FIRST GEMARA · 4 OF 4
One question, another route to an answer
Knowing an answer and explaining why it follows are different accomplishments. Read another reported inquiry, make your own evidence connection, then compare it with the Gemara.
In this lesson
Keep the question open for this inquiry
Continue from Why use the priests’ time marker? The Gemara, our sages’ discussion of the Mishnah and other teachings, has examined two ways of understanding the beginning of Leviticus 22:7. We now read its immediately following report in Berakhot 2b, the second side of folio 2. A folio is a leaf with two sides.
The priests’ eligibility means their permission to eat terumah, the sacred portion of produce reserved for priestly consumption. The case assumes the required preceding purification, including immersion. Some purification processes still require an offering the following day.
The two possibilities concern the sun’s setting and the day clearing of daylight, or “the arrival of its light” and the person becoming clean. As in the previous reading, we follow Rashi’s explanation of the proposed alternative: the following eighth day’s light and the person’s purification through the offerings. The eighth day belongs to that purification process, not a date in the month.
We retain the open word-gloss “the sun comes” and “becomes clean” while the source examines their meaning. English supplies the reasoning; you do not need to decode the original script.
Read a separately reported question
במערבא, “In the West,” refers to sages in the Land of Israel, west of Babylonia. The report distinguishes their inquiry from the answer already attributed to Rabbah bar Rav Sheila.
במערבא הא דרבה בר רב שילא לא שמיע להו ובעו לה מיבעיא האי ובא השמש ביאת שמשו הוא ומאי וטהר טהר יומא או דילמא ביאת אורו הוא ומאי וטהר טהר גברא
In the West, they had not heard this teaching of Rabbah bar Rav Sheila, and they raised it as a question: Does this “the sun comes” mean the sun’s setting, and does “becomes clean” mean the day has cleared? Or perhaps it means the arrival of its light, and “becomes clean” means the person becomes clean?
English rendering by Messianic Yeshiva
Notice the precise statement: they had not heard this teaching. The report gives no individual names for these questioners. For the next attempt, set aside the preceding word-form argument and use the evidence supplied below.
Make the evidence connection yourself
A baraita is a teaching from the era of the Mishnah’s sages preserved outside the Mishnah. This excerpt comes from a baraita quoted later on Berakhot 2b. It is supplied here as context, not as the next line after E.
The baraita asks when the evening Shema, our recitation of Torah passages, begins. Rabbi Meir’s different marker precedes this excerpt; here we read the sages’ view. “Entitled” means permitted, not simply choosing to eat.
וחכמים אומרים משעה שהכהנים זכאין לאכול בתרומתן סימן לדבר צאת הכוכבים
The sages say: From the time the priests are entitled to eat their terumah. A sign for this: the emergence of the stars.
English rendering by Messianic Yeshiva
Write the connection before opening the resolution. The western inquiry does not have Rabbah bar Rav Sheila’s teaching. Use S2, not his word-form argument. Which of E’s two possibilities does the baraita support? Explain why its whole clause about eligibility and stars favors that possibility over the alternative as Rashi explains it.
1. How does your inference compare with the reported resolution?
והדר פשטו לה מברייתא מדקתני בברייתא סימן לדבר צאת הכוכבים שמע מינה ביאת שמשו הוא ומאי וטהר טהר יומא.
Then they resolved it from a baraita. Since the baraita teaches, “A sign for this: the emergence of the stars,” infer from this that it is the sun’s setting, and that “becomes clean” means the day has cleared.
English rendering by Messianic Yeshiva
The baraita connects priests’ eligibility to eat terumah with the emergence of stars. That places the relevant boundary at nightfall, supporting the sun’s setting and the day clearing. It does not place eligibility after the following day’s light and offering, as Rashi explains the alternative.
The important step is the connection between the marker and eligibility. “The first possibility” or “the same answer as before” gives a conclusion without its reason.
והדר פשטו לה, “Then they resolved it,” reports a resolution; שמע מינה, “infer from this,” draws the conclusion from the evidence. Rashi identifies the baraita later in this discussion and explains that the stars marker establishes that the offering does not hold back terumah eligibility.
Named commentary, paraphrased from Rashi on Berakhot 2b, the comment on “from a baraita.”
Keep the two routes distinct
An inference connects evidence to a conclusion. Two accounts can reach the same conclusion without using the same evidence or belonging to the same speaker.
