Daf Ditty Pesachim 13: Elijah not welcome Erev Shabbes If your dispersed ones will be unto the end of the heaven, from there the Memra (Logion) of the Lord your God shall gather you by the hand of Elijah, the high priest and from there He shall bring you near by the hand of the King Messiah Targum Ps.-Jonathan to Deut 30:4 not a crumb of leavened or unleavened bread and no manna fell no water sprang out of the bunker’s wall the last potato was gone we sat and we munched chunks of potato-peels more bitter than herbs we didn’t dare to sing and open the door for Elijah we huddled and prayed while pillars of clouds massed above our heads and pillars of fire loomed like blazing traps Passover Night 1942 by Yala Korwin 1 And if you wish, say instead: When Rav said that the halakha is in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Yehuda, he ruled in accordance with the opinion of this tanna, as it was taught in a baraita: With regard to the fourteenth of Nisan that occurs on Shabbat, one does not remove leaven on Passover eve in the usual manner. Rather, one removes everything leavened before Shabbat, and one burns ritually impure teruma: Teruma in abeyance, whose purity is uncertain, and even any pure teruma that he does not require for his Shabbat meals. And one leaves from the pure leaven food for two meals, the meal at night and the one in the morning, in 2 order to eat and finish until four hours of Shabbat morning. This is the statement of Rabbi Elazar ben Yehuda of Bartota, who said it in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua. The Sages said to him: One should not burn pure teruma, as perhaps those who can eat it will be found on Shabbat, and he will have retroactively violated a Torah prohibition by burning pure teruma unnecessarily. Instead, one places the teruma aside, and if no one is found to eat it, he feeds it to the dogs or renders it null and void in his heart. He said to them: They already sought people to eat the teruma and they did not find any other priests in the city to eat it. They said to him: Perhaps those priests who could eat the teruma on that Shabbat slept outside the wall of the city and will enter the city on Shabbat morning, at which point they could eat the teruma. He said to the Sages: According to your statement, that you take into account this unlikely scenario, one should not even burn teruma in abeyance, as perhaps Elijah the Prophet will come on Shabbat and establish prophetically that the teruma is not ritually impure, and render it ritually pure. They said to him: That possibility is no source of concern, as the Jewish people have already been assured that Elijah will come neither on a Friday nor on the eve of a Festival, due to the exertion involved preparing for the upcoming holy day. Consequently, Elijah will certainly come neither on Friday, nor on Shabbat itself, which is Passover eve. RASHI Summary 3 There is a dispute regarding the fourteenth of Nissan that falls on Shabbos whether terumah that is tahor should be burned. If the fourteenth of Nissan falls on Shabbos, Rabbi Elazar ben Bartosa said in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua that we eliminate all chametz before Shabbos, and we burn foods of terumah that are tamei, suspended or tahor. From the food that is tahor we leave over food that is enough for two Shabbos meals which one can eat for the first four hours of the day. The Chachamim disagree and they maintain that the terumah that is tahor should not be burned on the thirteenth of Nissan, because he can feed the terumah to guests who are Kohanim, and if there are no guests, he can feed the terumah to dogs owned by Kohanim on Shabbos or he can nullify the chametz. Even if no guests are found, there may be guests who stayed outside the walls of the city but who are within the two-thousand-amah techum of the city and they are permitted to walk into town. Rabbi Elazar ben Yehudah countered that if this is the case, then even foods that were suspended should not be burned, because Eliyahu may arrive and he will rule that the foods are tahor. The Chachamim, however, maintain that Eliyahu does not arrive on the eve of Shabbos or Yom Tov because the Jewish People are preoccupied with their Shabbos or Yom Tov preparations. The Halacha follows the opinion of Rabbi Elazar ben Yehudah. (13a) 4. A man deposited chametz with Yochanan Chakukaah and mice pierced the bag and Rebbe told Yochanan to sell the chametz in the market. A man deposited a bag full of chametz with Yochanan Chakukaah. The eve