Topics covered:
Chapter 1, Mishna 3, 4
Rabbi Yehuda and Rabbi Meir disagree by one hour re how late we may eat chametz, leaven, on the morning before Passover begins. They also disagree by one hour and how big a discrepancy we’ll accept between the testimony of two witnesses in a murder case, based on the tendency of people to err in estimating time according to the passage of the sun across the sky. Rava and Abaye argue over just how big a spread we can allow between those testimonies, in light of the fact that to impeach such witnesses we need to establish when and where they were, lest a second set of witnesses come forward to say the first witnesses are liars intent on destroying the defendant, and we know that because the first witnesses were with us at that time in different place than the murder location. Returning to chametz, we see that people’s ability to judge the time by the sun can be seriously impacted by an overcast day, but everyone knows when the fourth hour of the day is because that’s when most people eat their first meal. And we have six categories of people depending on when they eat their first meal…