Q&A: A Topological Issue?
A Topological Issue?
Question
On the Sabbath, when I was studying the laws of selecting in depth, I came across a passage brought in the Jerusalem Talmud (chapter 7, halakha 2):
“Rabbi Yudan said: There is a case where one picks out pebbles all day and is not liable. And there is a case where one takes out the volume of a dried fig and is immediately liable. How is this so? If he was sitting on top of a heap and picked out pebbles all day, he is not liable. If he took into his hand the volume of a dried fig and selected, he is liable.”
I would appreciate my teacher’s explanation of this passage (I was thinking perhaps to explain the passage in a topological context).
Answer
I hope you didn’t violate these prohibitions on the Sabbath: https://ph.yhb.org.il/plus/01-05-02/
Once I heard that Rabbi Ovadia said this falls under “selecting,” so you literally transgressed what you were studying. May God have mercy.
That’s it for the jokes. As for your actual point, I didn’t understand what the difficulty is. The Pnei Moshe there explains that this is talking about a selection process that does not complete the cleaning, and therefore the result is not fully sorted. You are removing waste, but more waste still remains in the mixture, and therefore you are exempt. In your hand, you perform a complete act of selection, and therefore you are liable.
I didn’t understand what this has to do with topology.
Discussion on Answer
I didn’t understand, because after all he did eventually select a dried fig’s worth and the labor was done. What difference does it make that I didn’t finish the cleaning? There is already a result here at the minimum measure for the labor. From here it seems a bit that what matters is that the food be made fit, not that the waste be outside.
Obviously. That is exactly what the Talmud is saying here.
At long last I selected a dried fig’s worth (on the micro level), and the labor was done. (I didn’t violate selecting on the Sabbath, because it’s impossible to learn the entire Torah on the Sabbath, so the reason for the allowance is because of what I studied. Maybe this also counts as “two people who performed it” [study partner].)