Bava Kama page 70 B

In Bava Kama page 70 B there is brought down that one who steals and then sells on Shabat does not have to pay the 4 and 5. [4 sheep in place of one sheep. 5 oxen in place of 1 ox.] Rav Papa said the sell and shabat came at once in case the buyer said throw your theft into my yard. The question the Gemara asks then is that that seems to be like R. Akiva who said קלוטה כמונחה דמיא an object that is thrown is like it is sitting. The Gemara answers it could be like the Sages [who disagree with R Akiva] also in the case the buyer said my yard will only acquire when the object lands.

In Gitin 78 a husband throws a divorce document at his wife from a roof top into her courtyard and it burns up before it hits the ground. She is divorced. The Gemara asks but the document was not in a guarded place? Rav Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel that is  a case where it got inside the walls of the yard. R. Aba asked Ula this seems to be like R. Yehuda Hanasi who said an object that is thrown is like it is sitting. Ula answered the sages who disagree with R Yehuda can agree with this since they can hold Shabat and acquiring are different to the sages.

Tosphot in Bava Kama asks on the statement there "It seems to be like R Akiva". He asks that even to R Akiva there is a problem since he also would said the object is not acquired until it gets inside the walls, but in terms of Shabat he would be liable right away as the object is above the walls. He answers the thief threw the object in through a window or side door. He then asks on the Gemara in Gitin why does it not ask "It seems to be like R Akiva?" [So what would the sages say?] Tosphot answers the case there is with walls while R Akiva hold the object is acquired even without walls.

The Maharsha, Maharam and Maharshal ask on this Tosphot that the start of Tosphot holds R Akiva would require walls and then says he would not.


I have not had a chance to take  a close look at these three comentaries,. But off hand it seems the end of Tosphot is dealing with the question why ask from R Yehuda. That is they are asking about the הווא אמינא. [What the Gemar is thinking at that point]. So to ask from R Yehuda the Gemara has tobe thinking R Akiva is different. While the beginning of Tosphot is going according to the idea there that the sages would make a difference between shabat and acquiring and that would presumably go for R Akiva also.

There is also a side question I thought of as I was looking at this subject. Lets say in fact that R Akiva does not require walls for acquiring as the Gemara thinks there at first. Then would not it make sense to drop the need for walls?

Next day: I did get a chance to glance at the Maharsha today and saw that he and the Maharam both answer the question on Tosphot in basically the same way as I did up above. And as for the second question. I was going to answer it that R. Akiva would not think that walls are sufficient since the divorce document needs to be in a guarded place before it can be valid. So even if walls would help for acquisition they would not help for the divorce. And today i saw that that is in fact what the Maharasha says right there.

Rav Nahman said not to be strict about anything.

Rav Nahman said not to be strict about anything. That is in terms of Jewish Law but also in terms of every day matters.

So for years I was not at all careful about carrying things in a public domain on Shabat. Sadly I can not learn Torah but I did get a chance to glance at a few pages in tractate Shabat and noticed that carrying is a big issue over there.

Even though you see the idea that a public domain in only where 600,000 people walk through  in Rashi and Tosphot and the Shulhan Aruch of Rav Joseph Karo itself brings it. Still it does not seem to be in the Gemara itself. I even noticed in the Yerushalmi some incident where a sage accidental carried on Shabat said he would bring a sin offering when the Temple would be rebuilt.

How would that have been possible in Babylon? the Jewish cites there were minuscule. Just think about Rome at the peak of its power. It had about a million people.  How could small Jewish towns have had comparable numbers?

Creation ex nihilo [from nothing] comes up in the book of Rav Nahman of Breslov in in LeM vol 1 chapter 4.

The idea of Creation ex nihilo [from nothing] comes up in the book of Rav Nahman of Breslov in in LeM vol 1 chapter 4. So it is hard for me to figure out why some people think that the Torah and or Rav Nahman held by pantheism.

