Welcome again to the second שיעור, which means the second lesson, the next lesson of the subject that we were discussing last time, which is to explain the underlying thought and understanding between the two opinions of בית שמאי and בית הלל. I don't need to repeat the introduction again, but just to mention the general idea of what we're trying to explain is that when we have an argument between different sages in the תלמוד or in the משנה, and I explained already last time what the difference between תלמוד and the משנה is, so even though there are different reasons for many of the different arguments, but there's many times one underlying thought, a thread of thought that would be the reason for each of the opinion. And that could be the same idea, the same thought would be in many, many subjects, even though they're different subjects altogether, nevertheless, their reasoning behind their opinions would be based on the same thought. And what we're discussing here is the different opinions of בית שמאי and בית הלל, and as I explained last time, it's based on the way we look at things, because there are two ways we could look at things. Every a lot of things have two stages, which is the stage of בכח and the stage of בפועל. בכח, as I explained last time, means the potential stage, and then you have the actuality. And they're both important, but the question is which of the two is more important, and that that should be the reason for the decision in that specific given question. And the opinion of בית שמאי is usually that we follow the בכח, we follow the way it is in its potential form, therefore we would make a decision in any given question of הלכה, of Jewish law, based on the way it is in its potential form. And בית הלל's opinion is that we base everything on the בפועל, the way it is in actual form, in actuality. And gave a few examples in the last class. Today, we will continue with different examples, and again in different subjects altogether, but it's all based on the same idea and the same reasoning. And that is first starting with a משנה in the tractate called עוקצין, which actually, by the way, happens to be the last, last tractate in the whole ש\"ס, in the whole תלמוד, in the whole משנה, which is made up of ששה סדרים, called six orders. We know the תלמוד is also known as ש\"ס. ש\"ס is an abbreviation, שין, the Hebrew letter שין, and a סמך, Hebrew letter סמך, which is abbreviation of the word ששה סדרים, six orders. There are six sections, so to speak, and each section has a lot of tractates. The last one of all, of the whole ש\"ס, is עוקצין. So in the last, in עוקצין, in פרק גימל, which is the third chapter of the מסכתא, the tractate עוקצין, it says a דין, a law like this. Now, give a little introduction before I mention the law. I already mentioned before the concept of טומאה וטהרה, that certain things could become טמא, which again means a spiritual type of impurity, doesn't mean dirt, physical dirt, it's a spiritual, halachically coming from the just from the laws of the תורה of what of becoming טמא, and certain things don't become טמא, and there are certain ways things become טמא, and there is a ways how you get rid of the טומאה, of the impurity, etc., etc. One of the laws in the laws of טומאה, which means the laws of impurity, is that there is nothing that's alive that could become טמא. The only living thing that could have this status of being טמא, impure, and again the spiritual impurity, is a Jewish person. A Jewish person who touches these different things which could make him טמא will become טמא. Anything else that's alive cannot become טמא. Even there are though there are certain species which actually the חומש, the Bible, says is טמא, but it only means when they are not alive. But there is nothing that's alive that could become טמא except a Jew. Even a non-Jew, based on the original laws the way it's written in the תורה, in the Bible, cannot become טמא while he's alive. A dead body is טמא, and that's even of a non-Jew, of any person is the same, but a living thing cannot become טמא. So here the משנה discusses fish. At what point can fish become טמא? So the משנה says, דגים, fish, מאימתי מקבלין טומאה? From when, at what point can they become טמא? It doesn't mean that a fish that's dead is טמא, but a fish that's dead is food, and food that touches an impure thing which, according to the Jewish law, is טמא, will make it טמא too. But if it's alive, it might, could touch the highest, worst level of impurity, will not become impure. Like I said, something that's alive cannot become impure. So, at what point do we consider the fish that it's not alive anymore, and therefore, it's able to become טמא, able to get this the status of טומאה of not being pure, of it being impure, if it does touch something that's impure? בית שמאי אומרים, בית שמאי say, משיצודו, from when they're caught. When you catch a fish and you take it out of the water, it's really still alive, but you know you're going to leave it like that, it's going to die because fish cannot live without water. So, בית שמאי says, so the school of שמאי says that the moment you catch the fish, the fish already now is able to become impure if it