📖 SATURDAY PRAYER: HOCHMA-YESHIVAT HAVERIM יְשִׁיבָה חברים – BABYLONIAN TALMUD p171

READING: BETWEEN MIDNIGHT AND DAWN OF SATURDAY

CHAPTER X.
FURTHER REGULATIONS CONCERNING THE PRESCRIBED QUANTITY OF THINGS TO BE
STORED.
MISHNA I.: One who had stored anything for planting, sampling, or medicinal purposes (before
the Sabbath) and carried some of it out (into public ground) on the Sabbath, be it ever so small a
quantity, is liable for a sin-offering. Any one else, however, is culpable only then if (he carried
out) the prescribed quantity. Even the one who had stored is culpable only for the prescribed
quantity, if he brought the thing carried out by him back (to private ground).
GEMARA: For what purpose is it said in the Mishna, “One who stored anything”? Would it not
be sufficient to say, “One who carried out things intended for planting, sampling, or medicinal
purposes, be the quantity ever so small, is culpable”? Said Abayi: The Mishna treats of the case
of a man who, after storing the thing, forgot for what purpose he had stored it, and then carried it
out into the street for any purpose whatever. Lest one say that the original intention (to store it)
is abolished, and now the thing carried out has for him only the same value as for others, and he
would be culpable only for carrying out the regularly prescribed quantity, it comes to teach us
that one who commits a deed executes his original intention.
R. Jehudah said in the name of Samuel: R. Meir declares one who carried out only a single
wheat grain, intended for sowing, culpable. Is this not self-evident? The Mishna taught: “Be it
ever so small.” One might presume that the term “be it ever so small” denotes something smaller
than a dried fig but not smaller than an olive. R. Meir therefore informs us (that it refers even to
one wheat grain). R. Itz’hak, the son of R. Jehudah, opposed this: “(We see that) the Mishna
declares one culpable for an act originally intended to be performed, but now, supposing a man
intended to carry out his entire household at once; is he then not culpable until he had
accomplished the entire task, even if he had carried out part of it?” The answer
was: If a man has an absurd intention it is abolished by the law, and he is culpable for carrying
out the prescribed quantity.