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

What do you do when you’re wrong? Do you stick to what you said in the past? Admit you were wrong? Pretend you always thought the way you now think (now that you know better)? Deny?

On today’s daf we have a beautiful, humble, public admission of having been wrong:

Rabba bar Rav Huna went back and placed an interpreter before him so that he could tell the public that he had been wrong, and he interpreted a verse homiletically. The verse states: “And let this stumbling-block be under your hand” (Isaiah 3:6). A person does not understand statements of Torah unless he stumbles in them. Therefore, I retract my previous statement . . .

May we all see and admit our errors which allows us to learn and grow and never stop evolving.

Slavery is abhorrent and disgusting. I do not want to defend or apologize for it. Yet, today’s gems remind us that the way our ancestors practiced slavery looked very different than what slavery looked like in the States.

Our first gem pulls from the Torah to discuss how if a master strikes his slave to the point of causing damage – the slave goes free.

The Gemara suggests: Come and hear a proof based on what is taught in a baraita: If the master knocked out the slave’s tooth and then blinded his eye, then the slave is emancipated due to the loss of his tooth, as the verse states: “He shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake” (Exodus 21:27). And his master gives him reimbursement for the value of his eye, as though he were a freeman. . . .

The second gem is really my favorite.

Come and hear a solution to this question based on what Rav Mesharshiyya says: With regard to a woman married to a priest whose offspring was mixed with her maidservant’s offspring, and it is not known who is who, then these two children may partake of teruma. One is a priest and one is the slave of a priest, both of whom may partake of teruma. And they must divide one portion of teruma together at the threshing floor, because the slave of a priest is not allowed to collect teruma at the threshing floor. And when the mixed children have grown up, they free each other, and by doing so the one who was a slave is freed.

While this text is here to discuss if a slave or half slave can eat teruma – I love that if we just pull back we can be blown away by the scene that the rabbis seem to take for granted as happening all the time – a free woman’s children and a slaves children grow up together and are so enmeshed no one can tell who is whose child. They eat together, play together, grow up together and then free each other. A very different kind of picture then those painted by the more recent past in the good old USA.

There are times we are arguing for justice, for what we think is right; and there are times where we argue just to be contrarians. There are some famous rivalries in the Tamlud, but none more famous that that of the Houses of Hillel and Shammai.

Why? Well, they were two schools of thought and influence AND they are an example of an “argument for the sake of heaven.” As Pirke Avot 5:17 tells us:

A disagreement which is for the sake of Heaven will be preserved, and one which is not for the sake of Heaven will not be preserved. What is a disagreement that is for the sake of Heaven? The disagreement of Hillel and Shammai. What is not for the sake of Heaven? The disagreement of Korah and his congregation.

But, alas, the law goes according to Hillel (at least until the Messiah comes when the Kabbalah argues it will go according to Shammai) in almost all cases. That’s why today’s gem is so special – it’s a win for Shammai, and this poor guy who is a slave owned by two masters.

MISHNA: In the case of one who is a half-slave half-freeman because only one of his two owners emancipated him, he serves his master one day and serves himself one day; this is the statement of Beit Hillel. Beit Shammai say: Through such an arrangement you have remedied his master, as his master loses nothing through this. However, you have not remedied the slave himself, as the slave himself remains in an unsustainable situation.

Yes Shammai! This works for the master who gets half a slave’s work, but not for the man/slave! He is still in a tenuous position. He is neither free nor slave. And that means that, in addition to still wanting freedom, he cannot marry:

It is not possible for him to marry a maidservant because he is already a half-freeman, as it is prohibited for a freeman to marry a maidservant. It is also not possible for him to marry a free woman, as he is still a half-slave. If you say he should be idle and not marry, but isn’t it true that the world was created only for procreation, as it is stated: “He did not create it to be a waste; He formed it to be inhabited” (Isaiah 45:18)?

So, what do we do? Rather, for the betterment of the world his master is forced to make him a freeman, and the slave writes a promissory note accepting his responsibility to pay half his value to his master. And Beit Hillel ultimately retracted their opinion, to rule in accordance with the statement of Beit Shammai, that a half-slave must be set free.