touches something that's impure. ובית הלל אומרים, בית הלל say, משימותו, from when it'll die. You have to wait. If it didn't die yet, even though it's out of the water, it's still considered alive, and it cannot become טמא. It cannot get the status of טומאה if it touches something that's טמא. But when it dies actually, that's when it could become טמא. Here it's pretty obvious how this fits to the line of thought that I was saying before, because when you take the fish out of the water, בכח, potentially, it's going to die, unless you put it back into the water, so you have to do something else. But if you just leave it as is, you take it out of the water, you put it down, at this point, it's potentially dead. It's not actually dead, but it's potentially dead. Actually dead it is when it actually dies. So, בית שמאי says, since I look at everything in the potential form, so therefore they say that from the moment you caught the fish, it is already as if it's dead, and it's מקבל טומאה, and it's able to receive and become טמא. But בית הלל says we look at everything in the actual form, and since in actuality this is not dead yet, so we don't consider it dead, so it should be able to become טמא if it touches something that's טמא, and therefore, בית שמאי, בית הלל says, it only becomes טמא if it is actually dead. So, here we see a very clear argument between the two based on the difference between whether we accept everything בכח or בפועל. There's another one also in מסכת עוקצין, which is also more or less obvious, unlike the other two examples we gave before in the previous class, which were not so obvious and needed some explanation, but this is much clearer. And this, what I'm going to say now, is also pretty clear like the one I just said, and that's also in the same tractate, עוקצין, and this is משנה י\"א, the 11th משנה of that tractate עוקצין: חלות דבש, מאימתי מטמאות משום משקה? And this does need a little introduction. Again, it's in the laws of טומאה וטהרה, of things becoming טמא, because מסכת עוקצין, this tractate עוקצין, is part of the section, the order that's called טהרות, that deals with the laws of purity and impurity. So, here it says that חלות דבש means a beehive, which has the honey in it, the honeycomb. When, I'll translate the words and I'll explain it. Again, חלות דבש, which means the honeycomb, מאימתי מטמאות משום משקה? When can it become impure in the level of liquid? Which means like this: as I said before, things that touch something that's impure will become impure. But there are different laws and different levels and all kinds of things, so much about it. But the one law that's important to our discussion in this משנה is that there are different laws in טומאה וטהרה, in impurity, between food and drink, between solids and liquids. Solids have their own set of rules, liquids have their own set of rules, and we have to know the differences. Here we have a question: what is honey? Is honey solid, or is honey liquid? Everyone agrees that when you have the honey out of the honeycomb, it's definitely considered a liquid. It's a pretty thick liquid, but it's still considered a liquid. And therefore, the laws of impurity, of טומאה, that will apply to the honey will be laws that apply to liquids. What, at what point does it become liquid, is it considered liquid? So, בית שמאי אומרים, בית שמאי say, משיחרחר. משיחרחר means from when you smoke the bees out. I don't know how they do it nowadays, but the way they used to do it then, they couldn't get to the honeycomb to get the honey out because of the bees, so they would take smoke and they would smoke the honeycomb and the bees would automatically run away and they were left with the honey, and they would take out the honey. So, בית שמאי says, from when you smoke the honeycomb, at that moment, the honey in the honeycomb is considered liquid. And therefore, all the laws that apply to liquid will apply to the honey, too. בית הלל אומרים, בית הלל say, משירוסק. It's when you actually crack open, break open the honeycomb. At that moment, the honey inside becomes liquid, has a הלכה, has a law, is considered liquid. Before that, it's considered solid. So, בית שמאי says the honey in the honeycomb, before you do anything to it, is considered solid. And therefore, if this honeycomb will touch something impure, it will have to apply all the laws of solids to the honey that's inside. But when you smoke start you put the smoke there, so the bees should leave, which is again the beginning of the process of taking the honey out, already at that moment, the honey is considered liquid. And בית הלל says the school of בית הלל says, \"No, it is from the time you actually break open the honeycomb.