ANY KNOT WHICH ONE CAN UNTIE WITH
ONE HAND ENTAILS NO GUILT.
The Mishnah goes on to specify items of women’s clothing,
i.e. a laced up garment, ribbons and sandals which may be tied.
Our page goes into a long discussion about sandals, which
knots are “permanent” and which are “temporary.” There is contradictory
evidence about whether a sandal with a strap broken in public is considered
like a utensil, which may be carried on Shabbat, or not. Complicated by the
fact that a sandal can carry impurity (if worn by someone with a leprous condition
or having a discharge) AND is also used for the ceremony of halitzah – a
release by a widow of her bother-in-law’s biblical obligation to marry her.
Sandals are complicated!
A debate over some of the details is held between Hezekiah
and R. Johanan. When R. Johanan solves an especially tricky problem in a
brilliant way, Hezekiah exclaims: “This one is not the son of man!” – A
superhero rabbi.
Which leads to a comment about the loss of scholarship over
the ages:
R. Zera said in Raba b. Zimuna's
name: If the earlier [scholars] were sons of angels, we are sons of men; and if
the earlier [scholars] were sons of men, we are like asses.
All over sandals and their knots!
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