Commentary for Avodah Zarah 139:14

Jews may visit (or host) non-Jewish prostitutes. But, according to Rava, they will not transgress the prohibition of drinking yayin nesekh. Therefore, we can assume they will not let the non-Jewish prostitute touch their wine. As an aside, in light of human behavior, this does not seem at all shocking. It is not uncommon to see people who are cautious about ritual laws be more lax on moral ones.

If the prostitute is Jewish and she is surrounded by non-Jewish clients, she will not be able to stop them from drinking her wine. Therefore the wine is prohibited.

Since Jews can see the jars opposite the crack, we can assume that the non-Jew would not drink them. However, he might have opened the jars that could not be seen through the crack and therefore they are prohibited.

Since the non-Jew does not know that the Jew is away, we can assume that he would not sneak a drink of the Jew’s wine. Note that the assumption in both this story and the previous one is that non-Jews will drink the Jewish wine unless they are sure that they will be caught. This is not necessarily a statement though about the nature of non-Jews. It may very well just be a statement about people—when they don’t think they will be caught, they will drink other people’s alcohol. I’m sure that remains true at times today.

If the non-Jew is startled when the Jew comes in and acts as if he was caught like a thief, then we can assume that the non-Jew was afraid of being caught and would not have drank the wine.

If the non-Jew has a ready excuse for why he is in the house, we must suspect that he snuck in prepared to drink the wine and offer an excuse for why he is caught. But if he has no excuse, then he will be frightened when the Jew comes in and he will not come to touch the wine.

The baraita seems to say that if the inn was locked or the Jew told him to watch, then the non-Jew would feel safe around the wine and the wine would be prohibited if the non-Jew was found among the barrels, even if he did not have an excuse. But the Talmud resolves the difficulty by saying that the case was only where he did offer an excuse for why he was in the house. If he offers no excuse, the wine is permitted.

When heading off to synagogue, Jews won’t want to leave their wine behind for long. I must say that this is another one of those lines in these passages that strike me as still true.

The Jew leaves the ship because it is Shabbat and does not take his wine with him. Rava assumes that the non-Jew does not know that the Jew will be away all of Shabbat, so he will not touch the wine, afraid that the Jew will come back any moment. The principle here is the same we’ve seen before. If the non-Jew is afraid of getting caught, he will not touch the wine.

The question the Talmud asks is how come the non-Jew does not know that the Jew will keep Shabbat. The answer, quite fascinatingly, is that indeed, non-Jews do not realize that Jews keep Shabbat. A convert named Issur says that before he converted, he and his fellow non-Jews assumed that Jews do not keep Shabbat, for if they did, then purses would be found in the marketplace all the time, for Jews could not carry them! What he did not know is that R. Yitzchak taught a way that a Jew could indeed pick up a purse and carry it four cubits at a time and thus save it from the marketplace. The purse referred to here is probably not just a random one, but rather a purse that the Jew was carrying when Shabbat began. If there is no alternative but to just toss it, the Jew can carry it four cubits at a time to get it home. But this is only allowed for one’s own purse/wallet.

Since the non-Jew does not know if the Jew is there or not, the wine is permitted. I do hope that they stay away from the wine-press until the lion goes away. Or at least write a children’s book—“The Lion in the Winepress.”

This story, if historically accurate and if it’s not just a leniency by Rava, shows how dominant the Jews were in Pumbedita, or at least among the thieves!

Shmuel also rules that as long as we are not sure that non-Jews touched the wine, the wine is not considered yayin nesekh. The Talmud suggests that this law follows R. Eliezer and not the rabbis who would hold that he is impure even if he is not sure whether he walked in that field. In our case with the wine, it is unclear whether gentile thieves entered the house at all, for the thieves may have been Jews. This is like R. Eliezer’s rule—if we’re not sure he even entered the field, then he remains pure. The rabbis though would hold that the wine is impure.

In the case of the casks, there are two uncertainties—one, whether the thieves were Gentiles or Jews, and even if they were Gentiles, perhaps they were looking for money and not wine. Therefore, even the rabbis who are more stringent than R. Eliezer with regard to the rules of impurity, would hold that this wine is pure.