Tractate Shabbat, Chapter One – Lesson 29
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
🔗 Link to the original lecture
🔗 Link to the transcript on Sofer.AI
Table of Contents
- University updates and hybrid teaching
- The case: extending a hand into a private domain and receiving rainwater
- Rabbi Avin’s statement in the name of Rabbi Yohanan and the difficulty of uprooting with one’s hand
- Questions about whether a liquid counts as an object and about the minimum measure for carrying out
- Breaking down the concept of uprooting into two components and their implications
- Rabbi Zeira’s challenge: loaded by another person versus loaded by Heaven
- Comparison to the Mishnah, responsibility for the action, and the absence of an object resting in place
- The dispute between Rashi and Tosafot on page 3 and the Rosh’s explanation
- The Sefat Emet’s challenge from “he uprooted and received” and his answer
- The Talmud’s answer: “Do not say received, but rather intercepted,” and the meaning of the action
- The requirement of uprooting from a place measuring four by four and the difficulty with a hand and with the air
- A solution by means of a slanted wall and the distinction between a book and water
- “What is caught is as if it has come to rest,” the halakhic ruling, and an analogy to Zeno’s paradox
Summary
General overview
At the university they’re organizing for continued Zoom learning until Passover and a return in hybrid format after Passover, depending on health guidelines and the technical ability to use specially equipped classrooms, all as part of a planned policy to allow Zoom for anyone who needs it even after returning to campus. After that, the Sabbath topic begins with a person standing in the public domain, extending his hand into a courtyard in the private domain, catching rainwater, and taking it out, against the background of the rule from page 3 that uprooting one’s body counts as uprooting, but uprooting one’s hand does not count because the hand is not considered at rest. The discussion proceeds through Rabbi Zeira’s challenge comparing this to a case where another person loaded an object onto someone, through Rashi’s and Tosafot’s explanations regarding the definition of uprooting with the hand, through the Sefat Emet’s question comparing it to “he uprooted and received” in the topic of two forces within one person, and on to the Talmud’s answers requiring active “interception” and the requirement of uprooting from a place measuring four by four, together with an attempt to resolve this by means of a slanted wall and a conceptual discussion of “what is caught is as if it has come to rest” and the distinction between “is found” and “is standing,” inspired by Zeno’s arrow paradox.
University updates and hybrid teaching
At the university they’re organizing some kind of return after Passover, while until Passover classes will be on Zoom. After Passover, hybrid teaching is planned, in which an in-person classroom operates in parallel with students learning from home on Zoom, based on the principle that anyone who needs it—and maybe also anyone who can, as he puts it parenthetically—will be able to continue on Zoom. This depends on public-health guidelines and on the university’s capabilities, because hybrid teaching requires a special classroom, and in the departments there may be only one or two such rooms, which creates a room-allocation problem when several courses run in parallel. The currently planned policy is in principle to allow continued Zoom participation even when people return to campus, and everything is still being worked out while waiting for further instructions. It is said that until the elections one can’t really know what’s happening, and after the elections the decrees will come, and then the guidelines and what can and should be done will become clear.
The case: extending a hand into a private domain and receiving rainwater
The case is defined as a person standing in the public domain and extending his hand into the courtyard of a private domain, catching rainwater in his hand and taking it outside. It is noted that the commentators point out that this does not specifically mean another person’s courtyard, since ownership does not really matter, and it could also be his own courtyard. The background is the Talmud’s statement at the end of page 3a, according to which uprooting one’s body is considered uprooting, but uprooting one’s hand is not, because the hand is not considered stationary.
Rabbi Avin’s statement in the name of Rabbi Yohanan and the difficulty of uprooting with one’s hand
It is said: Rabbi Avin said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: if someone inserted his hand into another person’s courtyard, received rainwater, and took it out, he is liable. At first glance, this seems to contain no novelty, because the person performed both an uprooting and a placement. But a problem is raised from the rule that uprooting one’s hand is not considered uprooting, so it seems that there is no uprooting here at all, only a placement without prior uprooting. An analysis is presented in two stages: first the water is caught in the hand, and then the hand begins to move with the water. Since the beginning of that movement is “uprooting one’s hand,” which is not considered uprooting, the question is whether the very catching of the water from the air can itself count as uprooting.
Questions about whether a liquid counts as an object and about the minimum measure for carrying out
A question is raised: who says that water, and liquid in general, counts as an object? The answer given is that in the Talmud liquid is indeed an object in every relevant sense in many places, and there is no reason an object has to be solid. Another question is raised about the amount of water a person can hold in a hand, and the answer is that there are minimum quantities for carrying out listed at the end of the tractate, and here it is simply assumed that the water involved meets the required measure for the purposes of the discussion, whether because the hand is large enough for the topic or by means of a vessel, while sidelining secondary issues that the Talmud itself does not treat as troubling the discussion.
Breaking down the concept of uprooting into two components and their implications
It is said that ordinary uprooting has two components: bringing the object into the hand, and the beginning of the hand’s movement that detaches the object from its place. Usually these happen together, so without both there is no uprooting. It is argued that if one merely places a hand on an object resting in place without movement, that is not uprooting; and if the object is already in the hand and the hand alone begins to move, that also is not uprooting because it is merely “uprooting one’s hand.” For uprooting to exist, there must be meaningful reception together with movement that removes the object from its prior place. A question is raised whether the beginning of movement is an essential component or merely a condition that retroactively reveals that the reception counted as reception, and the point is left open, but it is emphasized that in the present Talmudic passage each component on its own is insufficient.
Rabbi Zeira’s challenge: loaded by another person versus loaded by Heaven
The Talmud challenges: Rabbi Zeira objected: what difference is there between another person loading him and Heaven loading him? He did not perform an uprooting. It is explained that Rabbi Zeira’s objection does not rest on the stage of the hand’s movement, because uprooting one’s hand certainly is not uprooting, but rather on the possibility that catching the water in the hand might count as uprooting. Against that, he argues from the Mishnah that when the homeowner places an object in the poor person’s hand and the poor person takes it out, that does not count as an uprooting performed by the poor person; and so too, when the heavens “load” rainwater into the hand, the uprooting cannot be attributed to the person. A distinction is raised between the claim that the person is passive and a deeper question—whether there is any uprooting at all when there is no object that had been resting in the private domain but was instead taken from the air—and it is suggested that, with some pressure on Rabbi Zeira’s wording, his comparison to the Mishnah may be intended to deny the possibility that the movement of the hand alone could count as a substitute uprooting after the object is already in the hand.
Comparison to the Mishnah, responsibility for the action, and the absence of an object resting in place
It is argued that there may be a stricter distinction: in the Mishnah another person performed the uprooting, whereas with rain there is no other human agent, so one might have thought to say that the person himself is responsible for the uprooting. But it is said that the Talmud treats passive uprooting as no uprooting even without attributing it to someone else. A more lenient distinction is then presented: in the Mishnah there was certainly an uprooting of an object that had been resting somewhere, whereas with rain the object had not been resting but was in the air and in motion, so perhaps there is no uprooting here at all. The question is raised: “Isn’t air a place?” and the discussion is directed later to the issue of “what is caught is as if it has come to rest.”
The dispute between Rashi and Tosafot on page 3 and the Rosh’s explanation
It is said that Tosafot explain that uprooting one’s hand is not considered uprooting because the hand is dragged after the body, and this depends on a situation in which the hand is in a different domain from the body; so if hand and body are in the same domain, perhaps that would count as uprooting. It is said that Rashi explains that the hand is not at rest upon the ground, and therefore uprooting one’s hand is not uprooting even when hand and body are in the same place; and Tosafot challenge him from the Mishnah and from the laws of another person loading him. The Rosh is cited as reconciling this by saying that Rashi agrees that if another person loaded something onto his shoulder or into his hand and he uprooted his feet and went out, he is liable, because uprooting his body counts as uprooting the object; but if he remained standing in place and only stretched out his hand, he is exempt, because uprooting the hand is not uprooting the object. It is clarified that in our case, where the body stands in the public domain and only the hand enters the private domain, according to all views this is a case of uprooting one’s hand, which does not count as uprooting, and therefore the question centers on the catching of the water.
The Sefat Emet’s challenge from “he uprooted and received” and his answer
The Sefat Emet objects that since the person puts out his hand in order to receive, this resembles “he uprooted and received” in the topic of two forces in one person, where moving toward the object turns the reception into an active act, and therefore here too the person ought to be considered as performing the uprooting and be liable. An alternative claim is presented, that his question never gets started if the problem is that the rain is not resting anywhere at all and so there is no place from which to uproot it; and an intuitive distinction is also suggested between moving toward an object that was thrown and placing one’s hand in a spot where rain happens to be falling. The Sefat Emet answers that although “he uprooted and received” exempts the thrower, that is not proof that the receiver performed the placement alone; rather, the placement is done by the force of the thrower together with a change introduced by the receiver, and is considered a case of “two people doing it” with respect to the placement, so the receiver does not have a complete forbidden labor in his own hands in such a case.
The Talmud’s answer: “Do not say received, but rather intercepted,” and the meaning of the action
The Talmud answers: do not say “received,” but rather “intercepted,” and according to Rashi this means that with one hand he struck the water and deflected it into the other hand, so the act was done actively and not as passive reception. A question is raised as to which hand is considered the one that uproots, and it is said that at first glance the striking hand is the active one while the receiving hand is passive, so the uprooting is attributed to the act of deflection. It is noted that this understanding works as a solution to the passivity problem according to the plain reading and according to the Sefat Emet, whereas for the approach that emphasizes the problem as the absence of an object resting in place, one must assume that in the striking hand a state of placement was first created, from which the uprooting then occurs.
The requirement of uprooting from a place measuring four by four and the difficulty with a hand and with the air
The Talmud challenges: but we require uprooting from atop a place measuring four by four, and that is absent here. It is said that the difficulty is that a place of uprooting must measure four by four, and in the air there is no such place; and the possibility is raised that even if the hand serves as an important place of four by four for placement, it does not necessarily help for uprooting, because the significance of the place depends on the context of the act. The Kehillot Yaakov is mentioned as discussing whether a place of four by four is needed in the private domain as well or only in the public domain, and it is said that here it seems explicit that a place of four by four is needed for uprooting even in the private domain, along with a remark wondering why this proof was not brought there.
A solution by means of a slanted wall and the distinction between a book and water
It is said that the continuation of the Talmudic passage proposes a case of intercepting from atop a wall, and it is clarified that a straight wall is not a receptacle and the water would simply run off, so the case is established as involving a slanted wall that provides some temporary retention. The Talmud’s challenge is cited by comparison to a rolling book, and it is said that the Talmud distinguishes between an object like a book, which even while rolling can be considered “something that is apt to come to rest,” and water, for which the Talmud says, “is water apt to come to rest?” so the problem with water is not only actual movement but its dynamic nature, which does not allow such restfulness to be attributed to it. From here it is argued that being at rest does not necessarily mean standing still, but rather being located in a position within the domain in a way defined as resting; yet with water the Talmud is unwilling to treat it as even “found” in a stable enough way in the halakhic sense.
