“One may even employ artifice.”

I struggle with the image of standing beside a burning home and just letting it go up in ashes. And yet, we are told in this section of the Talmud that one must not extinguish a fire on Shabbat. One is allowed, however, to run inside the house and rescue food for three meals if the fire breaks out on Shabbat eve. If it breaks out on Shabbat morning, he is allowed to salvage food for two meals, or just food for one meal if the fire breaks out on Shabbat afternoon. In a reminder that one must feed his animals before himself, he can also rescue food for his animals.

“A donkey kicked the lamp.”

We are introduced to the house of Abidan in today’s Daf Yomi, which is a salon where intellectuals of the day gathered in its wide courtyard to discuss philosophy, medicine, literature and most likely religion, including the new-comer, Christianity. Most Rabbis stayed away from the salon, but Shmuel, the man of science, was a regular visitor who I imagine went to hear the latest thinking on medicine and astronomy.

“That they are read.”

Today’s Daf Yomi deals with the question of what one may rescue from a fire on Shabbat and more broadly, the value of reading sacred texts in translation. The prohibition against putting out a fire or rescuing one’s belongings, except for a few essentials, is a difficult one to comprehend. We are hard-wired to extinguish fires so that their initial damage is contained and to rescue what we can of our lives from the flames.

“The Torah taught you etiquette.”

Today’s Daf Yomi addresses among other matters what constitutes a Torah scholar and how should he (dare I say she) present himself (herself) to the world. We are provided with a lesson in grooming along the way and as the quote that introduces this blog says, some guidance in etiquette.

“Give to the wise one and he will become wiser; let the righteous one know and he will learn more.”

Ruth makes a cameo appearance in today’s Daf Yomi. Ruth was said to be exceptionally loyal to her mother-in-law Naomi after her husband died. Ruth converted to Judaism and is often characterized as a role model for someone who becomes Jewish as an adult. But after her husband and the husbands of her mother-in-law and sister-in-law died, they were left in dire straits.

“She removed the left shoe which was on the right foot.”

Today’s Daf Yomi is a catalog of footwear and what is allowable on Shabbat if we wear sandals that have elaborate ties, a sandal strap or two breaks, or a shoe becomes ritually impure. We are presented with scenarios where a woman might wear a left shoe on her right foot, a Rabbi might share a shoe with his son, or a Zav might wear his shoes backwards (like the earth shoes I wore as a teenager in the 1970s that amused my grandparents tremendously.) I am passionate about footwear, although I have been wearing very little of it since I have been sheltering in place at home.

“These have restored me to my youth.”

We learned in previous portions of the Talmud that the overriding principle is that one shall not kill any form of life on Shabbat (except for an exception of creeping animals that are not part of the Talmudic eight and lack the ability to bleed beneath their skin). Today the concept of respecting life on Shabbat (and hopefully every day of the week) is translated into restoring one’s vitality through anti-aging remedies.

“One that digs a pit will fall into it, and one who breaches a fence will be bitten by a snake”

Today’s Daf Yomi is all about snakes and if there was ever a time to look up at the heavens and ask the Rabbis if they are kidding in the strongest of New York accents, this is surely the time. Oh Rabbis, are you kiddin’ me?  We are provided with a treatise on the dangers of snakes and anyone who has Ophidiophobia, the fear of snakes, should best stay away from today’s reading. 

“All seas purify like a ritual bath.”

What a world the Rabbis lived in 1,500 years ago when intention mattered, except when it didn’t. Today’s Daf Yomi is focused on forms of healing that are prohibited on Shabbat. The theme is that appearance rather than intention matters. Herbs, soaking in wine and vinegar, or bathing in hot springs are all assessed based on if they are remedies that a healthy person might undertake. If that is the case, one would not be suspected of applying a therapy for the purpose of healing.

“A great man is coming from the West.”

I have been fascinated with the relationship between Rav and Shmuel since we were first introduced to them. They agree on almost nothing, and yet, they appear to complement each other with their ongoing discourse. I envision them walking side-by-side, always arguing over some fine point of Talmudic law. They were great friends and Rav is said to have mourned profoundly the death of Shmuel because there was no one else who he could verbally spar with him in quite the same way.

“One is liable for killing any creature that procreates.”

