Spinning Wool on Shabbat
Spinning wool is one of the 39 prohibited labors (melachot) of Shabbat, and one of the few explicitly mentioned in the context of making the Mishkan: “And all the skilled women spun with their own hands. . . . All the women who excelled in that skill spun the goats’ hair” (Shemot 35:25-26). The essence of this melacha is gathering small wool or cotton fibers with one’s fingertips or with a spindle, and forming these fibers into yarn. By extension, some say that it is prohibited to form dough into strands and to braid the strands into a challah.
The spinning in the Mishkan was unusual. The wool was spun before the goat was sheared, while the wool was still attached to it! This is not the normal way in which wool is spun. Rather, this was a special skill possessed by the women of the time. If someone nowadays were to spin this way on Shabbat, he would be exempt from punishment on the biblical level. This is because to be liable to such punishment, a melacha must be performed in the usual way.
Why did the women of the time spin the wool so unusually? A number of suggestions have been offered. First, this shows how eager they were to fulfill G-d’s command. They began weaving even before the animals were sheared! Others maintain that they did this to avoid the possibility of the wool becoming impure (tamei), as living animals cannot become impure. A third, clever explanation is offered by Rav Yechiel Meir of Ostrovtza. He suggests that since spinning the way these women did is not punishable on Shabbat (and rabbinic restrictions did not apply), they were allowed to spin on Shabbat. Being able to spin seven days a week transformed the melacha into a positive commandment which was not time-bound, in which case women had the same obligation as men.