Shabbos 115a
Can You Save a Translated Sefer From a Fire on Shabbos?
Part of Ein Yaakov · 17:53
A halacha sugya on rescuing holy books on Shabbos, Rabbi Yishmael catching a scribe erasing Divine names, and the custom of reciting Tehillim chapters by age.
Audio Transcript
Mishnah says like this, \"כל כתבי הקדש,\" all the כתבי הקדש, which refers to Tanach, \"מצילין אותן מפני הדליקה.\" If there's a fire on Shabbos, you're allowed to save it in a forum that where it's only איסור דרבנן, like כרמלית and whatever, you're allowed to save it and you shouldn't let it get burned. \"בין שקורין בהן ובין שאין קורין בהן.\" Whether these are sefarim that you read in, or that you don't read in. And the Gemara is going to explain which are the כתבי הקדש that you don't read. Okay, we'll see. \"ואף על פי שכתובים בכל לשון,\" even if they're written other languages, you have to, \"טעונים גניזה,\" you have to hide them. In other words, you can't just throw them away. You can't let them get burned. And he says over here, \"מפני מה אין קורין בהן?\" Why, תאקע, are certain things that you don't read? He says over here, \"מפני ביטול בית המדרש,\" because it takes away from the shiur. There are certain, to see, you have certain sefarim. Tanach is learned. Torah, Neviim... Torah, Neviim, Kesuvim, people would like to use it, learn it in time when, you know, they're giving a shiur in halacha, things that you have to know, and people would spend time. So it says you shouldn't learn it then. So בכלל on Shabbos you shouldn't learn these sefarim, because you should spend more time in going to learn בית המדרש. Huh? No, those days they learned from a Sefer Torah. They learned then. That's what their learning was from a Sefer Torah. All right, but those are things that are normally learned. See, I'll read inside: \"בין שקורין, נביאים, מפטירין בהם בבית הכנסת בשבת. בין שאין קורין בהן, כגון כתובים.\" \"ורבינו הלוי אומר, דאפילו יחידים אין קורין בהן.\" Even יחידים shouldn't read. Why? \"משום ביטול בית המדרש. דהאי משיך לביה,\" that it pulls them back from coming. \"ובשבת היו דורשין דרשה לבעלי בתים, שהיו עסוקים במלאכה כל ימי...\" on Shabbos, when people were working so they I mean, the weekdays they couldn't come to shiur, so Shabbos they would learn for them. \"ובתוך הדרשה היו מורים להם הלכות איסור והיתר, וטוב להם לשמוע מליקרות בכתובים.\" Better they should listen to the shiur than going to learn Kesuvim. So mimela, כתובים is something that you shouldn't be learning. I guess כתובים And נביאים is learned, he says, in maftir, haftarah, so you have it. And Torah is, obviously, always learned Torah, chumash. That's only if there's a shiur. I mean, if it's at night, it's not... Yeah, but those days the shiur was all day. Yeah, I know. It used to be No, that's a difference between scrolls. Right. The Tanach, yeah.
\"אמר רבי יוסי,\" רבי יוסי said, \"מעשה באבא חלפתא,\" story in אבא חלפתא, \"שהלך אצל רבן גמליאל בריבי לטבריא,\" he came to רבן גמליאל ברבי in טבריה, \"ומצאו שהיה יושב,\" found him sitting \"על שולחנו של יוחנן בן נזוף,\" by the table of יוחנן בן נזוף, \"ובידו ספר איוב תרגום,\" and he was holding ספר איוב written in תרגום, not in not in the original, but it's translated, \"והיה קורא בו.\" And רבן גמליאל ברבי was reading it. \"אמר ליה,\" so he said to him, רבי יוסי, אבא חלפתא said to him, \"זוכר אני ברבן גמליאל אבי אביך,\" I remember Rabban Gamliel, your grandfather, because this Rabban Gamliel, the one that did it, was Rabban Gamliel the son of Rav Shimon, and Rav Shimon was the son of Rabban Gamliel, and Rabban Gamliel the son of Rav Shimon. That was the two generations like that. So he says, I remember Rabban Gamliel your father's father, \"שהיה עומד על גב מעלה בהר הבית,\" he was standing on a step in Har HaBayit, in by the Beit HaMikdash, \"והביאו לפניו ספר איוב תרגום,\" and they brought him ספר איוב תרגום, \"ואמר לבנאי,\" and he said to a builder that was there, \"שקעהו תחת הנדבך,\" build it into the wall, put it into the Why? And why? Because this will cause people to read it, and it's not kadai, because you would read it at a time when you shouldn't be reading it. I guess all doesn't apply now because now there's so many sefarim that the shiur, no special shiur in halacha, and you could All these things were in the time of the Gemara there was a special set time. So when he heard this, No, it's taking away time from learning halacha. So when he heard this, \"אף הוא צוה עליו וגנזו.\" So he also said, \"Okay, in that case, I'll stop it.\" And he said be gonzez it, put it away. Then the Gemara says, \"תנו רבנן,\" the רבנן, and we learned like this:
