Simchat Yot
Hello Rabbi.
The Mishnah (Pesachim, Chapter 6, Mishnayot 1-2) provides a list of actions (in the context of offering a Passover sacrifice) some of which postpone the Sabbath and some of which do not.
The actions that are reprehensible are actions from the Torah, and the actions that are not reprehensible are actions from the rabbinic.
Rabbi Eliezer says that all of them are rejected, because if one transgresses prohibitions from the Torah for the purpose of the sacrifice, then even the lesser actions of the rabbis will be rejected.
Rabbi Yehoshua challenges Rabbi Eliezer and tells him that the Torah mentions permitted practices and the rabbinical prohibitions. We see that it is impossible to learn this verse.
Rabbi Eliezer asks him, “What are you comparing between the actions of the Yom Tov, which are permitted, and the Passover sacrifice, which is a mitzvah?”
And really, what did Rabbi Yehoshua think to compare? – says the Gemara (Pesachim 68:) because for Rabbi Yehoshua, the joy of Yot is also a mitzvah. So everything is a mitzvah.
Now the question: Even if Simchat Yot is a mitzvah, none of the actions are obligatory (one is not required to cook on Yot), but in the Pesach sacrifice, every action is obligatory. Therefore, it seems that even Rabbi Eliezer believes that Simchat Yot is a mitzvah, only that there is a distinction between a mitzvah that is permissible and a mitzvah that is obligatory.
So there is still a division here. And what is the basis for Rabbi Yehoshua’s method?
You assume that only necessary actions postpone Shabbat. But there are principles of postponement that do not depend on the necessity of the action. For example, the Rav at the beginning of the Sifra speaks of women who confer a permission (mitzvahs from which women are exempt, such as Ma’esh 73), and says that even the conferring of women postpones a law or a law that does not postpone Shabbat, even though for women it is a permission. Learn from this that the joy of Yot, which is not a permission but an obligation, but which can perhaps be done in another way, can certainly postpone a prohibition.
This dispute is of course related to the question of the devices on which the Rabbis and the Rabbis disagreed at the beginning of the chapter on the Rabbis’ Demilah on Shabbat. There they also discuss that according to the Rabbis, only devices that cannot be made from a ba’u’i postpone Shabbat. But in my opinion, even if we accept this, it is still possible for the joy of Yo’t to postpone Shabbat, even though it is possible to rejoice in another way. According to the Rabbis, if it cannot be made from a ba’u’i, it can postpone Shabbat.
I do not assume that only obligatory actions cancel Shabbat.
But I am saying that the explanation of the Gemara that Rabbi believes that Simchat Yom Tiv is a mitzvah does not answer the division that still exists between a mitzvah that is permissible and a mitzvah that is obligatory.
The fact that even things that are not obligatory cancel Shabbat is fine, but what is the proof?
I understand better the Rabbi who says that everything is permissible because, of course, if they are permitted by the Torah, then the Rabbis are also permitted.
And I do not understand how the explanation of the Gemara in Rabbi Amor's opinion proves his method. (And why does this mean that Rabbi Amor does not have a mitzvah of Simchat Yom Tiv? Maybe he does, and he simply divides between obligatory and permissible mitzvahs?)
As I wrote, the Gemara apparently assumes from the explanation that there is no difference. As long as there is a mitzvah in it, it rejects Shabbat.
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