Egyptian-Hebrew stream·Mishnah·Shabbat — Chapter XXI
Carrying through indirect means
A man may lift up his child even when the child holds a stone; he may move a hamper containing a stone; unclean heave-offering may be moved together with clean food. The principle of bi-tzevi'a (the prohibited item being secondary to the permitted).
Source context
- Theme
- Tannaitic oral-legal transmission and rabbinic halakhic ruling within the Mishnaic corpus
Steiner
not engaged in the GA corpus
Cross-tradition
- Oral Torah doctrine (Tannaitic Judaism)The Mishnah's Chapter XXI participates in the Tannaitic principle that oral tradition (Torah she-be'al peh) carries normative legal force equal to written scripture, structuring community life through accumulated rabbinic precedent.
- Kabbalah — exoteric/esoteric distinctionCross-tradition congruence exists between the Mishnah's codification of public halakhic norms and Kabbalistic tradition's distinction between the exoteric legal surface and the esoteric interior of Torah, the former being the domain the Mishnah addresses.
Chapter XXI
CHAPTER XXI.
§ 1. A man may lift up his child with a stone in its hand; also, a hamper, wherein there is a stone; and unclean heave-offering may be moved with clean and with non-consecrated things. R. Jehudah saith, "They may also take out the heave-offering from מדמע, 1 in the proportion of one to the hundred. 2
§ 2. [If] a stone [lie] on the bung-hole of a cask, a man may incline the cask to one side, so that the stone fall of. If it [the cask in question] is among other casks, he may raise it, and incline it on one side, so that the stone may fall off. If there be money [coins] on a bolster, the bolster may be turned, so that they may fall off. If there be any ordure on a pillow, man may wipe it off with a rag; if the cover [of the pillow] be of skin, water may be poured on it until the ordure is rinsed off.
§ 3. Beth Shammai hold, "That men may carry from the table bones and husks." Beth Hillel hold, "That the whole table-cloth is to be lifted up and shaken." 3 They may carry away from the table
fragments [of food] less than the size of an olive, and also the husks of beans and of lentiles; for these are food for cattle. A sponge, if it has a leather handle, they may wipe with it; if not, they must not wipe with it. The sages hold, "That, of either kind, it [the sponge] may be moved on the Sabbath, and is not liable to contract uncleanness."
Footnotes
65:1 Heave offering, which has got mixed among non-consecrated grain, which thereby becomes forbidden food for all but priests.
65:2 Vide Treatise Terumoth.
65:3 According to the Talmud, the opinions here assigned to the two schools are, p. 66 from some error, inverted, so that the opinion of Beth Hillel is given as that of Beth Shammai, and vice versâ. The remnants here spoken of are only such as may serve to feed cattle.