Resources for Rosh Hashana daf 23
Rabbi Yitzchok Gutterman
1. The גמרא says that if we would only be מקדש a מלא חודש, it would result in מלאכה ביטול. י"רש here explains that the מלאכה ביטול to which we are referring is for the month of תשרי when there is a significant מלאכה איסור and people would not be able to do מלאכה on both days of השנה ראש. תוספות disagrees and says that the מלאכה ביטול is referring to every חודש ראש because on חודש ראש people did not do מלאכה. He also quotes the מדרש that it is a special holiday for women and they refrain from work. Interestingly, י"רש in מגילה on ב"כ דף explains in a manner similar to תוספות, that the מלאכה ביטול is because women don’t work on חודש ראש. See the אבן טורי in מגילה who explains (based on a ירושלמי) that in the times of the מקדש בית, there was an מלאכה איסור for everyone on days which a ציבור קרבן was brought, which included the מוסף קרבן of חודש ראש. The only exception was the תמיד קרבן since you can’t prohibit people from doing מלאכה every day.
2. The גמרא says they would make large סעודות for the witnesses who came to give עדות on the new moon. See the כט סימן ע"אה ק"מהדו, ביהודה נודע who was asked whether someone can be paid to give testimony that a woman’s husband died. He says that בפּשטות, there is a rule that בטלה עדותו שכר נוטלה. The simple understanding is that the person is בעדות נוגע and is מדאורייתא פּסול. However, he cites our גמרא that says they gave out free cholent to anyone who come to be מעיד. This would seem to amount to payment for testimony. We see from here that שכר נוטל must only be a דרבנן פּסול, and דרבנן פּסולי are החודש לעדות כשר.
3. The משנה says that not only did the חכמים allow someone who came for החודש עדות to walk throughout the whole city as if they began שבת there, but they even allowed people who were coming to save lives to walk throughout the city. See the משה אגרות in פּ סימן ד"ח ח"או who asks that the word “even” in our משנה doesn’t seem to make sense. Surely there is more reason to allow for איסורים דחיית with נפש פּיקוח than with קידוש החודש. He also asks why the חכמים would permit איסורים דחיית after the מצוה is complete? He answers all these questions by saying that חז''ל weren’t דוחה anything. When they first instituted the איסור to prohibit walking out of your ד' אמות when you go תחום חוץ, they included an exception for anyone who had good reason to do so. In other words, they never prohibited that to begin with. Therefore, the משנה is telling us that not only was עדות החודש set up with that exception, even people coming for נפש פּיקוח, of whom you might have thought don’t need any היתירים since פק''נ is דוחה everything, only have the היתר because חז''ל made a special exception for them. This also answers תוספות’s question of why our גמרא isn’t included in the list of instances of תחילתן משום סופן היתירו, since there is no איסורים דחיית here at all. See the שלמה מנחת in ח סימן who disagrees and says that החודש קידוש is ways more important than נפש פּיקוח in regard to שבת דחיית since the מועדות תיקון for the whole Jewish people is dependent on it.
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