“The term ma’aseh is the intrusion of real life events into the largely theoretical in hypothetical discourse of the Mishnah”

The term ma’aseh is the intrusion of real life events into the largely theoretical in hypothetical discourse of the Mishnah. It introduces an event that happened in the past which has halakhic implications or ramifications of one sort or another.

Moshe Simon-Shoshan, Stories of the Law: Narrative Discourse And The Construction Of Authority In The Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 46.