Avodah Zarah, Daf Lamed Gimmel, Part 3

 

Introduction

This suyga discusses kashering wine-skins into which non-Jewish wine had been placed.

 

בר עדי טייעא אנס הנהו זיקי מרב יצחק בר יוסף. רמא בהו חמרא ואהדרינהו ניהליה. אתא שאיל בי מדרשא. א"ל רבי ירמיה כך הורה רבי אמי הלכה למעשה ממלאן מים שלשה ימים ומערן

ואמר רבא צריך לערן מעת לעת

 

Bar Adi, an Arab, once seized a wine-skin from R. Isaac b. Joseph. He put wine in it returned it to him. He came and asked about it in the Bet Midrash. R. Yirmiyah said to him: This is how R. Ammi ruled in an actual case: [The vessels] are to be filled with water for three days and then emptied. And Rava said: The water should be emptied every twenty-four hours.

 

Tannaitic halakhah talks about kashering vessels that are of metal through heat, but wine-skins cannot be torched (duh!). Thus the amoraim had to come up with a way of getting the non-kosher wine out of them, or at least the taste of the non-kosher wine. The solution was to fill them with water for three days, emptying and refilling the skin each day.

סבור מינה הני מילי דידן אבל דידהו לא כי אתא רבין א"ר שמעון בן לקיש אחד שלנו ואחד שלהם

 

They at first thought that this applies only to our [vessels used by pagans] but not to theirs. When Rabin came [from Palestine] he said in the name of R. Shimon b. Lakish: [It applies to] either ours or theirs.

 

At first the rabbis thought that this means of kashering works only for wine-skins that were first owned by Jews. These skins would have absorbed the kosher wine of the Jew and then absorbed the non-kosher wine. So the non-kosher wine would only be, in a sense, on the surface. But a statement by Resh Lakish teaches that this works for kashering any type of wine-skin, even skins originally owned by non-Jews.

 

סבר רב אחא בריה דרבא קמיה דרב אשי למימר הני מילי נודות אבל קנקנים לא אמר ליה רב אשי לא שנא נודות ולא שנא קנקנים

 

R. Aha b. Rava thought, sitting before R. Ashi, that this only applies to wine-skins but not to earthenware ones. But R. Ashi said to him: It makes no difference whether they be skin-bottles or earthenware ones.

 

R. Ashi rules when it comes to absorbing forbidden wine, even earthenware bottles may be koshered by the three days of water method.