Thought for the Day: We Have a Scroll of Secrets!!

The core of the Oral Law is encoded in the mishnayos collected and culled and edited into their final form by R' Yehuda. Collected, culled, and edited from where? There is a large body of statements that were used as the core curriculum in the ancient yeshivos of Eretz Yisroel. R' Yehuda produced from there the six orders of the mishna that is the official set of statements used by the entire Jewish nation. There are also other collections, authoritative in content, but not as well known nor are well studied. These are known as ברייתות; which literally means "outside teaching", as they are outside the office cannon of mishnayos. The gemara often uses them to clarify and deepen our understanding of a topic. The gemara (Shabbos 6b) is curious about why a ברייתא makes two quite obvious claims in one breath:

Were someone to move an object between a private and public domain on Shabbos; if it was by accident, they have to bring a sin offering, but if it was on purpose, then it is a capital crime punishable by spiritual excision done without witnesses and warning, and stoning otherwise.

The bothersome issue here is that this is true for any transgression of one of the 39 forbidden labors of Shabbos. The gemara makes a couple of half-hearted attempts, then brings out the big guns. Rav says he found the Scroll of Secrets from the Yeshiva of R' Chiya and it says in there: איסי בן יהודה says there are one less than 40 categories of forbidden labor on Shabbos, and the transgression of only one of them is a capital crime. The gemara says, basically... whoa!! that can't be right! So the gemara demurs and emends the statement to be:  איסי בן יהודה says there are one less than 40 categories of forbidden labor on Shabbos, and the transgression of all of them is a capital crime, except one. (which is left unidentified). (Trust me -- or not, you can check it yourself -- those statements are much more similar in Babylonian Aramaic.) The gemara concludes... Ah! That explains it! The ברייתא  is coming to tell us that the labor of transferring from one domain to another is not a candidate for the unidentified labor that is not punishable as a capital crime; transferring an object from one domain to another is definitely punishable as a capital crime. We feel much better. Two dots.

Sounds more than a bit Harry Potter-ish, no? Secret scrolls. Cryptic messages about life and death matters. So cool! I wanted to delve into this more, so I went downstairs, where the yeshiva has an Otzer HaHochma! Thousands of s'farim digitized and computer searchable. So I searched. I found 100s of entries and dozens of very detailed articles on this topic. Real stuff. M'iri, S'fas Emes, Chidushei Shevet HaLevi, and more! I have spent six hours poring through sources over the last two days.

I cannot possibly summarize what I found in one TftD. However, I'll whet your appetite. The M'iri says the category of labor whose transgression is not a capital crime is making a fire. How does we know? Because the verse at the beginning of parasha VaYakel says to not make a fire in all of your dwelling places on Shabbos (Shmos 35:3). Why was "making a fire" singled out from all the labors? One opinion is to tell us that making a fire is not a capital crime; another opinion is to tell us that one must atone (bring an offering) for each category of labor that was violated, not just one for the whole Shabbos. So the M'iri says that איסי בן יהודה meant fire. We, however, hold according to the other opinion. The final halacha, therefore, is that transgression of any and all categories of labor on Shabbos is a capital offence.

There are strong questions on this M'iri. And what is a scroll of secrets anyway? Stay tuned...