Commentary for Avodah Zarah 25:23

Resh Lakish offers a startling limitation of the prohibition in the mishnah. It is prohibited to enter the store only if he will directly benefit from the decorations by smelling them. But if he goes into a store where he will not smell the idolatrous decorations he may purchase items, even though the storekeepers will use the proceeds for idolatrous purposes. I should note that this is a radical reinterpretation of the mishnah, one that does not easily accord with tannaitic literature. It is a topic I will address at greater length in a forthcoming book.

Yohanan offers a more straightforward reading of the mishnah. It is prohibited to enter any store which is participating in idolatrous activities for this would be providing benefit to idolatry.

Natan’s baraita clearly indicates that a Jew may not provide benefit to idolaters by paying the taxes. This is a direct contradiction of Resh Lakish’s ruling.

Resh Lakish could resolve the difficulty by positing that he holds like other rabbis who disagree with R. Natan. We shall see such an opinion in tomorrow’s section. The existence of this other opinion provides legitimacy to Resh Lakish. R. Yohanan would hold that all tannaim agree with R. Natan—providing benefit to idolatry is prohibited.

This baraita proves that there are rabbis who allow one to buy property from idolaters, even though this will cause them to profit. One can even take the document to court to have it verified to ensure one’s claim.

The baraita now continues with cases where a person may suspend a law in order to recover property from idolaters. Generally, a priest should not leave the land of Israel because the rabbis say that the very land outside of Israel defiles. But he may do so in order to go to court to recover property from them.
Similarly, a priest may be defiled by entering a burial ground in order to save property from idolaters. The Talmud is quick to correct the baraita. It does not refer to an actual burial ground—the Torah prohibits a priest from entering there. Rather it refers to a “bet haperas” a field in which a body may have been buried. Entering such a field is only a rabbinic prohibition because we are unsure if there is even a body buried there.

The baraita continues by discussing other cases in which a priest may defile himself—to learn Torah or to marry a woman. These seem to be the two most important mitzvoth in rabbinic thinking. R. Judah and R. Yose argue over whether this is limited to a case where he cannot learn Torah without defiling himself. R. Yose says that even if he could, he is still allowed to learn Torah from his preferred teacher for not every person can learn from every teacher. The teacher-disciple relationship is very individual.

Yohanan is cognizant of this baraita and rules according to R. Yose. Thus he too seems to be aware of the fact that the rabbis disagree and do allow one to provide benefit to idolatry. This is the end of the difficulty on R. Yohanan.

Yohanan could resolve the two baraitot and still maintain that providing benefit to idolatry is prohibited. The baraita that seems to allow it refers only to buying from an individual from whom taxes are not collected. One is not allowed to buy from the dealer, for that will provide benefit to idolatry.

The Talmud asks how one can be allowed to hamstring an animal—isn’t that a violation of the prohibition of causing pain to a living being? Abaye answers with a verse in the book of Joshua where God tells Joshua that in war the Israelites should hamstring their enemies’ horses. The implication seems to be that if a verse allows it, the action is permitted, despite the fact that the context of the verse was war, a time when disabling horses would seem to be an obvious step.

This baraita is brought here because the method of “disabling” contradicts the method mentioned in the other baraita. The topic here is one who dedicates an animal or something else to the Temple in a time where the Temple still stands. This is something one should not do, but if one did do it, he should somehow destroy the object so that it will not be brought to the Temple. The animal must be left to starve to death. [Note that this seems to obviously cause pain to the animal, but the rabbis, for various reasons, are not bothered by this.]