Sunday 21 August 2016

Bava Kamma 81: Prayers on Shabbat; Joshua’s Ten Conditions

After discouraging people from keeping pets, including genets (usually to help to manage unwanted pests), Daf 81 also taught us about when it is appropriate to cry out to G-d on Shabbat and when an alarm (likely the shofar) should be sounded.

Today’s daf continues with a list of the ten conditions that Joshua gave to the Jewish people when giving them HaAretz.  The Jews entering Israel have the right to:
  • graze their animals in the forests
  • gather wood from each others’ fields 
  • gather vegetation to be used as food for their animals from anywhere except for a field of fenugreek (hay)
  • pluck off shoots to grow their own plants except for olive trees
  • take water from a spring on private property - even when it first appears
  • fish in the sea of Tiberius/Galilee as long as fishermen have not set up underwater traps which will damage boats
  • relieve themselves outdoors behind a fence, even near saffron
  • walk on permitted paths through private property until second rainfall
  • after second rainfall, to veer into private property from the road due protrusions in the road
  • cut back vines when lost in a vineyard 
  • bury a corpse where it was found if no-one is burying it (met mitzvah)


The Gemara discusses each of these points and the rabbis attempt to understand some of the intended details of each condition.  For example, the rabbis tell stories about people who veered off of the road into private property and considered one who remains on the road to be overdoing a mitzvah, thus nullifying its positive benefits.

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