A win for Shammai and for a man who is now free.

There is a general criminal law principle known as “the corpus delicti rule” which says that a confession, standing alone, isn’t enough for a conviction. There needs to be some corroborating evidence to back up the confession. This is to prevent wrongful convictions by acknowledging the phenomenon of false confessions. But an admission holds a LOT of weight, as we see on our daf:

If the master said: I wrote and I gave to him a bill of manumission, and the slave says: He did not write it for me and he did not give me a bill of manumission, then he remains a slave, as the legal status of the admission of a litigant is similar to the testimony of one hundred witnesses.. . . If one says: I wrote and gave to him a document stating that I am giving him the field, and the supposed recipient says: He did not write it and did not give me a document stating that he is giving me the field, then he does not take possession of the field, as the legal status of the admission of a litigant is similar to the testimony of one hundred witnesses.

That’s a lot of weight for a confession! It should be that a confession is to be relied upon, but there are people who confess because they are mentally ill, trying to protect someone, scared and tired, or worse – coerced.

The fifth Amendment says that a citizen cannot be “compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself” and cannot be tried “without due process of law.” This means that coerced confessions are inadmissible in court . . .even if the confession was true. “Coerced confessions violate your right not to be compelled to testify against yourself, and coercive tactics are a denial of due process under the law (https://www.thefederalcriminalattorneys.com/).”

According to the Innocence Project, of the 258 DNA exonerations they have handled to date, 25% have involved a false confession.

So, is a confession as good as 100 witnesses? Only when the person is not coerced or under any pressure but freely states what they believe to be true.

I love the Harry Potter books, they’re so much fun. In the second book we are introduced to Dobby, a house elf. Hermione protests the enslavement of these creatures, but most think nothing of it. But Dobby tries to protect Harry from his wicked masters. The only way for Dobby to become free is for one of his masters to give him a piece of clothing. Where did this idea come from? Maybe our daf!

And when I came to Sura, I found Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Avin, and I said to him: Tell me, my friend [izi], the incident itself. What happened, and what exactly did Rav Naḥman say? He said to me that there was a certain maidservant whose master was on his deathbed. She came crying before him and said to him: Until when will that woman, i.e., I, continue to be subjugated? He took his hat [kumtei], threw it to her, and said to her: Go acquire this hat and thereby acquire yourself as a free woman. 

Now, do I think J.K. Rowling reads Talmud? No, but we do! Until tomorrow.

I am embarrassed to admit that I did not understand until my late 20s that most prostitution is not something a woman has chosen, it’s something that has been forced. According to the State Department, “The vast majority of women in prostitution don’t want to be there. Few seek it out or choose it, and most are desperate to leave it. A 2003 study first published in the scientific Journal of Trauma Practice found that 89 percent of women in prostitution want to escape.” I never thought about the women working in Vegas or at Super bowl parties or at “massage” parlors were trafficked, but many are. These women are modern day slaves, sex slaves, but still slaves.

Our daf shows us that this is nothing new – but perhaps there is something we can do to stop these rapes.

The Gemara relates: There was an incident involving a certain maidservant in Pumbedita with whom people were performing prohibited sexual acts, and her master was unable to prevent this. Abaye said: If not for the fact that Rav Yehuda says that Shmuel says that anyone who emancipates his slave violates a positive mitzva, as it is written in the Torah: “Of them may you take your bondmen forever” (Leviticus 25:46), I would force her master, and he would write and give her a bill of manumission, enabling her to marry a Jew, which would ensure that she would cease her promiscuous behavior.

Okay, before we go further I was to clarify that the words in bold are the words of the Gemara while the worlds not in bold are the words of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz. Why am I telling you this? Well, if you take our Rabbi Steinsaltz’s comments where he calls her promiscuous and says her master could not stop her behavior – it really seems that this poor woman is being raped. Nothing in the Gemara itself implies that this is something she wants or has consented to. In fact, we could easily read it as her master pimping her out and allowing others to rape her.

