Eiruvin 10:12 — Rabbinic leniencies in the Mikdash
A reading aid, not an exact translation.
This English is a clause-by-clause rendering to help you follow the Hebrew. It is not word-for-word literal, and it is not a transcript of the recorded shiur — the audio carries explanation and context the translation deliberately leaves out.
| Case | Ruling | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| May one restore the lower hinge? (צִיר הַתַּחְתּוֹן) | Tanna Kamma: Mikdash: permitted · medinah: forbidden | — |
| Rabbi Yehuda: Permitted even in the medinah | — | |
| May one restore the upper hinge? (הָעֶלְיוֹן) | Tanna Kamma: Forbidden in both places | — |
| Rabbi Yehuda: Permitted in the Mikdash | — |
A machine transcript of the recorded shiur.
This is the shiur as spoken, transcribed automatically and left unedited — the wording is Ephraim's, and occasional transcription errors remain. It follows the audio word by word.
An amalgam of commentaries, including original insights.
These insights draw on the commentaries to this Mishnah and on the recorded shiur. Those commentaries often rest on earlier sources — the Gemara, the Yerushalmi, the Rishonim, and one another — without always saying so; where they do, we generally cite the one we read. Every commentary consulted is kept, verbatim, with this card.
A chest, not a building
The whole case turns on a detail easy to miss: the door is the door of a chest — a keli — not a room. That is why it is even a question. The Tosafos Yom Tov sharpens it: the entire machlokes rides on whether the melachah of boneh (building) applies to vessels at all.
Why the lower hinge yields and the upper one doesn't
Tanna Kamma: reset the lower hinge in the Mikdash — the upper one still holds the door, so it is an easy fix, not real boneh. The upper hinge is forbidden everywhere (kan v'kan asur): without it the door drops, so reseating it is boneh, or you would hammer it home — makeh b'patish, the finishing blow that completes a vessel. R' Yehuda goes a step further (upper in the Mikdash, lower anywhere) on the principle ein boneh b'keilim — no building applies to vessels — so the act is rabbinic at most, and ein shvus baMikdash; with the kohanim mezarzim, scrupulously careful, no decree is imposed there.
A tzir was a pin turning in a socket bored top and bottom; the door pivoted on it. The lower pin sat under the door's weight and could be eased back once the upper one held; the upper pin, bearing the leaf, was the hard one to reseat — which is exactly the line the mishnah draws.
Where this sits: ein shvus b'Mikdash
This belongs to the series’ closing set on a single principle — ein shvus b’Mikdash: the rabbinic Shabbos restrictions (shvus) that bind everywhere yield inside the Beis HaMikdash. The reason the series draws out is trust — the Kohanim, serving before the Sanhedrin, are assumed zealous enough not to slip into a biblical violation. This mishnah sets the principle in place; the ones beside it press on how far it reaches.