daf bit: Shabbat 8

[cellio]

Just as the previous traactate, B'rachot, jumped into the discussion by starting with a detail (what time to say the evening Sh'ma), so too does Tractate Shabbat begin with a discussion of one of the 39 categories of work forbidden on Shabbat. (The full list will come page 70, IIRC.) The talmud here discusses carrying items between the public domain and a private domain (in either direction). It is because of this prohibition that a city (or neighborhood) might have an eiruv, a boundary that makes the space it surrounds into a single domain. (It's more complicated than that. Way more complicated. It has its own tractate, actually.)

On today's daf the rabbis discuss throwing things (which counts as carrying). Suppose there is a tree on private ground with a branch overhanging public ground, and you throw something and it lands on the branch? Rabbi says the branch is as the trunk, so if you throw it from the public space you have transgressed by moving the object to a private domain. The sages, however, dispute this, saying we do not cast the branch after the trunk. (8a)

Usually "the sages" have the last word, though I'm not sure if that's always true and the g'mara here doesn't say. If any of my readers need to throw things on Shabbat outside of an eiruv, you should consult better sources than me.

Comments

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

Hm. If I felt a great need to do this, I'd try throwing a paper airplane across the International Date Line. So you could throw it on Saturday and have it land on Sunday.
Though it might be hard to have an eiruv whose border was near the International Date Line.