\"הברכות והקמיעין,\" you had like paper a paper, a parchment, which had written all the berachot on it, or kame'in, which had פסוקים, שמות, \"אף על פי שיש בהן אותיות של שם,\" they have letters of shem, of the Eibershter's name, \"ועניינים הרבה שבתורה,\" and a lot of עניינים of Torah, \"אין מצילין אותן מפני הדליקה.\" On Shabbos you can't save it from a fire. Now, it doesn't mean like if it's getting burned, you shouldn't save it. You can't carry it out. Now, you can't carry on Shabbos, so you can't carry anything out, but we said before, certain things which be'etzem you're not allowed to carry, but the רבנן were mekil because of the sefarim. For this they were not mekil, these sefarim. אלא נשרפין במקומן. Huh? אלא נשרפין במקומן הן ואזכרותיהן. You let them be burned there and even though it has the shemot, because this azkarot it says. Azkarot. It says azkarot. הן ואזכרותיהן. Azkarah is the shem of, the Eibershter's name written out. No. Yeah, so you have to let it burn, you can't take it out. That means you cannot Yeah, but you can't מחלל שבת even for other things either, but this is a If it would be a issur de'oraita, you can't. Even for a Sefer Torah. We're talking, we said that כל כתבי הקדש מצילין אותן, it's only in a case where it's only not a real issur. It's a issur, but not a issur de'oraita. Karmelit, for instance, a mavoi, a mavoi which you can't carry without an eruv, place where you have to have an eruv and you can't carry without an eruv, in this case, you're allowed to. רשות הרבים, you can't. Because that's a איסור דאורייתא. It's, it's חיוב מיתה. It's a איסור, it's carrying. But these, you're not allowed. ומכאן אמרו, from here they said, כותבי ברכות, and so we said, if people write these ברכות down on these things, כשורפי תורה. They're basically like burning the תורה. Why? Because if ever this will be caught in a fire, you'll have to let it be burned. So don't write it לכתחילה, you might come to a to a case where you'll have to let it be burned.
מעשה באחד, there's a case of a צידון, there was a story of one guy who was writing these things in צידון, כותב was, was, writing ובאו והודיעו לרבי ישמעאל, so they told רבי ישמעאל this guy is writing, we just said you shouldn't write these things. והלך רבי ישמעאל לבודקו, רבי ישמעאל came to find out, this is serious, check it out to see if it's true that he's writing it. כשהיה עולה בסולם, רבי ישמעאל was going up the ladder to the second floor to see the guy if he's doing it, הרגיש בו. He felt, he realized that רבי ישמעאל is coming to see, so he didn't he didn't want him to catch him doing it. What did he do? נטל תומל של ברכות, he took a whole bunch, a group of these ברכות, a whole קובץ of these קונטרסים, ושקען בספל של מים, and he stuck it into a, I think a pot of water, so that רבי ישמעאל shouldn't see it. Yeah, ובלשון הזה אמר לו רבי ישמעאל, so רבי ישמעאל told him, גדול עונשך מן האחרון מן הראשון. You were worried about, which is you didn't like that I was going to catch you writing the shemot which you shouldn't. Here, you erased it, you put it into the water and you're erasing the shem, that's mamash a issur of מחיקת השם. Yeah. Yeah, it's only in case there, but not itself, not, although you shouldn't write it. But this is mamash, you are over now. I, I guess he did, yeah. Doesn't say anything happened to him. Yeah, zogt di Gemara vayter, תנו רבנן, the רבנן taught like this: ויהי בנסוע הארון
ויאמר משה, the parashah that starts with ויהי בנסוע הארון, פרשה זו עשה לה הקדוש ברוך הוא סימניות מלמעלה ומלמטה. The Eibershter made, which is in the Torah you have סימנים, we always have, we have in the ספר תורה נו\"ן. נו\"ן הפוכה on two sides, beginning of the פרשה ויהי בנסוע and the end. לומר, to tell you, שאין זה מקומה, that really this is not the place. According to the seder of the Torah, this is not where it belongs. It belongs not, this is when it talks about the Yidden traveling. It belongs, Rashi says, by the דגלים, when it tells us in the beginning of Parshat Bamidbar, tells us how the דגלים were set up and the seder. So there it belongs, the seder. And it never says who went first, who went second. So it should have said, ויהי בנסוע הארון, and when the ארון went, this is this what happened. Why is it here? And that's why the Eibershter made sure to put in that you