Taanit

in order to extend the restriction to the preceding day, so here also it was necessary in order to extend the restriction to the following day. With whose view will this agree? Is it with that of R. Jose,1 who declared that the restriction applies equally to the day before and the day after it? If so, with regard to the twenty-ninth Adar, why need you base your restriction on the ground that it is the day before the Daily offering was established;2 deduce it rather from the fact that it is the day after the twenty-eighth concerning which it has been taught: On the twenty-eighth of the month [Adar] the good news reached the Jews that they were no longer to be kept back from the study of the Torah.3 For once it was decreed that the Jews should not occupy themselves with the study of the Torah nor circumcise their children and that they should desecrate the Sabbath. What did Judah b. Shammua’ and his colleagues do? They went and took counsel with a Roman Matron with whom all the prominent Romans were wont to associate. She advised them, ‘Arise and raise an alarm by night’. They went and raised the alarm by night thus, ‘O ye heavens, are we not your brethren? Are we not the children of one Father? Are we not the children of one mother? Wherein are we different from every other nation and tongue that ye make harsh decrees against us?’ Thereupon the decrees were annulled and that day was declared a festive day!4 -Abaye replied: It was necessary to state the restriction in this way in order to cover the case of a full month [where Adar has thirty days].5 R. Ashi said: The same would be the case even when the month [of Adar] is deficient,6 because on a day following on a festive day fasting alone is forbidden but mourning is permissible; but as for this day [the twenty-ninth Adar] seeing that it is placed between two festive days it was considered as if it were a festive day itself, and therefore mourning too was forbidden thereon. The Master said: ‘From the eighth day of the month until the end of the festival mourning is forbidden since then the date of the observance of the Feast of Weeks was definitely fixed.’ Why does he say, ‘from the eighth of the same month’? Let him say, ‘from the ninth of the same month’ and the eighth day would ipso facto be forbidden because it is the day on which the Daily offering was established?7 — The reason why it is stated ‘the eighth day’ is this, should it ever come to pass that the seven festive days be abolished,8 even then on the eighth day it would still be forbidden to mourn, because it is the first day on which the date of the Feast of Weeks was definitely fixed. Now that you have arrived at this conclusion the same will apply also to the twenty-ninth Adar because should it ever come to pass that the twenty-eighth Adar be abolished as a festive day, even then the twenty-ninth would be forbidden seeing that it is the day before the Daily offering was established. It has been taught: R. Hiyya b. Asi said in the name of Rab, the halachah is in accordance with the view of R. Jose.9 Samuel said, The halachah is in accordance with the view of R. Meir.10 But did Samuel actually say so? Has it not been taught: R. Simeon b. Gamaliel said: Why does the text [in the Scroll of Fasts] repeat the word ‘behon’ [on them] twice?11 This is to teach you that the restriction applies to these days but not to the days immediately preceding or following the days enumerated in the Scroll of Fasts. On which Samuel's comment was that the halachah is in accordance with the view of R. Simeon b. Gamaliel! — At first he thought that as there was no other authority who took a lenient view as R. Meir did he decided that the halachah was according to R. Meir, but when he heard that Rabbi Simeon took an even more lenient view he decided that the halachah was according to R. Simeon b. Gamaliel. And so too said Bali in the name of R. Hiyya b. Abba, in the name of R. Johanan: The halachah is according to R. Jose. Thereupon R. Hiyya said to Bali: I will explain to you that when R. Johanan said that the halachah was in accordance with R. Jose, he meant only with regard to the prohibition of fasting.12 But did R. Johanan actually say so? Did not R. Johanan say that the halachah is in accordance with the anonymous opinion of a Mishnah,13 and it has been learnt: Although the Rabbis said that [the Megillah of Esther] could be read earlier14 but not later, yet the Tamid. the ground that it precedes the first Nisan and not that it follows the twenty-ninth Adar, seeing that a day (the twenty-eighth) intervenes. view is anonymously stated in the Mishnah and in accordance with the accepted tradition that every anonymous statement in the Mishnah goes back to R. Meir. Hence the statement in our Mishnah is taken, to be the view of R. Meir.