Platonism – Lecture 4

Table of Contents

• The thing itself, its appearances, and concepts
• Platonism versus Aristotelianism in defining concepts and in the dictionary
• Method in the philosophy of Jewish law: the act of halakhic ruling versus “publicistic” literature
• Legal effect, the language of lomdus, and the difference between description and “legal effect”
• Gittin 42b: one delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, the thirty-shekel fine, and injury payments
• Tosafot, Pnei Yehoshua, and a novel understanding of “property” as deriving from ownership
• Prohibitory ownership: ownership without rights, and the claim of Platonism in Jewish law
• Ownership of items forbidden for benefit, and using that as a test case for the concept of ownership
• The rest of one’s animal on the Sabbath: ownership as the source of a prohibitory obligation
• Damage caused by one’s animal: damaging property as a periphery, and the connection between ownership and responsibility
• Ownership of information and copyright
• Conclusion and questions

Summary

General overview

The text presents a Kantian distinction between the thing itself and its appearances, and applies it to concepts, contrasting an Aristotelian-conventionalist view in which a concept is an agreed name for a collection of characteristics, with a Platonic-essentialist view in which the concept is an entity or idea and the characteristics are its properties. The speaker argues that Jewish law in practice adopts a Platonic view of concepts, and prefers to clarify this through actual halakhic implications rather than through “publicistic” declarations in introductions and meta-halakhic literature. He demonstrates this through the Talmudic topic of one delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation in tractate Gittin and the discussion of prohibitory ownership versus monetary ownership, and expands to examples like the rest of one’s animal on the Sabbath and liability for damage caused by one’s animal, to show that ownership is understood as a metaphysical bond that generates a variety of consequences not reducible to monetary usage rights.

The thing itself, its appearances, and concepts

The speaker says that the distinction Kant makes regarding objects can also be made regarding concepts like democracy. He raises the question whether democracy is just a name for a collection of characteristics chosen by convention, or whether there really is such a thing as democracy and the characteristics are its characteristics. He suggests an indication of a Platonic view from the fact that not every random collection of characteristics creates a natural concept with a name, and gives the example that combining characteristics like “countries located on the seashore, that grow peaches, and have fewer than ten million residents” gives no natural reason to assign one collective name to them. He mentions Borges and “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” as an example of the connection between arbitrary classifications and conceptuality.

Platonism versus Aristotelianism in defining concepts and in the dictionary

The speaker formulates the difference as conventionalism versus essentialism: Aristotle sees a concept as convention, the attaching of a common name to a collection of characteristics, and he cites Saul Kripke on “baptism.” The speaker says that according to Plato, definition is the result of observing the idea and therefore is not in our hands as an arbitrary agreement. He explains that a dictionary, according to Plato, describes ideas and is therefore in a certain sense “forced upon us,” even though the word itself may be arbitrary across languages. He says that according to Aristotle, the dictionary reflects agreements, and if there is no agreement there is no point speaking that language, so there is no anchor in reality itself for the definitions of concepts.

Method in the philosophy of Jewish law: the act of halakhic ruling versus “publicistic” literature

The speaker says that when people investigate questions in the philosophy of Jewish law, they usually bring proofs from introductions to books and from reflective literature that talks about Jewish law, and he calls this “publicistic” literature that does not actually “do the thing.” He gives as an example Maharshal and the introductions to Yam Shel Shlomo, which speak about the autonomy of the decisor, but argues that his actual responsa are “pretty standard” and do not express that same far-reaching autonomy. The speaker argues that drawing conclusions about philosophical positions from general declarations is dangerous, because people use concepts imprecisely and sometimes promote ideological agendas. He states that in his view Jewish law is not pluralistic, and that no one ever really claimed that it is, and the references brought for such a claim come from literature that is not practical halakhic literature. He proposes clarifying metaphysical questions through Talmudic topics in which there are halakhic consequences that reveal how Jewish law actually “thinks” in practice.

Legal effect, the language of lomdus, and the difference between description and “legal effect”

The speaker asks to move from philosophical discussion to halakhic examples and to examine the concept of legal effect. He says he heard in the name of Rabbi Shagar that guys in hesder yeshivot or modern yeshivot talk about the “legal effect of a married woman” without understanding what that actually means, and he interprets this as a failure to internalize the connotations of the analytic yeshiva language. He asks whether “the legal effect of being a married woman applies to her” is really different from the simple sentence “the woman is married,” and warns against pompous usage that gets detached from reality, comparing it to the current use of the word “carried out” instead of “shot.” He argues that there really is a difference between these formulations, and wants to locate it through a halakhic consequence that will show a case where one can say one but not the other.

Gittin 42b: one delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, the thirty-shekel fine, and injury payments

The speaker presents the concept of the Canaanite slave and the distinction between the monetary aspect of ownership and the prohibitory status of the slave, and mentions Rabbi Akiva Eiger’s discussion whether the slave is “an upgraded gentile or a diminished Jew.” He says that freeing a Canaanite slave is done by means of a bill of emancipation, even though freeing him involves nullifying the positive commandment of “they shall forever work for you,” and he mentions freeing a slave in order to complete a quorum as an exceptional case associated with Rabbi Eliezer. He explains that declaring the slave ownerless cancels the monetary ownership but does not cancel the slave’s status, and this creates a case of one “delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation,” in which “I have prohibitory ownership over him, but I do not have monetary ownership over him.” The speaker presents the Talmud’s question: to whom is the fine of “thirty shekels” paid when an ox kills a slave who is delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, since the verse says “he shall give it to his master,” and the master no longer has monetary rights. He brings the attempted resolution through the law of knocking out his tooth or blinding his eye, and the Talmud’s objection that if injury by others would go to his master, it makes no sense that the master himself should have to pay the slave.

Tosafot, Pnei Yehoshua, and a novel understanding of “property” as deriving from ownership

The speaker brings Tosafot, who assumes that since the thirty-shekel payment for a slave goes to his master, injury payment also goes to his master, formulating it as, “What difference does it make whether he killed him entirely or whether he killed half of him?” He then cites Pnei Yehoshua’s difficulty, distinguishing between the thirty-shekel payment for a slave as a fixed fine by scriptural decree and injury as a monetary liability of the five categories of damages, and asking, “Why should the master have any claim to it?” when he no longer has monetary rights. The speaker shows that Pnei Yehoshua narrows the comparison mainly to “damage” and not to loss of livelihood, medical expenses, humiliation, and pain, but in his words Pnei Yehoshua then returns to the formula, “Since Scripture revealed… wherever he is called master,” in a way that seems as if it does not really answer the question. He presents his own interpretation: damage payments are not necessarily compensation to the person who was harmed, but payment to the owner of the damaged object, and the assessment is determined by the extent of the damage without this necessarily being a matter of “restoring the previous state.” He reinforces this with an example from the dispute between Rashi and the Rosh in the chapter HaChovel whether to assess the injured party like a Hebrew slave or like a Canaanite slave, and suggests that the approach of assessment as a Canaanite slave fits the view that the assessment of damage evaluates the value of the damage, not the “loss of possibility” of the Jew’s actually being sold. He concludes that according to his understanding of Pnei Yehoshua, the very fact that the Talmud recognizes the master as “master” in the case of one delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation reveals that the bond remains, and therefore certain monetary payments can also rest on the status of ownership despite the absence of usage rights.

Prohibitory ownership: ownership without rights, and the claim of Platonism in Jewish law

The speaker explains that the term “prohibitory ownership” is not just a description of a prohibitory status, but an expression of the fact that there is “ownership” in the sense of belonging, because only the master can sever the status by means of a bill of emancipation. He presents two understandings of ownership: a conventionalist view in which ownership is a set of rights and uses that define the concept, and an essentialist view in which ownership is a metaphysical bond that usually generates rights and uses as consequences. He argues that the Platonic view allows for a situation in which the metaphysical bond remains even when the monetary consequences disappear, as happens in the case of one delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, where the ownership is “hidden” and appears only in prohibitory consequences. He uses the expression “intrinsic sanctity does not lapse on its own” to argue that in reality the bond is not severed without an act, and therefore only a bill of emancipation severs the bond, not making the slave ownerless. He concludes that the passage in Gittin is a “halakhic implication” showing that the concept of ownership in Jewish law is Platonic rather than Aristotelian, because the master remains a master even without monetary usage rights.

