are disqualified from marrying into the priesthood. The act renders a woman a zona. It is prohibited for a priest to marry her (Tosafot).

The Gemara rejects this: No, that is not necessarily so. Perhaps the reason for Shmuel’s father’s insistence was because he thought to prevent them from lying next to one another so that they would not become accustomed to sleeping with a foreign body, which could stimulate sexual desire.

And he made a ritual bath for them in the days of Nisan. This supports the opinion of Rav, as Rav said: When rain falls in the West, Eretz Yisrael, the great witness attesting to that fact is the Euphrates, as the water flow in the Euphrates increases after the rainy season. The rainfall in northern Babylonia, where the source of the Euphrates is located, is essentially parallel to the rainfall in Eretz Yisrael. The increased water flow of the Euphrates in the spring is the result of the rainfall in the winter. Shmuel’s father held that immersion in the Euphrates would not purify them. A river maintains its status as a river in terms of purification through immersion only if it is established that the rain water that fell would not exceed the naturally flowing spring water. In the halakhot of ritual baths, there are two manners of purification. The first is the immersion in a place where water is gathered, e.g., collected rainwater that does not flow and remains in place. The second is immersion in flowing waters in their natural state, e.g., a spring or a river. However, rainwater purifies only when it is collected; it does not purify when it is flowing.

And he disagrees with his son Shmuel, as Shmuel said: The river is blessed from its riverbed (ge’onim); the additional water in the river is not from rainfall but rather from subterranean sources. And this statement of Shmuel disagrees with another ruling that he himself issued, as Shmuel said: The water purifies when flowing only in the Euphrates during the days of Tishrei alone. Since rain does not fall in the summer, only then is it clear that the water is in fact river water.

We learned in the mishna: A woman may fasten her cloak on a stone, and on a nut, and on a coin, as long as she does not fasten her cloak with them ab initio on Shabbat. The Gemara asks: Didn’t you say in the first clause of this halakha in the mishna that a woman may fasten, indicating that she is permitted to do so even ab initio? How do you explain the contradiction? Abaye said: In the latter clause of the mishna we have arrived at the case of a coin, one of the examples cited in the mishna. The halakha with regard to a coin is the exception. Because a coin is set-aside from use on Shabbat, one might conclude that it may not be used at all; nevertheless, it is only prohibited to fasten the cloak on the coin ab initio on Shabbat itself.

Abaye raised a dilemma: What is the halakha with regard to a case where a woman employs artifice to circumvent the halakha and fastens her garment on a nut in order to take the nut out in a permissible fashion to her young child in the public domain on Shabbat?

The Gemara notes: This is a dilemma according to the one who said that one may employ artifice when there is a fire on Shabbat. One is permitted to wear several layers of garments to take them out of a burning house on Shabbat. And this is a dilemma according to the one who said that one may not employ artifice when there is a fire on Shabbat.

The Gemara elaborates: This is a dilemma according to the one who said that one may employ artifice when there is a fire on Shabbat, as the cases are distinct. Perhaps there, artifice is permitted because if you do not permit him to take the garments out of the burning house in that manner, he will come to extinguish the fire. However, here, if you do not permit the woman to employ artifice and take the nut out to her child in the public domain, she will not come to take it out.

Or perhaps, even according to one who said that one may not employ artifice in the case of a fire, there is a distinction between the cases. There, in the case of a fire, wearing garments is the typical manner in which one takes clothing out to the public domain. However, here, utilizing a nut as a button is not the typical manner in which one takes a nut out to the public domain. Since no Torah prohibition is violated by doing so, say that she may well employ artifice to take the nut out to her son. The Gemara concludes: Let this dilemma stand unresolved.

MISHNA: One with an amputated leg may go out on Shabbat with his wooden leg, as it has the legal status of a shoe; this is the statement of Rabbi Meir.