“What is caught is as if it has come to rest,” the halakhic ruling, and an analogy to Zeno’s paradox
It is said that in the background stands the topic of “what is caught is as if it has come to rest,” discussed as a dispute between Rabbi Akiva and the Sages, and that in practice Jewish law follows the Sages, so if someone throws from one private domain to another through the public domain, he is exempt. A possible distinction is suggested that even according to the Sages, when an object is on its way to coming to rest in the very domain beneath it, being caught on the way to landing might resemble placement; and evidence is brought from the Be’er Heitev regarding tefillin, where a state of being caught is treated as if it had come to rest. In closing, an analogy is drawn to Zeno’s arrow paradox, saying that at every moment the arrow is “found” in a place with velocity and not necessarily “standing” there; inspired by this, it is suggested that “at rest” may be understood as defined presence even amid motion, but water as a category is not granted that kind of restfulness in this Talmudic passage, and the discussion closes with the comment that there will not be time to complete the practical halakhic aspects.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First of all, a few updates—not just from this morning, but from three-thirty in the morning. At the university they’re talking about some kind of return; they’re organizing toward some kind of return after Passover. Until Passover it’ll be on Zoom. After Passover they’re organizing toward some kind of return, where the guiding principle of that return is supposed to be that anyone who needs it, and maybe also anyone who can—I’m saying that in parentheses because I don’t know—will be able to do it on Zoom from home. Meaning, the teaching will be hybrid: both for the group physically in the classroom and in parallel for those studying separately at home. So that’s the university’s current planning. Of course, it depends, first, on the health guidelines, and second, on the university’s capabilities, because for hybrid teaching you need a special classroom. And meanwhile, in the university departments there’s maybe one classroom, maybe two classrooms like that for hybrid teaching. And if there’s one course or two courses running in parallel in the same department, or three courses running in parallel in the same department, then there could be a room problem. So this whole thing is still being worked out, and we’re waiting for further instructions. In any case, in principle there is supposed to be an option to continue on Zoom for whoever needs it, even when we return to campus. That, at least for now, is the planned policy as far as they’ve updated us. Right now they’re working on the plans and organizing exactly how this can happen, subject of course to the guidelines and health developments. So that’s more or less the picture as I know it, updated as of yesterday. Meaning, yesterday we got some kind of update. So that’s what we know at the moment. I’m not assuming there’ll be major changes in the coming days. Like I said before, until the elections you can’t really know what’s going on. After the elections, the decrees will come, and then we’ll be able to see what to do, what the guidelines are, what can and should be done. Okay. I want to start with our Talmudic passage. We’re talking, basically, about someone who extended his hand into another person’s courtyard, received rainwater—he’s standing in the public domain, extending his hand into a courtyard in the private domain, receives rainwater, and takes it out. Commentators already note here that it doesn’t specifically mean another person’s courtyard; ownership of the courtyard doesn’t really matter. But they say “another person’s courtyard” because that’s the standard formulation. It could also be his own courtyard—for example, he’s standing outside his own courtyard, sends his hand into the courtyard, and receives rainwater. In the background, as I mentioned—and that’s also why it’s on the page—is the Talmud on page 3 at the end of amud aleph, where the Talmud says that uprooting one’s body counts as uprooting, but uprooting one’s hand does not count as uprooting, because the hand is not stationary. Okay, so moving the hand is not uprooting. What does that mean? When you begin moving your hand and there’s an object in it, that isn’t considered that you uprooted the object from its place; that’s not uprooting. As opposed to a case where I’m holding an object and begin walking together with the object, which is called uprooting one’s body, and according to the Talmud’s conclusion, uprooting one’s body does count as uprooting. Okay. So that’s the background. Now let’s begin the actual passage. Rabbi Avin said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: if someone inserted his hand into another person’s courtyard, received rainwater, and took it out, he is liable. That’s basically the statement. On the face of it, it seems there’s no novelty here, because all that happened is that a person performed an uprooting and also a placement, and the same person did both the uprooting and the placement. Meaning, there was an uprooting here, there was a placement here, and the same person did both. So seemingly all the conditions are met and this is just an ordinary case of carrying out, for which one is liable by Torah law. But here the Talmud raises the passage I mentioned earlier on page 3, where it says that uprooting one’s hand is not uprooting. And if uprooting one’s hand is not uprooting, then essentially in our case there is no uprooting. I stretched out my hand, I received rainwater. When was there uprooting? When I began to move the hand with the rainwater. But that is what’s called uprooting one’s hand. And uprooting one’s hand is not uprooting. So in effect it comes out that there was an act of placement not preceded by uprooting, and therefore this law is not clear. So how can Rabbi Avin say that in such a case one is liable?
[Speaker B] Also, the way this is happening now, that means he also caught it from the air, right?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And therefore what?
[Speaker B] That he uprooted it from the air; he didn’t uproot it from a resting place.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Good. You’re actually introducing another parameter now that I’m just about to explain, which basically means there are two stages in the process of uprooting here. There’s the stage where the water is caught in my hand.
[Speaker C] Exactly—caught. No one placed it there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s resting in my hand, okay? And then there’s the beginning of the hand’s movement with the water. Now, the beginning of the hand’s movement with the water is called uprooting one’s hand, and that isn’t uprooting. But the question is whether grasping the water itself from the air perhaps counts as the uprooting, okay? That’s really the question. Because even if I say that uprooting one’s hand isn’t uprooting, that’s talking about a case where the hand begins to move. So the beginning of the movement of the hand with the object inside it—in this case, water—doesn’t count as uprooting. But on the other hand, so what does count as uprooting? How do you normally uproot? Normally you uproot by taking with your hand an object that is resting somewhere and lifting it, right? With the hand. Meaning, uprooting is basically bringing the object into the hand, not the beginning of the hand’s movement with the object. But that seemingly did happen here, because I brought the rainwater into the hand. So even if the beginning of the movement of the hand with the rain doesn’t count as uprooting, maybe catching the rain in the hand does count as uprooting? Okay? So about that it really says—
[Speaker D] Can I ask for a second a background question that isn’t clear? Yes, yes. Who says that water, and liquid in general, is an object?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It doesn’t sound good.
[Speaker D] You can’t hear me. Can I write it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Now we can hear.
[Speaker D] Okay. I asked: who says that water and liquid are an object at all? And second, you need some minimum quantity to hold it in your hand, so what person can hold a significant quantity of water in his hand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] First, it’s obvious in the Talmud that liquid is an object in every relevant sense. Not only in our passage—in many places. It’s an object like any other object. How is it different from any other object?
[Speaker D] But it’s liquid, not solid. What? It’s not solid, it’s liquid.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what? Why does an object have to be solid? Where is that written?
[Speaker D] Is air also an object?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you catch the air inside something, maybe yes—why not?
[Speaker D] But that’s exactly the point—it’s not water in a vessel, it’s water in my hand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They really do have hold. Water has hold. When you move your hand like this, there isn’t air inside it that you’re taking from place to place. The air stays where it is; the hand moves.
[Speaker D] And how much water can a person hold?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait. And when there’s water in the hand, the water in the hand is water that is there. So what’s the problem? It’s an object like any other object.
[Speaker D] How much water can a person hold in his hand and carry over?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Your second question is a question about the minimum measure. Now here I don’t remember at the moment what the minimum quantity of water is for carrying out. I think it’s probably something like a revi’it or enough to fill one cheek or something like that. The measures for carrying out appear at the end of the tractate; you can look there. At the moment I don’t remember. In any case, right now we’re discussing a situation where there is a sufficient measure of water. What difference does it make? Otherwise the whole discussion doesn’t even begin. We’re talking about a situation where there is a sufficient measure of water, okay? Either because I have a hand large enough for the purposes of the discussion, or for example maybe I’m holding it with a vessel. Meaning, I take the hand with the vessel and collect the rainwater with it and then take it out. Maybe that too could work, okay? Right now we’re ignoring side issues; from the Talmud’s point of view it’s pretty clear that this doesn’t bother it. Meaning, there was a sufficient amount of water here and it was taken out. Okay?
[Speaker E] I want to ask something for a second.
[Speaker D] But if it’s a vessel, that’s a completely—
[Speaker F] Different topic entirely. We can’t hear her. What happened here?
[Speaker D] I’m saying that if it’s a vessel, that’s a completely different topic, and meanwhile it’s water in his hand.
[Speaker F] You don’t sound good.
[Speaker G] It’s not the speaker; it’s probably the internet connection.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, Iris, we can’t hear you. There was someone else who started to ask something.
[Speaker E] Yes, I want to ask. Yes. We basically split the issue of uprooting into two parts. One is bringing the object into the hand, and the second is the beginning of the hand’s movement. Right. When I grasp something and haven’t yet detached it, I’ve brought it into my hand—let’s say I have an object resting on the table. I take my hand and grab the object and I still haven’t moved it. That isn’t called uprooting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so it may be that both things happen together; that doesn’t matter, but they’re still two things.
[Speaker E] No, but is that called uprooting? I still haven’t moved my hand—is that already called that I did an act of uprooting? No. Now when I place my hand in the air and water lands on my hand—why should that be called uprooting? I didn’t move my hand. I also didn’t take the water from its place. The water stopped on my hand and I didn’t move my hand at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the Talmud’s question that we’re now starting to read.
[Speaker F] It’s similar to the previous topic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. I went ahead so we could better understand the question. I went ahead and distinguished here between two components of the action the person performs. The first component is bringing the water into the hand, which he does not do—he just puts his hand there and the water enters the hand.
[Speaker F] Again, it’s similar to the previous topic.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The second component is the beginning of the hand’s movement with the water. Okay? And now let’s read the Talmud’s question and we’ll see what it’s talking about. It’s exactly what you’re asking—just a moment.
[Speaker F] Besides that, it’s similar to the previous topic, where extending the hand is like running and receiving.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s the Sefat Emet; we’ll get to that soon. Okay. So now the Talmud asks: Rabbi Zeira objected. You can see it, right? Still shared. Rabbi Zeira objected: what difference is there between another person loading him and Heaven loading him? He did not perform an uprooting. Right? Meaning, what does Rabbi Zeira say? In such a case there is no uprooting. But notice, when he tries to explain why there is no uprooting, he’s not talking about the question of uprooting one’s hand. Right? He’s not talking about the stage where the hand begins moving with the water inside it. That’s obvious, and clear in the Talmud, that this certainly is not uprooting, because uprooting one’s hand is not uprooting. But at first the Talmud thought that the first part was the uprooting. Meaning, the catching of the water in the hand before the movement begins—maybe that could count as uprooting. Because that uprooting one’s hand is not uprooting was clear to the Talmud. Okay? But the Talmud thought maybe catching the water in the hand would count as uprooting. Then Rabbi Zeira comes and says: what are you talking about? From the Mishnah we can prove that even such a thing is not called uprooting. Where do we see that in the Mishnah? When the poor person extends his hand into the private domain, and the homeowner puts the object in the poor person’s hand, and then the poor person takes the hand back to himself, into the public domain. Notice—in that case there is no uprooting. But there is no uprooting for both reasons; both components are not uprooting. The beginning of the hand’s movement is not uprooting because that is uprooting one’s hand. That’s clear. But also the reception of the object into the hand is not uprooting. Why? Because the homeowner did that, not the poor person. And since that is so, the reception of the object into the hand also is not uprooting. And now the Talmud says: so what difference is there between the homeowner putting the object in my hand and the heavens sending rain into my hand? And there is a difference.
[Speaker F] There is a difference. What? Because what the Holy One, blessed be He, did—you can’t say that two people did it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait. One second. You’re already offering a solution; first let’s understand the difficulty. The Talmud’s claim, basically—and notice, the Talmud itself is making the distinction here between the two components. That’s very important. The beginning of the hand’s movement is not uprooting because it’s uprooting one’s hand. That was clear to the Talmud from beginning to end. What the Talmud thought at first is that the catching of the water in the hand would count as—
[Speaker B] Uprooting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay? Now, as Chani I think noted earlier, if I place my hand on an object that’s resting on a table, by itself that obviously isn’t uprooting. You need the beginning of the hand’s movement. But the beginning of the hand’s movement is not, in itself, uprooting. Rather, the beginning of the hand’s movement, or taking the object from the table, is the uprooting. Meaning, in ordinary uprooting both components appear together. Catching the object in the hand and the beginning of movement by means of the hand together create uprooting. If one of them is missing, there is no uprooting. If the second is missing, the beginning of movement, and I merely place my hand on the object—that is not uprooting. If the object is in the hand and I begin moving the hand, meaning there is only the second component, movement of the hand—that too is not uprooting. For there to be uprooting, the object has to be placed in my hand and the hand has to begin to move, meaning the hand takes the object from another place and begins moving it toward the other domain. That is what is called uprooting.