Ownership of items forbidden for benefit, and using that as a test case for the concept of ownership

The speaker is asked about terumah and the benefit of choosing to whom to give it, and notes that in the simple sense terumah belongs to the tribe of the priests, and the choice of which priest to give it to is a “benefit” that has monetary value. He is asked about ownership where there is no possibility of benefit, and raises the example of orlah fruit and the dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether “there is ownership over items forbidden for benefit.” He argues that there is no proof for Platonism merely from the possibility of ownership over items forbidden for benefit, because one can explain that there is ownership and there are monetary rights, except that “a lion crouches upon it” and forbids its use. He says that the position holding that there is no ownership over items forbidden for benefit tends to identify ownership with a set of rights and therefore fits better with an Aristotelian view, but even there he qualifies this by saying that one can understand the removal of ownership as an act of the Torah and not necessarily as an essential identification between ownership and rights.

The rest of one’s animal on the Sabbath: ownership as the source of a prohibitory obligation

The speaker brings as an example the law of the rest of one’s animal on the Sabbath, where the animal must rest and the prohibition applies to the owner when the animal performs labor, even if it is not doing so in order to produce the owner’s monetary gain. He distinguishes between leading an animal with a load and the law of the animal’s rest, and presents that even when the animal carries from one domain to another or performs a primary category of labor, the owner violates a Torah prohibition, whereas in a case of “that is just its way of lying there,” such as eating grass, there is no prohibition. He explains this through the concept of “periphery”: the animal is a periphery of the person, and therefore its action is attributed to him on the level of prohibition, even though this is a prohibition that does not incur stoning, because the periphery is farther from the body. He concludes that such a mechanism is not intelligible if ownership is only a set of monetary rights, but it is intelligible if ownership is a bond that creates consequences also in the laws of the Sabbath.

Damage caused by one’s animal: damaging property as a periphery, and the connection between ownership and responsibility

The speaker presents an inquiry about liability for damage caused by one’s animal: does the liability stem from negligence in guarding it, as a sanction, or from the very fact that the animal belongs to the owner when it causes damage, with proper guarding exempting only because the case is considered beyond one’s control? He cites Even HaEzel as formulating these two views, and the Rogatchover, who asks why ownership itself should obligate payment. He explains that liability based on ownership rests on that same conception of periphery: the animal as a distant part of the person, and therefore when it causes damage it is “as if I caused the damage,” and the owner is liable just as a person is liable even if he caused damage while asleep. He answers the question about a minor who causes damage by saying that the difference is that the minor does not “belong” in a proprietary sense and is therefore not the father’s proprietary periphery, and so there is no such basic liability of “his property that caused damage” as an attribution of the damage to the owner. He connects this also to the concept of “my force” in human torts, where one’s force is considered an extension of the person, and suggests that damaging property is conceptually a more indirect extension of damage caused by a person.

Ownership of information and copyright

The speaker is asked about copyright and whether Jewish law recognizes ownership without a tangible object, and answers that he wrote an article on the subject in Techumin and on his website, where he argued that there is ownership of information. He says that halakhic decisors tend to claim that one cannot “squeeze copyright law out of halakhah,” but he himself argues that one can, and brings proofs from deception and from sources that speak of a person’s ideas as “the children of his spirit.” He refers the audience to the material on the website.

Conclusion and questions

The speaker suggests continuing the discussion next time and opens the floor for questions. He agrees to coordinate a personal conversation and suggests getting in touch by WhatsApp, email, or through the website. The text closes with farewell blessings and “Have a peaceful Sabbath.”

