[Avodah] lo plog

[Daniel Israel]

Zev Sero wrote:
> AIUI "lo plug rabanan" doesn't mean that the rabanan *can't* make
> distinctions, but that they don't have to make every distinction that
> could conceivably be made.

I thought it was past tense, that is, "the Rabbanan didn't distinguish." 
  The point being that this is an observation of what the Rabbanan 
actually did, rather than the statement of a principle.  The Rabbanan 
were able to establish gezeiros as they saw appropriate, and we are 
simply observing the various cases of lo plug, where they didn't make a 
distinction, and trying to postulate a rule.  Given that various 
gezeiros were made by different rabbanan, it is not clear that there 
needs to be one.

-- 
Daniel M. Israel
dmi1 at cornell.edu