What is Talmud Tweets?

What is Talmud Tweets? A short, personal take on a page of Talmud - every day!

For several years now, I have been following the tradition of "Daf Yomi" - reading a set page of Talmud daily. With the start of a new 7 1/2 year cycle, I thought I would share a taste of what the Talmud offers, with a bit of personal commentary included. The idea is not to give a scholarly explanation. Rather, it is for those new to Talmud to give a little taste - a tweet, as it were - of the richness of this text and dialogue it contains. The Talmud is a window into a style of thinking as well as the world as it changed over the centuries of its compilation.

These are not literal "tweets" - I don't limit myself to 140 characters. Rather, these are intended to be short, quick takes - focusing in on one part of a much richer discussion. Hopefully, I will pique your interest. As Hillel says: "Go and study it!" (Shabbat 31a)

Thursday, May 30, 2013

Eruvin 83 – Half a Loaf

Defining the size of the eruv meal – bread which is set aside to determine extend the Shabbat boundary:

WHAT MUST BE ITS SIZE? FOOD FOR TWO MEALS FOR EACH, THE QUANTITY BEING THE FOOD ONE EATS ON WEEKDAYS AND NOT ON THE SABBATH; SO R. MEIR. R. JUDAH RULED: AS ON THE SABBATH AND NOT AS ON WEEKDAYS. AND BOTH INTENDED TO GIVE THE MORE LENIENT RULING.

Rabbi Meir assuming that because the food is so good on Shabbat, one is tempted to eat more bread – so the weekday amount is the minimum because it is smaller. Rabbi Judah did the opposite, eating less bread on Shabbat in order to save room for all the good Shabbat food! In either case, the smaller quantity is the minimum.

There is quite a lot of discussion then on how quantities are calculated in an era which lacked standardized measurements. For example:

Our Rabbis taught: The Jerusalem se'ah exceeds that of the desert one (described in the Torah) by a sixth, and that of Sepphoris (in the Galilee) exceeds that of Jerusalem by a sixth.

In any case, quantity matters:

HALF OF THIS LOAF IS THE SIZE PRESCRIBED FOR A LEPROUS HOUSE,(Lev. 14:33ff) AND THE HALF OF ITS HALF IS THE SIZE THAT RENDERS ONE'S BODY UNFIT. (Yoma 80b)

If someone stays in a leprous house the amount of time it takes to eat half a loaf, they become ritually impure.

From this it has been inferred that if a person consumes such a quantity of food he is sound in body and happy in mind. He who consumes a greater quantity is a glutton and he who consumes less suffers from bad digestion.

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