For both lovers who party TB Shabbat 101

I never owned a boat, but my aunt owned a houseboat for quite some time. I have friends who in the past have owned sailboats. For me today’s topic is theoretical, but for them it could have been practical khalakhah. The Mishnah on TB Shabbat 100b teaches “If boats are tied together, one may carry an object from one to the other on Shabbat. However, if they are not tied, even though they are adjacent, one may not carry from one to the other.” (Sefaria.org translation) Each boat is a private domain (רשות היחיד). Of course, if one person owns both boats and they are tied together, he may transport objects from one boat to the other. If the boats are not tied together, the sea is a karmalit (כרמלית) and separates the boats. The sages analogized the karmalit to a public domain (רשות הרבים) and thus we’re forbidden rabbinicaly to carry an object from a karmalit to a private domain or in this case to pass an object from one private domain to another through a karmalit.

Today’s daf TB Shabbat 101 deals with the situation when each boat is owned by a different person. “Rav Safra said: The mishna was only necessary to obligate one to place an eiruv, a joining of courtyards, between the two boats. Since the boats belong to different people, they must be joined to form a single domain in order to permit carrying from one to the other, as it was taught in a baraita: With regard to boats tied to one another, one places an eiruv and carries from one to the other. If the ties between them were severed, the people on the boats are prohibited to carry from one to the other. If they were then retied, whether unwittingly, i.e., the one who retied them forgot that it was Shabbat, whether intentionally, whether due to circumstances beyond one’s control, whether mistakenly, the boats are restored to their original permitted status.”

The owners of the boats must make and an eiruv khatzarot (ערוב חצרות) so that they may carry from one boat to the other in the same manner that people who live around a common courtyard or apartment need an eiruv khatzarot to carry items from their homes to the courtyard and vice a versa. This eiruv makes all those individual domains into one large domain. We shall study the eiruv khatzarot in more detail when we study the next massekhet, Eiruvin, on our daf yomi journey. As a preview of what we shall learn together here are four important khalakhot concerning an eiruv khatzarot.

1, The purpose of the jointly owned food is to indicate that it is as though everyone who owns a share of the food was living in one area. In order to create a community eiruv food of the size of 6 or 8 Kebaytzim suffices. Traditionally people use a box of Matzahs since that lasts a very long time.

2, The food should be given as a gift to the entire community.

3, The food must be accessible on Shabbat to the Jewish people for whom the eiruv serves. 

4, If the food is eaten in the middle of Shabbat, it is still permitted to carry for that Shabbat, but the food must be replaced for the next Shabbat.