Thursday, November 30, 2006

Women and Talmud Torah XI

(Material taught by Rabbi Kenneth Auman, presented by Chana. All mistakes are my fault.)

Now please click this link to be directed to a Tosefta in Bava Kama.

Please look at the highlighted orange part.

This is discussing an oven in the process of being built. While it is being built it is not considered a kli or vessel, but then when it is built it is considered a kli. So at what point in the building do we consider it a kli that accepts tumah? So, the first opinion is that the oven is a kli when you heat it up enough to bake a liquid batter (which is a lower temperature, so you don't need such a high heat, it appears.) R' Shimon said, "Immediately." R' Shimon bar Gamliel said, "So if it's tamei, what do you do with an oven that's tamei?" You have to break it in order to render it not a kli. Rabbi Chalafta said he asked the brother of Beruriah, and he said to physically pick it up and move the oven, and then it says u'bito (meaning his daughter, which refers either to Beruriah or to her brother's daughter) said, "When they would remove the outer layer of the oven." Beruriah's brother said that what she had said was better than what he had said; he acknowledged, concurred with and accepted her opinion.

So in this case, we actually have a woman's halakhic opinion being considered better than the man's original opinion!

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