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 Summary 

 Mar bar Ameimar to Rav Ashi: My father would grasp the arba minim while praying. 

 Challenge: One shouldn’t pray while holding tefillin or a sefer Torah (because it will disturb his concentration), nor should he urinate or sleep while wearing tefillin. 

 Shmuel: Nor should one hold a knife, a plate of food, a loaf of bread or money while praying.

 So how can one hold the arba minim while praying? 

 Resolution: Those are not a mitzvah to hold and they distract from the prayers, but the arba minim are a mitzvah and not a distraction. 

 Beraisa: Rabbi Elozor bar Tzadok (he was a veteran of the old Yerushalayim): The custom of anshei Yerushalayim (30.1) was: One left his house holding his lulav, he entered the beis haknesses holding his lulav and that is how he would recite krias shema and tefillah. If he had an aliyah or he would say birchas kohanim, he would put it down for a moment. If he went to visit the sick or comfort mourners, he would be holding his lulav. When he entered the beis midrash (there you can’t hold the lulav while learning), he would send the lulav home with a child, a servant or someone.

 Question: What are we learning here? 

 Response: The great alacrity with which the ancient Jews practiced mitzvos (33.2).

We learned in the mishna (33.2): “Rabbi Yosi: On the first day of Yom Tov which falls on Shabbos, if one forgot and carried out his lulav, he is pottur because he took it with mitzvah-permission.”

 Abayye: This is only before he was yotzei. 

 Challenge: He is yotzei as soon as he picks it up! 

 Abayye: He can pick it up upside down, and not be yotzei. 

 Rava: He can be holding it right side up, but in a box. 

 Challenge: Rava is the one who says (30.3) that “Holding by means of something else, is still considered holding.”! 

 Resolution: Only when it is held in a respectable way, but not in our case.