\" But before that, even though you smoked it already, it's still not considered liquid. I have to add that there's another version in this משנה, that the opinion of בית שמאי is not from when you smoke you bring the smoke to the honeycomb, but instead of the word משיחרחר, which means, as I said, you smoke it, there instead of the ח, there's a ה, משיהרהר. הרהור means thought. So בית שמאי says, when does it have a הלכה, when is it considered liquid? When you think, when you have a thought, when you are in your mind preparing to go and take the honey out of the honeycomb. So here we have two versions in בית שמאי, whether it is from when you put the smoke there or when you think about it, and in בית הלל it is only when you break it open. And here again, it's pretty obvious that this is connected to the two ways of thinking whether it is בכח ובפועל. When you smoke the honeycomb, bring smoke to the honeycomb, it's the beginning, the potential of it coming out, and when it comes out, as I said before, is definitely liquid, so now you're already it's the potential of becoming liquid, it already has the הלכה it's considered liquid, and all the laws of liquid apply to it. The same is if you have the version משיהרהר, when you think. Because the moment he's thinking, in other words he's going to do it, already this is the beginning in a potential form, it's more potential than the smoke, but it's a potential form already of taking the honey out of the honeycomb to become liquid. So, therefore, בית שמאי says that being that we follow or we claim that the potential counts more than the actuality, and therefore, from the moment it's potentially already honey out of the honeycomb, we apply to it the laws of liquid. And therefore, it's or from when you thought about it, or at least from when you put this brought the smoke there, from that point on, it's liquid. While בית הלל says that's only potential. We follow בפועל, we follow in the actuality. In actuality, it's not liquid yet. In actuality, it's still inside the honeycomb and it's not liquid. When does it become liquid? When it comes out of the honeycomb, when you actually crack the honeycomb, משירוסק, you crack the honeycomb open, then it comes out, then it's considered liquid. So here we have another example of the way בית שמאי and בית הלל give their opinions based on בכח ובפועל. Now, actually, these two examples are pretty close. See the other examples I gave before were from two completely different subjects all together. Here it's from two that are close, but they are still completely different than the other two subjects we spoke about in the last class. So here we see another subject where we have their difference of opinion. We will now go to another example where we see that the argument of בית שמאי and בית הלל is based on בכח ובפועל. And this is again in a completely different subject all together. At the end of the series, you will see such a variety of subject completely from one end of the spectrum to the other, and they're all based on the same thing. And this is in the tractate ברכות. Now, ברכות is the first tractate of the ש״ס. of the whole Talmud, and it talks about different blessings. Actually, the word ברכות means blessings. So all kinds of laws about all different blessings that we make, whether it's blessings for food that we eat, blessings for מצוות that we do, commandments that we fulfill, like the the blessing of ציצית and תפילין that we do. Then there's another type of blessing, which is called ברכות שבח והודאה, blessings of praise to God for certain things. Actually, it's not important to our discussion here, but I just want to mention that there are three categories of blessings. One is called ברכות הנהנין, blessings we make before we have pleasure of something, before we eat things, or other types of pleasure, before we even smell something which is a pleasure, that's called ברכות הנהנין. Like when you eat bread, you say, ברוך אתה המוציא לחם מן הארץ, we thank God for taking bread out of the ground, or other blessings that we make on food. Then we have ברכות המצוות, blessings that we make before we do a מצוה. For instance, before you blow the שופר, there's a blessing that you make. Before you eat מצה on פסח, there's a blessing that you make, called ברכות המצוות. Then we have ברכות שבח והודאה, blessings that we say praise to השם for different things He gave us. Not mainly for the pleasure that we have from it at that moment, but general blessings. One of the blessings that we make is after שבת when we make הבדלה. We know that when שבת is over, we have to make הבדלה. We all know what הבדלה is. הבדלה is that you take a cup of wine and you make a blessing where you speak about God separating between שבת and the weekdays, and all kinds of different separation He makes. So we make הבדלה, we call it מוצאי שבת, מוצאי שבת, when שבת is out. One of the things we do during הבדלה is we make a ברכה on the fire. Actually, everyone knows you hold the הבדלה candle, and then what we do is we our nail we look at our nails and we make the ברכה for the fire. What ברכה do we make? Many of us, many of you are all familiar with what the ברכה is: ברוך אתה השם אלוקינו מלך העולם, which means \"Praised are You, השם, the God of the world, the King of the world,\" בורא מאורי האש, who creates the lights of the fire. Again, בורא מאורי האש, who creates the lights of the fire. It's not so simple! We do that because that's the way בית הלל holds, and as I said, we usually do like בית הלל. But it's an argument, it's not so simple. Let's look at the משנה. The משנה in, again, tractate ברכות דף נ\"א עמוד ב', which is 51st page, the second side. We always go by the page and