A lot of conversation, both in tractate Shabbat, and in Beitzah, has had to do with the concept of mukze – things that you cannot touch/carry/use/etc on Shabbat or the Festival. Today’s daf gets into a conversation about the possibility of something changing its status to and from being mukze during the day of the festival. In particular, we wonder about a first born calf that fell into a cistern so it might have transitioned from being not allowed to be slaughtered on the festival to being allowed to be slaughtered – and food that might have transitioned from edible to inedible back to edible (like beans, raisins from shriveled grapes, etc).
Within all this is my gem which teaches us to be precise in our words and teachings as we read that one of our sages wasn’t:
The Gemara answers: This does not pose a problem to our reasoning, as that baraita was taught by Adda bar Ukhmei, who would often confuse the opinions in the text and teach an inaccurate version of the dispute; therefore, his version is unreliable.
Seems Adda bar Ukhmei was not good at citing his sources and reteaching ideas accurately. So, we see his teaching dismissed as likely inaccurate and therefore, dismissible.
It’s hard to be good at those things when it comes to Talmud, but our rabbis are painfully precise and always cite their sources (sometimes taking half a daf to argue about what words should really be attributed to who).
I wish all our news sources would work this hard to keep things accurate and precise. i can think of a few sources that I personally discount because they, like Adda bar Ukhmei, are unreliable (or maybe they’re worse in that they seem to sometimes be purposefully misleading) . . .
2,711 pages of Talmud. A gem a day. 