Okay, last time I talked about the relation between the thing itself and its appearances, and I said that this distinction Kant makes with respect to objects can also be made with respect to concepts. Meaning, there are concepts like democracy or something like that, where the question is whether democracy is a definition that takes a collection of characteristics of a state and gives them some general name—and that’s what is called democracy—or whether there is such a thing as democracy, and those characteristics are its characteristics. I said that one of the indications of the Platonic view, which says that these concepts are ideas, some kind of entities, and the characteristics are characteristics of the idea, is that we have some sense that not every collection of characteristics can generate a concept. There’s some collection of characteristics that naturally comes together into a concept like a democratic state, but states that lie on the seashore, grow peaches, and have fewer than ten million inhabitants—I don’t think anyone would think of creating some general name for that collection of characteristics. Why not? Because there isn’t any—it’s just taking a bunch of characteristics that have no connection among them. So when the collection of characteristics gets some kind of name, it gets a heading, like I said, a democratic state, that probably expresses the fact that there is such a thing called a democratic state, and the collection of characteristics are its characteristics. And therefore they constitute a concept. By contrast, if I just gather a bunch of characteristics, they are not characteristics of something—and by “something” I don’t mean an object but a concept, right? A spiritual object. So I don’t connect them into one concept. And I brought Borges’s example with that planet there, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius. In any case, that’s what we saw last time, and what I said, basically, is that Platonism versus Aristotelianism, when I apply it to concepts, what that means is that my attitude toward concepts can be conventionalist or essentialist, yes, substantialist. Aristotle sees this as conventionalist. Meaning, Aristotle says a concept is a convention. A collection of characteristics—I decide I want to give them a common name, so I baptize them, that’s what Saul Kripke calls it, he’s a Jewish-American philosopher—I baptize them and define them as a democratic state. By contrast, Plato looks at concepts in an essentialist way. There is an essence behind these characteristics; there is such a thing as a democratic state, and I noted that in order to arrive at a definition of what a democratic state is, according to Aristotle it’s simply a social agreement. We agree among ourselves that this concept will have this meaning. And according to Plato it’s basically some kind of observation. I look at the idea and ask myself what its characteristics are, what its properties are. So the definition is something not given over to us—it’s not just a matter of shared agreement, but there’s something here that is the result of observation. A definition basically describes something I see. It’s not arbitrary. We’ll come back to that. In any case, what I want—yes, maybe one more sentence—someone asked last time what a dictionary is. In a dictionary, he says, there’s a concept and it gives its definitions. According to Plato, a dictionary describes ideas. I don’t invent a dictionary; it’s not some group of people deciding what the dictionary will be. Rather, the dictionary is, in a certain sense, imposed on us. Again, of course I can describe the concept in Hebrew or in English, choose this word or that word—the word can be arbitrary. But the concept—defining in the dictionary what a democratic state is, if you show me some jumble, it doesn’t matter, but if they define a certain concept as having these characteristics, that’s imposed on us, okay? Therefore according to Plato it’s not in our hands. According to Aristotle it is: it’s convenient for us to use this collection of characteristics, so we give it some overall label or general name so it can be used further. So according to Aristotle, the dictionary reflects agreements. According to Plato, the dictionary reflects the results of observations, and therefore it’s not in our hands. If someone doesn’t see it that way, he’s simply mistaken. He doesn’t see correctly. And according to Aristotle, if someone doesn’t see it that way, then there’s no point speaking with him in this language. We have to agree on another shared language. And therefore there is no anchor in reality itself for the definitions of concepts. Okay, that’s up to this point. Now I do want, for the moment, to leave this—we’ll return to philosophy and conceptual analysis—but I want to leave conceptual analysis and philosophy for a moment and enter into halakhic examples. And I think the way to see this Platonic point in Jewish law is to look a bit at halakhic concepts. And I’ll try to show that the halakhic conception is Platonic. But I’ll try to show it, as I’ve already said I think more than once, not through statements in books of thought or philosophy of Jewish law or things like that, but through actual halakhic ramifications. Generally speaking—and this is an introduction I’ve given at some point in the past—when people try to clarify an issue in the philosophy of Jewish law or thought about Jewish law, whether Jewish law is pluralistic, monistic, whatever it may be, or whether Jewish law believes in Platonism, whether concepts are ideas, or whether Jewish law is Aristotelian, or whether time exists or doesn’t exist in the halakhic outlook—all kinds of philosophical, metaphysical, conceptual questions—usually when you see treatment of these questions, say in the literature of Jewish thought, they’ll bring in philosophical writings by people in Jewish thought or Jewish legal authorities, who in the introduction to a volume of responsa or in the introduction to their commentary say this, say that: time is like this, time is like that; yes pluralism, no pluralism. The inquiry is conducted through literature that I call publicistic literature, meaning literature that talks about the thing rather than doing the thing. So, for example, when people want to bring proof for the autonomy of the halakhic decisor, they can bring statements from the introductions to Yam Shel Shlomo by the Maharshal, where he indeed speaks in very extravagant terms about autonomy, about the obligation of the decisor to act autonomously. But when you look into his responsa themselves, the responsa are, all in all, fairly standard. They really do not express the far-reaching autonomy he talks about there in the introductions. דווקא in Yam Shel Shlomo, which is on the Talmud, not responsa, there you do see more expressions of his autonomy, but there it’s a commentary on the Talmud and less a book that issues halakhic rulings as in responsa. So somehow my feeling is that one has to be careful about taking statements made not in a halakhic context but about Jewish law, and drawing all sorts of conclusions from them. You can find statements in meta-halakhic literature or various introductions about the pluralism of Jewish law. In my view that’s a mistake; Jewish law is not pluralistic and no one ever argued that it is. Contrary to various books that want to claim that and even bring supports for their words, what all those supports have in common is that they come from publicistic literature. Yes, literature in which we talk about things. But when you check how Jewish law itself operates, you can discover, I think in a more reliable and authentic way, what it really thinks. When you look at halakhic authorities and how they rule, not when they talk about Jewish law and deliver ideological speeches, but how they act. And when you see how they act, I think that’s a better or more reliable method for clarifying these issues. Of course, that requires us to identify halakhic topics in which, or through which, one can clarify the philosophical question, and that isn’t always simple. So in the context of tolerance and pluralism and so on—I talked about this in other series—there is such a topic, for example someone who causes another person to stumble in something that, according to the other person’s view, is a transgression, while according to my view it is not. Am I allowed to cause him to stumble or not? So you can look at passages that deal with this, decisors who deal with this, and through that examine the question of pluralism—not through what they say, whether Jewish law is pluralistic or non-pluralistic, and all kinds of broad statements like that. That says nothing. Very often you’re not aware, very often you use concepts imprecisely, very often you have ideological agendas to advance. Let’s see how you act. Let’s see how you issue halakhic rulings. Meaning, in the way Jewish law itself is ruled, I think that’s a much better instrument. So if I return to our issue, here too, when I want to clarify whether Jewish law is Platonic or Aristotelian in its relation to concepts—right? the concepts of Jewish law—whether Jewish law sees them as existing entities or as a collection of properties, like Aristotle, then once again we could perhaps search in Jewish thought literature, or introductions, or whatever. I prefer to do it through careful study of an actual halakhic passage, where we are doing the thing and not talking about the thing. Okay? So let’s see how this works. I want to look a bit at the concept of halot. Yes, one of the first articles I wrote. I want to examine the concept of halot—chalois, as they say in the Lithuanian yeshivot. What is this thing? I once saw this from Rabbi Shagar; I heard once from someone who had been in a conversation with Rabbi Shagar, and he told me that Rabbi Shagar said to them that guys in the yeshivot—I don’t know, hesder yeshivot, modern yeshivot—they talk about the halot of being a married woman, but they don’t understand what the chalois of being a married woman is. Meaning, they understand, they talk about a married woman, but they don’t understand what the chalois of being a married woman is. Meaning, there’s something in the language, in the feel of the analytical yeshiva discourse, that somehow feels missing there, or yes, missing some sort of infrastructure; the connotations haven’t been acquired. They somehow look at it a bit from the outside and not from the inside. And that got me thinking a bit about this concept, halot, really. What does this concept mean? The halot of being a married woman. What’s the difference between saying that a woman is a married woman and saying that there is upon her the halot of being a married woman? Is that the same thing? I just saw now exactly some very nice article, actually, even though it’s in Haaretz, about the word “carrying out.” Someone writes there that everywhere they tell us, “he carried out gunfire.” He fired; he didn’t “carry out gunfire.” Meaning, very often we try somehow to soften harsh things, so we say “they carried out gunfire.” As if it was all planned, all by procedure, everything was—meaning there was no kind