[Avodah] kesiva and tzovea

[Chana Luntz]

R' Micha Berger wrote:
:> Ink can crack or peel off parchment. It more rests above the skin than
:> penetrate within it. Would medium be considered tzoveia in any case?

I replied:
: Well if you consider that not to be permanent, then you don't have the
: melacha of kesiva either...

And RMB further replied
>I wasn't talking about impermanence. If ink on parchment were temporary,
>we would have no sta"m!

My comment was something more like a rhetorical question and perhaps should
have read like this:- obviously you are not assuming that the fact that ink
can crack or peel off parchment renders it not permanent, otherwise we would
have no melacha of kesiva, and no stam.  But the Rambam, who is our major
source on the topic, defines permanence and non permanence as the defining
line, not absorption or non absorption - as can be further illustrated by
the cases he brings to demonstrate non permanence, make-up and colouring on
iron and copper.  If absorption versus non absorption were the test, then
these cases would never get to first base.  Nor, arguably, would we even
have a rabbinic ban on make-up, on the basis of k'ain d'orisa tikun, since
make-up is both non permanent and non penetrating.

>AIUI, the most common ways of writing in ancient Israel were:
>1- Writing with ink / dye on pottery -- in which the ink is absorbed into
   the writing surface, and we can therefore entertain our question about
   tzoveia.
>2- Etching into clay, where there is definitely no question of tzoveia.
>And last
>3- Ink on parchment. But the ink sits ON the parchment, AIUI. We aren't
   dying the parchment, we are sticking a colored (black) layer on top
   of it. Veharaayah, you can take a blade and scrape it off, and years
   of aging and enviromental changes can cause the ink to peel off on
   its own.

>So I asked about case 3 -- the most usual way of writing text by Jewish
>contemporaries of Tanakh. Does the process even allow for the question
>of tzoveia?

>In the mishkan, kesivah was marking letters on gold plate. Either they
>were etched (like my #2) or the ink was stuck onto (but outside) the
>gold (like #3). AFAIK, there is no way to dye gold.

I understood your question, and was attempting to answer it thusly:  while
it might be logical to argue for a distinction between absorption and non
absorption in terms of tzovea (at least d'orisa), that is not the way that
our major source on this, namely the Rambam, goes, but rather he
distinguishes between permanence and impermanence only.  And similarly, the
teshuva of Rav Ovadiah I referred to, brings many poskim who make the
distinction between permanence and non permanence, but not between
absorption and non absorption.  And even when ROY is formulating his
distinction between what occurred in the Mishkan, and what did not, to
exempt the sunglasses, he does not formulate it in terms of absorption
versus non absorption, but application of one thing to another (which
applies to ink on parchment as much as to dye into wool). Ie nobody seems to
go the way of your attempted distinction.

Maybe one possible reason why not (over and above the make-up case, where
many poskim say it is not tzovea d'orisa only because it is not permanent)
is the discussion on Shabbat 75a where Rav suggests that somebody who shects
on shabbas is chayav for tzovea (Shmuel says netilas nishama).  Rav
qualifies on 75b that he means that he is also liable for tzovea, because a
shochet is pleased that the place of shechita is dyed with blood, because
then people will come and buy from him.  But the blood does not need to be
absorbed - the shochet really wants it on top so people will see it.  Hence
(maybe) the Rambam and those who followed him felt that absorption versus
non absorption was, by dint of this gemora, a non starter.

>Micha

Regards

Chana