The Problem Isn’t Playing Ball on Shabbat |
In a recent article, an author shared how children can “upgrade their kdeushas Shabbos” by not playing ball or riding on scooters. In other words, they can improve the way they sanctify Shabbat by refraining from these activities. He cited a story that, during the time of the Second Temple, an entire city called Tur Shimon “was destroyed because ball was played on Shabbos.” The citation for the story is listed as the Jerusalem Talmud Taanit 4:5.
This past week on X, the account the Jewish Meme Queen shared the excerpt from the article, posting that “There is no way a city was destroyed because people played ball on Shabbos. It’s not even Halacha. This is not Judaism. This is extremism.”
The responses were heated. “Modern orthodoxy is when the gemara isn’t Judaism?” “So Judaism is based on your personal common sense? Do what you want but don’t call it Judaism.” “What do you mean this is not Judaism? That’s literally one of the Talmudim, the very basis of Rabbinic Yiddishkeit.”
The worst was “look at this shiktza [sic] denying the torah … nobody cares about your opinion goya, you are the extreme one and we Charedim have preserved true orthodoxy.”
It was an astonishingly vicious response to what seemed to be a reasonable objection, albeit garbed in more radical criticism.
Of course, the notion that the city was destroyed on Shabbos wasn’t actually stated in the Jerusalem Talmud. The article contained a faulty citation.
For context, this section of Taanit includes a discussion of, among other things, the terrible things that happened on Tisha b’Av, the ninth of Av (the day when,........