Q&A: Megillah!
Megillah!
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi!
How are you in such pleasant weather?
Hope you're having a good day.
I have a few things to ask:
1. In the Talmud in tractate Megillah 2a it says that the Megillah is not read on the Sabbath out of concern that people might carry it. In the time of the Sages there was no eruv, but today there is an eruv and there’s no concern about desecrating the Sabbath. So why is it still not okay, if that reason no longer applies nowadays?
2. Since we're already on the topic of the Sabbath, here’s a question that has been bothering me for a few years now. If Sabbath observance is maybe the most critical thing there is (I don’t need to explain to you the restrictions placed on Sabbath desecrators), why isn’t that written explicitly in the Written Torah? And where did the Sages learn in tractate Shabbat that the labors of the Tabernacle are the Sabbath labors?
3. Why is the Jerusalem Talmud so underrated? I’ve heard of lots of yeshiva students and yeshiva graduates who never touched the Jerusalem Talmud at all.
4. Do you know whether, in Torah publishing houses, binding and printing are usually included in the final price?
Answer
1. A rabbinic decree cannot be nullified, even if its reason no longer applies, except by a Sanhedrin. Beyond that, it’s not at all certain that the reason no longer applies. Even in their time, a true public domain was very rare. It’s possible there was an additional reason beyond the one they gave (the concern about carrying into a public domain). I wrote something similar in my article about blowing the shofar on the Sabbath.
2. What exactly did you want to be written? The punishment of stoning does appear. The way they derived it from the Tabernacle appears in the Talmud, and there are several approaches to it. In one passage they derived it from the juxtaposition of Sabbath and the Tabernacle in the portion of Vayakhel. In Bava Kamma 2a they also discuss this, and there are three approaches in Tosafot there, as well as the Maharsha and the Maharam. And there is another passage that connects it to the 39 times that "labor" or "work of" is written in the Torah.
3. I don’t know. For some reason the Babylonian Talmud was accepted by the public, and therefore its halakhic status is also higher. As a result, the textual versions of the Jerusalem Talmud are more corrupted, and its language is also less clear (Land-of-Israel Aramaic).
4. I haven’t the faintest idea.