Q&A: A Difficulty in Maimonides
A Difficulty in Maimonides
Question
To the great Rabbi,
Maimonides wrote (Laws of Leaven and Matzah 1:9): “And the Sages prohibited eating leaven from the beginning of the sixth hour, etc.; therefore with regard to priestly terumah and the like consisting of leaven that is sacred, one neither eats it nor burns it until the sixth hour arrives, and then everything is burned,” end quote. See the Maggid Mishneh, who writes that Maimonides’ source is the Talmud in Pesachim (11b), in the Mishnah. Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik explains that the fifth hour involves only a personal prohibition—namely, the rabbinic prohibition against eating leaven—and one does not burn terumah because of “the safeguarding of My terumot.” Only in the sixth hour, when there is also an object-based rabbinic prohibition on the leaven itself, and “the safeguarding of My terumot” no longer applies, must one burn the leaven.
This requires clarification, in light of what Maimonides wrote there (3:4): “If the fourteenth fell on the Sabbath, he removes it before the Sabbath. If he had many loaves of terumah, and he must burn them on Sabbath eve,” end quote. [His source is the Mishnah in tractate Pesachim (49), from which it is clear that “the safeguarding of My terumot” does not apply on the eve of Passover, even when there is no personal prohibition regarding the leaven, since they already burn it on Friday, the thirteenth of Nisan.] Indeed, in the Talmud in Pesachim (13a) and in Tosafot there, it appears that this is a dispute between the two mishnayot. If so, how does Maimonides rule in accordance with both of these mishnayot, which seem at first glance to contradict one another?
It seems that one could explain that obviously Maimonides held that from the outset, when the Sages enacted the burning of leaven, they knew that the fourteenth might fall on the Sabbath, and their enactment was originally instituted so that on Friday the prohibition would take effect on the object itself, in order to prevent people from stumbling, and one should not argue from what is possible to what is impossible.
We would be glad to hear the honored Rabbi’s comments.
With faithful blessings and great affection,
His student,
Author of the books Esh David and Shemittah LeDavid
Answer
Possible, except that according to some later authorities, rabbinic laws by their very nature are personal prohibitions on the individual (Atvan DeOraita, Netivot HaMishpat sec. 234, and others). According to that approach, this explanation would not work. Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, however, assumes that the Sages do have the power to institute object-based prohibitions, such as leaven in the sixth hour.
Perhaps one could explain that burning is permitted only where there is no other choice. Therefore we wait until the sixth hour and do not burn in the fifth. But when it falls on the Sabbath, burning is impossible altogether, so they burn on Friday. A practical difference would be that on Friday one should burn it very close to the onset of the Sabbath.
Another possible explanation: when the burning falls on Friday, the entire day has the status of the sixth hour, because there they do not distinguish between hours the way they do on the eve of Passover.