[Avodah] Rav Shimon Schwab on how Jewish women should dress

[David Riceman]

Me:

<<We see that she went to (in the immortal words of AA Milne) "the edge 
of  the town" while dressed up.>>

RMB:

<<(We're discussing Taanis 23b, the maaseh begins on amud A.)

The words are "ki mata lemasa". While "masa" does sometimes mean
"hometown", it usually means one's estate (home and yards). The meaning
you presume is a derived one, and the it would have been more natural to
call the town a kefar or an ir (depending on how urban Aba Chilkiyah's
town was). So, one can't "see" from this quote that she went beyond the
gate of their property.>>

Except that Abba Hikiyah was a day laborer (he says this explicitly later on), so it's unlikely that he had an estate, and the next line in the story is "ki mata l'beisa" (when he got to the house), so it can't possibly mean his house.  Furthermore, when he explains his actions at the end of the story "kdei shelo etein einay b'isha aheres", what other woman would be in a day laborer's yard?

David Riceman

David Riceman