daf bit: Eruvin 6

[cellio]

This week we begin a new tractate, Eruvin. On Shabbat one is not permitted to carry items from a private domain (like a house) into a public domain (like the street) or vice versa. However, this doesn't apply to houses around a central (fenced or walled) courtyard, an architectural style common in ancient Israel; this can be viewed as one big private domain even though it's multi-dwelling. (There are rules, like the people living there actually need to share food on Shabbat.) Applying similar principles, a larger space, like a town, can be enclosed by an eiruv and thus treated as a private domain.

The first several pages of this tractate discuss alleys. An alley is not like a courtyard because it's open at both ends (it's a thoroughfare). The rabbis discuss the effects of walls, posts, doorways, and openings below a certain width. On today's daf we learn that it was taught in the name of R. Yochanan that Jerusalem, a walled city with a central road running through the center, would have been treated as a public domain because of the road, were it not for the fact that its gates were closed at night, rendering it like a courtyard. 'Ulla, too, said the same of the city of Mahuza, which also had gates that were closed at night. But Beit Hillel said you don't need to close the doors; they just need to be present.(6b)

Comments

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

Pfft, even I can find a way around that.

Set aside a plot of land that grows grain and is owned communally by everyone in the city. When grain is brought to the miller to be turned into flour, pick up one bit of grain from that sack and toss it in. Your bread has now been made with grain that is shared by everyone in the city.

I am not saying that is how it was done, but it would seem to satisfy the rule. :)

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

I suppose this depends on what "sharing" is, and when ingredients become food. I'm sure the rabbis have answers to both those questions, though.

(At the least--those are just the places where I use a term in some way that makes this not work. Sharing = "provide into the communal from your private stores"; food = "something which is usually consumed as-is". It's not sharing because the people receiving it already owned it, it's not food because you don't eat raw flour. You can probably see where this leads me to think that the only way to accomplish this is a weekly citywide potluck buffet.)

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

And, depending on how twisty you want to get, here is another possibility:

One is expected to give of what one has to help those who would otherwise go without.

One is also expected to maintain the other person's dignity, which can mean anonymity.

So, if you have given toward the sustenance of those in need in your city (or you yourself have received from those stores), and you cannot say for certain if any given person was the other party in that, then you can claim belief that everyone in the city might have shared your food.

Again, I have no idea what justification was used. But it's hardly logistically impossible: plenty of ways to game it. :)

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

Remind me to never run an RPG you're a player in.

It still seems like you'd need to do this every week though.

[talvinm.livejournal.com]

Hehehehe.

I once brought low a Paladin (played by my wife). She had just led an army to a great victory in the name of her faith.

A pack of kobolds showed up at the gates saying they were tired of being on the losing side, and they wanted to convert!

The Prelate said, "NO, you may not slaughter them all, they want to join the church, and I am putting YOU in charge of them! You are responsible for anything they do...."

You're right: you don't want to play in any RPG I am part of. :P