the side because it's easier to remember, again. Here it says like this: בית שמאי אומרים, בית שמאי say, שברא מאור האש, מאור האש. The blessing is that we thank השם that He created the light of the fire. בית הלל אומרים, בית הלל say, בורא מאורי האש, who created the lights of the fire. Again, בית שמאי says, the school of שמאי says we say, we thank God, this falls into the category of thanking God, שבח והודאה, we give thanks to השם, to God, so we thank God for creating the light of the fire, and בית הלל says we say thank God for creating the lights of the fire. Just by the way, I'm sure many people will be curious when they listen to this, why do we make this blessing if we thank השם, we thank God for the fire, which is a very important thing that we have, why do we do it on מוצאי שבת, after שבת? Well, there it says because when אדם הראשון, the first human being, was created, he was created on the sixth day of creation, and it says the seventh day of creation, which was שבת, there was no darkness. That first שבת was light 24 hours. So basically he hasn't seen darkness. So he was created on Friday, was light, then when שבת entered it was still light, then שבת day was light, and then שבת was over, all of a sudden it became dark. It's the first time he saw darkness, he got very scared. God put into his mind to start to think what should I do, so he thought of taking two rocks and he rubbed them together, and fire came out. Well, he thanked God, \"Now I I could see, there's fire.\" So to remember that, every מוצאי שבת we thank God for the fire. Fine. But what blessing do we say? So בית שמאי says we say ברוך מאור האש, we thank God for the light, מאור is the light, the luminary of the fire, and בית הלל says the lights of the fire. Now what is the reason for their argument? So, we look at the תלמוד, few page, a page later, which is דף נ\"ב עמוד ב', page 52, second side, and the תלמוד explains what the difference is. Here: בית שמאי סברי, בית שמאי holds, חדא נהורא איכא בנורא. There is one light in the fire. So we make the blessing: ברוך מאור האש. We thank God for the light of the fire. בית הלל סברי, בית הלל holds, טובא נהורא איכא בנורא. There are many lights in the fire. רש\"י, who is one of the great commentaries, says: what does it mean many lights in the fire? So, רש\"י says: because you have שלהבת אדומה, you have the red part of the flame, לבנה, you have the white part of the flame, וירקרקת, the green, the blue, whatever part of the flame, so we have different parts of the fire. So בית שמאי says we have one light in the fire, and בית הלל says we have more than one light in the fire. Is this an argument whether we have one light in the fire or we have three lights in the fire? I mean, how could they argue in in a fact? Look at the fire, you'll see. If you look at it, you'll see. Take a candle, take a הבדלה candle and look. You see, there's the part is white, the part is blue, the part is red. So how could בית שמאי say there's only one color, one type of light in the fire? The answer is very simple: they don't argue whether there is one light in the fire or not. Everyone knows that there is three lights in the fire, is more than one. But in potential, in foundation, there is one kind concept of fire, and that one fire comes out into three separate separate kinds of fire. The יסוד האש we call it, the foundation of fire or the element of fire is really one. From that element of fire, when it comes out into actual fire that you could see, you see different colors. So בית שמאי says, being that we always follow the potential, so we make the blessing according to the potential. And in potential, we say ברוך מאור האש, the fire, because the potential is one fire. The יסוד, the foundation of fire, the way it is in its source, is one. And בית הלל says, no, since when it comes out into בפועל, into actuality, it has more than one color, so we make the blessing by saying that we thank God for giving the lights of the fire because there are more than one light. And this is another example of this argument. And here again, this is a different subject altogether. So now we added three more. Number one was in the case of עוקצים with the fish, that בית שמאי says that from when you catch the fish, when you take it out of the water, it's already considered dead, and therefore it has the laws of of something that's able to receive and become טמא, and בית הלל says, no, when it actually dies. בית שמאי says בכוח, בית הלל says בפועל. In the case of the honey, בית שמאי says when you have the potential of it becoming liquid, it's already considered liquid, and בית הלל says, no, it actually has to become liquid. When you open it up and take it out, that's when it has the law of liquid, it's considered liquid. And here we have the case of how do we look at the fire? Do we look at the potential concept of fire which is before it actually comes out into the into the actual fire, and we have when you strike it or when it's in the potential form, it's not three, it's just when it comes out, it looks like three. So בית שמאי says we make the blessing on as if it's one, and בית הלל says we go after the בפועל, and therefore we make the blessing ברוך מאורי האש.