of outburst here, no cold-blooded murder. No, he “carried out gunfire.” He didn’t shoot. And he brought there many examples of using the concept of “carrying out,” and it was just wonderful. Meaning, suddenly you see that with our pompous language we lose contact with reality itself. Everything we describe as some kind of… So sometimes the feeling is that in the context of halot too, perhaps there really is no difference between saying that a woman is a married woman and saying that there is upon her the halot of being a married woman. Did I perform kiddushin, or did I marry? Right? Is the woman a married woman, or is there upon her the halot of being a married woman? Right? The halot of being a married woman. What’s the difference? You’re just using a pompous term to describe something that is actually simple and clear. So the question is whether that is really so. And I want to argue that it isn’t. There is a difference between saying that a woman is a married woman and saying that there is upon her the chalois of being a married woman, the halot of being a married woman—and this point sheds a very interesting light on Jewish law in general, and it is of course connected to Platonism and Aristotelianism. That’s why I’m bringing it up here. And I’ll already say now that there is a certain advantage דווקא to the guys who did not absorb this language with their mother’s milk—yes, guys in hesder yeshivot—over people who grow up in the yeshiva-analytic, Haredi world, let’s call it that. There’s an advantage and a disadvantage. And I want to demonstrate that through a discussion of the concept of halot. Okay. So when I think for a moment what the difference is between saying that a woman is a married woman and saying that there is upon her the chalois of being a married woman, then I need, once again—as we said, the technique is to try to look for a halakhic implication. Where can I see, in a halakhic discussion, an implication of the difference between a married woman and the halot of being a married woman? Can I see somewhere in Jewish law that this can be said and that cannot be said? That will give me an indication of the difference between these two statements. So I’ll start not with a married woman—we’ll get to that later—I’ll start with a passage in tractate Gittin, a passage in Gittin 42b. Maybe I’ll share it with you. The Talmud there asks: “They raised a dilemma: with regard to one for whom a bill of emancipation was written, may he eat terumah or may he not eat terumah? The Merciful One said ‘his money possession,’ and this one is not his money possession—or perhaps, since he still lacks a bill of emancipation, we read him as his money possession.” Right, introduction. There is an indentured Hebrew servant and there is, in Jewish law, a Hebrew servant and a Canaanite slave. We are talking about a Canaanite slave. A Canaanite slave is basically acquired—a non-Jew acquired by a Jew and he becomes his slave. A Canaanite slave is obligated in commandments like a woman. There’s a dispute—Rabbi Akiva Eiger talks about this in several places, he ties it to a dispute between the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud—whether this slave is an upgraded gentile or a diminished Jew. Okay? It doesn’t matter; there are various practical ramifications. In any case, this is called a Canaanite slave. Now this Canaanite slave, his being a Canaanite slave has several implications. There are monetary implications: he belongs to me, he is acquired to me, the product of his labor is mine, everything he does is basically mine, he is essentially my property like my ox and my donkey. Literally. Halakhically, a Canaanite slave—a gentile who is a Canaanite slave—is like my ox. Exactly the same. I am his owner completely. On the other hand, this slave has some kind of prohibitory status. Meaning, the question of whether he may marry, whether he may not marry, he is obligated in commandments like a woman but not in the commandments men are obligated in, and so forth. There are some halakhic implications to his being a Canaanite slave. Notice: those are implications not related to the monetary dimension, to his being acquired by me. There is here some halakhic implication of the monetary bond between us. Okay? That’s called a Canaanite slave. How is a Canaanite slave emancipated? First of all, it is forbidden—“for them shall you labor forever” is written. To free a Canaanite slave is a nullification of a positive commandment. One should go on using his labor as much as possible. But in principle, even though it’s forbidden, one can free the slave, meaning it takes effect. Even though I generally transgress a prohibition—unless I freed him to complete a quorum, like Rabbi Eliezer and others—in principle, freeing a Canaanite slave is forbidden, it nullifies a positive commandment, but it is halakhically possible. How is it done? By means of a writ, a bill of emancipation. So when I give him a bill of emancipation—“you belong to yourself”—the slave goes free. What happens if I renounce ownership of the slave? I say: the monetary bond between me and him is canceled. I haven’t given him a bill of emancipation, but the monetary bond—I renounced it, just as I can renounce ownership of my ox I can renounce ownership of my slave. So according to Jewish law—this is a dispute, but according to the ruling—renouncing ownership does not free him from the status of slave. But it does terminate my monetary ownership over him. I no longer have monetary rights in him. This is called “one delayed for a bill of emancipation.” All right? After I’ve renounced ownership of the slave, if I want to free him I have to give him a bill. If I didn’t give him a bill of emancipation, then he remains an ownerless slave—ownerless in the sense that he is not anyone’s monetary property, but he has the prohibitory status of a slave, and in the language of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), this is called: I have in him an acquisition of prohibition, but I do not have in him a monetary acquisition. Fine, that’s the standard terminology—not in the Talmud, but in the later commentators. This is called “one delayed for a bill of emancipation.” Now the Talmud—I return to the Talmud—the Talmud asks whether one delayed for a bill of emancipation may eat terumah. Sorry, I read the wrong section. Yes, the dilemma is related to the issue too. It is this: does one delayed for a bill of emancipation receive the penalty payment or not? What does that mean? When my ox gores a slave and kills him, I have to pay thirty shekels to his master, to the slave’s master. This is called a penalty. Why is it a penalty? Because the amount is fixed. It doesn’t depend on the value of the slave. If my ox gored a slave—thirty shekels to his master. It’s a fixed amount, that’s a penalty. A penalty, as opposed to compensation, is a punitive payment. When I damage someone, I have to compensate him for the damage I caused, and that is called compensation. And the compensation is according to the amount of damage. If I caused damage of one hundred shekels, I have to pay him one hundred shekels; a thousand, a thousand. A penalty is a punitive payment; it is not compensation, it is not a monetary payment. It is punitive. They punish me, only instead of giving me lashes, they punish me by making me pay money. And that money is a punishment, it is not intended as compensation. One of the indications that it is a penalty and not compensation is that the amount is fixed and constant and does not depend on the value of what is involved here—of the slave in this case. Okay, so there is this thing called the thirty shekels for a slave, and that’s when my ox gores a slave and kills him: I pay thirty shekels to the slave’s master. What happens if the slave had been delayed for a bill of emancipation? If the slave is—what’s the problem? If the slave is delayed for a bill of emancipation, then he is no longer really his master’s property. He has the status of a slave, and therefore the Talmud assumes that the payment of thirty shekels I still have to pay. It’s still the thirty shekels for a slave. But the question is to whom do I pay it? Says the Talmud: to pay it to his master? That doesn’t make sense, because he is no longer his master’s property; he was already renounced, he is one delayed for a bill of emancipation. So perhaps since the bill of emancipation is still lacking, he is nevertheless still considered his master’s property, and the payment, the penalty, should be paid to the master. That is what the Talmud said: “He shall give thirty shekels to his master.” “He shall give thirty shekels to his master,” said the Merciful One. “And this one is not his master,” because he renounced him. “Or perhaps, since he still lacks a bill of emancipation, we read him as master.” Fine. So it may be that since he still lacks a bill of emancipation, he is still called master, because after all I still need to free him. So now the Talmud tries to resolve it. And the Talmud says as follows: “Come and hear. If he knocked out his tooth and blinded his eye, he goes free by his tooth… if he knocked out his tooth and blinded his eye, he goes free by his tooth and he pays the value of his eye.” The Talmud says—you know that when a person injures one of the twenty-four tips of a slave’s limbs, the slave goes free. One of them is a tooth or an eye and so on. So the Talmud says if he knocked out the tooth or blinded the eye of one delayed for a bill of emancipation, then he goes free by his tooth and he pays the value of his eye. “And if you say that he has the penalty and the penalty goes to his master—now if others who injure him give it to his master, shall his own master who injures him give it to him?” Right? If others injure the slave, they give it to the master. So his own master who injures him would pay it to the slave himself and not to himself? Why would the master who injured him pay the slave? There’s no logic in that. Rather, from here there is proof that you do not give it to the master but to the slave himself. That is what the Talmud says. Fine. So after that the Talmud says that it tries to reject this, but let’s look at this for a moment. Rabbi, does that mean if they injure him after he blinded his eye and knocked out his tooth? No, no, no, unrelated. If you take one delayed for a bill of emancipation and injure him, then you pay his master. You still pay his master when he’s delayed? Yes, that’s what the Talmud assumes. The Talmud says, if so, then when his master blinds his eye it cannot be that he pays the slave. If others injure the slave they pay the master. So if the master injures him, how can it be that he pays the slave? The master injures him—it actually sounds reasonable. Okay, now let’s look at Tosafot. Tosafot asks here as follows: “If others injure him they give it to his master, even though the product of his labor belongs to himself.” Right? This slave is no longer his master’s property; he is delayed for a bill of emancipation, so what he does, the product of his labor, is for himself, it does not belong to his master. So why, if others injure him, do they have to pay his