Beitzah 33

I remember noticing, when we first started dating, that my husband would use any scrap paper to pick his teeth – even the receipt from the restaurant. When I met his father, I saw that this was something he learned from his dad. (One year I even bought him a personal container of toothpicks – to this day I still think it was the best gift I ever gave him.) So, of course I thought of them as I read today’s daf:

As it is taught in a baraita: Rabbi Eliezer says: On Shabbat or a Festival, a person may take a sliver of wood from before him to clean his teeth with it, and the Rabbis say: One may take a toothpick only from an animal’s trough; since it is fit for animal fodder, it is considered prepared for all purposes. And they agree that he may not pluck it from a tree. And if he did pluck it to clean his teeth with it or to use it as a key and open a door with it, if he did so unwittingly on Shabbat, he is liable to bring a sin-offering. If he did so intentionally on a Festival, he receives the forty lashes administered to one who desecrates the Festival by performing labor. These are the words of Rabbi Eliezer.

Apparently using random scraps to pick your teeth is an ancient practice! But apparently breaking off a twig to use during Shabbat or a festival is a big no-no. . . but not as bad as we read above where the punishment is a sin offering or lashes:

And the Rabbis say: Both this and this, whether one did so on Shabbat or a Festival, even if he plucked it by hand to use it as a key, it is prohibited only due to a rabbinic decree. . . . Therefore, the Rabbis who state there, in the case of plucking a toothpick, that he is exempt but it is prohibited.

Don’t do it, but you won’t be punished if you do.

All those years ago, my husband expressed to me that when he gets something between his teeth, he is so uncomfortable and that it distracts him from enjoying himself. Perhaps that is what is happening here as well. On a day of celebration, we do not want to be uncomfortable and distracted from enjoying the preciousness of the moment. Not when it’s something a little toothpick could relieve.