My Mast Post
and other girsological issues
Nazir 54-55 brought up the famous dispute about whether the ritual impurity accorded to lands outside of Israel are mishum gusha or mishum avira. It takes an idea put forth by the Talmudic Narrator and attempts to retroject it to a Tannaitic dispute, between two Sages of the (sixth) final Tannaitic generation, Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi and Rabbi Yossi, son of Rabbi Yehuda (bar Illai). However, such an attempt is not required and therefore cannot be proven, because competing legal theories could explain this Tannaitic dispute.
This sugya, or portions of it, appear in parallel passages such as Chagiga 25a, Eruvin 35b, Gittin 8b, and earlier in the masechet, Nazir 19b. The assumptions of how we rule may differ between sugyot, as well as which is the more stringent, gusha vs. avira. Each can be studied both in its own local context and then with an attempt at a global explanation.
I discussed the idea of Ohel Zaruk, a moving partition / tent, in an early Scribal Error post about Dayan Ehrentrau, who went viral for wearing a suit bag for a brief few minutes while flying over a cemetery.
There were a few interesting girsological issues on Nazir 55a. Here is the sugya marked up:
The blue underlines are proposals and the red boxes are reactions to them. There are two approaches to the structure.
That of Pseudo-Rashi (the Mefaresh), in which the first וְהָתַנְיָא is an attack, as the brayta undermines the idea, while the second and third וְהָתַנְיָא are supports. That is because the word וְהָתַנְיָא is ambiguous. While usually such a citation of a brayta it is an attack, it can occasionally be benichuta, gentle support.
What goes with this differing usage of וְהָתַנְיָא is the second underlined word ואלא, but rather. Since the brayta undermines the first theory (of gusha), the ela / “rather” supplants it. In contrast, the blue-underlined וְאִיבָּעֵית אֵימָא is presenting an alternative theory, but isn’t coerced by anything which undermined it. That is so because the preceding וְהָתַנְיָא was a support. And that final theory is an attempt to resurrect the gusha approach, by complementing it with an additional legal hypothesis (that it depends on whether they decreed for fear he’d stick out his head or most of his body).That of Tosafot. Here, all three instances of וְהָתַנְיָא are a support. They go on at length with theories of just how the brayta can support. And accompanying this consistent reading, they have to change ואלא, which they do to another וְאִיבָּעֵית אֵימָא.
Hachi garsinan has only two manuscripts. Munich 95 has אלא but with the aleph replaced with a diacritic. Strangely, Vatican 110 has ואלא with an initial vav.
It is a reach, but perhaps וְאִיבָּעֵית אֵימָא, which can be written shorthand as ואב”א, could then have its bet misinterpreted as a lamed. More likely, these joining words can be in flux, and so one interpretation (as an attack) could allow a scribe to “correct” the text to an אלא.
Another interesting girsological issue was the type of water-vehicle one might regularly take from Israel into chutz la’aretz. Thus, on Nazir 55b:
וְהַתַּנְיָא: הַנִּכְנָס לְאֶרֶץ הָעַמִּים בְּשִׁידָּה תֵּיבָה וּמִגְדָּל — טָהוֹר, בְּקָרוֹן וּבִסְפִינָה וּבְאִיסְקַרְיָא — טָמֵא.
The Gemara adds: And it is taught in the Tosefta (Oholot 18:5) in accordance with this explanation of the opinion of Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Yehuda: One who enters the land of the nations in a chest, a box, or a cabinet is ritually pure. If he was in a wagon [karon], boat, or raft [iskareya], he is ritually impure. The difference is that the latter vessels are commonly used to convey people.
Rav Steinsaltz remarks that the Geonim had the word iskadya:
Then he translates based on this Geonic text, and gets “raft”. We can do the same with Google Translate.
What happened to the initial אי of the word? This is frequently added to allow Hebrew speakers to pronounce consonant clusters, like st and sch.
Especially for strange foreign words, daled / resh replacement is an easy trap. Rav Steinsaltz also notes that our text has iskarya with a resh. He connects this to ίστοκεραία, though I think I am getting the diacritic wrong here. This adds a few letters in the Greek.
He says that it is mast upon which one puts a sail, thus a large boat with sails. Google Translate doesn’t quite get us there, but I suppose a modern antenna is like a pole or mast. There is a difference between modern and ancient Greek. There is a related Greek word for mast.
By the way, did you spot the error in the English Koren translation above? In their haste, they wrote: “or raft [iskareya]”. However, this takes the translation of the daled-word (raft) and juxtaposes it with a transliteration of the resh word.
Pseudo-Rashi defines the iskaryia as follows:
הנכנס כו' בקרון ובספינה ובאיסקריא - כלומר בספינה גדולה שיש בה איסקריא וקרי לה הכי על שם איסקריא שבה דהיינו תורן וקרוי פוש"ט (מש"ט: תורן) בלע"ז משום דמילתא דשכיחא גזרו בה רבנן והא מתני' ר' יוסי בר' יהודה היא:
One who enters etc. in a wagon, boat or raft -- that is to say, in a large boat which is equipped with an iskareya -- and is it called this [iskareya] because of its iskareya, which is a mast. And it is called POST or MAST in a foreign language. Because it is a frequently-occurring case, the Sages decreed regarding it. This baraita is according to Rabbi Yosei, son of Rabbi Yehuda.
Translation via Sefaria Community Translation. What is happening with post / mast = toren, mast? Our Vilna Shas has פו”שט, with a little daled footnote, which tells us that girsat Rivan is משט.
Rashi earlier had used the Hebrew word toren, which matches mast. Admittedly, a mast is a kind of post, but why wouldn’t Rashi use the Old French word that was actually most on-point?
If we examine the Venice printing, Rashi says mast:
This is a case of a מ being separated into two letters, פו. See how if you connect them, they form a stylized mem.
Something I posted on Facebook yesterday related to the daf:
Feeling gratified.
This morning, in response to a question about tumas eretz ha'amim, and why even if the reason is mishum gusha, Biblical concern about buried corpses, the concern is being exposed over the airspace, not just physically touching. Even though there's a difference between meisei bnei yisrael (which are metameh also be'ohel) and meisei umos ha'olam (which are only metameh via touching or carrying), the concern may be safek meisei bnei yisrael.
Or as I put it more succinctly: No, this isn't MAGA country.
One final interesting point, as we progress from Nazir 55 to 56. On 55b, third-generation Amora, Rav Chisda, presented his theory, that metzora doesn’t fully suspend nezirut, such that the days of leprosy also count. He then explains why the Mishnah doesn’t indicate otherwise.
Rav Chisda is then attacked by three people:
Rav Sherevya who then answers how own question. According to Rav Hyman, a fifth-generation Amora, student of Abaye and Rava.
Rami bar Chama. Fourth-generation Amora, who was a student of Rav Chisda along with Rava.
Rav Ashi. Sixth-generation Amora, student of fifth-generation Rav Pappa, student of fourth-generation Rava, student of third-generation Rav Chisda.
We do see a scholastic network in play here, and how each might have heard of and grappled with Rav Chisda’s suggestion. The order is troublesome, since the regular order is chronological. Either we can revisit Rav Sherevia, with whom he appears, and just how he interacts with Abaye and Rava to see if he could be deemed a fourth-generation colleague. (It doesn’t seem so, when he is listed alongside Rav Pappa.) Or we should explain it based on the flow of the sugya, that it is easier to dispense with Rav Sherevya as a standalone, who also functions to properly frame what Rav Chisda means by a minimal or maximal nezirut, outside of its regular meaning of a thirty-day limit.