Hot answers tagged mishna
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The Commentary on the Mishnah came first. In his colophon at the end of it, Rambam writes that he began writing the commentary at age 23, and finished it at age 30, in the year 1479 of the "Era of Documents" (4928 since Creation, 1168 CE).
The Mishneh Torah, on the other hand, was written in the 4930s. In the introduction he says that the current year is ...
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The Rav (ad loc.) explains that these are opposites: One who borrows without repaying doesn't foresee that, therefore, people will refuse to lend to him in the future. R' Shim'on b. N'san'el didn't want to say "one who doesn't see what's coming", explains the Rav, because others who don't see what's coming aren't so bad, as they may be able to get around ...
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From Soncino's intro to Seder Moed:
"It might be observed that the designation 'Mo'ed' is in the singular, as distinct from the plural forms used to designate the other Orders, e.g., Nashim, Nezikin, etc. It has been suggested that the singular is here specially used to avoid the confusion that might arise through the employment of the plural Seder Mo'adim ...
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With regard to Sh'kalim, I believe the answer does indeed rely on publication practices. The practice of printing (and therefore studying) Sh'kalim with the rest of Talmud Bavli Seder Moed can be traced as far back as the times of the Geonim. [The idea is that Sh'kalim is short and therefore relatively inexpensive to print with the rest of Seder Moed to ...
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HaMaor Volume 46 Number 3 Page 26 says that since all the Yomim Tovim are going to be nullified besides Purim when Moshiach comes therefore it is called Moed in singular form as the only Mesechta remaining will be Megila.
Otzar Kol Minhagei Yishurin Siman 7 * note says that since the names of the Shisha Sidrei Mishna are based on the Pasuk והיה אמונת עתיך ...
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An Google spreadsheet with all that information (and more!) is available here.
A screenshot of the more relevant part is clipped below:
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I vaguely recall seeing some discussion about the whole "heat adding" thing years ago (maybe an old AOJS article?), but unfortunately don't have the details. Honestly, I'm still not certain how to understand the mishna. But off the top of my head ...
Leo Levi's The Science in Torah suggests that something like manure worked by fermenting, and fermentation ...
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The Shulchan Aruch records this Halacha unopposed in OC 110:8. The Mishna Berura there notes that the Ari would say this prayer every morning. He also notes the Rambam's opinion (commentary to Mishna Brachot 4:2) that these prayers are obligatory and says the the Elya Rabba and others all seem to rule like the Rambam.
The Aruch HaShulchan (OC 110:16) notes ...
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First of all, as @msh210 noted, R' Shimon ben Nesanel cannot have said "someone who does not see the consequences of an action", because that is simply the absence of a good trait, but not necessarily a bad one. It would have been equivalent to if R' Eliezer had said "one who does not have a good eye."
That said, the simplest way to understand R' Shimon's ...
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While your summary might work for the general behavior of bringing sacrifices of birds in ideal situation, your summary does not cover, or give reference to the border cases, and what exactly is to be done with various birds or situations that can not be offered.
Also, at the point in time in which the mishna was written, these cases were not done in ...
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The book Kol Yehudah explains that the Gra held that "chasurei machsara" means that the gemara is saying that it initially appears that the mishnah is missing something, but at a closer look it really is not missing at all.
The Pe'as HaShulchan explains that the Gra held that it means that the gemara was really actually changing the intent of the mishnah, ...
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The first actual description of it is given by the Ohr Zarua (Kilayim 1:288): A sort of animal (named yedua, used to do yidoni) attached to the ground, that can destroy anything that approaches it; but if someone somehow manages to disconnect it from the ground, it dies immediately.
In the introduction to Tanchuma, it relates a story that someone invited a ...
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I don't know about Nida and Shabbat, but as far as mesechet Taanit I heard a really interesting explanation.
I'm clearly not doing the explanation justice here, but in the Talmud Yerushalmi, Mesecht Taanit, is called mesechet Taniot. Because outside of Israel, you can not declare new fasts, and many of the fasts that were declared were optional based on ...
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You must mean a non-Jewish (actually, quasi-Jewish) slave, a "shifcha." (I.e. she was born non-Jewish, then underwent a part-conversion when she became a slave.) A born-Jewish, "ama ivriyah" goes free automatically upon reaching puberty, so that case is moot.
I don't know whether the partial conversion given to a shifcha already wipes out all existing ...
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Choosing a quick and easy mesechta of mishnayos is a highly subjective activity.
The first consideration, obviously, is length. However, there are plenty of relatively short mesechtos, so this is not a major problem.
The biggest issue, especially for someone with a limited background, is to avoid having too many new concepts at once, especially big ...