master and not him himself? He is his own master in monetary terms. So Tosafot says: “Even though the product of his labor belongs to himself, since the penalty goes to his master”—we saw above that the thirty-shekel penalty for a slave is given to his master—“so too injury goes to his master.” Why? “For what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him halfway?” If they kill him entirely and the thirty shekels go to his master, then injury is simply killing half of him. I cut off his hand, so I cut off his hand, I killed half of him. There is no difference between killing all of him and killing half of him. If that goes to his master, this also goes to his master. That’s Tosafot’s claim. Here arises the obvious question of the Pnei Yehoshua. The Pnei Yehoshua asks: “And this is difficult for me.” He cites Tosafot, and “this is difficult for me. How can the cases be compared?” What is Tosafot doing comparing the thirty-shekel penalty for a slave to injury payments, to damages? “How can the cases be compared? Granted, where he killed him entirely, the liability of thirty shekels for a slave is a penalty, for even if he is worth only a shekel they give thirty sela, and he is liable only by virtue of a scriptural decree. If so, one may hold that the Torah granted this penalty to the master even though he no longer has any monetary right at all in this slave. Nevertheless, since he is still called master regarding the body, he thereby acquires the penalty by virtue of the scriptural decree. But where he killed him halfway, for example by injuring him or blinding his eye, where the liability is the five payments—damage, pain, loss of livelihood, humiliation, and healing—and all of them are full compensation according to all authorities apart from Maimonides, who says damage and pain are penalties, as I will explain shortly—if so, where would one get the idea that the master acquires it, since he no longer has any monetary right at all?” What is the Pnei Yehoshua asking? Basically, the Pnei Yehoshua is claiming: what is Tosafot doing, comparing the penalty where an ox kills the slave and thirty shekels are paid to his master, and from there Tosafot says that if someone injures the slave one should also pay that to his master? What’s the connection? The thirty shekels for the slave, we said, is a penalty, a punitive payment. You’re not compensating the one damaged, because the one damaged is dead, the slave is no longer with us. So you give it to the master, and it’s a fixed amount. Therefore it’s clear that this is not compensation but a punitive payment, a payment innovated by the Torah. If the Torah innovated it, it can also innovate that you give it to the master even in the case of one delayed for a bill of emancipation. After all, you have to punish, so to whom do you pay? You have to pay someone, so pay the master. But with injury, when you damage someone, the payment is not punitive, it is compensation: you caused him damage, compensate him. That is called mamon and not penalty. Compensation has to go to the one who was damaged. Who was damaged if I cut off the slave’s hand or eye? Who was damaged—the master? The master can no longer make any use of him anyway; he already renounced him. The one damaged here is the slave. So clearly here the payment should go to the slave and not to the master. How does Tosafot even compare the law of a penalty to the law of compensation? That’s what the Pnei Yehoshua asks. An excellent question. So would he say that in that case too it is the master’s money? Why, even when it’s not delayed for a bill, does it go to the master and not to the slave himself? No, there you can say it goes to the master because the product of the slave’s labor belongs to his master. Right, but that’s not because of his labor product; you injure the slave, and if this is a payment of compensation… You can explain it two ways, and they discuss it here. I’m not injuring—you can explain it in two ways. You can explain that it really goes to the slave, but like all the product of the slave’s labor, from the slave it passes to the master; in effect they pay the master. And you can say that the one who lost here is the master. If the slave now cannot do something, then everything the slave does belongs to the master anyway. So ultimately the one who lost here is the master, not the slave, and then the conception is that the payment goes directly to the master, not through the slave to the master. Those are two possibilities. But in any case one can understand… But it’s not the principal damage, it’s loss of livelihood and healing and I understand all those things, yes, that goes to the master, but the actual damage… On the contrary, specifically for damage I would say it goes to the master—it’s the value. Specifically for loss of livelihood and healing I’d say maybe more to the slave. Right, right, right. The Pnei Yehoshua himself actually notes what you pointed out. Here, you see—and even with a full slave. On the next line he says: “For even with a full slave, strict law would dictate that the one who injures him should give him the five payments and even humiliation,” and so on. That’s just his comment, but it’s less important for us. Now see how he answers. “And it appears that in truth the Talmud is not asking from loss of livelihood, healing, humiliation, and pain, but only from damage, since the body still belongs to his master. It seemed to the Talmud that since Scripture revealed in the case of the thirty shekels for the slave that it goes to his master, wherever he is called master, the same applies to damage. Why should I need a verse…” and so on. So in fact he removes loss of livelihood, healing, humiliation, and pain from the picture—that goes to the slave himself. But damage—it should go to the master, because in terms of the damage, the one damaged here is the master. And therefore he says that the Talmud’s question is only… it asks not from loss of livelihood, healing, humiliation, and pain but only from damage. So why does the Talmud compare damage payments to the penalty? After all, his question was: a penalty is a penalty and damage is compensation. What? You pay damage to the one who lost. And what does he answer? He answers nothing. He says: “Since Scripture revealed regarding the thirty shekels for the slave that it goes to his master, wherever he is called master, the same applies to damage; what difference is there between killing him entirely…” What does he want from us? He repeats Tosafot’s statement after asking on it; he says “I don’t understand it,” and then repeats the statement: yes, it seemed to the Talmud, “what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him halfway.” But you yourself just asked before, what do you mean “what difference is there”? In the case of killing him entirely it’s a penalty, and in the case of killing him halfway it’s compensation, so what room is there to compare them? And somehow he doesn’t answer at all. So when I studied this—it was many, many years ago when I was studying in a yeshiva in Bnei Brak—I had a heated argument with my lecturer, and I argued that what the Pnei Yehoshua is saying is the following claim: basically, the Pnei Yehoshua wants to introduce a novelty in the laws of damages. He wants to say that when I pay damages—if I caused someone damage—I am supposed to pay the damage to the owner of the property. How much do I pay? As much as I damaged. But notice: this is not compensation to the person damaged. Even damage payments, which are mamon, are not compensation to the one damaged; they are an obligation to pay the owner of the damaged property, and the assessment of how much to pay is according to how much it was damaged, but it is not compensation. What’s the practical difference? My claim is that in the case of one delayed for a bill of emancipation, the master is still the owner of the slave. He has no rights at all to make use of that ownership, but he is still the owner. Therefore, if you ask me who lost as a result of this damage, only the slave lost; the master lost nothing. But if you ask me who is the owner of the item that was damaged, that is the master. As long as he hasn’t given a bill of emancipation, as long as the slave has an acquisition of prohibition, the master is his owner even though he has no monetary rights in him. So if payment for damage were meant to compensate the one damaged, then it should go to the slave and the Pnei Yehoshua’s question would be a good one. But if we assume that the payment is supposed to go to the owner of the damaged object, then the owner of the damaged object is still the master, even though he has no rights of use. But he is still the owner. And that is what the Pnei Yehoshua is saying, and now notice his wording. He writes this. But he says that this really is a penalty, not compensation. No, it’s not a penalty; he claims this is the definition of compensation, not a penalty. Because a penalty is a fixed amount and a punitive payment; here it isn’t punitive. It is a payment to the owner of the property. If you damaged something, you have to pay—but not as compensation; you have to pay the value of what you damaged. For example, I’ll give you an example: there’s a dispute between Rashi and the Rosh at the beginning of chapter HaChovel. Right, at the beginning of chapter HaChovel there is a dispute between Rashi and the Rosh: when I injure a person, how do I assess the damage? How is the valuation done? So the Talmud says we do it like a slave: we appraise him in the market like a slave and see how much his value went down because of the injury. There is a dispute between Rashi and the Rosh whether we appraise him like a Hebrew slave or like a Canaanite slave. Now that’s interesting, because we are talking about damage to a Jew; a Jew cannot sell himself as a Canaanite slave. So what’s the logic of appraising him like a Canaanite slave? Because if the conception really is that I am not going to compensate him for the damage that occurred, but I have to pay him because I damaged him and he is the owner of his body, then I pay. How much do I pay? The value of that damage. How much is such damage worth? Go to the market, look at such a Canaanite slave and see for how much he would be sold. Not because this person himself could have been sold for a lower price and I’m making an assessment of what he lost, because he could not have been sold as a Canaanite slave—he’s a Jew. But if you want to assess how much such damage is worth, then it is correct to go to a Canaanite slave, not a Hebrew slave. I think that one who says to appraise there like a slave—a Canaanite slave—that is basically the view I want to attribute here to the Pnei Yehoshua: damage payments do not come to compensate you for what you lost, because you, as a Hebrew slave, did not lose the possibility of being sold as a Canaanite slave; you don’t have that possibility. But you are the owner, and therefore one has to pay you for what happened, for what I did. How much to pay? For that we make the valuation of a Canaanite slave. Fine, you can quibble about that, but it’s an illustration of the principle that I