Resources for Rosh Hashana daf 25

Daf A Week

Rabbi Yitzchok Gutterman

  1. The משנה brings two cases where רבן גמליאל believed the two witnesses while another תנא did not. There is a מחלוקת ראשונים regarding whether the witnesses in question were indeed liars or not. רש"י and תוספות both say, at least in the first case, that the witnesses were not necessarily mistaken (at least according to רבן גמליאל). Although seeing the moon in the west 12 hours after seeing it in the east is quite rare, it is still possible (פּעמים בא בקצרה). However, see the בעל המאור who strongly disagrees and says it is not possible. Therefore, רבן גמליאל believed them because he discounted the first part of their story, that they saw the old moon in the east. He reasoned that the עדים aren’t really looking carefully for old moons—they only pay attention for the new moon. Therefore, we can assume that what the עדים saw in the morning was a shooting star. Accordingly, the ברייתא the גמרא brought about פּעמים בא בקצרה was just for informational purposes but not connected to the actual story in the משנה. See the רמב"ם in פּירוש המשניות who learns like the בעל המאור, except that he has an alternative explanation regarding the ברייתא brought by the גמרא for why רבן גמליאל decided to only listen to half their testimony. This was because ר''ג knew based on his calculations (פּעמים בא בקצרה) that it was supposed to be ר"ח that night.

As far as the second case of the משנה, the בעל המאור says that everyone agrees the witnesses were liars. רבן גמליאל accepted them because he had already been מקדש the חודש. It was only on the second night when the moon was clearly not visible that he knew they were liars. However, since he had already been מקדש the חודש, it was valid since אתם אפילו שוגגין, אפילו מזידין. The רמב"ם בהלכות קידוש החודש פּרק בּ' הל' ו disagrees and says that even the second case is not based on אתם אפילו שוגגין. Rather, he did not need to concern himself with the fact that they couldn’t have seen the new moon the next day as that was not part of the testimony that was needed.

  1. The גמרא discusses at length that שמואל בדורו כיפתח בדורו. See the תשובת מהרי"ק שרש קס"ג who says that בזמן הזה one cannot fine a person a ליטרא זהב for being מזלזל a תלמיד חכם. He cites our גמרא that says שמואל בדורו כיפתח בדורו, and explains that’s only regarding following their פּסקים and תקנות. However, regarding their כבוד, that is reduced with each generation as our own levels are diluted with time. As proof, he quotes the גמרא in מועד קטן that says that in the times of the תנאים, נידוי was for 30 days while in the times of the אמוראים, it was reduced to seven days as “נידוי שלנו כנזיפתם שלהם”. We see from there that כבוד חכמים is not the same as what it was.
  2. The משנה says that if ב"ד wasn’t able to be מקדש the new month on day 30, it is automatically מעובר. See the ריטב"א who says that this משנה is a proof that one cannot be מקדש the new moon retroactively after the 30th has passed, against the רמב"ם פּרק בּ הל' ט. Interestingly, the ריטב"א agrees somewhat to the application of למפרע here, at least in theory, as follows: the גמרא is saying we might have thought that if witnesses came on the 30th and ב"ד wasn’t מקדש the חודש until the night, we would say the קידוש works retroactively to the previous day, קמ"ל that we can’t do that since משפּט כתיב ביה and you can’t be מקדש at night. The ריטב"א asks why can’t we then just be מקדש the month the next morning retroactively? He answers that since the night in between is necessarily מפסיק, we can’t connect the עדות to the קידוש. The result is, in theory, there is some concept of למפרע that could have been applied to קידוש החודש if theזמן שאינו ראוי לקדש had not gotten in the way.

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