Hi friends, and welcome back to Talmud Daily, our 40-week tour of the entire Talmud—just 10 minutes a day. And today we are talking about the daily practices that emerge from Tractate Eruvin. If you’re keeping track about our schedule, which we’re still getting used to, the rhythm: Mondays we always do the basic concepts; Tuesday we try to give the deeper meaning and themes of the tractate; Wednesdays we try to focus on daily practice; Thursdays is history;and then Friday we share voices. And then you have the whole weekend to review, to study, to read some of the articles that we’ve sent out. There are always, you know, references in the emails that you’re getting that are extra articles.
But today we’re going to focus on the daily practice that emerges from Tractate Eruvin. And so, what I would like to talk about is how you can build your own eruv. Just joking, that’s crazy. Building an eruv is really, really, really difficult, both technically and halachically. It is probably the most challenging area in both halacha and like actually like technically building it. Like if you struggle to build your sukkah, which we will get to. But if you struggle to build a sukkah, the hut that we put up every year Sukkos time in our backyard, in our front yard, wherever that is.If you struggle to hang a picture—I’m really just describing myself right now. My sukkah builders are right outside. I don’t even build my own sukkah, I’m certainly not building my own eruv.
So what is the daily practice that we should focus on at the end of Tractate Eruvin, when you walk out from this tractate? So really the first thing that I was thinking about, and this really comes from a very classical work in English. Iit’s written in a bit of like a very heavy philosophical English, but it is a book that I just want you to be familiar with because it was written by one of the great Talmudic thinkers of the last century, and that is Rabbi Yosef Dov Soloveitchik, who served as a rosh yeshiva, the head of the yeshiva, in Yeshiva University, and was a rabbi in Boston. And Rabbi Soloveitchik lived from 1903 to 1993. An incredible thinker who really revolutionized and brought together the emerging fields of modern philosophy with Talmud, was a deeply rigorous Talmudic thinker, was part of a family, the Soloveitchik’s, that stretch back centuries of world-renowned rabbis. To this day there are Soloveitchik’s. You may be familiar with Meir Soloveichik. There are Soloveitchik’s in Israel. This is the name.
So, Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote a book called Halakhic Man. I am not recommending this book. It is a tough read. It’s a rewarding and enjoyable read, but it’s not an easy-breezy book. It is written in English, and it’s called Halakhic Man. And what he’s describing in Halakhic Man is when you immerse yourself in Talmudic thinking, what is the worldview? How do you look at the world afterwards? And I want to read some of the passages from it because I think it’s so amazing, the way he describes the perspective of somebody who is immersed in the world of Talmud, in the world of halacha. They see the world differently. He’s probably actually describing his father, if you read the book carefully, but he’s talking about somebody who’s halachic man. It’s not a it’s not a superhero like Superman or Batman, you know, behind me. But it is a real hero in their own and that the way that they see their world is through a lens of obligation and commitment and Jewish commitment.
And this is what he writes: “When halachic man looks to the western horizon and sees the fading rays of the setting sun or the eastern horizon and sees the first light of dawn and the glowing rays of the rising sun, he knows that this sun or sunrise imposes upon him anew obligations and commandments. Dawn and sunrise obligate him to fulfill those commandments that are performed during the day: the recitation of the morning Shema,” which we’ve already discussed. And he goes on.
And then he gives another example, and I think this is why I’m introducing the daily practice that emerges from Tractate Eruvin, “When halachic man chances upon mighty mountains, he utilizes the measurements which determine a private domain,” and in parentheses he uses a term that we introduced, a reshus hayachid.
A reshus hayachid is what we call a private domain, and a reshus harabbim is a public domain. And there is that domain in the middle, the ambiguous domain, which in the Talmud is called a karmelis, and that is why we have the string going around that ambiguous domain. Because the string is what allows us to transform that ambiguous, you know, your neighborhood streets, into a place that is technically allowed to carry and allowed to walk. And the string is there to remind you.
The rabbis said, “Look, we’re the ones who prohibited the ambiguous area, but we’re going to give you a fix. If you make it all doors, doorways all the way around, even with just string that it just has the outline of a door, you are allowed to carry there. We’re going to relax our prohibition in this ambiguous area and allow you to carry in those places.” This is really what forms communities.
