The story is told of Nehemiah son of R. Hanilai who one walked
and studied. One Shabbat day he became so absorbed in his study that he
accidently walked beyond the 2000 cubit limit.
‘Your disciple Nehemiah’, said R.
Hisda to R. Nahman, ‘is in distress’.
‘Draw up for him’, the other
replied: ‘a wall of human beings and let him re-enter’.
Now this is an interesting solution. Can a valid “wall” be
created by a column of humans? Perhaps it is obvious that it can, and the
problem was there were not quite enough to make the distance. Or perhaps it is
not obvious that living entities can constitute such a wall. After all:
For it was taught: If a man used a
beast as a wall for a sukkah, R. Meir ruled it to be invalid while R. Judah
ruled it to be valid.
But perhaps the problem here is that an animal might walk
away – while a human, committed to the task, would not!
But another problem then arises: one cannot “build” a wall
on Shabbat. Those humans who constituted the wall would be intending to be the
wall and therefore “building” it. Ah, not if they did it unaware of their
purpose!
Certain gardeners once brought
water through human walls and Samuel had them flogged. He said: If the Rabbis
permitted human walls where the men composing them were unaware of the purpose
they served would they also permit such walls where the men were aware of the
purpose?
So unaware human walls bring the wandering Jew home.
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