Torah that comes from the halls of delusion

In the LeM of Rav Nahman [Collections of Rav nahman] you find the idea of Torah that comes from the halls of delusion. That is in volume I. Chapter 245.

In the השמטות [left out parts] you also find this idea of Torah of the Sitra Achra [the Realm of Evil]

The basic idea there is that  there are Torah lessons which come from the kelipot [forces of evil].

That is to say --in order to merit to true and authentic Torah takes a great deal of self sacrifice in the service of God.

Not just people that cl;aim to be giving over Torah lessons, Rav Nahman finds highly suspect;-but also doing things which you think are good deeds ma very well not be good deeds. As the LeM starts out Vol I chapter 1 "the evil inclination is dressed in mitzvot" היצר הרע מתלבש במצוות

The magnum opus of Rav Nahman from Breslov [Collections of Rav Nahman, the LeM] has a great deal of great ideas

The magnum opus of Rav Nahman from Breslov [Collections of Rav Nahman, the LeM] has a great deal of great ideas but does not seem to have a systematic world view except "be frum."
It is not like Hegel, Spinoza, or Leibniz [or the Nefesh HaHaim by Rav Haim from Voloshin]]

When you find a particular Torah lesson that deals with your particular issue, you learn it forty days in a row and that helps to solve the problem.

His idea of avoiding philosophy on one hand makes a lot of sense. Like Descartes said . that no opinion, however absurd and incredible, can be imagined, which has not been defended by a philosopher.


However the blanket attack on the Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides and all medieval Jewish thinkers seems a bit over the top. Plus the attack on scientists also seems kind of overboard. [Okay then stop using your I phones and Jet airplanes to get to Uman.]


My view is more along the lines of Rav Israel Salanter while at the same time accepting the important ideas from other places.

faith with reason

In the Middle Ages there was an approach that combined faith with reason.
In Ibn Pakuda חובות הלבבות Obligations of the Heart you see this right on the first page of the introduction in terms of the important of what Muslims called "theology"["Wisdom of God" literally] . So he is not referring juts to Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus but also to how Muslim scholars developed those ideas. [I imagine he must have been thinking about Al  Farabi and Al Kindi.]

Later in Obligations of the Heart in chapter 3 of Shar NaBehina you see the emphasis on Physics [not just the spiritual aspects of Creation like angels.]

This seems to go with the general nature of the approach of Saadia Gaon and later the Rambam.

With the Rambam, the subject becomes a little more clear when he says specifically Physics and Metaphysics as they were understood by the ancient Greeks. [So he is not talking about mysticism.]

Even though learning Torah mainly refers to the Gemara with the Rishonim [Tosphot, Ritva, Rashba, Tosphot HaRosh.] still you see in the medieval sages [mainly from Spain] that also included Physics and Metaphysics in the category of the mitzvah itself.

Physics I think is clear if you look at the subject matter  extends to modern Physics. But what about metaphysics?
I think that after the Middle Ages some important advances have been made. On one hand you have Berkeley and general critiques of Aristotle. But what do you do with that? Thomas Reid [the philosopher of common sense] pointed out how absurd Berkley's idealism is and yet admitted that his arguments are close to irrefutable. To deal with this it seems to me it is unavoidable to have to learn Kant and Hegel.

faith in the wise. You need some kind of common sense to tell when it is best to listen to the experts and when to develop your own approach.

Rav Nahman makes a good point about אמונת חכמים--faith in the wise. But I think one needs to develop a certain kind of common sense to know in what exact points the sage was correct and to be able to filter out the areas where he might have been wrong.

In universities it is common to give advice to students to think for themselves. Read the material and come to their own conclusions. However how would this work if you are in a hospital? What would be the best approach? Listen to the doctor? Or think for yourself and come to your own conclusions?

Sometimes however even experts can be wrong.
You need some kind of common sense to tell when it is best to listen to the experts and when to develop your own approach.