Tags
39 melachot, mafshit, me'abed, mechatech, memachek, mesartet, molach, order of making hides, shochet, tzad
There are 39 forbidden melachot (types of work) on Shabat listed in Mishna Shabat 7,2. We already discussed the "order of bread" and the "order of garments", here now for the "order of making hides". Its 7 melachot describe the process of making leather goods. Voila:
- First, we need to catch (tzad, צָּד) some animal, preferably one where the hide makes good leather.
- Then we slaughter (shochet, שּׁוֹחֲט) the animal.
- As we are interested in the hide, we skin (mafshit, מַּפְשִׁיט) the animal.
- Next step is tanning (me’abed, מְעַבֵּד), i.e., curing the hide with salt (molach, מּוֹלְח) and adding some chemicals to preserve it.
- To get nice leather, we then need to smoothen (memachek, מֵּמַחֲק) the animal skin.
- We then draw on the leather what we want to cut out, called scoring (mesartet, משרטט) …*
- … and cut (mechatech, מְּחַתְּך) it to size.
A longer explanation what each melacha entails can be found in the excellent Laws of Shabbat course by Pathways.
* I cannot find this melacha in the Mishna text, anybody help me?