should be able to tell. How we have to look at it when we have these, these נו\"ן, it's similar to a parenthesis, what we would do nowadays, make parenthesis, חצי עיגול, to show that this is somehow. So the אייבערשטער כביכול, not exactly, made like parenthesis there to show it's not. Is that, ah? Not he forgot, to show that to us we should know. Now, is that a parsha, why so many places where we find that אין מוקדם ומאוחר בתורה, that the Torah order, and it doesn't do it. Okay, but this is something special, there must be a reason why this the Eibershter wanted to indicate, you should know I put it here because that's where it has to be, but it's not the order. You should realize it's not the order. רבי אומר, רבי says, לא מן השם הוא זה. This is not the reason. No, this is not. This is not the reason why the Eibershter made this parsha. אלא מפני שספר חשוב הוא בפני עצמו. The Eibershter wants to show this is a sefer for itself, that just like every chumash, Bereishit, Shemot is a chumash, these pesukim are a chumash. כמאן אזלא הא, and the Gemara, who does it go according? שמואל בר נחמני said in the name of רבי יונתן:
חצבה עמודיה שבעה, the Eibershter carved out seven pillars to the world. What are the seven? אלו שבעה ספרי תורה. Seven תורות. We all know there is חמשה חומשי תורה, five, why all of a sudden? Who does this go like? כמאן, כרבי, goes like Rebbi, because Rebbi said that this is a sefer for itself. So it comes out, no, so come so it comes out that Bamidbar is three sefarim. One sefer is till Beha'alotcha, another sefer is Beha'alotcha, I mean ויהי בנסוע, one is till ויהי בנסוע, one is ויהי בנסוע, and from ויהי בנסוע till the end. So that's three ספרים. So it comes out you have Bereishit, Shemot, Vayikra, three in Bamidbar, and one in Devarim, that's seven. Other things we have that we have different numbers. למשל, how many קפיטלאך in Tehillim? We have 150. Really, the Gemara says that the first and the second are really one קפיטל. אשרי תמימי, אשרי אשרי האיש and and the second one are one קפיטל, so really we have 149. Huh? Okay, the Dead Sea Scrolls. I saw another one, I
once saw it myself, and it says קנ\\"א, another קפיטל which we have no, we don't have it. I saw, it's on the parchment, I saw it myself, of the original. They once had it an exhibition, what was it, somewhere in Clifton? The Rebbe has a whole אריכות on this, regarding two or one, and there the Rebbe in a big הערה brings all this, he brings this Gemara that there is seven and five, and we find in Tehillim, this and, and we find in how many מסכתות in ש\\"ס? ששים המה מלכות, it says. The same פסוק, ששים, the Gemara saying there ששים המה מלכות, the Rebbe says, אלו ששים מסכתות, למעשה there are 63. How many פרשיות in the Torah? נ\\"ד, and that's 54. Why? Because it's all of ויגלח, I considered as one, נצבים וילך, so we see that there are two types of חשבונות, so here also, we know there are five, true there are five, there are seven also. I mean there's different, from different angles, different learnings. When did the Rebbe write, what is the הערה about? So, I'll tell you. It's something that's interesting, I said it once, that בנוגע the קפיטל תהלים that we say for a birthday, we all know that our מנהג is from the Baal Shem Tov, that if you're 20 years old, you say קפיטל כ\\"א. So, the
Rebbe told somebody once in a יחידות, that there's a רמז to it, and the remez is, that kapitel ע\\"א, kapitel ע\\"ב, finishes off, כלו תפלות דוד בן-ישי. That means David finished, died, when he said kapitel ע\\"ב. Since the Gemara says that kapitel א' and ב' are one, so really it's the end of kapitel ע\\"א. How old was he? 70! So, when he was 70, he said kapitel ע\\"א. So, is a remez. So, is a remez. No, ע\\"א. No, ע\\"א. ע\\"ב, ע\\"ב, שטייט נאר ע\\"ב, which is really ע\\"א, no, מ\\"א doesn't finish anything. מ\\"א also finishes. No, כלו תפלות doesn't say that. כלו תפלות doesn't. No, מ\\"א finish ברוך ה' אלקי ישראל מהעולם ועד העולם אמן ואמן. Only yeah, only ע\\"ב, which is really ע\\"א. Huh? Bar mitzvah, why why not י\\"ד, why י\\"ג? No, when you become a bar mitzvah, you say י\\"ד. י\\"ד? When you say become bar mitzvah, you say kapitel י\\"ד. You talk about kapitel תהלים? בן י\\"ג is a bar mitzvah, not בן י\\"ד. A vadai, nu. Today you're you finished, when you're finished with your 13 years, when you become 13 years old, now the next day, you're going into your 14th year. So, the whole year from when you're 13 years