Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Yisro

Cloud Computing

February 13, 2025

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Dayan Yosef Greenwald

I am Hashem your G-d, who took you out of the land of Mitzrayim…

Shmos 20:2

Chazal say (Shabbos 88b) that when Klal Yisrael heard the first two dibros directly from Hashem, they were thrown back a distance of 12 mil.

The Moshav Zekeinim Miba’alei HaTosfos asks that the Gemara says the aseress hadibros were given on Shabbos. While there is a machlokess Tana’im whether the techum limiting walking on Shabbos to 2,000 amos outside the city is mideOreisa or mideRabanan, most Rishonim agree that a techum of 12 mil is deOraisa. If so, how were they able to walk back to Har Sinai on Shabbos?

The Moshav Zekeinim answers that because the Jews were surrounded by the ananei hakavod, the entire area within the clouds was considered within city limits.

The Pri Megadim asks that the entire halacha of reshus harabim is derived from the machanei Yisrael in the midbar, which proves that the ananim were not like walls, because then the camp would have been a reshus hayachid.

One answer offered by the Acharonim is that for an area to be a reshus hayachid, it must be encompassed by sturdy barriers that deem it enclosed. For techumin, however, the area need only be surrounded, so as to define the area as a single place; for this purpose, ananim suffice.

We may add that the reason the machaneh is considered one area is because it is designated to be the dwelling place of Hashem in this world. Because the entire area has one exalted purpose, the ananim suffice to unify it vis-à-vis techumin, even if they aren’t enough to make it a reshus hayachid.