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Tamid is, except for the very end, a story of how things used to be in the bes hamikdash. You can practically just read through it without commentary (though having a floor plan of the second bes hamikdash — usually published as an appendix to nearby maseches Midos — handy will help a good deal).
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Aside from the excellent points that SethJ made in the comments here and to the other related question, we do find R. Yehudah Hanassi himself disparaging the use of Aramaic:
"Rebbi says: in the Land of Israel, why use Syriac [= Aramaic, see Rashi and Tosafos]? Either use the holy language, or Greek" (Sotah 49b and Bava Kamma 83a).
In the latter place, ...
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One significant rule you didn't mention is that if a bird from a group of "undesignated pairs" flies into another such group, it invalidates one bird in each group. Another important topic is the discussion at the end of the masechta regarding a kohen who didn't do what he was supposed to.
In any event, aside from the fact that there are more rules than the ...
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The Mishna is a compilation of (mostly) halachic rulings that comprise the Oral Law, which is the body of knowledge received by Moshe at Sinai sans whatever is included explicitly in the Written Torah. It was compiled (or perhaps even written) by R' Yehuda HaNasi in around the second or third century CE.
In the next several centuries, halachic discussions ...
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Sometimes, the reason is technical:
Often, there were only two leaders of the Generation, such as the Nasi and Av Beis Din of the Sanhedrin, or the Rosh Yeshivas of Sura and Pumbedeisa.
In post-Talmudic texts, this is often just a preference of the Brisker Method of Talmudic analysis.
On a more philosophical level, Occam's Razor applies - why assume ...
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An explanation I heard from my teacher in Yeshiva, Rabbi Sholom Shpalter (he quoted it from somewhere, but I don't remember where):
The Mishna deliberately overly shortened concepts to keep the idea that there is an oral tradition to understanding Torah, and it is not all written down.
That works according to the opinions that the Mishna was written down ...
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Regarding the measurements, there is a long discussion in the Tlmud Bavli, Eruvin 83(p1-2). At the end (p2), the Talmud says that the Challah measure is 7 quarters of flour = 6 quarters of Jerusalem = 5 quarters of Sepphoris.
Notice that the Talmud doesn't say here anything about the reasons or the meaning.
תנו רבנן (במדבר טו) ראשית עריסותיכם כדי עיסותיכם ...
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כופר בתורה שבעל פה does not mean that he denies the theoretical existence of any תורה שבע"פ but that he denies the actual תורה שבע"פ in our possession--so if someone denies the authentic תורה שבע"פ he would fall under that category. Furthermore, such a person would be included under the category of מכחיש מגידיה as someone who denies the reliability of the ...
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My guess is that the drasha of "בן ולא בת, בן ולא איש" was a known drasha that the mishna here is incorporating to support it's statement about the age of the ben sorrer u'moreh. Although the fact about "בן ולא בת" is not relevant to the discussion of the mishna, it includes the full statement as it was known.
To give a more famous example, in the gemara ...
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Not every Mishna is mentioned in the Bavli. As a counterexample (selected at random) the opening phrase of Keilim 14:3 does not appear in the Bavli.
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I seem to have hit something of a brick wall with this, though may have enough information now to tentatively answer my own question. It seems that this phenomenon is alluded to in a number of places: in addition to those I mentioned in the question, mChallah 2:6, bEruvin 83a-b (thanks, Moti, for your answer), bShabbat 15a, bShabbat 76b, bPesachim 48b, etc. ...
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If you go to this website and choose the schedule of one mishnah a day for a certain masechta, and count the days in the schedule, you'll have the number of mishnayos in that masechta (choose the option for the number of days and not dates). You can do the same thing for a perek.
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This seems more like an opinion piece than an actual question-and-answer thing, but for what it's worth I think that Danby's translation greatly overshadows Neusner's, but have not seen Blackman's (nor any other).
Danby translates the whole Mishna himself, is slavishly faithful to the Hebrew, and although he sometimes notes alternative interpretations in ...
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There is no "source" for Hanukkah any more than there is a source for Tisha B'Av. You can point to the earliest known reference to the day in print (for Hanukkah, that would be Maccabees I), but that text won't serve as the "source" for all later treatments of the concept any more than you could say that discourse today concerning the Vietnam War is all ...
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It seems that others identify Michvar as Machaerus, site of a Hasmonean and later Herodian fortress, mentioned by Josephus, whose remnants are still extant. That's a lot closer to Jerusalem - about 28 miles as the crow flies. Granted, that's still twice as far as Jericho, but since about a third of that distance is over the Dead Sea, maybe indeed that would ...
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