Tags
39 melachot, gozez, kore'a, kosher, matir, melaben, menapetz, mesech, order of garments, oreg, oseh shnei batei nirin, potzea, tofer, toveh, tzovea
There are 39 forbidden melachot (types of work) on Shabat listed in Mishna Shabat 7,2. We already discussed the "order of bread", next in line is the "order of garments". Its 13 melachot describe the process of making clothes, sometimes I really have no clue about, so I’m sorry for inaccuracies. Here the list of melachot:
- First, we need to get wool by shearing (gozez, גּוֹזֵז) a sheep.
- What we get from the sheep is called fleece and is dirty, we need to clean (literally "whiten") it by laundering (melaben, מְּלַבְּן).
- Next, the cleaned wool has to be straightened out, done mostly by combing (menapetz, מְּנַפְּץ).
- In order to have colorful clothes, the wool is then dyed (tzovea, צּוֹבְע).
- Finally, we get a thread by spinning (toveh, טּוֹוֶה).
- At this point we start weaving and need to set up the loom. First step is to mount the warp threads (mesech, מֵּסֵךְ), these are the threads that go top-down on a loom.
- Next are the weft threads, the horizontal threads on the loom, they have some sort of loops, so the melacha is to make two loops (oseh shtei batei nirin, עוֹשֶׂה שְׁנֵי בָתֵּי נִירִין).
- After the loom is set up, we can do the actual weaving (oreg, אוֹרֵג).
- As a final step when the weaving is finished, we need to unravel (potzea, פּוֹצֵעַ) the loose ends in order to reweave them neatly again.
- Related to clothes is also the tying (kosher, קּוֹשֵׁר) of a permanent knot …
- … and the untying (matir, מַּתִּיר) of such a knot in order to retie it better.
- To get some useful clothes, we sew (tofer, תּוֹפֵר), staple or otherwise permanently attach parts of cloth together …
- … and sometimes undo the sewing or rip (korea, קּוֹרֵעַ) an object apart.
A longer explanation what each melacha entails can be found in the excellent Laws of Shabbat course by Pathways.