MISHNAH. A STUMP-LEGGED PERSON (HaKita)
MAY GO FORTH WITH HIS WOODEN STUMP: THIS IS R. MEIR'S VIEW, WHILE R. JOSE
FORBIDS IT. . . ONE MAY GO OUT (WITH LEATHER
SUPPORTS FOR THE STUMP) ON THE SABBATH, AND ENTER THE TEMPLE COURT WHILST
WEARING THEM.
There is some confusion of who permits and who forbids the
wearing of artificial limbs in public on Shabbat. But it is an interesting
addition about wearing them in the Temple court. Shoes were not allowed there.
So is the wooden leg and leather support a “shoe”?
Another text is found in which a wooden shoe is shown to be acceptable
for halitzah – the ceremony in which a widow takes the shoe off her deceased
husband’s brother to show she does not accept him as a new husband (Deut.
25:5-9).
The law is reversed about wearing wooden legs in the Temple
court. They are forbidden.
Besides the practical (how does this person ever go up to
the Temple mount without his wooden legs?) it is interesting to see the law
reversed in this way.
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