think the Pnei Yehoshua is introducing. Now look—I’ll read him again; there’s one word here to pay attention to. So he says like this: “And it seemed to the Talmud, since Scripture revealed regarding the thirty shekels for a slave that it goes to his master, wherever he is called master…” That’s the key sentence: “that it goes to his master wherever he is called master, the same applies to damage—what difference is there,” and so on. Where is the novelty? I said that he is simply repeating the same question without explaining anything. After all, you said before that one cannot compare the thirty shekels for a slave to compensation. Because the thirty shekels for a slave go to his master because it’s a kind of punitive payment; it doesn’t have to go to the one damaged. But compensation has to go to the one damaged. He says no. “Since Scripture revealed regarding the thirty shekels for a slave that it goes to his master”—what does that mean? I ask myself: true, the thirty shekels for a slave is a penalty, and still I ask why the Torah says the penalty is paid to his master. Even the penalty should have been paid to the one damaged. So what do you see from here? You see from here that he is still called his master, even though he has no right of use in him. He is called his master. That is the Pnei Yehoshua’s novelty. Consequently, if he is called his master, then compensation payments too go to him. Why? Because even in compensation payments I am not compensating the one damaged, but I pay his master, the owner of the damaged object. And from the penalty I see that the master is the owner of one delayed for a bill of emancipation even though he has no rights of use in him. Therefore I also give the compensation payment to his master, because he is the owner. True, he is not the one damaged; it’s not compensation. If it were compensation, I would have had to compensate the slave. But the payment goes to the owner of the property and not to the one damaged. It is not compensation but an obligation to pay the owner of the damaged object. That’s the claim. And if so, then the Pnei Yehoshua really does resolve well his difficulty with Tosafot. And if so, that is also what Tosafot says and apparently also what the Talmud says. Because Tosafot is basically explaining the Talmud—why the Talmud assumes there should be a connection between the thirty shekels for a slave and compensation payments. What’s the connection? Meaning, I’m doing this through the Pnei Yehoshua and through Tosafot, but in the end, this is Talmud. And what the Talmud is basically telling us—if I return to our discussion and why I brought this whole passage—is… So is a third concept created here that’s neither penalty nor compensation, so what is it then? No, no—this is what is called compensation. Not a third concept. This is what is called compensation. Compensation does not mean compensating you for the damage that happened, as people usually use the term; rather, it means a monetary payment—not a penalty—that goes to the slave’s master, to the owner of the damaged object, but it does not necessarily come to compensate him or restore his situation to what it was. Rather, it’s another understanding of the concept of mamon; it’s not a third concept. I want to sharpen this point for our purposes, though it’s less important, just background. What happens for us? Look—when I told you that I had an argument with my lecturer in the yeshiva, we went to a kind of arbitration before one of the other rabbis there. And he was my advocate; he represented my position. So he asked him this question, and he asked it better than I would have. He said to him: look, in the language—as I mentioned earlier—in the language of the commentators these two aspects in the slave are called an acquisition of prohibition and a monetary acquisition. Yes: I have in him a monetary acquisition, meaning he belongs to me, and there is also an acquisition of prohibition. What does acquisition of prohibition mean? He has a prohibitory status, right, a different personal status. He has a prohibitory status—he is obligated in commandments like a woman, whether he may marry, whether he may not marry, all sorts of things like that—and this is called an acquisition of prohibition. Now why is it called an acquisition of prohibition? There is a monetary acquisition and a prohibitory status, so why call it an acquisition of prohibition? It is called an acquisition of prohibition because in the end, who can free him from his prohibitory status? Only I can. I give him a bill of emancipation and then he becomes a Jew—yes, a Canaanite slave who receives a bill of emancipation becomes a Jew. So he effectively becomes a Jew. Meaning that in essence he is in my hands; I can give him the bill and free him. So that means I am his owner even though I have no rights of use in him. Whatever he does is for himself; I cannot give him instructions about what work to do or anything. I have no—no acquisition in the sense of ownership, in the sense of deriving rights, in this slave who is delayed for a bill of emancipation. But I am still called his owner. And the implication is a prohibitory implication, not a monetary one. The implication is prohibitory. And therefore the commentators apparently call this status an acquisition of prohibition; it is not called a prohibitory status, it is an acquisition, because he belongs to me. Now the claim is that what is really written here is this: what is an acquisition of prohibition? Some new invention? There is ownership but without rights? No. Regular ownership—when I own an object—it can be understood in two ways, and here we arrive exactly at our point. One way to understand it is to say: I have a collection of rights. I am allowed to use this object, others are forbidden to use it without my permission. There are definitions of what the status is of an object that is under my ownership. That collection of definitions is what it means to say I have an acquisition in the thing, that I own it. That is one conception; let’s call it the conventionalist conception. As if it is a convention: this collection of halakhic characteristics is what is called ownership. But there is an essentialist conception that says: when I say that I own something, that means there is some reality, some metaphysical bond between me and it; that is what it means that I am its owner. Usually this metaphysical bond has halakhic implications. I am allowed to use it; others are forbidden to use it without my permission—those are implications of the fact that I am its owner. They are not the definition of the concept of ownership; they are implications of the fact that I am its owner. So what does it mean to be its owner? To be its owner is a metaphysical statement. It belongs to me. I have some metaphysical bond with it. And there are some halakhic expressions of that—that I may use it and others may not use it without my permission, and so on. You can see here the Platonism versus the Aristotelianism. Platonism says that ownership is a reality in the world. And it has—its legal description, or its legal characteristics, are really implications. If there is such-and-such a bond between me and the object, that has many halakhic implications. I may use it; someone else may not use it without my permission—but those are implications. The Aristotelian conception says these are not implications; this is the concept of ownership. The concept of ownership is the collection of those halakhic characteristics, that set of laws, which for convenience we call so-and-so owning the table or the slave or the cow. But that is just a convenient definition; in essence we have said nothing about reality when we said he owns it. What we said is that there is a collection of halakhic definitions that apply in this situation. So there is a difference between a Platonic perspective and an Aristotelian perspective. On the Aristotelian view, the set of laws that characterizes a concept constitutes the concept. Meaning, the concept is nothing but the set of laws. When I say that I own something, all I have said is that I may use it and may sell it, and others may not use it, and someone who takes it is a thief. That is all I said when I said I own it. That is the Aristotelian, conventionalist perspective. The term ownership does not describe reality; it is an agreement among us: let us call this collection of characteristics ownership. By contrast, on the Platonic view—and I claim this is the halakhic view—on the Platonic view, saying that I own something is a state, it is a reality in the world. It has halakhic implications. Once there is such a bond between me and it, there are various implications. I may use it, someone else may not use it, and so on. Now, says the Pnei Yehoshua—or the Talmud according to Tosafot, according to the Pnei Yehoshua, according to how I understand the Pnei Yehoshua—the concept of ownership is a Platonic concept. And when I say that the owner owns the slave, that means there is a metaphysical bond between them. This does not yet get us into the question of rights of use. There is a metaphysical bond between them. Now this metaphysical bond usually has implications: whatever the slave does belongs to his master, the master may put him to work, someone else may not put him to work, the slave may not keep it for himself because it belongs to his master. All those are implications. First of all, he is mine; there is a metaphysical bond between me and him. The halakhic implications are implications of that fact. Where is the practical difference in this? It is possible that the metaphysical bond between me and the slave remains while all the implications disappear. Without implications. Does that mean I no longer own him? According to Aristotle, yes, because the whole concept of ownership is nothing but the collection of implications. If the implications don’t exist, there is no ownership. According to Plato, no. The concept of ownership describes a metaphysical bond. Usually this bond has such-and-such halakhic implications, but it could be that there is a situation in which something prevents those implications from appearing, so the metaphysical bond will not appear in the form of legal implications—still, I am his owner. It will appear in the form of prohibitory implications, not monetary implications. Therefore it is called an acquisition of prohibition. The ownership I have in one delayed for a bill of emancipation is not a different kind of ownership. It is the same ownership I have in a regular slave. It’s just that in one delayed for a bill of emancipation, that ownership does not appear through legal implications. There are no monetary rights. Fine—this means that the metaphysical bond between me and the slave is hidden, because it does not appear in the form of legal implications, but it is still there at the metaphysical level. And that is the same bond that existed between us before I renounced him. I owned him; only by renouncing him, what I said was: from now on I do not want the rights that flow from your being my property. So the rights disappeared, because I can renounce my rights, but the bond