[Avodah] Weird Exceptions

[kennethgmiller at juno.com]

We have mentioned in the past that when Chazal make a rule, it does not necessarily follow a logic that we would think of at first glance. Sometimes the rules are even counter-intuitive, until one realizes the deeper reasonings that Chazal had used.

(An example of this that I've often used is the "twenty amah height limit" for sechach and for a Chanuka menora. It strikes many as odd that Chazal would make such an arbitary cut-off without regard for how far away the viewer might be.)

I think that today, Shushan Purim, is another example worth remembering. In my mind, the most logical rule would have been to observe Purim on the 15th in any city which had a wall in Esther's day. We could then make an exception to that rule, and give kavod to Yerushalayim and set the 15th as Purim for Yerushalayim as well, even though Yerushalayim did not have a wall in Esther's day.

But that's NOT the rule Chazal chose to make. The actual rule is to observe Purim on the 15th in any city which had a wall in Yehoshua's day, which includes Yerushalayim, but *excludes* Shushan. So they made a logical exception to that rule, and set the 15th as Purim for Shushan as well, even though Shushan did not have a wall in Yehoshua's day.

This seems so odd! Either route would have had the same effect, of observing Purim on the 15th in both Shushan and Yerushalayim. So why did they follow the second rule rather than the first?

It seems to me that the answer is found in Gemara Megilla 3b, which brings a pasuk (regarding redeeming one's land, Vayikra 25:29) to show that certain halachos d'Oraisa apply in a walled city, but not elsewhere, and therefore we must carefully define exactly what counts as a "walled city". I don't recall or see where that Gemara makes an explicit comment, but it seems simple to me that if the Torah is declaring a law about the walled cities of Eretz Yisrael, then that status ought to be established upon entering the Land.

Now, Chazal were under no obligation to use the same definition of "walled city" for both land redemption and for megillah reading. But the point I'm making in this post is that it was natural for them to do so.

The Torah is one entire system, and the parts cannot be separated. There is a tendency among Chazal to presume that we are at least somewhat familiar with ALL of Torah, and that is why they define "walled city" the same way for these two very different areas of halacha.

Another example: On a d'Oraisa level, we may not have milk with the meat of a behemah, but there's no issur with mixing milk with the meat of a chayah. Chazal were afraid that we'd make mistakes, so they sought to broaden the issue, on a d'Rabanan level. But then come the question: How broad should they make it?

I never lived on a farm, yet even so, I know the difference between animals that produce milk, and animals that don't produce milk. So if it had been up to me, I would have included both behemos and chayos, but I would have left the poultry out of it. But Chazal didn't see it that way. And I'd like to suggest that the reason *why* they didn't see it that was is that there is no halachic category of "animals that produce milk."

They could have broadened their net further, to include *all* animals, even fish. I'm not sure why they didn't. Perhaps they just didn't want to be that strict. Or maybe "all animals" is a linguistic category without being a halachic category.

And what they were looking for is a *halachic* category. And that's why we avoid mixing milk with animals which require shechita. Because any Jew is presumably aware that cows and deer and chickens need shechita, but tuna and locusts do not.

And similarly, I suggest, that because of the laws of redeeming one's land, we presume people know which cities had walls in Yehoshua's day. But who would know which cities had walls in Esther's day? So Shushan is the exception to the rule, despite its importance to the Purim story.

That's my guess, anyway.

Akiva Miller

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