Study Shabbat folio 108A with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
פיטרא מאונא דחצבא — מיחייב משום עוקר דבר מגידולו. מתיב רב אושעיא: התולש מעציץ נקוב — חייב, ושאינו נקוב — פטור. התם — לאו היינו רביתיה, הכא — היינו רביתיה.
a mushroom from the handle of a pitcher on Shabbat is liable for uprooting an object from its place of growth. Rav Oshaya raised an objection from that which we learned: One who detaches a plant on Shabbat from a perforated flowerpot is liable, and one who detaches a plant from an imperforate pot is exempt. A plant that grows in an imperforate pot is not considered connected to the ground. One who detaches it is not uprooting it from its place of growth. The Talmud answers: There, in the case of an imperforate pot, that is not the way a plant grows. Plants are generally planted in the ground; a plant in an imperforate pot is disconnected from the ground. Whereas here, in the case of a mushroom growing from the handle of a pitcher, that is the way it grows. The plant is considered connected to the ground.
חיה ועוף כו׳. אמר רב הונא: כותבין תפילין על גבי עור של עוף טהור. אמר רב יוסף: מאי קמשמע לן? דאית ליה עור — תנינא: החובל בהן — חייב! אמר ליה אביי: טובא קמשמע לן, דאי ממתניתין, הוה אמינא כיון דאית ביה ניקבי ניקבי לא, קמשמע לן כדאמרי במערבא: כל נקב שהדיו עוברת עליו — אינו נקב.
We learned in the Mishnah: One who wounds an animal or a bird on Shabbat is liable. Rav Huna said: One may write tefillin on the skin of a kosher bird. Rav Yosef said: What is he teaching us with this statement? If he is teaching us that a bird has skin, we already learned that: One who wounds an animal or a bird is liable. Since there is liability only if a wound forms beneath the skin, apparently a bird has skin. Abaye said to him: He is teaching us many things, for if I had only learned from the Mishnah, I would have said the following: Since the skin of a bird has many holes from which the feathers grow, one should not be allowed to write sacred matters on it. Therefore, he teaches us as they say in the West, i.e., in Eretz Yisrael: Any hole over which ink passes and does not penetrate it, is not considered a hole that invalidates the writing.