And Rabbi Soloveitchik writes that when halachic man chances upon mighty mountains, he utilizes the measurements which determine a private domain: “A sloping mound that attains a height of ten handbreadths with a distance of four cubits.”
What Rabbi Soloveitchik is talking about [is] that literally when you build an eruv, it’s not always just string or just, you know, telephone wire. Sometimes an eruv will include—a mountain can be a side of the wall if the slope is steep enough. You need it that the slope is so steep that you can go literally ten handbreadths, ten handbreadths within four cubits. So that’s like… Get back to geometry. Don’t worry if you can’t calculate that. But it has to be steep enough.
So what Rabbi Soloveitchik is describing is that when you immerse yourself in Talmudic thinking, you don’t just look at a sunrise and a sunset. You think, “Oh wow, it is neitz hachamah,” a term that we also discussed. This is the time of sunrise. You might say, “Oh, it is tzeis,” which is a colloquialism for tzeis hakochavim, meaning halachic nighttime when you see the sun finally setting. Or you might say, “Oh, it is bein hashmashos, it is the time in between.” You begin to look at the world differently.
And this is all the more true, and why I think Rabbi Soloveitchik brought an example—what really transforms space more than anything is the eruv. The eruv is meant to remind you that, number one, it has to be recognizable, so you don’t forget that in an actual public space you’re still not allowed to carry. So it has to have asomething that is easily recognizable.
But what I think emerges from the daily practice, and this is really what I am inviting you to do, is find out for yourself, number one, does my community have an eruv? Not every community has an eruv. For sure more densely populated Jewish communities almost all have an eruv. But what I think would be really beautiful is you’ve probably never seen it or never noticed it. I would invite you on Shabbos to take a walk and literally try to find the borders, the boundaries of your eruv. Try to see if you can find the side posts. See if you can see some of the string going across it.
If you’re not able to walk, what I would suggest you doing, and I think this is very beautiful because something that I noticed, you know, I said, “I don’t know who even checks or even keeps the eruv functioning.” I think the most beautiful thing in the world, and I’m just suggesting this because I want to do this myself:send an email to whoever checks the eruv each and every Friday and say thank you.
This is the most thankless job in the world. Every community that has an eruv, there is somebody who checks the eruv on Friday. Sometimes it’s the rabbi, somebody else, depends how dense the community is, but that is a job that allows everyone, kind of forms the community, and I assure you they almost never get a thank you. I don’t know that for a fact, but I’m pretty, pretty certain they’re not getting thank yous.
There are many communities that don’t have an eruv. I am not suggesting that you go out after, you know, listening to a week of Talmud Daily on Eruvin. We’re not yet Eruvin experts to build an eruv. I hope that’s okay. We’ll need another, another program for that. It would probably be just 40 weeks on eruv, which nobody wants or has asked for.
But what you, what you can do, and I really think this is what Eruvin is all about. The deepest idea that emerges from Tractate Eruvin is understanding the halachic boundaries of your community, but that’s not the end of it. The most important part of Tractate Eruvin is sharing those boundaries, inviting somebody into those boundaries. And what we learn from Tractate Eruvin is that one of the forms of eruv, what brings a community together, especially, like, let’s say they’re all in an apartment building, not in the outside, is through food. That’s what bring people together.
And this, I believe, is the daily practice that really does emerge: Invite people to your home on Shabbos. Share food with them. Doesn’t have to be for a meal. My practice is I always have literally like an open-door policy. I daven very early on Shabbos.I’m already home 9:30 in the morning. And I sit, we have coffee, we have l’chaims, we have a little crackers and cheese.
But what it’s doing is it’s really creating that shared space through food, which is what Eruvin is all about, which is what Shabbos is all about:building that community, that kehilla, as Shabbos is introduced through the verb of vayakhel, creating community. This is the beauty of Eruvin, this is the beauty of Shabbos, and the point of it is not to create walls that keep people out, but literally the eruv is a wall just built with doorways.
So the number one reason of why we have doorways is we’re trying to invite people in. For the daily practice for Tractate Eruvin, I would suggest familiarize yourself with your boundaries, and then the most important part is invite somebody inside.
Thank you so much for listening to Talmud Daily. and let’s keep making Torah sweet.