between me and him still exists until I give him a bill. The sanctity of the body does not lapse on its own. In reality one cannot act except by means of an act. And the moment I give him the bill, I have done an act and that severs the metaphysical bond between me and him. But that bond, as long as the bill has not been given, still exists even though there is no monetary legal implication whatsoever. And that is the meaning of the Platonic conception of the concept of ownership. And my claim is that what the Talmud here in Gittin says is that the concept of ownership is Platonic and not Aristotelian. Unequivocally, that is what it says here. Because it is basically telling us that although I have no rights of use whatsoever in the slave, I am still his master. He belongs to me, he is my acquisition. And you also see this in the term acquisition of prohibition. Acquisition of prohibition is not a prohibitory status. It is a prohibitory implication of an acquisition. But in the case of one delayed for a bill there is only a prohibitory implication to this acquisition. So that means the concept of acquisition is a metaphysical concept. And if you ask me who the master of the slave delayed for a bill of emancipation is, the answer is: the same master he had before, except that he has no rights of use—but he is still his master. Therefore both the penalty goes to him and the compensation for injury goes to him. And that is what, in my opinion, is written here in the Talmud. And here we have a halakhic implication of the claim that concepts in the halakhic world are understood in a Platonic way and not in an Aristotelian way. Here there is a halakhic implication of it—to whom the penalty and the injury payment go. If it’s with regard to terumah—if I have terumah in my house, I haven’t yet given it to the priest and I use it, I have to add a fifth, right? Yes. But it doesn’t belong to anyone? That’s a major question. With terumah, the simple conception is that from the moment it is terumah it already belongs to the priests. But it belongs to the tribe of priests, not to a particular priest. The choice of which priest to give it to is called in the Talmud “benefit of discretion.” Benefit of discretion is money. I can choose which priest to give it to, and that effectively gives me some financial value in the matter. But in essence the terumah is no longer mine. That is the simple view—it belongs to the tribe of priests. Rabbi, if let’s say someone vowed upon himself not to derive benefit from his own object in any way, in any way. Okay. And now someone came and said, okay, so it’s no longer yours; I’m stealing it from you. You’re asking a good question. I’d ask it even more strongly about someone—leave the vow aside—plain prohibited benefit. I own fruits of orlah that grew in my yard, but they are orlah, benefit from them is forbidden. I cannot make any use of them—not eat, not enjoy, not sell, nothing. Exactly. So what is their status? If someone stole them from me—a gentile came and stole them from me, and a gentile doesn’t care about orlah—did he violate theft? That’s the question. And in fact, on this matter the medieval authorities (Rishonim) disagreed—or at least that’s the common way of thinking; I’m not entirely sure, but that’s what people always say. The question is whether there is ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden. There are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who claim that once a thing is forbidden for benefit, there is no ownership over it. And there are medieval authorities (Rishonim) who claim it is forbidden for benefit, but there is ownership—one is simply forbidden to benefit. Now usually you wanted to bring proof from the first group of medieval authorities. Those who say that if it is forbidden for benefit then there is no ownership apparently identify the collection of rights with ownership—an Aristotelian conception. I claim that is not proof. Why? Because one could say—wait, the opposite. Meaning, some wanted to bring proof from the fact that there is ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden, to the Platonic conception. If there is ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden, then that means that even though I cannot make any use whatsoever of this object, I can still be called the owner. But that is not proof. Why? Let’s say I have a pig. It is mine, but I am forbidden to eat it. The Torah forbids me to eat it. Does that mean it is not mine? It is mine, only the Torah forbids me to make use of my rights. “A lion crouches over it,” in the language of the Talmud—as though a lion is lying there and not letting me approach it—but it is mine. Like something of mine locked in a safe. I can’t make use of it, but it’s mine. So the fact that it is forbidden to make use of something does not mean that the thing is not mine, even on the Aristotelian conception. The fact that there is ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden is not proof of Platonism. Because the fact that there is ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden can also be explained by Aristotle. Why? Because it is essentially mine, in all rights; the rights too are mine. I am allowed to use it in monetary terms, only there is a prohibition. Right? If someone steals it from me, then he has taken something that is mine. Okay? If I were to transgress the prohibition of benefit and eat the fruits of orlah—is there anyone in the world who could come to me with a claim that I ate something that was his and not mine? No. I ate something of my own. The Holy One, blessed be He, would come to me with a claim that I committed a prohibition. This is called a matter of Yoreh De’ah, not of Choshen Mishpat. Because at the level of monetary law it is entirely mine—not only metaphysically, monetarily as well. The value too is mine. It is simply forbidden for me to make use of it; a lion crouches over it. Therefore the view of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) that there is ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden is not necessarily Platonic. By contrast, the view of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) that there is no ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden is necessarily Aristotelian. That view basically says that the collection of rights is ownership itself. Once there are no rights, there is no ownership. There you cannot interpret it otherwise. So specifically in that dispute one cannot bring proof for Platonism, which is the approach I want to argue for; if anything, in the other view of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) there is proof for Aristotelianism. I’m just not sure that’s correct, because it may be that what they mean is that ownership of a kind in which there is no possibility, from the Torah’s point of view, of making use of it—then the Torah has also removed the metaphysical dimension, perhaps. Not because there is an identity between the collection of uses and ownership. So from there I wouldn’t bring proof at all to our case, to the discussion of ownership over things from which benefit is forbidden. But for our purposes, what I want to claim is that what you see here in this passage is that when I own something, first and foremost that means there is a metaphysical bond between me and it. The rights of use this gives me, or the legal implications this has, are implications of the fact that I am the owner. That is not the concept of ownership itself. And therefore, for example, there can be a situation in which the concept of ownership exists but without the implications. I waived the implications, I renounced them, so there are no implications. But that does not mean that the concept of ownership or the metaphysical bond itself does not exist. In fact—and not only that, this is not a hypothetical statement. It has other implications. For example, an acquisition of prohibition in a Canaanite slave has prohibitory implications. The slave still has the status of a slave, he is obligated in commandments like a woman, he may marry a Canaanite maidservant, he may not marry a Jewish woman. All these things still exist, but those are prohibitory implications; they are not rights that I have in the thing. So you see that my ownership of the slave, or the bond between me and the slave, can have implications even when there are no monetary implications at all. That indicates that there still exists some bond between me and the slave. I want to end perhaps with a few more examples of such implications. For example, there is a law in the laws of Sabbath called the resting of one’s animal. Right? People don’t know this law very well, but it is a Torah prohibition—or if you prefer, a Torah positive commandment—of the resting of one’s animal. What does that mean? There is a law of leading an animal. If I plow using an ox, I still violated the prohibition of plowing, because the fact that I’m doing the labor through my animal does not make me merely indirect. And this is the law of leading an animal—that I walk behind my donkey and use my donkey. The law of the resting of one’s animal is not the same thing. The law of the resting of one’s animal is an obligation upon me that the animal rest on the Sabbath. Meaning, if the animal now carries things outside the boundary, I have violated a Torah prohibition. Not my things; not that I used the animal to carry my things from private domain to public domain or beyond the Sabbath boundary. No—the animal is just walking, and there are things on it, and it goes from private domain to public domain, lifting and setting down. It performed labor, one of the primary categories of labor on the Sabbath. I violated a Torah prohibition of the resting of one’s animal. Okay? There are other views too, but that is the simple conception of the resting of one’s animal—that the animal itself must rest on the Sabbath. Now clearly the obligation on the animal to rest on the Sabbath is an obligation upon me, not upon the animal. Because if the animal did not rest, I violated a prohibition, not the animal. Okay? Now this is, of course, only with regard to an animal that is mine. If the animal belongs to a gentile and it desecrates the Sabbath, no one violates a prohibition because of that—it’s obvious. Only when the animal is mine do I violate a prohibition if it performs labor on the Sabbath. Incidentally, say the animal eats grass on the Sabbath, so it is reaping on the Sabbath—did I violate a prohibition? The Talmud says no here: that is its normal way, a Talmud in Yevamot. “That is its normal way” means it does this for its own life. It eats—that’s how it lives. So that is not considered that I committed a prohibition. But if it is something that is not its normal way, not for the sake of its living need, then indeed I violated a prohibition when the animal performed labor. Now why does that happen, really? Why is there a prohibition that the animal perform labor on the Sabbath? What is the issue here? Again, we’re not talking about resting and not plowing in the field, but not doing the primary categories of labor. That’s not the same thing as resting, not