Study Shabbat folio 16B with parallel Hebrew-English text, traditional commentary, and modern study tools. Free access to Babylonian Talmud online.
Text Excerpt
רב אשי אמר: לעולם לכלי חרס דמו, ודקא קשיא לך לא ליטמו מגבן? הואיל ונראה תוכו כברו.
Rav Ashi said: There was never a need to equate glass vessels and metal vessels. Actually, glass vessels are likened to earthenware vessels in every sense. And that which was difficult for you, that if so, glass vessels, like other earthenware vessels, should not become impure from contact of their outer side with a source of ritual impurity; since in glass vessels its inner side looks like its outer side, the legal status of the outer side was equated with that of the inner side, as there is no visible separation between them.
שמעון בן שטח תיקן כתובה לאשה וגזר טומאה על כלי מתכות. כלי מתכות דאורייתא נינהו! דכתיב: ״אך את הזהב ואת הכסף וגו׳״. לא נצרכה אלא לטומאה ישנה, דאמר רב יהודה אמר רב: מעשה בשל ציון המלכה שעשתה משתה לבנה ונטמאו כל כליה, ושברתן ונתנתן לצורף וריתכן ועשה מהן כלים חדשים. ואמרו חכמים: יחזרו לטומאתן ישנה.
We learned that Shimon ben Shataḥ instituted the formula of the marriage contract for a woman and decreed impurity upon metal vessels. The Talmud asks: Aren’t metal vessels impure by Torah law, as it is written: “But the gold, and silver, and the bronze, and the iron, and the tin, and the lead. Anything that came in fire, make it pass through fire and it will be pure, but with the water of sprinkling it will be purified and anything that did not come in fire make it pass through water” (Numbers 31:22–23)? The Talmud answers: This ordinance of Shimon ben Shataḥ with regard to the impurity of metal vessels in general was only needed with regard to previous impurity reassumed by metal vessels after they are recast. As Rav Yehuda said that Rav said: There was an incident involving Shimon ben Shataḥ’s sister, Shel Tziyyon the queen, who made a wedding feast for her son. All of her vessels became impure, and she broke them and gave them to the smith, and he welded the broken vessels together and made new vessels. And the rabbis said: What she did was ineffective, as all the vessels will reassume their previous impurity.