Komentarz do Kilajim 9:5

Introduction This mishnah deals with a mechant who may be selling kilayim garments and in the process of selling them may end up wearing them as well.

Sellers of clothes may sell [clothes made of kilayim] in accordance with their custom, as long as they do have not the intention in the sun, [to protect themselves] from the sun, or in the rain [to protect themselves] from the rain. Evidently, while clothes-sellers were traveling, they would sometimes wear the clothes that they intended to sell. They would do this either to transport the clothes from place to place (they were peddlers) or to show people how the clothes looked, or both. The mishnah rules that the traveling clothes salesman may wear kilayim, as long as his intention in wearing them is not to use them as covering, either in the summer because of the sun or in the winter because of the rain. The discerning reader will note that this mishnah seems to disagree with mishnah two, where we learned that one cannot wear kilayim in order to smuggle them away from the tax collectors. In both cases a person wears a garment not because he wants to wear it as clothing but for some other reason. While mishnah two prohibited this, our mishnah permits it, as long as he doesn’t intend to also use it as clothing.

The scrupulous hang [such materials or garments] on a stick over their backs. Those merchants who didn’t want to take advantage of the leniency in the above section, would not wear the kilayim clothes. Rather they would hang the clothes behind them on a stick.