[Speaker B] Can these two parts be split according to a time dimension? Meaning, I do the first part, some amount of time passes, and then I do the second part—is that still considered one action?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I don’t think that—that there’s a gap in time, because basically by definition, the moment you place the hand on the object, that still isn’t even called that you caught the object. Since the object is, after all, still resting on the table as well. You’ve just put your hand on it. That isn’t called that the object is in the hand.
[Speaker B] And if I did catch it into my hand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the normal case, in the normal case of uprooting, you need the beginning of movement also in order to define the placing of the object in the hand as a placement. Because without the start of movement, the first component also doesn’t really exist. Therefore in ordinary uprooting, although there are two components, they always happen together. Without a beginning of movement, the catching of the object in the hand also doesn’t count as catching. You’re merely placing your hand on the object, but it’s resting in the same place it was resting before, so that isn’t called uprooting. The moment the hand begins to move, that turns the catching of the object in the hand into something meaningful. Because now the object is no longer resting in the place where it was resting before, but only in the hand. And now this is the case where I caught it.
[Speaker B] And if I made a movement, caught the object, and left it in my hand—I didn’t do anything—and only later moved it? Is that still considered one action?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Of course. What do you mean, is it now one action? If in the end you place it down in the public domain, you committed a transgression. Yes. Obviously yes. Because after all, think about it: when you do the uprooting, obviously you can stop in the middle and then go out into the public domain; that doesn’t matter. In any case this is an action that takes time. This action doesn’t happen in a single instant. Okay. But still, as long as the hand hasn’t begun moving, the catching of the object in the hand also hasn’t happened. Meaning, it always happens together. Now there is room for an analytical question: is the beginning of movement really part of the components of uprooting, or is it merely a condition?
[Speaker B] Basically uprooting is the catching of the object—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the hand, except that if the hand doesn’t move, it isn’t called that the object was caught.
[Speaker B] Exactly—that’s my question. Are you judging it in light of its end? Like, in light of the end of the action?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the opposite—in light of the beginning. Meaning, its end proves its beginning. Exactly, yes. When I begin to move the hand, it becomes clear that from the outset, when I caught the object in the hand, that really was a catching. Exactly, yes. Now it may be that uprooting is only the catching. Meaning, the second component is required only so that the catching will be meaningful. Or maybe I really say that you need both things: catching the object and the beginning of movement. Here I’m leaving that open. But in any case it’s clear that in ordinary uprooting we have both components. Here, in this Talmudic passage, we see that each of the components by itself doesn’t help. Because the component of the beginning of movement—that’s uprooting one’s hand, which is the topic on page 3. The component of catching into the hand without movement—and notice, this time it really is catching into the hand, not in the sense of putting the hand on an object that is in any case resting in the private domain. Here it is a catching that you really can see as catching even without the hand moving. Do you understand why? When I place the hand on an object and the object is resting on the table, there the logic says that as long as the hand hasn’t begun to move, there was no catching either, because after all the object was on the table and is still on the table; I only put my hand on it. But in our case, the water isn’t resting somewhere—it’s coming down as rain. So when I put my hand under the rain and the hand fills with water, you can’t say there wasn’t catching here. There was catching. It’s not that the water was previously standing in the air and now remains in the air. Before it was in the air, and now it’s in my hand. The only problem is that I didn’t perform that catching. There was catching, but I didn’t do it. So who did it? The heavens, as it were—the forces of nature, gravity, whatever is bringing the rain down. And about that Rabbi Zeira says: how is this different from the case where the homeowner in the Mishnah did the catching? There too you can say there was catching, but the problem is that the poor person is not the one who did it. So you can’t say he is liable. Here too, there was catching, but the one who did it was the rain, not me. And therefore I can’t be held liable because I performed only the placement, not the uprooting. Now here there’s a subtle point. When the homeowner puts an object in the poor person’s hand, first of all there’s maybe the point Ruti made earlier. Ruti basically suggested: what kind of challenge is this? When the homeowner puts the object in my hand, there’s another person here who performed the uprooting. Here I’m using the laws of nature; there’s no other agent to whom you can attribute the uprooting. So the logic there might say that in this case it’s considered that I used gravity, but if you ask who did the uprooting in practice—the answer is: I did. There isn’t another person to whom you can attribute it, and therefore there would be room to say that maybe here there would be uprooting. The Talmud clearly thinks not. From the Talmud’s point of view, as long as I’m passive and something else or someone else performed this uprooting or this catching into my hand, that isn’t called that I performed uprooting. That’s one point. Second, here in our case there’s another, deeper problem. The issue is not only who did the catching, or whether I did the catching, but whether such a catching can really count as uprooting at all. If the homeowner took an object in the private domain and put it in the poor person’s hand, then the object had been resting—say, on a table—and the homeowner uprooted the object and put it in my hand. The object was certainly uprooted; there’s no question. It’s just that the homeowner did the uprooting and not the poor person. But there definitely was uprooting there, right?
[Speaker B] In our case there was uprooting too, but also both of them—it was done in the same domain. Meaning, if in my house I lift a cup from one table and put it on another table, that’s not uprooting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s permitted. It’s uprooting; it’s just permitted to uproot in the private domain and place in the private domain.
[Speaker H] Wait, but what you’re saying now basically undermines the whole Mishnah. Meaning, if there isn’t an uprooting and placement by two people, then there’s no carrying out at all here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, that’s exactly what the Mishnah says. If the homeowner put the object in the poor person’s hand, then indeed the Mishnah says he is exempt, because the homeowner did the uprooting and the poor person took it out and did the placement.
[Speaker H] They’re both exempt, yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m only arguing that in our case the problem is much deeper—what Ruti asked. In fact, in our case it could be that there would be more reason for liability than in the Mishnah, because here there is no other person to whom the uprooting can be assigned. It’s the rain, it’s the laws of nature. So here one might have thought that even though in the Mishnah this is considered one person uproots and the other places, and therefore he is exempt, in our case I would be both the one responsible for the uprooting and for the placement, because there’s no one else to whom to attribute it. It’s the rain; it’s not another person.
[Speaker B] So the idea is that it’s one person’s thought process and it doesn’t split into two.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And then what Ruti asked earlier—if so, what’s the question? Maybe in our case one is liable because here there is no other person to whom the uprooting can be attributed, and there’s no difficulty from the Mishnah where he is exempt because in the Mishnah there is another person. But you can see in the Talmud that this point doesn’t bother it; on the contrary, the Talmud assumes it’s the same thing. And why? Because the Talmud understands that if I was passive, regardless of whether there is another human factor to whom you can attribute the uprooting—if I was passive, passive uprooting is not uprooting. That answers Ruti’s problem, but I want—
[Speaker F] But it isn’t passive uprooting, because he stretched out his hand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no—you’re again talking about the Sefat Emet. The hand is resting there.
[Speaker F] But even before the Sefat Emet.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Later we’ll talk about the hand moving toward the rain. Right now I’m saying the hand is resting there and the rain is falling.
[Speaker E] Maybe first he moved the hand and only afterward it started to rain?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so that’s why I’m saying let’s talk for now about this case. The Sefat Emet really does make that point; we’ll get to it. But there’s another difficulty here, and it will accompany us all the way through. In the Mishnah’s case, the object is on a table—the homeowner definitely uprooted it, right? The homeowner who uprooted the object and put it in the poor person’s hand definitely performed an uprooting. It’s just that the homeowner did that uprooting and not the poor person, right? The poor person was passive. Okay? In our case, it could be that you can’t speak about uprooting at all—because where was the object resting before the uprooting? After all, we’re talking about rain that was falling. This wasn’t yet an object resting in the private domain, which the poor person now takes from the private domain and brings to himself. The object wasn’t resting at all. Is that called uprooting an object from the private domain? Who says so?
[Speaker F] Wait, wait, but we learned a passage where someone throws an object from the public domain to the public domain and it passes through the private domain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re talking about—
[Speaker F] “What is caught” as though—
[Speaker J] “It has come to rest.”
[Speaker B] “What is caught is as if it has come to rest.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] We’ll get to “what is caught is as if it has come to rest” in just a moment.
[Speaker J] I really didn’t understand how no one gets into this—at least in the sources I didn’t see it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait a second, I’ll explain in a moment. We’ll get to “what is caught is as if it has come to rest” very soon. Right now I just want to sharpen the difficulty, because it will stay with us later as well. There’s another difference here, and this time a more lenient difference, between our case and the case of the Mishnah. The difference Ruti suggested is a stricter difference, and I’m talking about a more lenient one. Because in the Mishnah there was certainly an uprooting—it’s just that the homeowner performed it, not me. I was passive. Okay? In our case in our Talmudic passage with the rain, it isn’t clear at all whether any uprooting occurred. After all, the water wasn’t resting in the private domain at all; it was moving toward the private domain. It hadn’t yet come to rest there. Uprooting means uprooting it—uprooting the object from the place where it is resting in the private domain. Here we are not dealing with an object that had been resting in the private domain.
[Speaker F] But the private domain extends upward.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It isn’t resting there.
[Speaker F] Because it’s in motion, or why?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, it’s in the air. Not only is it in motion—it’s in the air. Even if it were standing in the air. Isn’t air a place?
[Speaker F] Isn’t air a place?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Air, seemingly, is. That’s what I’m asking. We’ll see in a moment, but that’s what I’m asking. And then basically one could have asked even more strongly than the Talmud asks. It’s not just: what difference is there between the homeowner loading him and Heaven loading him? In the case where the homeowner loaded him, there was uprooting, except that the homeowner did it. In our case there may not have been uprooting at all. Because to uproot an object, the object has to be resting in the private domain and I uproot it from there. But here the object was moving toward the private domain; it hadn’t come to rest there yet. I grabbed it on the way.
[Speaker C] But doesn’t the private domain go up to the sky?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? The private domain goes up to the sky. The airspace is defined as the airspace of the private domain, but that doesn’t mean it is resting in the private domain.
[Speaker C] Maybe in the cloud it was resting, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker C] Maybe in the cloud it was resting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the cloud it was resting—what does that have to do with me? In the meantime it already came down.
[Speaker C] It’s in motion, meaning right now it isn’t at rest.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. And a cloud also—I don’t know—it might be a neutral zone. That would need discussion. But in any case, here I’m taking it from the cloud. I’m taking it from the time of its descent. What?
[Speaker F] There are high places where you walk inside the cloud.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, that’s not what’s being discussed here. Of course not. That’s unusual.
[Speaker F] It’s not unusual at all; it happens a lot.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s not unusual, but that’s not what’s being discussed here. What difference does it make? That’s not the case here. The Talmud doesn’t hint at that, and none of the commentators hint at that. We’re talking about rain falling from the sky.
[Speaker E] What’s the difference between this and throwing from the public domain to the public domain…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] You’re bringing us back to “what is caught is as if it has come to rest”; I’ll get to that in just a moment.
