2,711 pages of Talmud. A gem a day.

Yours, mine, and ours? Our daf today talks about how married couples share, and don’t share, their money. Is everything ours? Not necessarily. In fact, non-movable property that the wife brings into a marriage does not automatically transfer into her husband’s possession.

The mishna teaches that a man does not have the ability to establish the presumption of ownership with regard to his wife’s property and a wife does not have the ability to establish the presumption of ownership with regard to her husband’s property.

So, whereas a squatter being on the land and working it for 3 years, with the assumption that the owner had the chance to hear about it and protest, can then become the presumed owner – this same method of establishing ownership does NOT hold for married couples.

We also learn that another built in protection for women in marraige doesn’t apply if the woman does not want it:

The Gemara asks: What is meant by: Such as this one? The Gemara explains: Rava is referring to that statement of Rav Huna, who said that Rav says a certain ruling. As Rav Huna says that Rav says: A woman can say to her husband: I will not be sustained by you and, in turn, I will not work, i.e., you will not keep my earnings.

The Sages ruled that a husband has to provide his wife with sustenance, and in exchange he is entitled to her wages. The daf is teaching us that, because this ruling was made in order to protect wives, a wife is able to opt out and say she doesn’t want her husband to take her wages and in exchange he is not obligated to give her food, clothing, and shelter.

Finances are among the top reasons couples divorce. While it’s not romantic, the ketubah is traditionally a pre-nup. Our daf shows us that different couples can be more successful in their marriages with different financial arrangements. Whatever a couple agrees to, sticking to the agreement is the important thing. You need to trust your partner, and that doesn’t always necessarily mean trusting them with all you own.

Our daf is discussing is a sale is valid when the original owner was coerced (read, hung from a tree!) to sell. We saw yesterday that the sale is considered valid. The rabbis today are trying to figure out why it woudl be valid when normally doing something under duress is not valid. The Gemara suggests comparing it to a case of divorce. So, here is that little gem:

And similarly you find this halakha with bills of divorce, that when the court rules that he must divorce his wife, they coerce him until he says: I want to divorce my wife.

According to the plain reading of Torah law only a husband can initiate a divorce, his the wife does not have that ability. So, what can she do? She can go to a court and THEY can force him. The Gemara even goes so far as to say that, if the Jewish court can’t get him to divorce her, the Jewish court can turn to a secular court and have them force him to divorce her.

With regard to a bill of divorce that the husband was compelled by the court to write and give his wife, if he was compelled by a Jewish court it is valid, but if he was compelled by gentiles it is not valid. And with regard to gentiles, they may beat him at the request of the Jewish court and say to him: Do what the Jews are telling you, and the divorce would then be valid.

So, the gem is that even in this patriarchal set-up, a woman should never feel trapped in her marriage. If her husband refuses to give her the divorce she desires, then the courts can still compel him . . . however they need to.

Today’s gem is a strange one. We are not held to commitments made under duress . . . usually. But Rav Huna teaches something a little different today.

Apropos transactions performed under duress, the Gemara cites that which Rav Huna says: If one was suspended, e.g., from a tree, and thereby coerced to sell a certain item, and he sold it, his sale is valid. What is the reason? The Gemara suggests that it is because whatever a person sells, were it not for the fact that he is compelled by his need for money, he would not sell it, and even so, his sale is valid.

So interesting. Here, Rav Huna makes a wise insight, that when times are tough we may be forced to sell personal items that mean a lot to us. This is how pawn shops stay in business. In a way, we are selling against our will. (This is a clear differentiation between selling as a merchant and selling as an owner. While there are cases where we want to clean house and get rid of things, often the items others want are not the things we want to sell. )

So, while there are protections around coercion, there is the valid question of when are we forced but still willing? When do we not want to sell but need to and therefore it is valid?

Reading the commentaries, one interesting insight is that the sale is valid but the purchaser is still taking advantage of the seller and violating the prohibition against coveting.

Again, they may be in certain cases; but if the seller is in such dire straights, isn’t the purchaser still helping? (Maybe not if they are suspending the seller from a tree but offering a good price.)

Well, we have the luxury of sitting and reading a page of Talmud everyday. It was originally transported from place to place by sages who would memorize the text. In fact, there are people today who can still put their finger at a point on the top of the book of Talmud and tell what that word is on a particular daf! They have it memorized that well. So, how was it memorized? One of the tricks is through mnemonics. Today’s pneumonic is my gem.

The Gemara presents the word Amalek as a mnemonic for the cases discussed in the baraita. It stands for: Ayin,guarantor [arev]; mem, creditor [malve]; lamed, buyer [loke’aḥ]; kuf, unconditional guarantor [kablan].