old, you're in the 14th year. So, you say kapitel י\\"ד, you say the kapitel in which year you're in. Why is it not? You're not י\\"ד, you're י\\"ג. No, you finished, you became י\\"ג. Why you say י\\"ד? You become 13 years old. Yeah. That's the separation. The נונ\\"ין. That's clearly, that's what he's saying. He made a separation instead of making רווחים, these are simanim to make it separate. Separation is a siman to make it, so why here he didn't choose to make a different type of סימן, דער אויבערשטער? Huh? But we see here, lemaaseh, it says כלו תפלות, it's finished. Yeah, so I'll tell you what happened, I told you once. So, the Rebbe said this to someone in yechidus. Someone told this to me. Someone told to me that the Rebbe, he asked the Rebbe in yechidus, he himself told me, that he asked the Rebbe what the siman is, and the Rebbe told him this is a remez to it. Yeah. So, he told it to me. So, I thought to myself that it's it's a shame that the Rebbe in a farbrengen never said such an interesante vort, it's a derush, there's nothing to do with it, it's not in any sicha, didn't say it, so it's a shame, it's going to get lost, such a vort. So I once, when I wrote a sicha, in the sefer? So I put it, no, I I when I wrote Likutei Sichos, one some of the sichos, I wrote this as a ha'arah, this vort. Connected to what? In the sicha, there's a sicha, the Rebbe speaks about the inyan that we say kapitel Tehillim of your age. The sicha talking about kapitel פ\"א, פ', when you're 80, you say פ\"א. So, I took an opportunity. Actually, I told you before, I told Rav Yoel once before when he wrote the sichos, \"Put it in someplace.\" Rav Yoel tells me, \"I'm afraid.\" Why? \"Because פ\"א, it's two kapitlech. So if I'm going to write this, the Rebbe is going to ask me, 'How could you write this vort, it's two?' So we'll have to come to a whole biur, and a gantze gesheft. איך וויל נישט אריינקריכן, איך האב מורא אריינצוקריכן in them.\" And he didn't write it. But when I wrote the sicha, I didn't care, so I wrote it in. So I wrote it in, so the ha'arah, the Rebbe was מגיה the sicha, and there's a ha'arah there, take, and the ha'arah that this is a remez, and it says there בדרך ב... בחידודא. בדרך צחות, like it's only, it's not a real ראיה, it's בחידודא. Okay, it's בחידודא, why not? חידודא, חידודא means sharp, it's a צחות, it's whatever. Shabbos, the Rebbe spoke in the farbrengen, Shabbos the Rebbe said the sicha that I gave out, it said this and this, and, but the emet is why is this two kapitlech? He asked that kashya, what Rabbi Yoel was afraid it's going to happen, it's exactly what happened. So the Rebbe made a whole thing, and he said even though it says בחידודא, but sof kol sof, it's it's like that one kapitel is How does he say it's one, why is this two? So he went in a whole אריכות to be מסביר that what what's the inyan of being one and what's the inyan of being two, and there's a remez in this, and that's whatever, wrote all this thing, and some places you find seven, we find five, we find 63. The whole that whole Then, after Shabbos, the Rebbe said that they should, what he said by farbrengen they should write up and make it as a הוספה to that sicha. If you look in חלק י', פרשת פרשת תולדות, you'll see it's a very strange thing. You look in the sefer, there's a sicha, at the end of the sicha, there's a whole a different a different font, a different type of that sicha, and that's all about this הערה. So, but this is a But the ikar is that I'm trying to bring out that this is a remez. י' פרשת... חלק י', פרשת תולדות. So you can look it up. You can look it up right now, we have the sefer here. And he proved it, בחידודא. Huh? He proved it. So, I told Rabbi Yoel later, All right, that does... you have a good chush, that he was afraid to do it. איז ער א בעל מבין, מבינים זיינען. גמרא זאגט. גמרא זאגט אין ברכות. גמרא זאגט: אשרי, אשרי האיש ולמה רגשו is באמת איין קאפיטל. So in the end, the Rebbe proved it to... At the end, yeah, we got the whole הערה, we got the whole thing, and the whole ביאורים, and... So they say you're 12th year and the 13th? The 13th, you say 14th? 14th, yeah, because you're starting the 14th year, no? All right, you're starting 14. That's right, we say the in which year you're in. And you start when you finish. The Rebbe gives the example that you have י\"ג, למשל, לדוגמא he says, כשיש לו כשמלאו לו י\"ג, לדוגמא, must be saying קאפיטל י\"ד. Shkoach, shkoach.