[Speaker E] When there is a public domain in the middle, he throws from one domain…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, that’s “caught as if it had come to rest”; we’ll get to that in a moment. So I’m saying that in principle there’s another difficulty in the background here too, and this time it actually makes our case more lenient compared to the Mishnah. Because in our case, one could say that the object was never at rest at all. And if so, there can’t even be something defined here as lifting up. The problem is not my passivity. Even if I had done it actively, it wouldn’t change anything. Because in the end, even if I took the object, before I took it the object was not at rest in the private domain, and therefore there is no lifting up here at all. So this raises another question: how can you compare this to the Mishnah, when of course here it goes in the lenient direction. Meaning, it only strengthens Rabbi Zeira’s question, unlike Ruti’s question before, where she challenged Rabbi Zeira’s difficulty. Here I’m strengthening it. Rabbi Zeira claims: even if you say this is a lifting up, what difference does it make? The lifting up was done by Heaven, just like by the homeowner. But beyond that I’m adding: in our case it could be that this isn’t a lifting up at all. Not only was he passive—even if he had been active, it wouldn’t matter, because the object was not at rest in the private domain, and so there is no lifting up here at all.
[Speaker I] Wait, but those are two different arguments, aren’t they?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, of course. On the contrary. I really do want to argue that although this strengthens Rabbi Zeira’s difficulty, the wording of Rabbi Zeira’s question shows that he didn’t address this point. Rabbi Zeira’s question says: what difference is there between “his fellow loaded him” and “Heaven loaded him”? Meaning, it sounds like he assumes that in both cases there is a lifting up, except that the lifting up was done by someone else and I was passive. That’s what’s bothering him. Otherwise he should have said something much stronger. There, his fellow loaded him; here even Heaven didn’t load him—there simply is no lifting up here. From the wording of Rabbi Zeira’s question it sounds like that point is דווקא not what troubles him. Now, one could say that Rabbi Zeira—in fact I want to insist on the possibility I mentioned earlier, and in a moment we’ll see why—and say that maybe what the Talmud means to ask is exactly what I said here: that in our case the rain was not at rest in the private domain at all, and therefore the taking of it by the poor person—by the… not the poor person, by the person standing outside—his taking the rain cannot be considered lifting up at all, not because Heaven did the lifting. But if so, then why do I need the Mishnah in order to ask this? I could have asked it without any connection to the Mishnah; it has nothing to do with the Mishnah. There simply is no lifting up here, not because someone else did the lifting. What I learn from the Mishnah is that even if the homeowner placed it in my hand and now I take my hand outside, there was room to say that the lifting of his hand—the beginning of the movement of the hand, that’s the distinction I made at the beginning of the class—the beginning of the hand’s movement would count as the lifting up. That is what they prove from the Mishnah. Meaning, we want to show from the Mishnah: what are you telling me? If the homeowner put the object in his hand and now he took the object and brought it out to himself—on that he is not liable. So I learn two things from here. First, that the homeowner’s lifting is the lifting of another person, and that is a case of “two people doing it”: this one lifts and that one sets down. Second, one might have said: fine, the homeowner lifted it, but after he lifted it he put it in my hand, and now my hand started moving with the object and took it outside. That movement should count as my lifting, and that already is my lifting.
[Speaker F] But we know that the result in the Mishnah is that he is exempt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? I didn’t understand.
[Speaker F] That’s what they prove from the Mishnah.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What they prove from the Mishnah is that you can’t say that the lifting of his hand counts as lifting up. And that is in fact what the Talmud on page 3 learns: that the lifting of his hand is not considered a lifting up.
[Speaker B] So you can understand from the continuation of the passage that they’re not talking at all about the lifting of his hand; they’re talking about how the water was at rest. Whether it’s on a slope, whether it’s in a vessel—in other words, clearly there’s some question here about the water itself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s clear that the lifting of his hand is not on the table here; the passage assumes that the lifting of his hand is not a lifting, because that’s the conclusion we reached on page 3. I’m only claiming that maybe Rabbi Zeira’s question comes to prove that very point. Rabbi Zeira comes to show how he proves it. He says like this: if the homeowner put it in the hand of the poor person, then of course the homeowner’s lifting will not make the poor person liable because it’s another person, but still, there is the beginning of the movement of the poor person’s hand. Why isn’t that considered lifting up? Ah—because the beginning of the movement of the hand is not considered lifting up. So too in our case. In our case too, Heaven loaded him—that’s one side of it. So who did the lifting? Heaven. On the other hand, what will you say? But the placing in the hand, then the beginning of the movement of the hand—maybe that should count as lifting up, and then it would be this person’s own lifting. That is what we prove from the Mishnah, that such a thing is not considered lifting up.
[Speaker B] So Rabbi Zeira’s novelty is that in order to count as lifting up, I need both parts, both components.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. Basically what Rabbi Zeira wants to say is that the lifting of his hand alone also cannot be considered lifting up. You need the lifting of his hand plus the catching in his hand. And what he… and this is a bit forced in his wording; it’s not the plain sense of Rabbi Zeira’s words. But I’m saying, if we insist, we can stay with it, and in a moment you’ll see why I’m insisting. But if we insist and want to say that basically in our case the problem is that there is no lifting, not because the person is passive, but because he didn’t lift it from any place at all, and because the rain was not at rest in the private domain—that’s the point. Then the question arises: so why does Rabbi Zeira compare it to the Mishnah? What I want to claim is that Rabbi Zeira compares it to the Mishnah not to show that this is the homeowner’s lifting and that is Heaven’s lifting. Rather, he comes to prove from the Mishnah that the movement of the hand by itself, if you were not the one who caught the object in your hand, is not considered lifting up. And so for our case as well—then what are we left with? The beginning of the movement of the hand is not lifting up because it is the lifting of his hand. And the catching of the object in the hand is not lifting up, not because it is done by Heaven, but because the hand did not take the water from a place where it had been at rest. It had not been at rest anywhere, so that cannot be considered lifting up. So what will you say? The movement of the hand should count as lifting up? No—that is the lifting of his hand. And then my claim is that maybe—and I’m saying this as a possibility; we’ll see in a moment—it isn’t the plain sense of Rabbi Zeira, but I’m insisting on keeping this possibility alive for now.
[Speaker J] Why? Why keep it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, wait—we’ll get there. Keep it for now, step by step. The claim is that maybe in our case the object isn’t considered at rest in the air at all, and therefore catching the object in the hand cannot be considered lifting up.
[Speaker F] So then what’s the meaning of the continuation: don’t say “received,” rather “caught”? I didn’t understand. What’s the meaning of the continuation, “don’t say received, rather caught,” if then he’s not passive?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait—and outside. Okay, we’ll get there in a moment. I want to go through the Talmud step by step. We’ll get there. All right?
[Speaker J] But if the case were different—suppose I was standing in the private domain with a cup, and the water was falling, and I would move, move with the cup outside, or stretch the cup outside, the cup outside.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s completely obvious that that’s lifting up; what do you mean?
[Speaker F] First of all, you lifted the cup, first of all. No—what are you talking about?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Leave the cup aside for a moment—even the lifting of the water. Why? Why not? The water was at rest in the private domain.
[Speaker J] No, no—with a cup, sorry, with my hand, with my hand, with my hand, but I was standing in the private domain, sorry, not with a cup, I just said that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Doesn’t matter, the hand is like your hand—what difference does it make?
[Speaker J] I’m standing with my hand in the private domain, catching water, right? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] From the rain or from the ground?
[Speaker J] From the rain, from the rain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, from the rain, okay.
[Speaker J] And now I take it outside. So according to Rabbi Zeira at the moment, is there only one part of his argument here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because that is lifting of his body.
[Speaker F] You’re going out—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] all together with your hand. If it were the lifting of his hand, it wouldn’t help. But when the hand and the body are together, that is lifting of his body.
[Speaker J] That’s only according to one opinion—according to Tosafot that’s not lifting up.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, wait, wait—again, you’re getting ahead of me. We’ll get there. All right? In the simple understanding, it’s lifting of his body and that certainly works; even according to Rashi, by the way, it certainly works.
[Speaker J] Even if I only take out my hand? What? Even if I only take out my hand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No—if you go with the body and the hand together.
[Speaker J] And if I only take out my hand? I was standing in the private domain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah—that may depend on Rashi and Tosafot.
[Speaker F] But that’s similar to the case…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If the hand and the body are in the same domain, according to Tosafot that is called his body, not his hand.
[Speaker J] Right.
[Speaker F] But Rabbi—
[Speaker J] No, but then I’d only have one part in Rabbi Zeira; I couldn’t say the two parts. I don’t understand why say that Rabbi Zeira is saying something additional. Why would he say it about the lifting of his hand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, but here in our case, the object is resting in my hand and the beginning of the movement of the hand is the lifting, so you don’t need the catching in the hand. Again, our whole discussion starts because the hand enters the private domain by itself. Right. And then what happens is that the beginning of the movement of the hand cannot be considered lifting up. So what is the lifting? The catching of the rain in the hand. And the Talmud asks: that too is not lifting up. But if I myself were standing in the private domain, and say I went with my hand into the public domain—would that be lifting up?
[Speaker F] Certainly his body.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait—in such a case, even if the rain was not at rest anywhere in the private domain, it was at rest in my hand, and when the hand and the body are together that is considered that the rain is at rest. And now when I begin to walk, that is considered the lifting of the rain.
[Speaker J] But no, on one of the first pages, “his fellow loaded him”—not in the hand, but like I put it on his bag or something.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s Tosafot’s question on Rashi. What? That’s Tosafot’s question on Rashi on page 3, before I referred you there. I’ll get to it in a moment. All right? In principle it’s clear that he is liable in such a situation. If his fellow loaded him, clearly he is liable, and even Rashi agrees he is liable. That’s Tosafot’s question on Rashi, but the Rosh resolves it; I referred you to the Rosh. So the claim basically says this: once the hand is alone in the private domain, then the movement of the hand by itself is certainly not lifting up, because that is the lifting of his hand. That is not the same thing as when the body is with the hand and the body begins to walk. That is lifting of his body, and that’s perfectly fine. In a situation where it is the lifting of his hand, then the lifting of his hand by itself is not lifting up. What will you say? Yes, but maybe the catching of the water in the hand—that’s the lifting? The Talmud says no, that too is not lifting up. Now we can understand why not. It could be understood in the simple way in the Talmud: simply because someone else did the lifting here—the rain, or the homeowner in the Mishnah. And I want to suggest another possibility here: that it’s not lifting up because it was never at rest. And for something to be considered lifting up, I need to take something that had been at rest and lift it. Okay, those are the two possibilities. Now, the Talmud on page 3 indeed says that lifting of his body is lifting, but lifting of his hand is not lifting. Why? Because his hand is stationary. Right? His hand is stationary and his body—no, sorry, his hand is not stationary. His hand is not stationary. On that Tosafot says: what is the reason his hand is not stationary? Let’s share this. What is the reason his hand is not stationary? The Ri prefers the alternate version that reads: “a hand, since it is dragged after the body, requires lifting; the body does not require lifting.” Which is exactly what I said before: if his body starts moving, it does not require a prior lifting. But if only the hand moves, then you need a prior lifting for it to count as lifting. The movement of the hand by itself is not lifting. And even according to the version that reads “his hand is not stationary,” the Ri explains that this is because it is dragged after the body. What does that mean? Why is the lifting of his hand not lifting? Because the hand is in a different domain from where the body is. Meaning, if the hand is in the same domain as the body, then yes, it would be lifting. Okay? Of course then you have to discuss whether it counts as setting down. Because if I’m standing in the private domain, holding it in my hand, taking the hand, stretching it out, and placing it outside—now the hand that puts it down outside is seemingly there without the body, and then perhaps there would be no setting down here, even though there was lifting up. But that’s not true, because regarding setting down it’s obvious that when the hand places it on a place, that certainly is setting down. The setting down is not the end of the movement of the hand. The setting down is the transfer of the object from the hand into the public domain. Therefore there Tosafot says that would certainly be fine. What is written here, that the hand is not at rest and therefore the lifting of his hand is not lifting, is because the hand is in a separate domain from the body. Now he brings—and if so, in our case of course this is simple, right? In our passage too it is the same thing: the hand is in a different domain from the body. Therefore here too the Talmud rightly assumes that the lifting of his hand is not lifting. That is according to Tosafot. What happens according to Rashi? “And Rashi explained”—I continue reading here—“his hand is not at rest on the ground.” His hand is not at rest means it is not resting on the ground. That implies even if he and his hand are in one place. Meaning, Rashi does not distinguish between a case where the hand is in a different domain from the body. Even when the hand is in the same domain as the body, still his hand is considered as not resting on the ground because it is suspended in the air. And then he says: this implies that even if he and his hand are in one place, and his fellow placed something into his hand, and he took it out, he is exempt.
