daf bit: Nazir 57

The mishna teaches: if someone says to two nazarites "I saw one of you (ritually) defiled, but I do not know which of you it was", it is as if both have been (so their naziriteships have been interrupted and they both bring korbanot (sacrifices)). The gemara objects: in other cases we require two witnesses, but here a single witness is sufficient? Rabbah ben Huna says: this means the witness saw a source of defilement thrown between them, but was standing far enough away to not see clearly. (57a)

Rabbah seems to take it as given that somebody must have been defiled in that case. I'm not sure of all the parameters here, assuming this happened outdoors (so there are no issues of being in the same tent, etc). Is the idea that everyone within a certain distance is affected, or is it that really only the nearer one should be but we don't know so affect both to be safe?

(Today's daf is 56, but I had trouble drawing something appropriate from that page.)

upcoming torah portions

I am reading torah this Shabbat. The portion, Behar, is part of the double portion that is arguably "my" portion -- the week I acquired a Hebrew birthday we read both Behar and B'chukotai, which are sometimes doubled up and sometimes not. So to the extent that I have a designated portion, it's either Behar, B'chukotai, or the combination. This year they are not combined, and since I was semi-randomly picking a week to read anyway, I picked one of those.

Today I was asked to read the other one next Friday night. Clean sweep. :-) I'm glad to finally be at a level where my reaction to "can you read in 8 days?" is not "aiiieeeee!" but "sure". (My congregation only reads one aliyah -- the sixth, this year -- so we are usually talking about 10-30 verses, not several chapters. Both of these ones are short, so that when they're doubled up the reading is not burdensome. I can read or chant, but, honestly, the chanting is easier for me to learn.)

I won't actually start learning it until Sunday, probably -- don't want to distract myself from this week's, and there's an SCA event on Saturday. But that still gives me six days.

This grew out of something more general: I'll be helping to lead services next Friday night. So we knew I'd be involved, but we didn't actually talk about division of labor until today. (Yay! I get to lead services again!)