003a – מאימתי – פרק ראשון – ברכות, ג ע”א

Rabbi Meir contradicts Rabbi Meir!

קשיא דרבי מאיר אדרבי מאיר - above he said, “from the time people go in to eat their bread on Friday nights”, and that is a later measure than that of the Kohen; and here he said, “from the time of immersion”, which is before bein hashmashos:

Two Tannaim^[1] hold differently in the view of Rabbi Meir.

Rabbi Eliezer contradicts Rabbi Eliezer!

קשיא דרבי אליעזר - of the beraisa, against the Rabbi Eliezer of our Mishnah:

Two Tannaim hold differently in the view of Rabbi Eliezer.

And if you wish, say:

the first clause

ואיבעית אימא רישא - of our Mishnah:

is not Rabbi Eliezer.

לאו רבי אליעזר היא - and as for its teaching “these are the words of Rabbi Eliezer”? That refers to the end of the time, which he gave as “until the end of the first watch”, and the Rabbanan disagree with him and say until midnight. For Rabbi Eliezer expounds when you lie down as the time when lying down begins, when people go to lie down, this one earlier and that one later; and the Rabbanan expound it as the whole time of lying down, that is, the whole night, but they made a fence around the matter and said “until midnight”; and Rabban Gamliel does not hold of that fence:

Until the end of the watch:^[2]

[See Berachos 2a]

What does Rabbi Eliezer hold?

מאי קסבר כו' - he should have given a time that is recognizable:

If he holds that the night has three watches,^[3] let him say “until four hours”!

אי קסבר - for Tannaim disagree about this below. There is one who says the night has three watches, by the watches of the service of the angels and their song, which is divided into three parts: the first for one band, the second for another band, the third for a third band; and there is one who says the night has four watches:

And if he holds that the night has four watches, let him say “until three hours”!

In fact he holds that the night has three watches,

and he teaches us this: that there are watches in heaven, and there are watches on earth.

והא קא משמע לן - when he gave you a sign for the time of the reading at the end of the watch, and did not give you an explicit sign, he taught you that every person can recognize it, just as it is in heaven:

As it was taught in a beraisa: Rabbi Eliezer says: The night has three watches,

and at each and every watch the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and roars like a lion,

as it says (Yirmiyahu 25:30): Hashem roars from on high, and from His holy dwelling He gives forth His voice; He roars, He roars over His abode.

ישאג שאוג ישאג - there are three:

And the sign for the matter:

in the first watch, the donkey brays;

in the second, the dogs howl;

in the third, the infant nurses at its mother's breast, and the woman talks with her husband.

ואשה מספרת עם בעלה - it is already close to day, people are waking from their sleep, and those lying together talk with one another:

What is Rabbi Eliezer counting?

מאי קא חשיב - these signs that he gave for the watches of the earth — where did he give them, at the beginning of the watches or at their end?:

If he is counting the beginning of the watches, why do I need a sign for the beginning of the first watch?

It is evening!

אורתא הוא - the stars coming out:

If he is counting the end of the watches, why do I need a sign for the end of the last watch?

It is day!

Rather, he counts the end of the first watch, the beginning of the last watch, and the middle of the middle one.

And if you wish, say:

he is counting the end of all the watches.

And if you say the last one is not needed —

what difference does it make?

For reciting the Shema, for one who sleeps in a dark room and does not know when the time of the Shema is.

Once the woman talks with her husband and the infant nurses at its mother's breast, let him get up and recite it.

Rav Yitzchak bar Shmuel said in the name of Rav: The night has three watches, and at each and every watch the Holy One, blessed be He, sits and roars like a lion, and says: Woe to the children, for whose sins I destroyed My house, burned My Heichal, and exiled them among the nations of the world.^[4]

It was taught in a beraisa: Rabbi Yosei^[5] said: Once I was traveling on the road, and I went into one of the ruins of Yerushalayim to pray.

Eliyahu, remembered for good,^[6] came and waited for me at the entrance until I finished my prayer.

ושמר - he waited; as in “a person should not say to his fellow, wait for me beside such-and-such an idol” (Sanhedrin 63b); and in Bava Kamma, perek Hachovel (90b): “he waited for her as she stood at the entrance of her courtyard”; and likewise and his father kept the matter in mind (Bereishis 37:11); that keeps faith (Yeshayahu 26:2):

After I finished my prayer, he said to me: Peace be upon you, my teacher.

And I said to him: Peace be upon you, my teacher and my master.

And he said to me: My son, why did you go into this ruin?

I said to him: To pray.

And he said to me: You should have prayed on the road.

And I said to him: I was afraid that passers-by would interrupt me.

And he said to me: You should have prayed a short prayer.

תפלה קצרה - [Havineinu]; and it is explained below in perek Tefillas Hashachar (29a):

At that time I learned three things from him.

I learned that one does not go into a ruin;

and I learned that one may pray on the road;

and I learned that one who prays on the road prays a short prayer.

And he said to me: My son, what sound did you hear in this ruin?

And I said to him: I heard a heavenly voice cooing like a dove and saying: Woe to the children, for whose sins I destroyed My house, burned My Heichal, and exiled them among the nations.

And he said to me: By your life and the life of your head, not only at this moment does it say so, but every single day, three times, it says so.