[Speaker F] Because there still wasn’t setting down.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That’s what Noa asked earlier. According to Rashi, it comes out that if I am with my hand in the private domain and I collected water, or someone put something into my hand—it doesn’t matter—and now I, with my hand, yes, together, went to the public domain and placed it there, according to Rashi apparently I am still exempt, because even such a thing is called the lifting of his hand.
[Speaker F] This thing is called that there wasn’t setting down.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? There wasn’t lifting up.
[Speaker F] Why? If the object is still remaining in the hand, then he hasn’t completed the labor of transferring.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There wasn’t setting down? He did place it down—the object is not in his hand, the object was placed down.
[Speaker J] Wait, according to Rashi, even if I walked into the public domain—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But if he—
[Speaker J] just takes out the hand, according to Rashi that’s lifting of his hand, no?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That perhaps yes. I don’t know; it needs discussion. But then Tosafot says: “And this does not seem correct,” says Tosafot, “for in every case where his fellow loaded him, whether on his shoulder or on his hand, and he went out, he is liable. For it teaches: or if he took it from within it and brought it out, he is liable. Evidently placing an object in the homeowner’s hand—where he and his hand are in one domain—counts as setting down, from the fact that the poor person is liable when he lifts it from the homeowner’s hand.” He brings proofs from the Mishnah against Rashi. Now what happens according to Rashi? According to Rashi, there is also something essential about the hand. Not only that it is in a separate domain from the body, but the very fact that this thing is done by hand does not count as lifting. Setting down or lifting, whatever. Yes. Now what happens in our case? In our case, of course, this is much stronger. Because in our case the criterion of Tosafot also applies, since the hand is in a different place from the body. But according to Rashi, even without that, lifting of his hand is not lifting. Even if the body is in the same domain as the hand. Therefore according to Rashi our Talmudic passage also works out. According to Tosafot too, but according to Rashi even more so. In particular, look—I brought here the passage from the Rosh, who says as follows: “What is the reason? His hand is not at rest on the ground. Therefore its lifting is not considered the lifting of an object. And this is not similar to where his fellow loaded him on his shoulder or on his hand and he lifted his feet and went out, for there he is liable.” What is the Rosh saying? First of all, the Rosh follows Rashi and not Tosafot, right? Because he literally says “it is not at rest on the ground”—that is Rashi’s wording, not Tosafot’s wording. He does not require that the hand and the body be in separate domains. And nevertheless the Rosh says: but if you placed it on my shoulder or on my hand, and I walked from the private domain to the public domain, then even Rashi agrees that there was lifting up. Which Tosafot says not. Why? “Because there his body is at rest on the ground, and the lifting of his body is considered the lifting of the object.” The lifting of the object. What was lifted is his body. The fact that the object is in the hand is perfectly fine, but what was lifted is not only the hand but the body. So basically it comes out that the object was lifted together with the body. Even Rashi agrees that this is called lifting up, even if the object was resting in the hand. “But if he did not lift his body and remained standing in his place, and stretched his hand outside, he is exempt, because the lifting of the hand is not considered the lifting of the object.” Meaning, if I stand in the private domain and hold the object in my hand, and now I take my hand and stretch it into the public domain but remain standing in the private domain—about that Rashi says this is not called lifting; it is called the lifting of his hand. Tosafot says that such a thing is called lifting of his body, because the hand and the object are both in one place. Rashi says no, that is called the lifting of his hand. But if the body and the hand go together to the public domain, then even Rashi agrees that this is called lifting; that is obvious. Now notice, this is an interesting point.
[Speaker E] Can we stop for a moment? I’m sorry, I lost it. I couldn’t understand the difference between Tosafot and Rashi; I couldn’t understand the passage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Let’s go back. According to Tosafot, the lifting of his hand is not lifting only where the hand is in a different domain from the body. Tosafot says according to…
[Speaker E] An example from the Mishnah?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Like in our case: someone stretched his hand out, received rainwater, and brought it outside, or the homeowner put it into his hand and he brought the object outside.
[Speaker E] So according to Tosafot that is not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] called the lifting of his hand. And according to Rashi? Now Rashi says that the lifting of his hand is not called lifting because his hand is not at rest on the ground, not because his hand is resting on the body.
[Speaker E] Now regarding Tosafot, what is the situation where the hand and the body are in the same place, where it is considered lifting? I didn’t understand why that is lifting, I didn’t understand. A person stands, takes an object in the same domain where he is standing—where is the lifting here? No, he transfers—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to the public domain. He lifts his body. What he did in the private domain is considered lifting up. What is the implication? That if he then sets it down in the public domain, he has violated a prohibition. The lifting by itself is certainly not prohibited.
[Speaker E] So if the actual lifting from the ground he does when his hand and body are in the same place, then it is called lifting, and if his hand and body are not in the same place when the act of picking up from the ground is done, then that—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is called the lifting of his hand.
[Speaker E] And why do I need all this?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] In the background of our passage there is always the question of the lifting of his hand. After all, the hand with the water starts to move toward the public domain—that is the lifting of his hand. So according to Tosafot such a thing truly is not lifting, just as our Talmudic passage indeed rightly assumes. According to Rashi it counts even less as lifting, because according to Rashi the lifting of his hand is not lifting even when the hand and body are in the same place, and certainly if they are in different places.
[Speaker E] And what is the Rosh adding here?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Rosh argues that Tosafot challenged Rashi: what would happen according to Rashi if the body and hand are in the same place and he begins to walk to the public domain and places it there? According to Rashi, apparently it should come out that he is exempt because there was no lifting up. True, the hand and body were in the same place, but according to Rashi even if the hand and body are in the same place, if the lifting is done by the hand it is not lifting. The Rosh says no, that’s not right—you didn’t understand Rashi correctly.
[Speaker E] But that totally contradicts the plain sense of the Talmud. The Talmud says that if he lifts his body, someone loads something onto his body—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s when it is loaded onto his body, but not when it is in his hand.
[Speaker J] He moves only the hand, not that he walks there.
[Speaker E] But we’re talking about a case where he does pass over, he walks—they put something in his hand or on his shoulder, doesn’t matter—and now he crosses with his body from one domain to another.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s obvious that if he walks with the body and the hand together into the other domain, says the Rosh, according to all opinions that is lifting, even Rashi agrees.
[Speaker E] That’s not a novelty; that’s also from the Talmud.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s on his shoulder in the Talmud; the Rosh just says what difference does it make whether it’s his shoulder or his hand. But what the Rosh claims is: where did Rashi say that the lifting of his hand is lifting even when the hand and body are in the same place? When the hand and body are in the same place in the private domain, and now I lifted with the hand and moved only the hand into the public domain, without the body. According to Tosafot, in such a case he would be liable. Why? Because according to Tosafot, lifting of his hand is only when the hand is in a different place from the body, but here that does not apply. The hand is in the same place as the body, so that is lifting. According to Rashi, since this is only the lifting of his hand, I don’t care that the body is with the hand—it is not lifting. Only if he lifts the body together with the hand is it considered lifting; but if he lifts only the hand, then even when the body and hand are in the same place, according to Rashi it is not lifting. But for our purposes it makes no difference. Because in our case, in any event, we are dealing with a situation where the hand is not in the same place as the body, so Tosafot’s criterion certainly applies—but Rashi’s criterion also applies. Because the only thing moving from the private domain to the public domain is the hand. The body remains in the public domain the whole time. So according to both Rashi and Tosafot, what we have here really is only the lifting of his hand. And therefore the beginning of the movement of the hand is certainly not lifting. The only question is whether the catching of the water in the hand is lifting or not lifting. All right? Yes. Now the Sefat Emet asks as follows. “Rabbi Zeira challenged: what difference is there if Heaven loaded him? Seemingly difficult. For since he inserted his hand in order to receive, it is as though he lifted it from its place. Since from the side of the throwing from Heaven it would have descended to the ground, and he advanced his hand to receive it before it descended to the ground, it is like one who moved from his place and received.” And of course he is referring to the previous passage about two forces in one person. There we saw that when one person throws from the public domain, and the other person who receives the object stands in place and receives the object, then the thrower is liable. Because that is no different from a case where I threw and it landed on the ground. It didn’t land on the ground, it landed on a person. But practically speaking, the thrower did both actions, both the lifting and the setting down. But if the receiving person moved from his place, went toward the object, and caught it in his hand, then in that case the thrower is exempt—or at least it is a doubt—
[Speaker F] in the Talmud, but there is a possibility that the thrower is exempt.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And the receiver as well?
[Speaker F] And the receiver as well. What? And the receiver as well?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Certainly exempt, because he did not do a lifting up. The novelty is that the thrower is exempt. Why? Because the receiving here was done by the receiver, not by the thrower.
[Speaker F] In an active way, in an active way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. Once you go toward the object, even though it was thrown to you, once you go toward the object, that is considered your act of receiving. The Sefat Emet says: if so, then let’s think about our case in the passage. The person stretched his hand into the private domain and caught water from the rain descending there. That is exactly parallel to one who moved and received. He basically went toward the rain that was about to fall to the ground, advanced toward the rain, and caught the rain. So who did the lifting here? The rain? No—the rain didn’t do the lifting; the person did the lifting. Because after all, there was an active act by the person, right? So why is he exempt? Why does Rabbi Zeira ask that he should be exempt? It isn’t similar at all to what appears in the Mishnah. What appears in the Mishnah is that the homeowner put it into the hand of the poor person. Right. But here the poor person stretches out his hand toward the rain, and the rain is thrown into the hand. So in our case the poor person did do a lifting. I’m calling him the poor person because that’s the one standing in the public domain; it’s not important right now. So the poor person did do a lifting. So it isn’t similar to the Mishnah; in our case he should have been liable. That is the Sefat Emet’s question.
[Speaker F] But Rabbi Yoḥanan says liable. What? Rabbi Yoḥanan said liable. And if he received water into his hand?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rabbi Zeira asks on that. Rabbi Zeira asks against him: surely he should be exempt, like in the Mishnah. On that the Sefat Emet asks: why should he be exempt? What do you mean? He should be liable.
[Speaker F] But the Sefat Emet says it is like one who moved and received—not only received, but moved and received. Right.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore that counts as lifting up. “Moved from his place,” not in the sense that he lifted an object, but the person moved from his place and then received the water in his hand. So that means that this counts as lifting up.