Abaye wants to force her master to emancipate her, but is worried he would be violating a law.

Ravina said: In a case like that, Rav Yehuda concedes that it is permitted to emancipate her, due to the prohibited matter that others are violating.

So, we see that we CAN emancipate her – let me make that clear, force her master to emancipate her – because she is being raped which is a violation of Torah law.

In fact, the Gemara continues with another case which seems to indicate that when slave women are raped their masters should be forced to free them.

The Gemara asks: And does Abaye hold that one cannot emancipate a slave even due to a prohibition that is being violated? Didn’t Rav Ḥanina bar Rav Ketina say that Rav Yitzḥak says: There was an incident involving a woman who was a half-maidservant half-free woman, as she had belonged to two masters and was emancipated by one of them, and the court forced her master to emancipate her, and he made her a free woman. And Rav Naḥman bar Yitzḥak said in explanation of why they forced him to do this: They took liberties with her, i.e., people engaged in sexual intercourse with her freely. This demonstrates that it is permitted to free a slave to prevent people from violating prohibitions.

Again, I would change Steinsaltz’s interpretation from “This demonstrates that it is permitted to free a slave to prevent people from violating prohibitions” to This demonstrates that it is permitted to free a slave to prevent people from violating her.”

A woman should never be forced. No matter her station in life. Here, the Talmud is trying to grapple with a reality that trafficked women are more frequently the subjects of rape than free women and is trying to solve the problem by freeing these women.

In Deuteronomy 15 we are commanded, “Every seventh year you shall practice remission of debts. This shall be the nature of the remission: all creditors shall remit the due that they claim from their fellow [Israelites]; they shall not dun their fellow [Israelites] or kin, for the remission proclaimed is of יהוה.”

Deuteronomy is trying to solve the problem of intergenerational poverty and one of the tools is forgiving debts every 7 years. You are likely wondering, as my B. Mitzvah students always do when they get this portion: If debts are forgiven every 7 years, who will want to loan money? Well, that’s the problem. So, on yesterday’s daf we read about “Prosbol.” Hillel saw that the people of the nation refrained from lending to each other so he arose and instituted the prosbol. Prosbol is a legal procedure introduced by Hillel (a reform even!!) in “the 1st century bc to permit private loans to persons in need without fear on the lender’s part that the debt would be legally abrogated at the end of the sabbatical year (every seventh year).” (thanks wikipedia for the easy explanation).

Our daf discusses how this would work saying, In the case of one who repays a debt to his friend during the Sabbatical Year, the creditor must say to him: I abrogate the debt, but if the debtor then said to him: Nevertheless, I want to repay you, he may accept it from him, as it is stated: “And this is the manner [devar] of the abrogation” (Deuteronomy 15:2).

so, you can still collect your debt even though it goes against Torah law – but you have to do this little dance of saying the debt is abrogated and the borrower saying they wan tto pay anyway. Easy. Right? Wrong.

The Gemara relates: There was a man by the name of Abba bar Marta, who is also known as Abba bar Minyumi, from whom Rabba was attempting to collect a debt. He brought it to him in the Sabbatical Year. Rabba said to him: I abrogate this debt. Abba bar Marta took the money and left. Abaye came before Rabba and found that he was sad. Abaye said to him: Why is the Master sad? Rabba said to him: This was the incident that occurred, explaining that Abba bar Marta understood his statement literally and did not repay the debt.

This reminds me of something that happened at our Day School’s annual art auction. Every year for decades they had raffled off a year of free tuition as one of the fundraisers. And every year the winner would donate the tuition back to the school. then one year a family who was new to the area won and claimed their prize! (That was the last year of that raffle – no making that mistake again.) So, Rabba knows the law and expects to still get to collect – but this guy is clueless and keeps his money! Until . . .

