explode the bottle in you hand? I gather the assumption is that by pouring a small measure of wine out for the deity of one's choice, the entire vessel of beverage is sacralized by the act. So if a cup of wine is drawing off a cask and then a libation poured from it, maybe the spiritual backsplash reaches the entire cask, dedicating it all to some other god.

Really, there should be a web site somewhere dedicated to Talmudic Physics, where phenomena likewise this, and like the FTL communication technique using the two rabbis, the pork chop and the really, really, long piece of spaghetti, can be fully elucidated.

[eta: really hating on the iPad keyboard right now.]

[cellio]

Your idea of spiritual backlash resonates with me. I don't know if that's how the rabbis viewed it, but certainly they believed that offering any part of the (bottle, cask, whatever) in idol worship invalidates the lot, so it could be something like that. And I don't have any problem with that.

In the case of a (modern) gentile who doesn't offer libations to anybody, and may well be an atheist or totally-non-practicing something-else, I have more trouble with saying that because he touched it the wine has become forbidden, particularly if everything happened in my sight (we opened the bottle and passed it around the table). There must be more to this that I do not understand.

By the way, there is a work-around of sorts that can keep this from being a social embarrassment: according to the rabbis, wine that has been boiled is unfit for idolatry and therefore these concerns don't arise. (It's not sterilization that removes idolatry effects; it prevents them from occurring.) Most kosher wine, at least of the sort that you see in grocery stores in the US, is in this category. I understand that this process can lower the quality in ways that people more educated about wine than I would notice, which is why not all kosher wine has been treated in this way.

Really, there should be a web site somewhere dedicated to Talmudic Physics, where phenomena likewise this, and like the FTL communication technique using the two rabbis, the pork chop and the really, really, long piece of spaghetti, can be fully elucidated.

Ooh, yeah.

Out of morbid curiosity

[dragonazure.livejournal.com]

Forbidding the wine in the immediate vessel from which the libation was poured seems straightforward enough, but how many decantings back does it affect?

The serving pitcher from which the goblet/glass was filled?
The bottle from which the pitcher was filled?
The cask from which the bottle was filled?
The barrel in which the wine was aged in prior to decanting to casks?

I would expect there is some sort of threshold at which the prohibition becomes impractical or unnecessary.

What happens if the libation occurs *after* you took a drink? I assume that anything consumed prior to that point would be considered spiritually "safe", but anything afterward is not.

[cellio]

Really, there should be a web site somewhere dedicated to Talmudic Physics, where phenomena likewise this, and like the FTL communication technique using the two rabbis, the pork chop and the really, really, long piece of spaghetti, can be fully elucidated.

I came here to delete a spam comment and noticed this again. While not quite what you're looking for, let me offer three recent questions from Judaism.StackExchange:

Does the torah discuss (space) aliens?

Time travel and Judaism

If a pig was genetically modified to chew its cud would it be kosher?

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

I'm not an expert (and, in fact, am probably significantly less observant than cellio) but I believe that so long as every process is being supervised by a Sabbath-observant Jew you're OK.

Although, come to think of it, my Uncle Eugene Z"L wouldn't drink from a bottle of kosher wine that my father had opened; their kitchen was (and remains) kosher, but not shomer shabbes.

[cellio]

Your Uncle Eugene sounds more extreme than anyone I know personally (and whose religious practices I also know).

[zevabe.livejournal.com]

The idea that non-Shabbat observers have similar effects on wine is not unheard of. I know ppl who observe that way.

[geekosaur]

Actually, it gets worse than that; there's a quote somewhere in there (cellio probably will hit it shortly) about how the real issue is how terrible it would be if Jews were to socialize with gentiles. *eyeroll*