“The divine attribute of beneficence takes effect more quickly than the divine attribute of punishment.”

Today’s Daf Yomi starts with the ‘greatest hits” of throwing and carrying out. We spend more time on carrying in and carrying out and discussing if an item comes to rest mid-air if it is thrown from one domain to another. I am a little bit tired of all this throwing and measuring cubits and determining if one or two sin offerings apply. I was happy to see my hero Rabbi Akiva return to set things right. What resonated with me today, was his interpretation of the story of Aaron and Miriam’s bout with leprosy.

“Isn’t it necessary to clarify the primary category before discussing the subcategory?”

There is a microcosm of the working world living their lives in rear windows and balconies. Today’s Daf Yomi tells us that because these balconies are in the private domain, all these work-at-home people who appear trapped in their apartments could pass an object back and forth frpm their balconies without liability on Shabbat. Perhaps they could organize a game of soccer as they toss a ball from balcony to balcony. And they could do this any day of the week, including Saturday.

Any sowing seed that is sown.”

The discussion of earthenware vessels and plants brought me back to my childhood in the late 1960s and early 1970s when I was growing up in suburban New Jersey and fashioned myself a budding flower child. I was too young to join the revolution, which seemed so romantic to me, and Height Ashbury was on the other side of the country, but I longed to go to San Francisco with flowers in my hair and feel the “strange vibration of people in motion.”

“One who plucks white hairs that are signs of impurity.”

I am convinced that the Daf Yomi cycle starts with the Berakhot Tractate in order to draw us in with all the inspiring discussions about blessings and intention. I am finding the Shabbat Tractate especially difficult to keep returning to each day, and the last few days have been especially tedious to wade through. In the spirit of finding one small thing each day to glean onto, I am focusing today on the Rabbis’ discussion of personal grooming.

“An individual who performs a transgression is liable, two people who perform a transgression are exempt.”

Today’s Daf Yomi if difficult. The discussion continues on what can be carried in the public domain, with a twist today on liability if two people are involved. We are presented with different scenarios, and contradictory opinions of what allows an action to be exempt. Hidden within the text, which is dry as dust, is a message about working in teams and sharing one another’s burden. Our resident Zav also returns to test a new set of situations that could lead to impurity.

#Shabbos92: “This mishna is disjointed.”

Today’s Daf Yomi is focused on unusual methods for carrying objects, including carrying such objects behind oneself and on one’s head and foot. I am tempted to try and see how these methods of carrying would work, but I am fairly clumsy and just took a major fall on my way to get coffee this week and that was without any burden on my head, or foot or shoulder. Perhaps the way to carry something behind oneself is with a little red wagon which you pull behind you with your day’s shopping and supplies. 

“Anyone who performs an action with an object with which he had dealings in the past, performs the action with the original intention in mind.”

Today we return to the recurring theme of intention that has been present since the start of this Daf Yomi cycle. We have been told over and over again that intention matters. Today’s Daf Yomi takes a different approach to the discussion and suggests that intention can reside within the essence of an object rather than with our present actions.

“Any amount is significant.”

After a couple days of grand drama, including Moses’ descent from Mt. Sinai and his smashing of the tablets when he witnessed his people exuberantly dancing around a golden calf, we return to a discussion of small measures. We travel from the grandiose vision of a mountain engulfing the Jewish people like a bathtub and Satan himself running around the world looking to take possession of the Torah, to a discussion of small measures.

And he stood between the dead and the living, and the plague was stopped.”

We enter into a dialog in today’s Daf Yomi between Moses and Satan, who I never knew existed before in Hebrew tradition. I do not remember Satan appearing very often in the Old Testament that I studied in Hebrew School. This is also not the brimstone and fire Satan that I have imagined would appear one day in the dialog with the Rabbis.

“If you accept the Torah, excellent, and if not, there will be your burial.”

Today’s Daf Yomi is a revelation. It presents a point of view that the holy covenant between God and the Jewish people, the grand act of giving the Torah to Moses on Mt. Sinai, was based on coercion. We are told that when Moses brought the Jewish people out of their camp to meet God a mountain rolled over them “like a tub” and God said, “If you accept the Torah, excellent, and if not, there will be your burial.”

“And he broke the tablets following the sin of the Golden Calf.”