Abaye went to Abba bar Marta, and said to him: Did you bring the money to the Master? He said to him: Yes. Abaye said to him: And what did he say to you? He said to him that Rabba had responded: I abrogate this debt. Abaye said to him: And did you say to him: Nevertheless, I want to repay you? Abba bar Marta said to him: No. Abaye said to him: But if you had said to him: Nevertheless, I want to repay you, he would have taken it from you. Now, in any event, bring it to him and say to him: Nevertheless, I want to repay you. Abba bar Marta went and brought the money to Rabba and said to him: Nevertheless, I want to repay you, and Rabba took it from him. In the end, Rabba said: This Torah scholar was not knowledgeable from the beginning, as it was necessary to teach him how to react.

If a Torah scholar can screw this up, anyone can. Still a cool thing to learn about as it shows our earliest of rabbis reforming laws.

Such a good daf today! We have the idea of prosbul which is a rabbi of reform of the laws of the sabbatical year because people weren’t lending money. We have a rabbi who was removed from teaching because he hit hit the students too much (but when he was reinstated). But this is by far my favorite. Beautiful words of advice on how to live.
The Sages taught: Those who are insulted [ne’elavin] but do not insult others, who hear their shame but do not respond, who act out of love and are joyful in their suffering, about them the verse states: “And they that love Him are as the sun going forth in its might” (Judges 5:31).

It’s the biblical – if they go low we go high. Let’s all aspire to follow this advice.

Two dramatic/spooky stories on our daf today. The lesson? Be really careful with the your words and if you’re a judge- with your rulings.

There was an incident involving a person during years of famine who deposited a gold dinar with a widow, and she placed the gold dinar in a jug of flour and unwittingly baked it in a loaf of bread along with the flour, and she gave the bread as charity to a poor man. After a period of time, the owner of the dinar came and said to her: Give me my dinar. She said to him: May poison benefit, i.e., take effect on, one of the children of that woman, i.e., my children, if I derived any benefit from your dinar. It was said: Not even a few days passed until one of her children died, and when the Sages heard of this matter, they said: If one who takes an oath truthfully is punished in this way for sin, one who takes an oath falsely, all the more so.

So our first case is one of a woman cursing herself accidentally. Next, we get a widow cursing a rabbi for a harsh ruling (he finds two different sages to follow and chooses the harshest rule from each).

The Gemara relates: There was an incident involving a certain widow who came before Rabba bar Rav Huna to collect payment of her marriage contract. He said to her: What can I do for you, as Rav does not collect payment of a marriage contract for a widow, and my father, my master, i.e., Rav Huna, does not collect payment of a marriage contract for a widow? She said to him: If I cannot collect payment of the marriage contract, then provide sustenancefor me from my husband’s property, to support me until I remarry. He said to her: You also do not have any right to sustenance, as Rav Yehuda says that Shmuel says: One who demands payment of her marriage contract in court has no right to receive sustenance any longer. The husband committed to provide for her sustenance only as long as she does not wish to remarry. Generally, once a widow demands payment of her marriage contract, she demonstrates that she wishes now to remarry and is no longer entitled to receive sustenance from her deceased husband’s property. The widow became angry and said to Rabba bar Rav Huna: May his chair be overturned, i.e., he should fall from his position of power, as he ruled for me in accordance with the different opinions of two people. Since Rabba bar Rav Huna was concerned about her curse, he overturned his chair in order to fulfill the curse literally, and then stood it up, and even so, he was not saved from the weakness that resulted from her curse.

I love that he turned over his own chair! But it wasn’t enough to by pass that curse. Who ever though Jews didn’t believe in such things?

The daf has been all about regret and coercion in the past 2 days. In one case a man sends an agent to divorce his wife and regrets it. In the other a court forces a divorce and the man tries to retract. But here, we get a sweet interlude which seems to be a woman who knows her husband and knows that he acted rashly. She sends away the divorce and he celebrates that he now has time to take back what he did.

The Gemara relates: A man named Giddul bar Re’ilai sent a bill of divorce to his wife. The agent went and found that she was sitting and weaving [navla]. He said to her: This is your bill of divorce. She said to him: At least go away from here now and come tomorrow to give me the bill of divorce. The agent went to Giddul bar Re’ilai and told himwhat had occurred. Giddul bar Re’ilai opened his mouth and said: Blessed is He Who is good and does good, as he was happy that the bill of divorce was not delivered.