[Speaker E] But from the previous passage it doesn’t say that he is liable.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why not? Of course it does. One who moved and received—
[Speaker E] Is he liable? The one who moved and received is the one who is liable? No. It says that the one who throws is exempt. It doesn’t say that the second one is liable. It could be that in such an action—after all, we said two forces in one person—you need both the throwing and the receiving, and if the two actions aren’t both present, then both of them are exempt if each one does only part of the force.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Obviously both of them are exempt. What do you mean, obviously? Obviously both are exempt. What the Sefat Emet proves from that passage is that if I throw an object and it lands on the ground, I am liable, right? Why am I liable? Because I did the lifting and the setting down.
[Speaker B] Wait, wait. In two forces in one person—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, just a second. Let me explain. Because I did the lifting and I did the setting down. The setting down was done by my force. What happens if I threw it and it landed in a person’s hand? I’m also liable. Who did the setting down? I, the thrower. Not him. He was passive. Now, if he advanced toward the object and caught it, then I did the lifting but he did the setting down, and therefore both of us are exempt. But both of us are exempt because I did the lifting and he did the setting down. What the Sefat Emet says is that in the case of rain, the very same principle should lead us to make the poor person liable. Why? Because the poor person here did both the lifting and the setting down. How do I know he did the lifting? Because he put his hand toward the rain, and we learned in the previous passage that the one who acts actively is the one considered to have performed the act. In our case that’s the lifting; in the previous passage it was the setting down. Okay? So if he did the lifting and he did the setting down, he should be liable. Why does Rabbi Zeira say he should be exempt? That is the Sefat Emet’s question. All right?
[Speaker F] So according to—so according to that—the rain is considered at rest. What? If he’s talking here about lifting according to the Sefat Emet, then the rain is considered at rest.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’ll formulate it differently. Good point; that’s why I gave that introduction earlier. I’ll formulate it a bit differently. Obviously, according to the explanation I presented earlier, the Sefat Emet’s question doesn’t get off the ground. Because I argued that the person—the poor person who stretched out his hand there—why is that not lifting? Not because he was passive. The Sefat Emet solves that problem, because here he isn’t passive—his hand moved toward the rain. So why isn’t that considered lifting? What is he assuming? That the reason there is no lifting is because of the passivity of the poor person. But if I’m right in what I said earlier, that the problem is that there is no lifting because the rain is not considered at rest in the private domain, then why should I care whether the poor person was active? Let him be active—but the object is not at rest in the private domain. So even if you lift it actively from there, that still is not considered lifting. Are you with me?
[Speaker J] Yes. In this part of the Talmud they still aren’t talking about whether it’s resting on a four-by-four area.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] They haven’t gotten to that yet. Right.
[Speaker J] So the Sefat Emet’s question is still on this part.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I’m already talking about this part. Already in this part I assume that this is not lifting; that’s what I suggested earlier. That this thing is not lifting because the water is not at rest, not because I’m passive. And then I say: according to that, the Sefat Emet’s question doesn’t begin.
[Speaker J] But the Talmud itself also doesn’t begin asking this issue now. I didn’t understand. The Talmud itself also answers only the question of passivity and not the question whether this—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Why? Why are you saying it asks the question of passivity?
[Speaker J] Maybe because it assumes “caught is as if at rest.”
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah! How do you know it’s asking the question of passivity?
[Speaker J] Ah—why am I saying that? Because Rabbi Zeira asks it that way.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I said before—not necessarily. The plain sense of Rabbi Zeira’s wording is indeed that he’s talking about passivity: what difference is there between his fellow loading him and Heaven loading him? His fellow—what difference is there from Heaven loading him? But I said that, with some forcing, if I insist on sticking with this, then one can say that the question is not passivity, but rather: whether Heaven loaded him or his fellow loaded him, the beginning of the movement of the hand is the lifting of his hand, and that won’t help. Why is the actual catching in the hand not lifting? Simply because it was not at rest. That is not what Rabbi Zeira came to explain; that’s what I explained above. Therefore I’m saying that from the wording of Rabbi Zeira’s difficulty it is not necessarily forced against what I said. I agree that the plain sense of his wording is not like that, but it is not necessary. One can still explain what I said. The gain in the explanation I gave is that the Sefat Emet’s question does not arise.
[Speaker E] I still didn’t understand. In the previous passage, the one who moved from his place and received—it doesn’t say that he is liable. Meaning, it’s not certain that he did a complete lifting. And similarly here, the one who stretches out his hand and receives water—who says he did a lifting?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He did a lifting—not that he didn’t do a lifting; he didn’t do a setting down. The one who threw the object, and the receiver moved from his place—himself, not the object—and received the object, then there was no setting down here; it’s not that there was no lifting.
[Speaker F] The thrower did—it wasn’t set down by the thrower.
[Speaker E] Ah, there was no setting down, so he didn’t really do both. Okay, he did only lifting and he didn’t do setting down.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And who did the setting down? The receiver.
[Speaker F] Ah—and the receiver did do setting down.
[Speaker E] Exactly.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The receiver did the setting down because he was active.
[Speaker E] I understand. But in our case with the rain, when the receiver receives the rain we’re talking about the fact that the receiver lifts the rain, not that he sets down the rain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But that he sets down the rain is obvious. The whole discussion is whether there was lifting here. The Sefat Emet says: according to the previous passage, it follows that there was lifting here too, so why shouldn’t he be liable? All right?
[Speaker F] From where is he lifting it? If there is a receiver here, from where is he lifting it? Is he lifting it from Heaven? Is he lifting it from the ground, so that the ground won’t receive it?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] As I said earlier, according to what I’m suggesting in the passage, the Sefat Emet’s question does not arise.
[Speaker F] Why? But I’m asking a different question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, it’s the same question. Because according to what I’m saying, the problem is: from where did he lift it? After all, the water was not at rest in the private domain, so he didn’t lift it from any place. The problem is not passivity; the problem is that if the water is not at rest in the private domain, then whatever you do to it—even if you lift it actively—if you do something active, it is still not lifting. Because to lift, you have to lift something that was resting in a domain.
[Speaker F] No, but I’m talking about if it is considered lifting. I’m asking: according to those who say he lifts it, from where does he lift it? Does he lift it from Heaven? Or lift it from the earth, so it won’t land on the earth?
[Speaker B] From the air, he—
[Speaker F] lifts from the air.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean? Exactly—that’s precisely what I’m saying. You’re not asking something different; you’re coming back to what I’m saying. What I’m claiming is that the reason there is no lifting here is because the water is not resting on the private domain; it’s in the air. Therefore even if I’m active here, as the Sefat Emet says, it changes nothing. The problem is not his passivity. The problem is that the water is not at rest at all. Yes, there is nowhere from which to lift. So what difference does it make whether I was passive or active? The Sefat Emet of course assumes otherwise, because in the simple plain meaning of the passage he is right—the simple plain meaning of the passage is that there is a comparison to the Mishnah, and comparison to the Mishnah only says that I was passive and someone else did the action. But in light of what I explained earlier—that I think you can also fit this into Rabbi Zeira, even though it is not the plain meaning of his wording—the gain is that the Sefat Emet’s question does not arise. And then when the Sefat Emet answers—by the way, one could answer the question in another way too.
[Speaker J] By the way, in principle, if I’m standing—even in the same domain—and someone else throws me an object, and I just receive it, do an action, move from my place to receive and move—is that really considered according to the Sefat Emet as though I lifted? Isn’t that “his fellow loaded him”? No, you only received; you moved yourself in order to receive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, no—clearly, you’re right.
[Speaker J] I was in the same domain, yes, that’s right. But is that really also the Jewish law?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you mean, “the Jewish law”? That’s what he claims. He claims that this is exactly what is written here too in the case of two forces in one person. Now, one could make other distinctions as well, even without what I said earlier, in order to resolve the Sefat Emet’s difficulty. After all, in the end I’m not moving toward the rain; the rain is basically there. True, this particular drop that I caught moved, but if I look at the rain as one unit, there is a state of rain there. Now I place my hand there and the rain falls into my hand. Is that called that I moved toward the rain? Not necessarily. That is not the same thing as throwing an object. Just look at it from a simple human perspective, not formally. From the simple human perspective, when someone throws me a ball and I move toward the ball in order to catch it, then I performed an act of receiving. But when I put my hand there and rain comes down into it, the fact that I made a movement of the hand is not called movement toward the rain. Now my hand is standing still and the rain is descending into it.
[Speaker F] No, if you intended to catch the rain then yes, it is called that, but if you just intended to stretch out your hand to do something else, then it’s not called that.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, even if I intended it in order to catch the rain. Why not? Because I didn’t have in mind some specific raindrop that someone threw to me and I sent my hand to catch it. I put my hand there because there is rain there.
[Speaker E] So according to that, I shouldn’t be allowed to walk in the rain at all, because if I walk in the rain and drops fall on my body and I pass with my body into another domain, have I done lifting and setting down?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Except that here you have unintentional involvement and lack of intent, and yes—but these things are not prohibited because of the ordinary rules of Sabbath law.
[Speaker E] So the conclusion from here is that when the rain falls onto my hand—if my hand had already been there and the rain fell on it, or even if I moved my hand and water landed on it—I… that’s not called that I did any lifting at all. Otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to walk in the rain at all, if I know מראש that this is what happens, that heavy rain is falling.
[Speaker H] That’s what I want to argue.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn’t understand—you’re coming back to what I’m saying.
[Speaker J] Right, but according to the reasoning of Maimonides that we mentioned, then the question is not whether I did an action but whether what the one who threw intended reached the place he intended. And I basically changed the original place. So here it does begin.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Here it doesn’t begin at all. Why not? Because here no one intended anything. The rain falls—
[Speaker J] Why not? The water had some sort of movement and it was supposed—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] to reach some place, and I basically… But there’s no intention here. No one intended anything there, so what if it had movement?
[Speaker J] No, there’s no intention, obviously, yes, but the question is whether—
[Speaker H] the water has movement—
[Speaker J] at all, and the question is whether this is lifting. I mean, I can’t—this is exactly what Ruti—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] said: according to Maimonides, this whole story doesn’t even get off the ground here, according to Maimonides’ simple wording.
[Speaker J] But then we go back entirely to Ruti, because there’s no intention here at all, and there isn’t another person, and I did the whole action. But here, if the Sefat Emet compares it to the course of movement, then I actually can say it. Meaning, there was a certain course of movement and I did the…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I… clearly that's what the Sefat Emet assumes. I'm only trying to reconcile his difficulty and reject what he says. What I'm trying to argue is that I can reject his difficulty in one of two ways. Either to assume that the whole problem with lifting here is that the rain isn't resting anywhere at all, and then it doesn't matter whether I'm passive or active, and the whole discussion never gets off the ground. A second possibility. What I'm trying to argue is that I can reject his difficulty in one of two ways. Either to assume that the whole problem with lifting here is that the rain isn't resting anywhere at all, and then it doesn't matter whether I'm passive or active, and the whole discussion never gets off the ground. The second possibility is that there's a difference between rain and an object that I throw into the public domain. With rain, it's not called that I'm moving toward those raindrops in order to receive them. I put my hand there because that's where the rain is, but it's not as if someone threw some raindrop at me and I caught it. That's not, that's not how it works. Therefore here there would be exemption in any case, even if I move. So that resolves the Sefat Emet's difficulty even without resorting to the interpretation I suggested above.
[Speaker J] But why didn't they say explicitly that the rain isn't at rest? Isn't that some kind of clear proof that something caught is not considered as though it had been placed in the air?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I didn't understand.
