People today customarily require explicit words of permission. Thus, if you approach the table before it is complete, that is considered greed, as the poet said:

When hands are stretched out toward the meal, I am not

The quickest among them, when the greediest of people is quickest.

So long as the host has not said, “Please, help yourselves,” we should wait. But if he brings the dish of food and sets it before you, this constitutes permission; explicit words are not needed. In sum, such matters are established by explicit wording or by clear contextual indications that point to it.

His statement, “Its permissibility”: if someone were to take some food before permission had been given, whether explicitly or by contextual indication, that would be unlawful. People do not regard this as unlawful; rather, they consider it bad manners to help oneself before being given permission. Yet the apparent meaning of the author’s words is that permissibility is established only through explicit permission or a contextual indication.

From this we derive an important question: if someone invites you and you come to his house, finding the door open at the time for which he invited you, do you need permission, or is the open door considered permission?

This too is, in common practice, tacit permission. If you come after the night prayer and find the door open, that is permission.

But there is no doubt that it is better to seek permission, for one of the women of the household may be in the courtyard or somewhere similar. However, if he explicitly says, “If you find the door open, come in,” or if the key is left in the door—as was done in earlier times, when people would leave their keys in their doors—then this is explicit permission.

His statement: “And if he knows that there is an evil which he is able to change, he should attend and change it.” “If he knows”: the pronoun refers to the person invited. “There”: an adverb of place, used to indicate