A few questions:
1) Rav Yosef suggests that food for the two meals must be separate. My question is, does he hold this way by Shabbos meals as well? That is, does the food for separate meals on Shabbos need to be separate according to his ma'an D'amar? For example, could one use the same cholent for three different meals? Could one use leftovers for the following Shabbos? Much more important that the halakhic answer is where the Inyon is discussed, and why Tosafos doesn't address this on the page.
2) There is a discussion about using meat to make the eruv, which requires enough for fully two meals, versus vinegar which requires only enough for dipping. Please comment on an idea that I have: The Rabbis wanted to encourage using bread as the primary ikur of a meal, and to discourage meat(Perhaps to respond to Persian - ie:goyish - custom). So they forced one to use twice as much meat, but only a small amount of food that would accompany bread.
3) Is there, possibly, a connection between the discussion of onions, and Rabbi Meir? Here's my idea: There is a discussion (where? Brochos?) of R. Meir's relationship with Alisha ben Abuyeh, where they argue about how he managed to sift through Acher's teachings. I think there may be, on an aggadic level, a ma'an damar regarding that machlokis here in the discussion of onions.
We know that one can eat onions. Perhaps when one sees a bad part inside, "A serpent" one might think he can remove it and continue eating, but the R. Meir says beware, there may be hidden dangers.
Is there anything to this? How would I research further?
Thank you very much for responding to my questions.
I look forward to further correspondence!
Randy Lazarus
1) It seems that when Rav Yosef requires a complete meal from one type of food (and different types of food do not join), this is only with regard to Eruv (as Rashi explains) and not with regard to the Shabbos meal.
2) It seems that the intent of the Gemara is simply that to make an Eruv Techumin, one must use the amount of food that people normally eat during a meal. Therefore, the Rabanan were strict with regard to meat, since there are people who make a complete meal out of meat. The same applies to bread -- since people make their complete meal out of bread, if one wishes to use bread to make his Eruv he must use enough bread for an entire meal. It does not seem to be an imposed "Kenas" of sorts.
3) The relationship between Rebbi Meir and Elisha ben Avuyah is described in Chagigah (15a-15b). (There, the Gemara describes the way that Rebbi Meir learned Torah from Elisha ben Avuyah and says that he "ate the outer fruit of dates and threw away the inner pits." The fruit is the Torah he learned from Elisha ben Avuyah, and the pit is the heresy which he avoided.)
Your insight is interesting. I don't think anyone talks about it, but you could check the commentaries in the Ein Yakov here and in Chagigah.
-Mordecai