And not only this,

but when Yisrael go into the synagogues and the study halls and respond: Yehei Shmei hagadol mevorach,^[7]

the Holy One, blessed be He, nods His head and says:

Fortunate is the King who is praised this way in His house.

אשרי המלך שמקלסין אותו בביתו כך - fortunate — all the while that this praise was within the Beis Hamikdash:

What is there for a father who exiled his children?

And woe to the children who were exiled from their father's table.

Our Rabbis taught: For three reasons one does not go into a ruin:

because of suspicion,

מפני חשד - so that people should not say a harlot is waiting for him there:

because of collapse,

ומפני המפולת - that the wall of the ruin is shaky, and it is dangerous, lest the wall fall on him:

and because of the mazikin.^[8]

“Because of suspicion” — but derive it from collapse!

תיפוק ליה - that is to say, why do we need three reasons for one thing, when one of them is enough? Unless it comes to teach you that there are times when this reason does not apply, and one must refrain because of that one:

Tosafos

קשיא דר' מאיר אדר' מאיר - for one cannot say that “the time when people go in” and the Kohen are one measure, for if so Rabbi Meir would be the same as Rabbi Achai, according to Rashi's explanation, who explained that most people go in to recline, that is, on Friday night. *[And also] it is not reasonable to say that people hurry on Friday nights as early as the time when the Kohanim immerse, which is while it is still day, before the sun has set: *[The reading of the Maharshal; another reading has “alternatively”]

קשיא דרבי אליעזר אדר' אליעזר - for one cannot say that “from when the day is sanctified” and “the Kohanim go in to eat their terumah” are one measure, for if so Rabbi Eliezer would be the same as Rabbi Yehoshua:

למאן דגני בבית אפל - and if you ask: but does not Rabbi Eliezer require (below, Berachos 9b), for the morning Shema, that one can tell apart techeles and karti? One can say: in any case, once he knows when the dawn will rise, by the time he gets up and prepares himself that time has already come:

היה לך להתפלל תפילה קצרה - at first glance this implies that it is not Havineinu, for below (Berachos 30a) the Gemara asks what difference there is between Havineinu and a short prayer. If so, Rashi's explanation here, that it is Havineinu, is difficult. Rather, it must be another prayer, as explained below: “the needs of Your people are many”, and so on. But this too is difficult, for below we say that the prayer of “the needs of Your people” may be said only in a place of danger, and Rabbi Yosei was not in a place of danger, that is, a place of bandits, since he answered him “lest passers-by interrupt me” and did not answer “lest bandits kill me”. And it seems to me, as Rashi explained, that the short prayer here is Havineinu. And although Abaye cursed one who prays Havineinu, that is only in the city, but in the field it is permitted. And what we say below, “what difference is there between Havineinu and a short prayer”, means between the short prayer mentioned in perek Tefillas Hashachar (Berachos 29b), such as “the needs of Your people”, and so on; but certainly the short prayer here must be Havineinu:

ועונין יהא שמיה הגדול מבורך - from here one can refute what is explained in the Machzor Vitry^[9] about Yehei Shmei Rabba: that it is a prayer that we pray that His Name be made complete, as it is written (Shemos 17:16), for a hand is upon the throne of Yah — that His Name is not complete and His throne is not complete until the seed of Amalek is wiped out; and its explanation is thus: Yehei Shmei—the name Yah—rabba, that is, we pray that His Name be great and complete; and “mevorach le'olam” is another prayer, that is, blessed in the World to Come. But this does not seem right, since it says here “Yehei Shmei hagadol mevorach”, implying that it is one prayer, and it does not mean that His Name be great and complete, but that His great Name be blessed. And also what people say, that Kaddish is said in Aramaic because it is a beautiful prayer and a great praise, and therefore it was instituted in the language of Targum so that the angels should not understand and become jealous of us — this does not seem right, for many beautiful prayers are in Hebrew. Rather, it seems as we say at the end of Sotah (49a): the world endures only through the Kedushah of the order and the Yehei Shmei Rabba after the aggadah; for they were accustomed to say Kaddish after the derashah, and the unlearned were there and not all of them understood the holy tongue, therefore they instituted it in the language of Targum, which everyone understood, for that was their language:

Notes

1. 1. Two later Tannaim each transmitted Rabbi Meir's view, and they reported it differently; so the contradiction lies in the reports, not in Rabbi Meir himself.
2. 2. The Gemara now takes up Rabbi Eliezer's words in the Mishnah, which end the evening Shema at the end of the first watch. The night is divided into watches, and the question is how many he counts.
3. 3. Rashi on the Torah explains in the same way: the three parts of the night are each called a watch, because the night is divided into watches of song of the ministering angels (Rashi, Shemos 14:24).
4. 4. See Shulchan Aruch HaRav 1:2; first edition 1:8.
5. 5. Rabbi Yosei is Rabbi Yosei ben Chalafta, one of the great Tannaim, a student of Rabbi Akiva, who lived in the generations after the Churban.
6. 6. Eliyahu Hanavi did not die but went up to heaven in a storm, and he appears to Sages and tzaddikim; hence “remembered for good” rather than “of blessed memory”.
7. 7. This is the congregation's response in Kaddish, after the chazzan.
8. 8. Mazikin are harmful spirits, which were held to frequent desolate and ruined places.
9. 9. The Machzor Vitry is a book of prayers and customs by Rabbi Simchah of Vitry, a student of Rashi.