I was talking to a friend earlier today about a bunch of unrelated things. Anyway, I mentioned something from a mishna which I then was able to find on wikisource. He didn't realize that any of the mishna was up on wikisource and started searching around. He came across this:
Mishnah/Seder Moed/Tractate Megillah/Chapter 3/2 - Wikisource
which seemed a little odd to both of us because the hachamim say: " sell it [for] forever, except [for it to be sold] for four things – a bath, a tannery, a mikveh, and a bathroom" and elsewhere it says to build a mikveh before a shul. On further observation I thought this might have something to do with the idea of forever, but even that doesn't seem like much of a resolution. Say a synagogue temporarily became a mikveh, it would take some effort to reverse that process. Why not just build a synagogue somewhere else now that you have a mikveh? I'm guessing the gemara discusses this at length but anyway, anyone know how (and if) the Talmud or later commentators dealt with this? Thanks for your help. It's been on my mind since I saw the passage a couple of hours ago.
-- Dauer
Mishnah/Seder Moed/Tractate Megillah/Chapter 3/2 - Wikisource
which seemed a little odd to both of us because the hachamim say: " sell it [for] forever, except [for it to be sold] for four things – a bath, a tannery, a mikveh, and a bathroom" and elsewhere it says to build a mikveh before a shul. On further observation I thought this might have something to do with the idea of forever, but even that doesn't seem like much of a resolution. Say a synagogue temporarily became a mikveh, it would take some effort to reverse that process. Why not just build a synagogue somewhere else now that you have a mikveh? I'm guessing the gemara discusses this at length but anyway, anyone know how (and if) the Talmud or later commentators dealt with this? Thanks for your help. It's been on my mind since I saw the passage a couple of hours ago.
-- Dauer