Avodah Zarah, Daf Ayin, Part 3

 

 

ההוא ישראל ועובד כוכבים דהוו יתיבי בארבא. שמע ישראל קל שיפורי דבי שימשי נפק ואזל

אמר רבא חמרא שרי מימר אמר השתא מדכר ליה לחמריה והדר אתי

 

A Jew and a non-Jew were sitting on a ship. The Jew heard the sound of the shofar on erev Shabbat. So he left [the ship] and went ashore. Rava said: The wine is permitted, [for the non-Jew would say], He will remember the wine at any moment and return.

 

The Jew leaves the ship because it is Shabbat and does not take his wine with him. Rava assumes that the non-Jew does not know that the Jew will be away all of Shabbat, so he will not touch the wine, afraid that the Jew will come back any moment. The principle here is the same we ve seen before. If the non-Jew is afraid of getting caught, he will not touch the wine.

 

ואי משום שבתא האמר רבא אמר לי איסור גיורא כי הוינן בארמיותן אמרינן יהודאי לא מנטרי שבתא דאי מנטרי שבתא כמה כיסי קא משתכחי בשוקא ולא ידענא דסבירא לן כרבי יצחק דא"ר יצחק המוצא כיס בשבת מוליכו פחות פחות מד’ אמות

 

But if [we should assume that the non-Jew will know] that he is leaving because of Shabbat, behold Rava has said: Issur the convert once told me, When we were in our Aramean (non-Jewish) state we would say that Jews do not observe Shabbat, because if they did observe it how many purses would be found in the streets! But I did not then know that we follow the view of R. Yitzchak who said: If a person finds a purse on Shabbat he may carry it for distances less than four cubits.

 

The question the Talmud asks is how come the non-Jew does not know that the Jew will keep Shabbat. The answer, quite fascinatingly, is that indeed, non-Jews do not realize that Jews keep Shabbat. A convert named Issur says that before he converted, he and his fellow non-Jews assumed that Jews do not keep Shabbat, for if they did, then purses would be found in the marketplace all the time, for Jews could not carry them! What he did not know is that R. Yitzchak taught a way that a Jew could indeed pick up a purse and carry it four cubits at a time and thus save it from the marketplace. The purse referred to here is probably not just a random one, but rather a purse that the Jew was carrying when Shabbat began. If there is no alternative but to just toss it, the Jew can carry it four cubits at a time to get it home. But this is only allowed for one s own purse/wallet.