Today’s Daf Yomi is a litany of horribles: draining fluid from an abscess, using a needle to remove a thorn and creepy crawly animals and insects – lice, snakes, weasels, mice, lizards, geckos, crocodile and skink (a lizard-like reptile). There is a discussion of wounding an animal or creeping reptile on Shabbat, which is prohibited. What is especially disturbing is the reference to the Cushite people and their skin color.

“We are dealing with a free bird, a sparrow, because it does not accept authority.”

In early March when I was first coming to terms with the reality that something ominous was encroaching on New York City, I found a dead sparrow on my balcony. This was a bit of a crisis for me. I am not someone attuned with nature and accustomed to disposing of dead birds. I have lived in the city most of my adult life. And there was a dead little being with his beak faced down on my balcony.

“You have counted my wanderings, put my tears into your bottle, are they not in your book?”

We wander through the world of grief and anger. Tearing one’s clothes upon the death of a relative is a profound physical display of grief. I remember my grandparents tearing the collars of their shirts when a family member died. When my father died two years ago this month, I was provided with a black ribbon to pin onto my collar. It was an emblem of grief, but within the modern day pinning to protect our garments from damage is the loss of the physical act of mourning.

“The verse added the bending of the righteous person to the bending of the faithful person.”

Today’s Daf Yomi reading has layers of meaning that are likely unknowable to someone like me who remembers shockingly very little from years of Hebrew School. Three days a week --Tuesday and Thursday after school and Sunday morning – my mother or another mother in our car-pool would drive my brother and me to the local synagogue. One day was devoted to Hebrew, one day to reading the Bible and Sunday morning to singing and cultural studies. I l loved the Bible stories of Noah and the Ark, and Lot and his wife who turned to salt and Moses who seemed so human in his anger. But the Hebrew language study was excruciating. I

“It should be perfect writing with no mistakes, and clear writing.”

We are provided with a lesson in the importance of legible handwriting that is “clear” and “perfect.”  One should not write bent letters with straight lines, and straight letters with curves. This passage brings me back to my childhood when I first learned how to write script. It was a huge achievement to progress from block printed letters to producing cursive script through the flow of my hand. 

“He is liable because his intention was realized.”

I struggle with the odd arrangement of the daily Daf Yomi text. Sometimes there is no order to where the chapters begin and end. There is a literary convention where a sentence may be carried from the end of one chapter to the beginning of another, as a form of moving the narrative forward and keeping the reader engaged. But the Talmud does not have any real narrative form or shape, and a sentence may be carried over from one day’s reading to the next, and then the discussion is abruptly dropped.

“Learn from it that this is so.”

Today’s Daf Yomi returns us to the sea. What resonated with me today is the image of two boats tied together peacefully floating in calm waters. For me, this represents the journey so many of us are on together in reading a portion of the Talmud each day. I envision not two, but hundreds, maybe thousands, of little boats drifting in the sea with little strings of learning tying us together.

“The object must actually land in order for the one who threw it to be liable.”

It is worth mentioning that we Daf Yomers have reached the 100th portion of the Shabbos Tractate. This has been an especially difficult text with a lot of analysis on what it means to cross public and private domains on Shabbat, impurity and the aerodynamics of throwing.

“Additionally, the clasps in the loops, which connected the curtains to one another, looked like stars in the sky.”

What resonated with me today was the image of the sky-blue curtains woven with purple and scarlet thread that hung in the lower portion of the Tabernacle. The image of those curtains among all the dust and sand that would have been present in the desert is quite striking. I imagine what it must have been like. Our ancestors are in the arid wilderness, they have no home of their own, the sun beats down on them, they are wandering for an entire generation and yet they have their Tabernacle that they painstakingly constructed from wooden planks pulled on rickety wagons through the hot sands. And like a mirage were those curtains that were crafted by women who were able to create a thing of beauty despite the multitude of hardships they must have had to endure.

“Domains join together; even though one public domain is separated from the other by a private domain, they are treated as one domain.”

As if we have not spent enough time studying what it means to carry something from domain to domain on Shabbat, today’s Daf Yomi returns to the discussion once again. And what more can there be to discuss? We revisit the allowable boundaries for throwing something from domain to domain, which is less than four cubits. And we learn that if two domains are joined together, they are treated as one. This is true even if two public domains are separated by a private one. The joining together of domains, given the blending of our private and public worlds through Zoom technology, resonated with me today.