Repair this note: “Rabbah bar Rav Sheila gave two proofs: a word form and a baraita.” For each route, name who the text identifies, what evidence it uses, and what conclusion it supports.
2. Who gives which argument?
D attributes the word-form reply and accompanying saying to Rabbah bar Rav Sheila. He argues from the wording expected under the alternative and the actual wording, read as the day’s completed clearing.
E–F report an inquiry in the West by people who had not heard that teaching. They resolve it from the baraita’s explicit stars marker.
Both reach the setting/day-clearing reading in this passage. But the report does not assign the baraita argument to Rabbah or identify individual western questioners. Matching conclusions do not erase distinct evidence and attribution.
Test which words do the work
For this exercise only, cover S2’s words “A sign for this: the emergence of the stars.” The remaining excerpt says when priests are entitled to eat terumah without giving that sign.
Would that remainder, by itself, supply the discriminating evidence used in F? Explain what was lost. This is a reading experiment, not a proposed version of the baraita.
3. What changes when the sign is covered?
In this restricted exercise, the remaining statement refers to eligibility without explicitly locating the disputed boundary. The covered words provide the particular time marker from which F draws its inference.
You may still know the result from other learning, but cannot attribute that knowledge to the missing phrase. The real baraita includes the sign; its text has not become uncertain. The exercise asks which part of the evidence does the work, not whether you remember the conclusion.
Follow the sources’ different jobs
Return briefly to B in the previous reading. Its baraita quotes Leviticus and distinguishes the sun’s setting from the outstanding offering. F uses another baraita. Their source type matches, but their work in the argument differs.
In B, what does the quoted baraita do with Leviticus? In F, what does the western report do with the other baraita? Explain why “both are old sources” is not enough.
4. What does each quotation contribute?
B’s baraita interprets the verse to distinguish the sun’s setting from the outstanding offering as conditions for eating terumah. The ensuing question challenges how that reading is known.
F’s report uses the other baraita’s explicit eligibility-and-stars marker to resolve the alternatives. Torah quotation, baraita interpretation and Gemara inference are different jobs.
The second baraita’s later placement on 2b does not make it a newly invented teaching of the western questioners. B’s earlier baraita is not the same quotation as S2. Keep both the source and the particular evidentiary role attached to each claim.
Write an account of the evidence
Close the answers. Explain the western inquiry in four parts: alternatives; evidence available; inference connecting them; scope of the result. Then repair this claim:
“The western sages rejected Rabbah, so this page tells everyone exactly what time to recite tonight.”
5. Does your account explain what follows, and what does not?
“The report asks whether the verse means the sun’s setting and the day’s clearing or, on Rashi’s explanation, the following day’s light and the person’s purification through the offerings. The baraita explicitly ties the priests’ eligibility to the emergence of the stars. That nightfall marker supports the first reading rather than the proposed next-day alternative. The result explains the verse and the terumah timing used in this discussion; the report says the western questioners had not heard Rabbah’s teaching, not that they rejected it.”
The passage supplies neither modern clock calculations nor a complete practical decision for a person’s circumstances. Its printed sequence and report do not establish a detailed chronology of when each inquiry occurred or how teachings traveled. A sound account preserves the particular conclusion and the evidence that supports it.
Now compare both routes in your own words. Write one short evidence account for D and another for E–F. Each should name the evidence, the excluded alternative and the inference, while preserving attribution. Your western account must stand without borrowing D’s word-form argument.
With a partner, ask one another, “Which words make this conclusion follow?” Alone, check that your second account uses S2 rather than only recalling D. Finish with one sentence explaining why the same conclusion need not mean the same argument. Use the answers as a reasoning guide, not wording to memorize.
Our study becomes more faithful when we can do more than repeat an answer: we can show the evidence, honor the source’s voice and explain the connection.
Read in context
Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 2a–2b: A–F across these two readings form one continuous selection, ending with the western report’s resolution. The later 2b baraita supplies S2’s separate contextual excerpt. Rashi on Berakhot 2b: the explanations of the proposed alternative and the reference to the baraita. Leviticus 22:1–9: the quoted verse in its setting.
The later baraita gives another view before S2 and continues with a qualified scriptural indication from Nehemiah afterward. We selected its sages’ clause for the evidence used here, not its whole discussion. The next אמר מר, “It was stated above,” begins another comparison; this pair ends before it.