Welcome to the Hundred and Eighty First episode of Daily Daf Differently. In this episode, Alyssa Gray looks at Masechet Eruvin Daf 26.

The Exilarch consults a rabbi to ensure that he is permitted to carry food and other meal necessities from his house to an abvarneka (small structure with seating) in his orchard. One rabbi sets up reed fences so as to render the orchard “enclosed for residential purposes,” and thus a permitted place in which to carry freely on Shabbat, but then another took down the fences, and two other rabbis even gathered up and took away the reeds! The bemused Exilarch’s wry response is another window for us into the rabbis’ anxieties about these complex laws.

Alyssa Gray, J.D., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Codes and Responsa Literature at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. She has written extensively on many topics in Talmud and Jewish law, and has taught and lectured widely in the United States, Israel, Europe, and South America.

The opening and closing music for this podcast is Ufros from The Epichorus album One Bead.