Shabbat 111: Medicinal Foods, Dipping, Wringing, Knot-Tying

A new Mishna teaches us more about remedies.  Pain in one's teeth is not cured through sipping vinegar on Shabbat because this would be using the substance for medicinal purposes.  However, one may dip one's food in vinegar in the usual manner and eat it and if it heals one's teeth, that's fine.  Similarly, pain in one's loins should not be treated with wine and vinegar.  Instead one may smear oil on them as long as it it is not rose oil, which is expensive and used specifically as medicine.   Rabbi Shimon argues that a Jewish people are princes, and so it is permitted to rub even rose oil on themselves on Shabbat.

Dipping or immersing one self before Shabbat won't be allowed on Erev Yom Kippur, for bathing is for pleasure.  But anything permitted on Shabbat is permitted on YomKippur.  Rava retracted his statements about prohibiting sipping vinegar.  

The rabbis consider closing a cloth stopper inserted into the top of a barrel.  Rabbi Shimon agrees that stuffing a clothing into a barrel will undoubtedly lead to the forbidden act of wringing.  If one is using rose oil for medicinal purposes, it depends on where one lives.  In Rav's place, roses were common, and thus he permitted smearing with rose oil.  Where rose oil is uncommon, the rabbis must avoid its us on Shabbat.

We learn another Mishna that one is liable for bringing sin offerings if they are tied as a driver's knot or a sailor's knot on Shabbat.  These are both meant to be permanent.  One is also liable for untying them.  Rabbi Meir states a principle: For tying any knot that one can untie with one of his hands, one is not liable to bring a sin offering because a loose sort of knot is not considered permanent even if that was one's intentions.  

A second new Mishna teaches that we have knots for which we are not liable to bring a sin-offering.  A camel driver's knot and sailor's knot are permitted.  A woman may tie the opening of her robe closed and she may tie the strings of her hairnet and the laces of her girdle.  We may also tie the straps of a shoe or sandal, the spouts of wine or oil jugs, a garment over a pot of meat, and a rope across an entrance so that an animal cannot leave.