expending energy. Right? Primary categories of labor are seemingly only a matter for human beings. What does it have to do with my animal performing a primary or derivative category of labor? Why do I violate a prohibition? The answer is because the animal belongs to me, and therefore it is basically my periphery. The animal is my periphery. And when the animal performed labor on the Sabbath, it is as if I myself performed labor on the Sabbath, or my periphery performed labor on the Sabbath. And therefore I violated a prohibition. Now this is not a capital prohibition, it is not like ordinary labor on the Sabbath, it is a Torah prohibition because this is a more distant periphery. If I perform the labor with my own body, that’s a close periphery. The body is also my periphery. I am the soul. The body is my periphery. If I perform labor—one of the primary categories of labor on the Sabbath or its derivatives—then I violated a prohibition and there is liability of stoning, because that is my intimate, close periphery, my body. My property is also my periphery, but a more distant one. When the periphery performs labor on the Sabbath, then I violate a Torah prohibition, but not a prohibition punishable by stoning. So here, for example, you see another implication of the fact that the animal belongs to me. After all, this implication has nothing to do with monetary rights I have in the animal, or that others do not have in the animal—that has no relevance here at all; this is a prohibition in the laws of Sabbath. But the very fact that the animal is mine creates a status with significance in the laws of Sabbath. So you see there is some bond between me and—if my ownership of the animal were merely a collection of rights of use, only monetary implications, there would be no logic in imposing a prohibition of the resting of one’s animal. Why should I care that the animal reaps on the Sabbath? But if one sees the animal as my periphery, as part of me, then the Torah says: just as you are forbidden to perform labor on the Sabbath, so too your periphery should not perform labor on the Sabbath. And therefore there is a prohibition of the resting of one’s animal. So you see that when one says the animal is mine, that means there is some… there is a bond between me and it, it is some kind of my periphery, and therefore it is under an obligation to rest. And this has nothing to do with monetary rights. Another example, another implication, is the inquiry of the later authorities (Acharonim) regarding liability for damages caused by one’s animal. Right? When my animal causes damage, I have to pay. There are two conceptions among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) and later authorities (Acharonim). The Even HaEzel is the famous one who presents it in the clearest way: two conceptions for understanding the liability to pay. One can understand that the liability is upon me because I was negligent in guarding it. Since I was negligent in guarding it, the sanction is that I am responsible for what the animal damaged and I have to pay. So that is a sanction for my negligence in guarding it. A second conception: no, the very fact that the animal belongs to me obligates me to pay. If I was not negligent they exempt me. Meaning, if I guarded it properly then I am under duress and they exempt me. But if I was negligent, what obligates me to pay is not the negligence; rather, from the very fact that the animal belongs to me and it caused damage, I am responsible to pay, unless I guarded it properly. Those are two conceptions, and there are various implications. The big question—and the Rogatchover asks this in Bava Kamma on page 17—the Rogatchover asks: why? If I was negligent in guarding it, I understand—they penalize me. They impose liability on me and I have to pay. But why does the very fact that the animal belongs to me mean that if it causes damage I have to pay, regardless of my negligence at this moment? Why? Why does damage as such constitute a basis obligating me to pay? And the answer he gives—and he himself brings this example, the resting of one’s animal—is that the answer is because there is a bond between me and the animal, a metaphysical bond; the animal is part of me, and therefore when the animal caused damage, it is as though I caused damage, and therefore I am obligated to pay. If I had caused damage with my body, I would be obligated to pay. Why is it not: I didn’t cause damage, my body caused damage? I am the soul. Say—when you caused damage intentionally, was it your soul that caused damage and it only used the body? What happens if I’m asleep? “A person is always forewarned,” whether awake or asleep. A person who causes damage is liable even when asleep. You can always say: what do you want from me? My body caused damage, my soul didn’t give it instructions, it was asleep. So why am I liable? Everyone understands that I am liable because my body is my periphery, it is part of me. The soul is the core, but the body is the periphery; it is also part of me. Therefore if the body caused damage, I am responsible for it. I was asleep, but the responsibility is still on me because I caused damage. The claim regarding an animal that causes damage is the same thing—it is also my periphery, albeit more distant, but it too is my periphery that caused damage and I am responsible for it. Since the periphery is more distant, if I was under duress then I am indeed exempt, which is not what we say if my body caused damage. If my body caused damage, even if I am under duress I am liable, because that is a close periphery. A distant periphery—I am responsible for it, but if I am under duress they exempt me there. Still, the basic liability is because it is my periphery. And again, you see—this is monetary law, but it has nothing to do with rights I have in the thing; on the contrary, it imposes duties on me. Why? Because the bond of ownership between me and the animal is not a set of rights. It is mine, it is part of me, my periphery. If it caused damage then I have to pay because I caused damage. Is that the explanation for “my force”? When people say “my force.” And “my force” is not an animal; an animal is not “my force.” I know, but I’m asking—“my force,” is that because it comes from my body, because it is considered me? Obviously. “My force” and not the force of my force. The force of my force is already damage by a person via force, considered damage by a person and not damage by property. When I throw a stone and the stone breaks something, that is “fire because of his arrows,” right? That whole topic of fire because of his arrows, and an arrow itself is direct damage. That is a person causing damage. Why is it a person causing damage? Because my force is considered my periphery. Even when I cause damage with my body, that too is really by my force. My force is operated by my body. When my force is operated by an arrow, it is still called a person causing damage. Okay? And similarly with the animal—the claim I’m making is that with an animal too it is that way. It’s just that since it is more indirect, it is called property causing damage. So it is not essentially different from a person causing damage; it is simply a more distant periphery. But conceptually, property causing damage is really person causing damage. It is person causing damage, only the periphery that caused damage is a more distant periphery. Therefore the very fact that my property caused damage obligates me to pay. It has nothing to do with whether I was negligent or not. It’s not a sanction on me—me as a person distinct from the property. No—the property is part of me. If it caused damage, it is like my body caused damage, and I have to pay. And why about a minor who causes damage? A minor who causes damage has no responsibility for anything. Right, so why not on the father? If the animal is considered to belong to a person, why not the minor? On the contrary. That’s not a difficulty, that’s the answer. After all, the whole difference between a minor and an animal is that the animal belongs to me, and the minor may be my responsibility but he does not belong to me. My son does not belong to me in terms of ownership, and therefore he is not my periphery in this respect. Now the question, if I was negligent and so on—then one can discuss whether I am liable to guard my son, but there is not this basis of obligation that exists with an animal, where it is simply I myself who caused damage because it is my property, it belongs to me. That is exactly the difference. Because in terms of responsibility, if the conception were that this is only responsibility, you would be right. My responsibility for the animal is like my responsibility for my son; I need to watch both of them, and if I didn’t guard them, then why wouldn’t I have to pay—after all, I was negligent in guarding them? And precisely according to the conception I just described, it is very clear. Because only my property that goes and causes damage is my periphery and is considered that I myself caused damage. The minor is not my periphery, at least not in this respect. Good, we’ll stop here. I’ll continue next time. If there’s a comment or question, then of course. Rabbi, I remember once you spoke about copyright and said that it had some kind of basis in… No, I don’t remember exactly the details, but it did echo for me now when we talked. If Jewish law does recognize the concept of ownership, then we don’t need some tangible object, supposedly, in order to give it monetary force. No, you could argue that this concept of ownership can exist only over a tangible object. But I tend to think you’re right. I wrote an article about copyright in Techumin, and there I indeed argued that there is ownership over information. I brought there expressions both from philosophers and from later authorities (Acharonim), who say that a person’s ideas are the children of his spirit. They are basically something born from him; they are something that is part of him. But I remember you said that Jewish law cannot—you can’t extract from Jewish law, you know, rights of ownership over copyright. No? Wasn’t that your claim? On the contrary, that’s what the decisors say. I claim that you can. I claim that you can, and I derived it from “deception of the mind” and more, where you see that information is definitely something over which there can be ownership. Is that on the site or only in Techumin? It’s on the site. Thank you. Anyone else? I was thinking about “a person does not leave this world with even half his desire in his hand”—how is it written there? So actually that relates to the previous series—it doesn’t fit for me with the summaries and all that—but I was thinking whether it would be possible to talk with the Rabbi not in a forum like this, if there’s such an option? What? It’s always possible, gladly. How? In what way? Send me a WhatsApp, email, or something like that. If you want to arrange a conversation, we’ll arrange one. If you want to talk on WhatsApp or by email, we’ll talk there, on the site, however you want. Good. Okay, thank you very much, goodbye. See you, Shabbat shalom. Shabbat shalom.