Q&A: Carrying Out Is an Inferior Category of Labor
Carrying Out Is an Inferior Category of Labor
Question
The Talmud tries to trace the labor of carrying out exactly as it was done in the Tabernacle, since it is an inferior category of labor (Tosafot and other medieval authorities (Rishonim)). For example, in the case of passing an object across, the prohibition applies only when the two balconies are in the same row, but not when they are opposite each other, since this is learned from the wagons, and they were one behind the other.
And I do not understand why the Talmud in Shabbat 96a says regarding bringing in, which did not exist in the Tabernacle, that it is based on logic, in the words of the Talmud: "We have found carrying out; from where do we know bringing in? It is logical: after all, it is from one domain to another domain—what difference is there to me whether one takes out or whether one brings in?" How is this different from passing from one wagon in a row to a parallel wagon, where we do not say it is logical, but instead stick to what existed exactly as it was?
Another point that needs clarification: the Talmud later on 98a explains that the wagons were parallel, so why would they not also have passed things across in parallel?
Answer
This is like the later authorities' questions about some of the permissions involving an unusual manner of performing an act, where they ask why it should not at least be rabbinically forbidden, since an unusual manner is rabbinically forbidden. But it is clear that there are several levels of unusual performance, and an unusual form that is significant enough is no longer similar to the original labor and is therefore completely permitted. The same is true of logical reasoning: there are different degrees. Otherwise, it would also be permitted to carry out and bring in any object that did not exist in the Tabernacle (a book, marbles, or computers).
Passing an object across is different from carrying out and bringing in, because it involves a novelty (since you are not really transferring from one domain to another), and therefore a more precise derivation from the Tabernacle is required there. Carrying out and bringing in are, logically speaking, two identical labors, because in both cases there is an actual transfer of domains, and therefore it does not matter there that bringing in did not exist in the Tabernacle.
Rashi on that passage raised this question and answered:
"Exempt"—for we do not find throwing or passing across in the labor of the Tabernacle from a private domain to a private domain with a public domain separating between them, because this was not how the Levites worked, passing beams from one wagon to the wagon beside it, but rather to the wagon in front of it (and behind it). For the sons of Merari had four wagons, as they carried the beams of the Tabernacle, and they traveled two together, side by side, as we say in the Talmud. And when they dismantled the Tabernacle in order to load it onto the wagons, they positioned the wagons in the manner of their travel: two next to each other close to the Tabernacle, and two next to each other in front of them, in the direction of travel along the public domain, because they wanted to travel after the pillar of cloud that went before them. And those dismantling the Tabernacle would pass the beams to those on the two wagons near the Tabernacle, and they would pass them to those in front of them. But from one wagon to the wagon beside it they had no need to pass them, since both of them were close to those dismantling the Tabernacle."
Thank you.
Regarding Rashi, I did in fact see this, but it seems from the passage discussing how the beams were arranged on the wagons that there is really no tradition about exactly how and what was there; rather, it is all based on reasoning.