Chapter 29
Laws Derived from Isaiah: Running, Walking, Commerce, Measuring, Reading, Speaking
SPEAKING ABOUT THINGS ONE IS FORBIDDEN TO DO ON SHABBATH AND YOM TOV
66.a. 1) A person may say, “I am going to such-and-such a place tomorrow,” even if the place is beyond the limit to which it is permissible to walk on Shabbath, or even if it is overseas.
2) a) The reason for this is that the act of going (by foot) is not in itself a forbidden activity;
b) if the houses of the town reached to within two thousand amoth of the place to which one wants
to go, one would be able to walk there on Shabbath.
3) Similar considerations apply to saying that one wishes, after Shabbath, to bring something from a place where there is no eiruv.
4) See also paragraph 11 above.
66.b.1) The ideal is to have the holiness of the Shabbath so close at heart that one only talks about Torah topics and things one needs.
2) “He rested on the seventh day” (Genesis 2:2). From what did He rest? Every day He had said, “Let such and such happen!” and it was so. Shabbath arrived and all the works of creation were complete. He stopped speaking. He rested from speech. So should we rest from workaday speech, if we wish the sanctity of the Shabbath to permeate us through and through.
3) The Talmud (Yerushalmi Shabbath, Chapter 15, Halacha 3, Bavli Shabbath 150b) tells of a righteous man who went for a stroll in his field on Shabbath and, seeing a break in the fence, thought to himself that he would fill in the gap when Shabbath was over. Aftewards, he said, “Since I thought about it on Shabbath, I shall forever refrain from repairing it.” What did the Almighty do for him? He caused a tree to grow in the gap, and from that tree the righteous man derived his and his family’s livelihood for the rest of his days.
