Berakhot 006
|
BET MIDRASH VIRTUALI
of the Rabbinical Assembly in Israel
RABIN MISHNAH STUDY GROUP
|
|
|
From when may the Shema be recited in the evening? From the time that priests enter to eat their terumah. Until the end of the first watch is the opinion of Rabbi Eli'ezer; the rest of the sages say 'until midnight', while Rabban Gamli'el says 'until first light'.
An incident is recorded in which his sons returned from a celebration and told him that they had not yet recited the Shema. He told them that if first light had not yet broken they were required to recite it. And not only here; but wherever the sages say 'until midnight' the mitzvah [duty] is actually in force until first light. In which case, why did the Sages say 'until midnight'? – in order to keep a person far from wrongdoing. DISCUSSION:
Our mishnah defined the earliest time for reciting the Shema in the evening as being from the time when priests eat their Terumah; and I explained (following the Gemara) that this was in order to "kill two birds with one stone".
Ed Frankel comments: My reading of this text does not disagree, but I believe points to another purpose. During the daylight one can tell the time by shadows and positions of the sun. At night, however, the best way to tell was by natural signs and by actions of recognized experts. Priests were expert at the time by which they had to eat their Terumah, they likely were hungry. Watching for them to go to eat, therefore, would be a natural way to tell time. In modern times one might consider it akin to telling time by the television schedule. e.g. the evening news just went on the local NBC channel, it must be 6:30 pm. Rick Dinitz also relates to this same topic: I might think that kohanim [priests] would approach the mitzvah [religious duty] of Keriat Shema [Reciting the Shema] with alacrity – structuring their evening schedule so as to fulfill Keriat Shema at the earliest possible moment. Yet our mishnah implies that they wait until after dinner. Here's the reasoning: the kohanim can't recite it earlier than Tzet ha-kochavim ["starrise"] (unless this mishnah does not apply to them), yet at that hour the mishnah tells us that they go in to eat their Terumah – so it must be that they recite Keriat Shema after dinner. Why did the kohanim postpone their recitation (as a group) until after dinner? Where did they recite it? On the same topic Richard Friedman writes: "Killing two birds with one stone" seems to me an insufficient explanation. I think the editing of the Mishnah is more purposeful than this explanation admits. I'm inclined to think that inserting this apparently tangential reference to the priests and the Temple into the very first Mishnah in the entire work is an intentional effort to link the post-destruction community to the Second Temple period. By defining liturgy times in terms of Temple cult times, the Mishnah affirms a continuity that the people might have feared had been sundered, and it pays homage to the primacy of the Temple in Jewish religion. I respond: I believe that there is a misunderstanding here. Not all priests had to bathe before eating their Terumah and certainly not every day. Only those priests who had contracted a ritual defilement were required to bathe in a mikveh [Ritual Bath]. In the Torah [Leviticus 22:1-7] we read:
Tell Aaron and his sons that … any man of you who approaches the sacred offerings while ritually defiled shall be cut off… No man of Aaron's seed may eat … of the sacred offerings until he has washed his whole body in water. Then, after sundown, he may eat of his [allotted] sacred offerings, for they are his food.
The Gemara [Berakhot 2a-2b] understands the phrase "after sundown" as indicating after the onset of dark, and not mere sunset. According to the Gemara, it is this distinction between sunset and dark that the mishnah wishes to teach 'incidentally' by linking these two disparate items (Shema and terumah) together. Since the priests were not congregated in one place, but each in his own home anywhere in the country, I do not think that we can imagine a mass visit to the mikveh as indicating to the rest of the people that the time had come to recite the Shema.
The time when priests who were ritually impure would bathe was when three medium stars appeared. After bathing they were permitted to eat their terumah, but that does not mean that they did so immediately. No doubt they first recited their evening prayers and then had their dinner. Indeed, I can see no reason why the priests (in this matter) should not be seen as the same as any other person, and included in the general charge of the sages mentioned in the Gemara [Berakhot 4b]:
A person should not come from the fields of an evening and say, "I shall go home and eat something, drink something, have a little nap, and then recite the Shema and the Amidah" … But a person should come from the fields of an evening, go into the synagogue, study some Bible if that is his wont, or some Mishnah if that is his wont, then recite the Shema and the Amidah, and [only] then eat his bread and recite grace.
I believe that this baraita [a source akin to the mishnah] also answers Rick's question as to where the priests recited the Evening Shema. There was no Arvit [Evening Service] in the Bet Mikdash, as such; if the service were held there in one of the halls it was as a Bet Knesset [synagogue].
I do not think that anything that the Gemara said (or I said in consequence) derogates from Richard's suggestion.
BMV Home |
Archive Search | Berakhot Archive | Subscribe/Unsubscribe | Shiur Dedication | Contact us The shiurim of the Rabin Mishnah Study Group are usually sent out on Monday and Thursday; These shiurim are and will remain free of charge.
|
Donation Form