We learned from this that the next section is going to cover guarantors, creditors, buyers and unconditional guarantors. Why I love this pneumonic so much is that it is Amalek. Amalek is the eternal enemy of the Jews. He attacked us when we were weak and fleeing from Egypt. Hamas is his great great grandson. He is a symbol of all those who come to try and exterminate the Jews. The Torah hates him so much. We are commanded to forget his name and yet his name is one of the devices we use to remember our Torah!! So, if we are going to remember his name, may it always be a cause for us to remember who we are and the sacred text that God has given us.

…The Gemara relates: Rava announced, and some say it was Rav Pappa who announced: All those who ascend from Babylonia to Eretz Yisrael and all those who descend from Eretz Yisrael to Babylonia…

There are two times that Jews refer to “Aliyah” – which literally means going up or ascending- when you go to Israel or when you go to say the blessings for Torah reading. Every other place, you just move to. But Israel is the Holy Land. It’s like approaching Torah, coming closer to God. So, you don’t travel, or move to Israel, you ascend, you go up.

Todays daf has a pretty messed up situation. It discusses someone selling land or property that has a lien against it! So the purchaser is supposed when a third party comes to take what they are owed. Oddly enough, the purchaser has no recourse if it’s land or “unmovable property” because they assume that people hear about such things. Sounds pretty bad for the buyer.

It does make me think of when you rent an apt or home and need a guarantor to protect the person lending or selling the space maybe we need one when buying as well…

As in American law today, in the Talmud, someone with a personal interest in a disputed property is not allowed to testify about a case concerning it. our daf discusses how someone might relinquish any benefit they might derive from the verdict in order to testify. But there is one item where we cannot relinquish our ownership rights, because even if we don’t own the physical object, it still belongs to us: the Torah.

Isn’t it taught in a baraita: With regard to a case of residents of a city whose Torah scroll was stolen, the case is not adjudicated by the judges of that city, and proof may not be brought from the testimony of the people of that city, as their testimony is biased? And if it is so that relinquishing one’s share renders one as not biased, then let two of them remove themselves from their share in the Torah scroll, and then the court can judge the case based on their testimony. The Gemara answers: A Torah scroll is different, as it stands for the people to listen to the Torah reading from it. Since they are obligated to listen to the Torah reading, they stand to benefit from this Torah scroll even if they relinquish their ownership share in it, and their testimony is biased.

The Torah belongs to every Jew, not just the keeper of the physical scroll. I was listening to an interview with Rabbi Menachem Creditor, and he shared that on October 7th, some terrorists tried to steal a Torah scroll from the synagogue at an army base called Paga. They put a new cover on it saying that the the terrorists tried to steal it, but were unsuccessful. His comment was, “The terrorists know that if they want to hurt us they need to steal our Torah.”

The Torah is ours. And if we take ownership of it, no one can take it from us.

We have been discussing how a person on land, or in a home, for 3 years can establish presumptive ownership. Today we see that there are certain people who do NOT establish presumptive ownership… including parents, spouses and children. The other include (as illustrated by the daf or in Codes):

• craftsmen who are working or building
• partners
• sharecroppers
• guardians for orphans that own the fields

The message here is that there are certain people who we hire to be with us or are related to. They should never be assumed to be owners without a deed of sale. And can you imagine the betrayal? It would be the absolute worst. Good that the courts are there to protect us.

Today we learn a law on the daf by it’s mentioning that the law does not apply in this particular situation:

In a case such as this, one would think that it is a situation where the court should apply the verse: “Open your mouth for the mute” (Proverbs 31:8), meaning the court should advise a litigant of his possible claims, because perhaps he does not state them out of ignorance.

I love this ruling (even if it doesn’t apply in this particular situation on the daf). What the Gemara is teaching is that it is the job of court to offer arguments on behalf of a defendant if they don’t know to offer them on their own. I love more so the explanation of the Proverb, that when someone doesn’t know how to speak up for themselves, it’s our job to do so. A truly good rule for a more just world (just not appropriate to give to squatters when they’re trying to falsely claim rights to a home they never purchased).

Today’s daf discusses an idea called “preemptive declaration” (in Hebrew Moda’a). The idea here is that you might be forced into a situation you never wanted. For example:

The Gemara answers: Actually, it is referring to a preemptive declaration for a sale, as Rava concedes in a case where one was compelled to act due to a threat of monetary loss, as with the incident of the orchard, as there was a certain man who mortgaged his orchard to another for three years. After he worked and profited from it for the three years necessary for establishing the presumption of ownership, he said: If you sell the orchard to me, it is well. And if not, then I will hide the mortgage document and I will say that this land is purchased and that is why it is in my possession, and you will receive no payment for the orchard. In a case like this, we write a preemptive declaration. The declaration states that he does not actually desire to sell his property but was forced to do so.

Nasty people doing nasty things. It’s nice to know that the rabbis do try and protect people from being forced into agreements they do not want but are being threatened by. I am thinking of it as a pre-nup/post-nup for everything but the marriage.