of Pesach arrived, and mice had pierced the bag and the chametz was flowing out. Yochanan came before Rebbe to inquire if he should sell the chametz as it had minimal value at that time. The first four hours Rebbe told Yochanan to wait, and in the fifth hour Rebbe told Yochanan to sell the chametz in the market. This is in accordance with the opinion of Rabbi Meir, who maintains that chametz is permitted in the fifth hour, but Yochanan could not take the chametz for himself as this would arouse suspicion. Destroying Tithe Our Daf quotes a baraita that brings the teaching of Rabbi Elazar ben Yehuda ish Bartota in the name of Rabbi Yehoshua regarding erev Pesah that falls on Shabbat. In such a case the hametz must be destroyed on Friday, leaving just enough for the Shabbat meal. Rabbi Elazar taught that all hametz should be burned on Friday, including tithes – whether or not they were tahor (ritually pure) – and food for two meals on Shabbat should be left from non- teruma hametz that must be finished before four hours into the day on Shabbat morning. The baraita records the following conversation that took place in response to Rabbi Elazar’s teaching: 4 Q. Why should the tithes be burned on Friday? Perhaps we will find kohanim on Shabbat who could have eaten them, and it will turn out that the tithes were burned for no reason, which is forbidden? A. Before burning them we looked for people who could eat the tithes, and did not find anyone. Q. Perhaps there are such kohanim that slept outside the walls of Jerusalem, and tomorrow they will enter the city? A. Were we to worry that someone might come tomorrow, then we should also refrain from burning teruma that is a safek (doubt), i.e. that we are unsure about its status since it may have become tameh (ritually defiled), because perhaps Eliyahu ha-Navi will come tomorrow (Shabbat) to herald the arrival of the Messiah, and he will be able to tell us whether the teruma became tameh or not. They said to him: That possibility is no source of concern, as the Jewish people have already been assured that Elijah will come neither on a Friday nor on the eve of a Festival, due to the exertion involved preparing for the upcoming holy day. Consequently, Elijah will certainly come neither on Friday, nor on Shabbat itself, which is Passover eve. According to tradition, Eliyahu will not come to rule with regard to questions of halakha. Nevertheless, the case of teruma that may have become tameh can be resolved by Eliyahu because it is a question of establishing the facts in a specific case, not a question of establishing a halakhic ruling. While the baraita discusses whether or not it is appropriate to burn teruma on the day before erev Pesah, it does not deal directly with the question of burning regular hametz (hullin). According to many rishonim the conclusion that needs to be reached is obvious – if we can burn teruma, then we can certainly burn hullin. Some argue, however, that we are allowed to burn the teruma only because it is available solely to a limited number of people – namely, kohanim – to eat. Hullin, however, can be eaten by anyone, so it is likely that someone will come tomorrow who would be willing to eat the hametz. Therefore, we should not destroy it until the latest possible time. Dr David Ariel writes:1 Classical Jewish texts depict a Messiah who will come to redeem the Jewish people, gather the exiled to the land of Israel, and rule over a prosperous nation, and relate other more detailed (and diverse) traditions about the Messiah’s arrival as well as the conditions of the messianic era.2 The Arrival of the Messiah 1 https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/the-messianic-age-in-judaism/ 2 Excerpted and reprinted with the permission of Schocken Books, a division of Random House, Inc., from What Do Jews Believe? 5 The rabbis speculated on the conditions under which the Messiah was likely to appear. He will not arrive on the Sabbath, since that would require people to violate the Sabbath in welcoming him [Babylonian Talmud Pesahim 13a]. [The prophet] Elijah [who is supposed to usher in the messianic age] will arrive no later in the week than Thursday, leaving room for the Messiah to arrive by Friday. Elijah will announce the arrival of the Messiah from Mount Carmel in the Land of Israel [Jerusalem Talmud Pesahim 3:6]. Many rabbis believed that the Messiah would arrive suddenly on the eve of Passover, the first redemption, which serves as a model of the final redemption [Mekilta de-Rabbi Ishmael, Pischa 14].