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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