Q&A: Measures Set by the Sages
Measures Set by the Sages
Question
“All measures set by the Sages are like this,” and “because of this they removed Rabbi Yirmiyah from the study hall”—why, really? If this is not a law given to Moses at Sinai, how could they determine that 40 minus even a tiny amount does not purify, while 40 counts as a valid mikveh? And likewise with all the Torah-defined categories that the Sages established.
Answer
There is a difference between setting a measure and asking what happens in a case that lands exactly on the measure. After all, whenever you set a measure, you set a fixed and sharp number. What else would you set—that the measure is between 2 and 3 handbreadths? Rabbi Yirmiyah was not arguing against the measure; he asked what the law is when, in practice, something happens at exactly the measure. That cannot happen, because exact precision is impossible.
Discussion on Answer
Ah, actually I just wrote that after the first answer. Measures that, according to the Sages, are laws given to Moses at Sinai are conditions for the legal effect to take place (and that is true even if authority was given to the Sages to fix them, and they were not literally handed down from Sinai), and if a person is not sure whether the measure is present, he really would act according to the laws of doubt and presumptive status. And for rabbinic law there is no legal effect at all, except that within the gray zone they stated a measure (and there too, someone who is uncertain would act according to the laws of doubt).
Does the Rabbi agree with what was said—that the measures are laws given to Moses at Sinai?!
“And the Sages knew that five planted in six do not draw sustenance from one another. And from where do we know that that which the Sages knew—that five in six—is a real matter? For Rabbi Hiyya bar Abba said in the name of Rabbi Yohanan: What is the meaning of that which is written, ‘Do not move your neighbor’s boundary marker, which the earlier ones set’? The boundary set by the earlier ones you shall not move. What did the earlier ones set? Rabbi Shmuel bar Nahmani said in the name of Rabbi Yonatan: What is the meaning of that which is written, ‘These are the sons of Seir the Horite, the inhabitants of the land’? Could it be that everyone else were inhabitants of the sky? Rather, they were experts in settling the land, for they would say: this rod-full is for olives, this rod-full is for vines, this rod-full is for figs. And Horite means those who smell the earth, and Hivite—Rav Pappa said—means those who taste the earth like a snake.” [Shabbat 85a]
That is, the expertise of the Sages was like those Canaanite experts, and not a law given to Moses at Sinai or prophecy.
So then why did they fix a measure, and not say: maybe 38 se’ah, maybe 40?
By the way, Rashi on Bava Batra 23 did in fact explain that they removed him from the study hall because “he was bothering them,” but in Tosafot:
“It should not be explained that this was because he asked about something that is entirely uncommon—how could it happen that one of its legs was within fifty and one of its legs was outside fifty exactly? For we do find that the Mishnah also speaks in such a case, as it teaches: if it is half and half, they divide. And Rabbenu Tam appears to say that this is why they removed him: because a hopping bird does not hop at all more than fifty cubits, even if one of its legs does; for all the measures of the Sages are like this… Found between two dovecotes. [And even though one of them is larger]…”
And the difficulty returns: where did the Sages’ measures come from with such precision?!
I don’t understand. The Talmud explicitly says that the measures are laws given to Moses at Sinai.
There are measures that are quite clearly fixed by the Sages. The size of a garment—three handbreadths, etc. But it is still a Torah-level measure (except that Scripture handed it over to the Sages).
This has nothing to do with prophecy or a law given to Moses at Sinai. “The Sages knew” is their realistic assessment (as with a garment of three handbreadths). It has nothing to do with expertise at all. We are talking about drawing a line based on a judgment of reasonableness. That is all.
I do not see any difficulty, nor why it returns. They fixed a certain measure because that is how Jewish law works. It is not reasonable to set a measure that is not sharp. And still, to object and ask about such an unlikely situation is nitpicking.
Why not actually determine that the measure is between 2 and 3 handbreadths, and in the gray zone apply the laws of doubt? As we would do if the validity of a kosher mikveh were a scientific fact whose full theory we had not yet discovered, but we could still narrow the range of uncertainty. Obviously, if everything is just conventions, then you can save effort for the observing public. Does the legal effect take place based on the setting of the measure, or is the measure fixed in an attempt to capture the legal effect?
Last week it was reported that in the Knesset they fixed an arbitrary number—518—in some law, and Haim Katz explained with great taste that this number is one hundred times hamsa plus one time chai, and added that we should not be surprised because that has long been his way of using such numbers in his decisions—here and here and there and there—and there is no reason to suddenly get excited. [The truth is that multiples of 5 and 18 cover almost all possible numbers quite nicely, so this is not really much of a limitation. Though if you restrict yourself to “clean” coefficients like 100, 1, etc., there are many fewer options.] He dismissed with contempt the suggestion that some interest was hiding behind this choice. In that case it really does seem clear that within the gray zone we simply want to set a number, and if some meshugener likes hamsas and life, then we’ll use hamsas and life, and good health to him.
https://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1001340473