[Speaker J] Meaning, why, if we're going in this direction, would Rabbi Zeira—according to what we said earlier, that he's really coming to say two things, not just the passivity—why does he say it this way, in a roundabout way? Why doesn't he say: I need it to be resting in the domain, and I need to lift it from a resting place? So that's what I explained above.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I explained it before. I said that in Rabbi Zeira's wording, the straightforward reading is indeed like the Sefat Emet, not like me. But Rabbi Zeira can also be explained according to what I'm saying. What?
[Speaker J] But why doesn't he say it explicitly if that's the main problem?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Wait, one second, I'm explaining. Since Rabbi Zeira comes to show, comes to rule out another possibility. The fact that it's not resting is obvious. That's obvious to him; that he doesn't need to explain. It's not resting, it's in the air—what is there to discuss? Rabbi Zeira is only saying yes, but one might have thought that after it's already in my hand, and now I begin moving my hand toward the public domain, that would be the lifting. Now that it's resting in my hand, that's the stage where it's resting in the private domain, not in the air. And now when the hand begins to move, that's considered lifting. Rabbi Zeira says: from the Mishnah you can see that this is not correct, because in the case of the homeowner who places it in my hand and I move the hand, that's not called lifting. Why? After all, when it's resting in my hand and the hand begins to move, seemingly that should have been considered lifting. Rabbi Zeira is only coming to rule out the possibility that the movement of the hand would be a substitute kind of lifting. But it was obvious to him from the outset—and he didn't address this at all—that receiving the object in the hand is not lifting. That's obvious, because the object was never resting in the private domain at all. That's what I explained above. Okay? Now of course this is where the question comes in of "something caught is considered as though it had been placed." Because really, in the background, the Sefat Emet seemingly is right. Why? Because even if the rain is resting in the air—not resting, but falling through the air toward the ground—I can still view it as resting in the private domain by the rule that something caught is considered as though it had been placed. So the Sefat Emet is right that there is no problem here that the rain isn't resting. The whole question is only passivity versus activity. Why don't I think that's necessary? Because if you remember, the rule that something caught is considered as though it had been placed is a dispute between Rabbi Akiva and the Rabbis, and in fact it's a Mishnah on page 96, chapter 11. And in Jewish law we rule like the Rabbis. I already noted this—how can they explain the Mishnah according to Rabbi Akiva's opinion when Rabbi Akiva is not actually ruled in accordance with in Jewish law? Meaning, that something caught is considered as though it had been placed is a principle not accepted in Jewish law. And Maimonides rules—and not only Maimonides, everyone does, the Shulchan Arukh as well—that one who throws from a private domain to a private domain through the public domain is exempt. Why? After all, if it passes through the air of the public domain, then it should be considered as resting in the public domain, and then it would come out that he should be liable twice. You took it out from the private domain to the public domain and then brought it in from the public domain to another private domain. Why is he exempt? Because the object is not considered as resting in the public domain, because we rule like the Rabbis and not like Rabbi Akiva. So seemingly I am certainly right that the rain is resting—well, not resting here in the air, it isn't resting anywhere. And then I say: it's not just one possible way to say what I'm saying; we are forced to say what I'm saying. Because you can't say that the object—the rain—is resting here in the private domain. So why can the Sefat Emet nevertheless still be said? Because think what happens when I throw from a private domain to a private domain through the public domain—why is something caught there not considered as though it had been placed? Because at no stage will the object come to rest in the public domain; in the end it will come to rest in the second private domain. So in that situation the Rabbis say—and that's how Jewish law rules—I do not view the object as resting in the public domain. But if I throw the object from above downward into the public domain, okay? Let's say I throw the object from a private domain into the public domain and it will land in the public domain, not in another private domain. When it's in the air of the public domain, maybe I can say that it is considered as though it had been placed? Because after all, in one more moment it will actually come to rest on the public domain itself. So I say: once it enters the airspace of the public domain, I view it as though it is already resting in the public domain. That might perhaps be agreed to even by the Rabbis against Rabbi Akiva. Everything the Rabbis disagree about is when the object is caught in the public domain, but it is not destined to rest in the public domain. It is destined to rest in another private domain. There the Rabbis say: we don't agree with you, Rabbi Akiva. The object is not considered as resting in the public domain. But in a place where the object is going to rest in the public domain itself, there it may be that already while it's in the air of the public domain, I see it as caught there.
[Speaker D] And if so, that's a possibility.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If so, then you can say what the Sefat Emet says: that when the water is in the air of the private domain, it is considered as resting in the private domain, because after all in another moment it is going to land in that very private domain; it's not passing to another domain. So there we say that something caught is considered as though it had been placed, even in Jewish law. Let me bring you a proof. Do you remember the Be'er Heitev that I brought in the class about "something caught is considered as though it had been placed"? A strange Be'er Heitev that says that if someone put on tefillin—remember? Someone is holding the tefillin over his head and is about to place them on his head. And as though he had placed them on his head, he started talking. Does that speech count as an interruption between the blessing and putting on the tefillin? The Be'er Heitev says: if we say that something caught is considered as though it had been placed, then already when it is in the air it's as if it is placed on the head, and therefore when you speak there it's not an interruption. Because you spoke after it had already been placed on the head; you did not interrupt between the blessing and the placing. Now what kind of thing is that? After all, in Jewish law we rule that something caught is not considered as though it had been placed.
[Speaker F] But that's from above downward.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] According to what I'm saying now, we can understand what the Be'er Heitev says. Because "something caught is not considered as though it had been placed" is in a case where the object passes over the public domain but in the end lands in another private domain.
[Speaker H] There—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There the Rabbis say: I don't view it as resting in the public domain; it's only passing through. But an object that is destined to rest in the public domain, then already while it is in the air on the way to the ground, it may be that there even the Rabbis agree that it is considered as resting on the ground. That can explain the Be'er Heitev—there are other difficulties with it—but this aspect of "something caught is considered as though it had been placed" may be a good explanation. And if so, it can also explain the Sefat Emet in our case. Because the Sefat Emet here assumes there is no problem that the object isn't resting in the air. The whole problem is only that I was passive, and therefore he asks: one moment, but here I wasn't passive, I was active. But according to my approach, if the object isn't resting in the private domain at all, what difference does it make whether I was active or passive? It's not lifting because you didn't lift it from anywhere. So what difference does it make whether you're active or passive? Okay? So I'm saying: maybe the Sefat Emet says that here there is "something caught is considered as though it had been placed" even according to the Rabbis, because after all the object is going to land in the private domain, the rain is coming down from above to below. In that situation maybe even the Rabbis agree that something caught is considered as though it had been placed. So that can be said within the Sefat Emet's approach. What does the Gemara answer? Don't say "received," rather "intercepted." What does that mean?
[Speaker F] That he was active.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rashi explains that with one hand he struck the water and diverted it toward the other hand. By the way, which hand is the hand that does the lifting? Interesting question. The right hand. The one that strikes. The hand—
[Speaker F] that splashes—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] into the other hand.
[Speaker F] The hand that struck.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, seemingly it's the hand that struck. Why?
[Speaker F] Because the water passed from one hand to the other, so therefore that's lifting.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Because the receiving hand is passive, right? It's like we explained before. So the striking hand is apparently the hand that does the lifting.
[Speaker F] And only if the hand was lying flat, but if it was from the wall then I understood.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That's also passive and active.
[Speaker B] Don't jump, don't—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] don't jump, we haven't gotten to that yet. One second.
[Speaker B] If we're going according to the attempt to explain the Sefat Emet, the direct direction of the drop is straight, and the hand that moves diverts it from its path.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. And then basically I am active, and once I'm active then I—I am the one who lifted it.
[Speaker F] But it's not only that you're active, but that there's a first hand that receives it, and from there it is lifted to the second hand. No—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn't understand.
[Speaker F] The fact that one hand strikes and it ends up in the other hand causes it to be as though there was receiving in the first hand, and from there it was lifted to the second hand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That's an interesting question, I'm not sure. According to the Sefat Emet, I think you don't need to get there.
[Speaker J] According to the Sefat—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Emet, all you need to show is basically that there was active lifting here, and there was—there is one hand that moved and lifted. According to what I said before, after all I asked what the analogy is to this case, because in the end it wasn't lifted from the private domain; the problem is not activity and passivity.
[Speaker F] So what, what—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] whether the hand struck or didn't strike, what difference does it make. It's interesting.
[Speaker F] And it was resting on the striking hand, and now it passes to…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That's where I'm heading, you're right. Wait, how to explain this. So seemingly according to what I'm saying there is no room for this answer to help. The hand struck, fine, the hand struck—but then that hand lifted it. But I ask: from where did it lift it? After all, the water wasn't resting on the private domain according to my approach—not like the Sefat Emet—that the water is not considered as resting in the private domain, because we do not say that something caught is considered as though it had been placed. So what does it help that the hand struck and you were active? So what if you were active? You were active, but it's not resting. There is no choice for that approach—if I want to insist, keep insisting on it—there is no choice but to say that when that hand struck, in fact that hand caught the water, and now the water is resting in the striking hand. And now I lift the water, and I basically place it in this hand and take it out.
[Speaker F] So that shows that Rashi agrees with your approach. No.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That the water isn't resting.
[Speaker F] No, why? Who says? Once they aren't resting—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Who says?
[Speaker F] That's why he needs the two hands. What? That's why he needs the two hands, so that in one hand it will be resting, and then it will be lifted to the second hand.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Even according to the Sefat Emet you need the two hands. No, that's true in any case. On the contrary, Rashi's words, in their plain sense, are like the Sefat Emet, not like me. Because what Rashi says is that if we solve the problem of activity, we've solved the problem. And I ask: according to my approach, even if you solve the problem of activity, you still haven't solved the problem, because after all the water is not resting. I only want to answer, like what you said before, Ruti—you can reconcile my approach with Rashi; not that Rashi must fit my approach, but you can reconcile it by saying that the water is resting in the striking hand. Fine, I simply gather the water with the striking hand so that it's resting here, and then I throw it to the second hand.
[Speaker J] And that also fits with the continuation of the Gemara.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And then it can fit even with my approach—not that it is required according to my approach. According to the Sefat Emet it is certainly fine. Okay, by the way, what does the Sefat Emet answer? I didn't read what the Sefat Emet answers to his own difficulty. He says: why does Rabbi Zeira say he's exempt? After all, he was active. So look what he writes. Is the screen shared properly? I—it's not shared? No. No. Here. So what does he answer? "And it appears that he holds that although he displaced it from its place and received it, the thrower is exempt, nevertheless regarding the receiver too it is not considered lifting, and it is like two people who performed this placing, since the act of placing itself was done by the force of the thrower, except that the receiver altered its placing from how it had been destined to come to rest." That's a huge novelty, what he says. It doesn't sound that way, neither in the medieval authorities (Rishonim) nor in the later authorities (Acharonim), in the topic of two forces in one person. What he's basically claiming is that in the topic of two forces in one person, when someone moves toward the object and receives it, that doesn't mean that the receiver performed the placing. The placing was done by both of them together. Meaning, even if you're active, it's not considered that you did the placing. It just isn't considered that the thrower did the placing alone. The thrower and the receiver together did the placing—two people who performed it. And really yes—but notice, "two people who performed it" is written there in the Gemara. It's just that his novelty is that the "two people who performed it" there in the Gemara does not mean that one lifted and the other placed.
[Speaker J] It's only about the placing, though.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Rather, one lifted and both together did the placing. And then he claims that in our case, if so, there still isn't complete lifting here, even if you did it.
