Shabbos 8
“The Gemara asks: This threshold, what is it; to what type of threshold is it referring?”
Dear Rabbis of 2,000 years ago: I am standing on your threshold of learning, passing knowledge from your Talmud (a transitional domain?) to mine (a private domain?) I have no right addressing you or reading your sacred text. You could never have imagined someone like me doing so when you wrote down all that oral wisdom so many years ago. I am a terrible Jew. I am writing this on the Sabbath and there is intention involved, since I know what I am doing. I studied English Literature in College and Graduate School rather than Judaism and did not return to synagogue until recently, and even now, not often enough. I know the poetry of Galway Kinnell by heart but not much more than the first verse of the Shema.
But only if it were a little easier… Am I out of line to ask why you made it so difficult? For instance, why is the definition of what constitutes a private or public domain so complicated? Can we just say that any dwelling with four walls or equivalent enclosures (including tents for the desert dwellers) is inside and everything else is a public domain – including pits, wells, holes in the ground, holes in external walls. It doesn’t matter what you throw or carry or lift or where it lands (although your discussion on aerodynamics a few days ago was interesting.) Can we forget about ten handbreadths and just say outside is outside and inside is inside? If you remove an object – any object – in any matter – from inside four walls (or their equivalent) to outside, or outside to inside, it’s a violation of Sabbath Laws. But then, what do I know? But only if it were a little easier…
And if some poor soul confuses the two domains for whatever reason, or even purposely violates the law like I do, why not make it a teaching moment (rather than a stoning moment?) If you could just make it a little easier to understand these laws, it might have been easier to be a Jew. I get it – I am blaming you and not accepting responsibility for my own Jewish learning and ability to absorb this complicated text. But only if it were a little easier...
I have nowhere near the knowledge required to dissect each passage that delineates inside from outside, violations from exemptions, and I know there is a lot of meaning embedded in all the throwing and lifting and placing and passing through, but if only it were a little easier…
I have come this far and will keep pushing ahead. I am standing on the threshold of your book of learning, in the intermediate space, trying desperately to figure it all out. But only if it were a little easier…