📖 SATURDAY PRAYER: HOCHMA-YESHIVAT HAVERIM יְשִׁיבָה חברים – BABYLONIAN TALMUD p161

READING: BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND DAWN OF SATURDAY

“Anonymous teachers say that there can be not more than four days’ difference between one
New Year’s day and another.” If a leap year intervened, then there may be a difference of five
days. Is this not contradictory to the opinion of both the rabbis and R. Jossi? According to R.
Jossi there were seven short months (of twenty-nine days) in that year, but according to the
rabbis there were eight such months, (consequently the difference from the last year was only in
two days,) as this year was an extraordinary one. (And the first day of the month Iar of the last
year was on Friday.)
Another objection was raised: We have learned in the Tract Seder Aulim that on the fourteenth
day of the month of Nissan, during which (month) the Israelites went out of Egypt, they killed
the Passover sacrifice; on the fifteenth they went out, and that day was Friday. Now, if the first
of the month of Nissan of that year was Friday, we must say that the first day of the following
(Iar) month was on the first day of the week and the first of the succeeding month (Sivan) was
on Monday. Is this not contradictory with R. Jossi? R. Jossi will then say that this Boraitha is in
accordance with the opinion of the rabbis.
Come and hear another objection: R. Jossi says: “On the second day Moses went up on the
Mount Sinai and came back. The same he did on the third day, but on the fourth day, when he
came back, he remained.” Came back and remained? Whence did he come back–it does not say
that he went up at all? Say, then, on the fourth day he went up, came back, and remained. On the
fifth he built an altar and offered a sacrifice. On the sixth he had no time. Shall we assume that
he had no time because on that day the Israelites received the Torah? (If we say that the second
refers to the second day of the week, it must be a fact that the Torah was given on Friday, and would this not be a contradiction to his [R. Jossi’s] own opinion?) Nay; he had no time because the Sabbath was at hand.