This story of Moses demonstrates that sometimes in order to effect change you need to become angry.  His people had received the message when he descended the mountain with the new set of tablets. His angry act of smashing tablets seems relevant for the world we live in today.

“The Mishna continues to cite a series of unrelated halakhot based upon biblical allusions.”

Today’s Daf Yomi breaks the barrier of the fourth wall once again and tells us upfront that the “Mishna continues to cite a series of unrelated halakhot based upon biblical allusions.” We know from this direct statement that we are in for a ride today. We are offered another odd pairing of a woman who discharges semen after a defined three-day period and a baby who feels pain from a circumcision during this same period.

“You shall not cross your neighbor’s border, which they of the old times have set in your inheritance that you shall inherit”

Today’s reading felt like a page turn of the Burpee seed catalog, which I used to pour over as child when it would arrive at my family’s home. For some reason, which makes no sense if you know me, I was fascinated by the possibilities of planting seeds that would bring forth flowers, vegetables, perennials, herbs, and fruits.

“Every bed on which the zav lies shall be impure; and every vessel on which he sits shall be impure.”

I would like to introduce you to Zachary, the Zav. Like many people in recent times, he has lost his job as a builder of earthenware ships and has hired himself out to a group of Rabbis who were looking for volunteers to test for immunities against contamination from impurity. Zachary decides to enter the gig economy, and although he is now making less than he did before, the extra income helps, and he believes he is providing a public service in the quest to find protection against impurity.

“Apparently, even idolatry the size of a fly falls under the rubric of the prohibition of idolatry.”

We have moved from the discussion of what can be carried in the public domain (it is so complicated that it might be best to just stay home) to a dialog on idolatry and impurity. Today’s Daf Yomi focuses on many things but includes an examination of how small an idol can be before it is no longer considered impure. Can I say upfront that the little I remember from Hebrew School taught me that idols are really bad and should be destroyed no matter their size?

“He is dealing with matters crucial to human life, and you say that he is dealing with mundane matters?”

Today’s Daf Yomi continues the discussion from the previous day of bathroom habits. A learned Rav asks his son why he is not at the study hall and the young boy answers that his teacher spent too much time discussing bathroom habits rather than the great learnings of the Torah. The Rav uses this as a teachable moment and tells his young son that what he considers mundane are matters central to human life. He orders his son to return to the study hall immediately and appears to be teaching him an important lesson in the mind-body connection and achieving balance in one’s life.

“One need not measure the stones. He simply takes a handful of stones.”

Did the Rabbis really have to go there today? By “there” I mean into a discussion of bathroom habits. This is not the first time the text dealt with bodily matters, including days of discussion of seminal fluids in the Berakhot Tractate. This is also the end of a very difficult and bewildering chapter that included smearing young girls with lime, painting only one eye blue and feeding menstrual blood to a cat. I am looking forward to moving on, but also with some trepidation of what lies ahead.

“The measure that determines liability for carrying out blue eyeshadow is equivalent to that which is used to paint one eye blue.”

The protracted discussion of permissible measures of what can be carried into the public domain on Shabbat continues in today’s Daf Yomi. The exactitude of these measures reminds me of what it was like to fly to London a month after September 11th when all one was allowed to take onto the plane was a plastic bag with a few essentials. Even today, depending on the airport (and Heathrow is especially stringent), most of our liquids, aerosols, and creams must fit into a quart-sized bag and each item is limited to just 3.4 ounces. 

“The measure that determines liability for carrying out animal hide is equivalent to that which is used to make an amulet.”

Today’s Daf Yomi continues the discussion of small measures, with a refinement of the treatment of what size animal hide is permissible to be carried in public on Shabbat.

“The blood of a bat, which lives in inhabited areas, for the cataract.”

I have become inured to some of the oddities encountered in the daily Daf Yomi readings, such as the request for eyeshadow and a comb from the grave in Berakhot and feeding a cat menstrual blood in this Tractate. But I was especially struck in today’s reading by the suggestion that the blood of a bat could cure a cataract while the blood of a wild chicken can cure a wart that lives outside the eye. Although the thought of putting blood of a wild chicken on a wart is frightening enough, the idea that one would put the blood of a bat inside one’s eye, given the presumed connection between bats and coronaviruses, is terrifying.