[Speaker F] Meaning there is no complete labor of transferring.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Exactly. And therefore the Gemara's answer—that he struck with one hand for the sake of the other hand—that really is an answer. Because here he does the lifting alone. Therefore here it really is considered lifted. Okay? That's what the Sefat Emet says. But again I'll note about the Sefat Emet: this too is somewhat forced in his wording or in his approach. Because according to his approach, it comes out that the rule of two forces in one person—what is written there, "two people who performed it"—doesn't mean this one lifts and that one places, but rather that the two together did the placing. And from the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim) there, it simply doesn't look that way. Therefore I bring this as an additional advantage of my approach, because according to my approach you don't have to explain the previous passage that way. There is no difficulty at all from the previous passage to our passage, and therefore you also don't need to explain that passage differently.
[Speaker F] Or he holds that two forces in one person are considered like one person. What did I understand? It's not like two people who performed it, but rather two forces in one person are considered as one person, and therefore he would obligate.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] He's on the side that would obligate; I'm talking about the side that does not obligate. Yes, yes. Okay, so that's the Gemara. Now the Gemara says: but don't we require lifting from a place of four by four handbreadths, and there isn't any?
[Speaker F] But the hand—we said that it is considered as four by four. If here we're talking about two hands, then this is four by four.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So what are you saying?
[Speaker F] So there is four by four here.
[Speaker J] But isn't that only for placing, though?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What do you say about what Ruti… We said this when we talked about four by—
[Speaker J] four—that that's only for placing. Why? Because only there is the place important by means of my hand and not a place of four by four; in lifting, the fact that I am lifting shows that I don't want it there.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Look, the place from which I lift—after all, the place from which I lift is not the hand. The hand is what does the lifting. The place from which I lift is the air. The air is not a place of four by four.
[Speaker J] No, but if you look at your approach—
[Speaker F] yours, wait—
[Speaker J] wait, one at a time.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If you look at your approach—
[Speaker J] then in the answer of "received" and "intercepted" and lifted, the lifting is done from the hand; the water rested on this hand and moved to this hand, so the question of "there is no four by four" is about this hand, and then that really is a question.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That's the next sentence. According to the Sefat Emet, or according to the simple reading of the Gemara, then the place from which the thing was lifted is the air. But the striking hand solves the problem of activity, as the Sefat Emet says, like the plain meaning of Rashi. Then the Gemara rightly asks: after all, you need a place of lifting of four by four. Not that the thing causing the lifting has to be four by four—that's the hand. Rather, the place where it is resting in the private domain has to be four by four, and that is missing; it's in the air. According to the way I explain it, it's more problematic. Why? Because if I explained Rashi by saying that the drop rests on the hand, and therefore that solves my problem too, now the question arises: then what is troubling the Gemara here when it says we need lifting from a place of four by four? After all, the hand has the status of four by four. Maybe it has—
[Speaker F] the status of four by four only when it is placing? What,
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I didn't understand. Maybe it has the status of four by four only—
[Speaker F] when things are placed on it, but not when they are lifted from it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Ah, so here comes in the second distinction between lifting and placing that we mentioned, and that you also mentioned. In placing, I assign significance to the place, and therefore it has the status of four by four. The hand—when I lift by means of the hand, I have no goal that the drop should be in the hand; my goal is to take the drop to the public domain. Therefore there is no assignment of significance to the hand, and therefore for this matter the hand will not be considered a place of four by four. And that's how this should be understood according to my formulation.
[Speaker J] But the second difficulty also does apply, because we said that if we look at it as though the water really is resting in the air—that is, something caught is considered as though it had been placed—we have to assume that, right? To assume that, then basically you can say…
[Speaker B] No, the hand solved that need for you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The Sefat Emet assumes that; I don't assume that. I argue that something caught is not considered as though it had been placed, and therefore there really is a problem here because there is no lifting; it is not resting in the private domain.
[Speaker J] And then the hand solves it. Now if I look at it like the Sefat Emet, who has to assume that something caught is considered as though it had been placed, then this question also works, because it's exactly the same question we asked there with Rabbi Akiva. Because if something caught is considered as though it had been placed, then you can say either that it's like on the ground, like Rashi in the private domain, or that it's in the air.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And therefore the problem of four by four still exists. Even if we say that something caught is considered as though it had been placed, the problem of four by four still remains. Right, certainly.
[Speaker J] Right, according to Tosafot it remains.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] So I'm saying: according to the Sefat Emet here, we would say what we said there, yes. That's not a difficulty on the Sefat Emet; that I can reconcile. Okay? Now the Gemara says—perhaps one more note. Did you see, did you get a chance to see the Kehillot Yaakov? The Kehillot Yaakov discusses whether you need a place of four by four also in the private domain or only in the public domain. Why doesn't he bring our passage? After all, in our passage it says explicitly that it's about the private domain, right? After all, the reed was in the private domain—
[Speaker F] and the Gemara asks, don't we require—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] a place of four by four, so you see that the Gemara says you need a place of four by four also in the private domain.
[Speaker F] But a person standing in the private domain isn't like a reed stuck in the domain…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Fine, but this is a person.
[Speaker H] According to what we understood, an object that is inside the private domain becomes part of it. Okay, and the rain is incidental; it doesn't become part of the private domain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The reed is not parallel to the rain; the rain is the object. The reed parallels the hand.
[Speaker H] But the object too—the rain as an object—doesn't remain in the private domain; it's something flowing, it disappears, it's incidental.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It falls onto the private domain; it doesn't have to flow.
[Speaker F] And if there's a pool there? The rain below—the roof—if there's a reservoir there?
[Speaker H] Wait, does that mean that… or in such a case does that mean that the falling rain that arrives, okay, that arrives and touches the private domain becomes four by four?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, the private domain itself is four by four; the rain is the object resting on the private domain.
[Speaker B] It's part of the essence.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes.
[Speaker H] So it becomes part of the domain.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It's resting in the domain. Again, notice: the Kehillot Yaakov ultimately said that for lifting, according to all opinions, you need a place of four by four in the private domain. Only for placing are there those who waive the need for four by four in the private domain. So my earlier question isn't difficult, right? Because here we're talking about lifting, not placing. Regarding lifting, even in the private domain you need a place of four by four. The whole dispute among the Amoraim there, and the medieval authorities (Rishonim), is only regarding placing in the private domain—the Rashba and Tosafot and everything he's discussing there. My only comment is: why doesn't he bring a decisive proof for the principle he innovates from our Gemara? In our Gemara it's written explicitly. That's really the comment I don't know about. Seemingly our Gemara is an explicit proof for the principle the Kehillot Yaakov introduces: that even one who says that in the private domain you don't need a place of four by four, that's only for placing. For lifting, you certainly need it. That's an explicit Gemara; you can't get around it. But it fits; the only comment is why don't you bring the proof from here. Okay? Now I just want to finish—and really I didn't get to it—so I just want to finish. In the end it says: for example, he intercepted it from above a wall, and then a slanted wall, and so on. Fine? What is called intercepting it from above a wall?
[Speaker F] A wall is a straight wall. Slanted? Or ordinary? It's a straight wall that doesn't gather the water to itself at all. It's not a vessel. A wall is not a receptacle—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] The water runs downward along the wall.
[Speaker F] Ah, so it's not rain from above downward? What?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It's similar—
[Speaker F] to rain that comes from above downward.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, only here it's on the wall. Then the Gemara asks: so what have you gained? The Gemara answers: it's a slanted wall. What does a slanted wall help you? After all, a slanted wall has a certain receptacle-like aspect. What? It's like, it's like, it's like it flows over the wall; it doesn't rest on the wall.
[Speaker F] But it rests a little. It doesn't disappear immediately like on a straight wall.
[Speaker J] It has an element—
[Speaker F] that at each and every point it sort of stops.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right? Seemingly that's what the Gemara says. Right? After all, in the end the Gemara says: granted that Rava said it regarding a book, which is made to come to rest—are water made to come to rest? But that's not correct, because the fact that a book, even if it rolls, is considered as resting on the wall. With water the problem is not that they are moving, but that by their nature they cannot come to rest. Not that they are in fact moving. Because the book too is in fact moving, and that doesn't bother the Gemara. What do we see here? What we see here is that being at rest in the public domain does not mean standing still in the public domain. You can also be moving. As long as you're a certain kind of object, like the book, which can come to rest. But water, which by its essence moves and is not going to come to rest—in that case the Gemara says that when the water moves along a slanted wall, for me that's not called that it rested there. But a book does, even though it's moving. And here I referred you to my article—I don't know whether you got to see it—it's an interesting philosophical question about Zeno's arrow. After all, Zeno's arrow, Zeno's paradox about the arrow, asks: think about an arrow flying. At every single instant that you photograph it, it will be standing in a different place. So when does it move between the places? At every instant, one moment it stands here, the next moment it stands here, the next moment it stands here. When does it move?
[Speaker F] It's digital.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Every instant you focus on it, it's standing in a different place—so when does it move?
[Speaker F] It's digital, but if we make it non-digital then it will move.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, even not digital, even continuous, what difference does it make?
[Speaker F] That's just physics. If we do it on video then we'll see it moving.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you'll also see Van Gogh's paintings of Gauguin. What is video? Video is an illusion. Altogether it's just a collection of static pictures projected quickly, and an illusion of motion is created for you. On the contrary, the example of video only sharpens Zeno's difficulty.
[Speaker B] Like what we used to do in notebooks when we were kids, like moving pictures.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. That's how a cartoon works. But not only a cartoon; filmed movies work that way too. The frequency is just very, very high, that's all.
[Speaker B] So basically—
[Speaker F] Maybe stillness is the illusion?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] My claim—I'll say it in one sentence because our time is already up—my claim is that what Zeno missed is that it's not correct to say that the arrow at every instant stands in a different place. Rather, at every instant the arrow is present in a different place. What's the difference between standing in a place and being present in a place?
[Speaker B] Being present means that while in motion it—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] is present. It is present; it may be moving, it has velocity, it's just that its location is this place. When I say it stands in a place, that means that it is present and its velocity is zero. Right? Now Zeno wasn't willing to accept a situation in which an object is in some place but is in motion. If it is present, then apparently it is standing still. How can an object move at a point in time? At a point in time it stands still. I say no, that's not correct. At a point in time it moves. It has velocity, but it also has a defined location at that point in time. And all the philosophy and mathematics are in that article there, but that's basically the idea. Now what I want to say for our case is the same thing: when we want to say that the object is present in the private domain, that doesn't mean that it is standing still in the private domain, but that it is present. Therefore the Gemara says that if the object rolls on a slanted plane, on a slanted wall, I have no problem with that; that's called that it is resting in the private domain. Why? Because it is present on a place of four by four in the private domain. It is not standing still on a place of four by four in the private domain; it is present on a place of four by four in the private domain. The Gemara's claim is that water cannot even be considered present there, since by its nature it's a dynamic thing. So I'm not willing to see it even as present, not only as standing still.
[Speaker F] But if you look at the rain not as drops but as one mass, then they are present.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, I'm not sure, because the body too is a dynamic body; the collection of drops is also a dynamic body.
[Speaker J] I'm not sure it matters whether it's—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] drops or a mass.
[Speaker J] But then I don't understand.
[Speaker F] I'm leaving, thank you very much, goodbye, and have a kosher and joyous Passover, and see you.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, all the best. Yes, Noa?
[Speaker J] I'm asking, so then the whole question from before, where we said the whole problem is that the water doesn't come to rest—seemingly that doesn't even arise at all.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right. In the end the Gemara says my problem is not with the resting of the water but with the presence of the water. But still, that presence too has to be defined in some place, and in the air there isn't four by four for that. Okay. Now, one final note—when I talked about the practical halakhic ruling, I'll leave that to you; look in the summary, we won't have time for that now.
[Speaker B] Okay, too bad. Okay, thanks, have a good holiday.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Thank you very much.