Talmudic Analysis – Lesson 15

Table of Contents

• The source of the concepts object-based prohibition and person-based prohibition, and the order in the Mishnah
• The standard explanation: a legal effect on the object versus a floating norm
• Practical ramifications in the medieval authorities (Rishonim): analogical extension and a vowed object versus a prohibited object
• Analogical extension on the day of the Fast of Gedaliah and understanding time as an entity
• A vow takes effect on a commandment-related matter, but an oath does not take effect on a commandment-related matter
• Rabbi Shimon Shkop and the Avnei Nezer: purpose and “the reason of the verse” instead of metaphysics
• The Nimukei Yosef, a positive commandment overriding a prohibition, and “one does not feed a person something prohibited to him”
• The Kehillot Yaakov: from here, Torah prohibitions are person-based prohibitions, and the dispute among the medieval authorities over what the standard model is
• Later authorities: rabbinic prohibitions as person-based and Torah prohibitions as object-based, and the proof from Netivot HaMishpat
• Three meanings of object-based and person-based, and the distinction between the dispute among the medieval authorities and the terminology of the later authorities
• Naziriteship: a law concerning the person, a legal effect on the person, and the placement of the Mishnah
• The Rosh, Avnei Miluim, and the Maharit: the nazir is “grasped” and his body becomes sanctified
• The Ran: a vow takes effect on an oath, but an oath does not take effect on a vow, and a vow also includes a personal dimension
• The Rosh on slaughtering on the Sabbath versus feeding carrion: two different object-based systems
• The concept of legal effect through a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation: an ownership of prohibition as ownership of the body
• Ownership as a metaphysical bond and its implications: torts and the Sabbath rest of one’s animal
• An anecdote about acceptance of commandments in conversion: essence versus technique in the Shulchan Arukh

Summary

General Overview

The text establishes the basic distinction between an object-based prohibition and a person-based prohibition from the opening of tractate Nedarim and from the order in the Mishnah: vows and dedications as laws of the object, oaths as a law concerning the person, and naziriteship as a category that cannot simply be an ordinary object-based category and therefore requires further clarification. It presents the standard explanation that an object-based prohibition rests on a legal effect of prohibition taking hold in the object, whereas a person-based prohibition is a prohibition on the person without being anchored in the reality of the object. From that it derives practical ramifications such as analogical extension and whether it can take effect on a commandment-related matter. It then brings an alternative proposal from Rabbi Shimon Shkop and the Avnei Nezer, who define object/person not metaphysically but according to the purpose of the prohibition. Against that background, it analyzes the Nimukei Yosef, the Kehillot Yaakov, and the dispute among the medieval authorities over whether Torah prohibitions are object-based or person-based. Finally, it distinguishes among three different meanings of object-based and person-based, expands on naziriteship as a legal effect on the person, and concludes with a deeper analysis of the concept of legal effect through the case of a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation, ownership, and the Sabbath rest of one’s animal, showing that Jewish law assumes a metaphysical bond from which practical consequences follow.

The Source of the Concepts Object-Based and Person-Based, and the Order in the Mishnah

The Talmud at the beginning of Nedarim distinguishes between vows and oaths by saying that vows are like prohibiting the object to me, while oaths are like prohibiting oneself with respect to the object. The order in the Mishnah—“vows, dedications, oaths, and naziriteship”—is presented as the basis for understanding vows and dedications as laws of the object, while oaths are a law concerning the person. Naziriteship is presented as a classificatory problem: it cannot simply be a regular object-based law like vows, because if it were, it would have appeared earlier in the Mishnah.

The Standard Explanation: a Legal Effect on the Object Versus a Floating Norm

An object-based prohibition is defined as a prohibition grounded in a halakhic reality that takes effect on the object itself, a legal effect of prohibition from which norms are generated that prohibit the object to the person. A person-based prohibition is defined as a prohibition imposed on the person without a source in the reality of the object, and it is described as a “floating norm.” The text states that the Talmud itself does not present direct practical ramifications for this distinction, but rather uses it to explain the order in which the topics appear in the Mishnah.

Practical Ramifications in the Medieval Authorities: Analogical Extension and a Vowed Object Versus a Prohibited Object

The text presents a central practical ramification in the medieval authorities: one can make an analogical extension in a vow, but one cannot do so in an oath, because in a vow there is a legal effect on the object that can be “copied,” whereas in an oath there is nothing to transfer. It defines analogical extension as “something from something,” as opposed to a regular vow, which is “something from nothing.” The rule “one makes an analogical extension from a vowed object and not from a prohibited object” is presented as the distinction between a prohibition created by a vow and a prohibition created by the Torah, with pork serving as the example of a prohibited object from which one cannot make such an extension. An oath is defined as parallel to a prohibited object in the sense that there is no legal effect on the object, and therefore it does not allow analogical extension.

Analogical Extension on the Day of the Fast of Gedaliah and Understanding Time as an Entity

The text notes a parallel discussion in vows and oaths in which one can say that something will be prohibited “like the day on which Gedaliah son of Ahikam was killed.” It sharpens the point that this seems like analogical extension from a prohibited matter, but the claim is that the extension is from the day itself, and the day itself carries a legal effect of prohibition. From here the text suggests a halakhic indication that a day or time is treated as an entity upon which a legal effect can take hold, contrary to a view in which time is only a mode of perception and has no real existence.

A Vow Takes Effect on a Commandment-Related Matter, but an Oath Does Not Take Effect on a Commandment-Related Matter

The Mishnah in Nedarim 16 is brought as the main practical ramification: vows take effect on a commandment-related matter, while oaths do not take effect on a commandment-related matter because a person is already under oath from Mount Sinai. The example is “This sukkah is forbidden to me by vow,” which takes effect and prevents sitting in the sukkah, as opposed to an oath not to sit in the sukkah, which does not take effect. The explanation ties this to the distinction that the commandment-obligation applies to the person, and therefore an oath, which is a law concerning the person, cannot take effect against an existing obligation, while a vow prohibits the object-status of the sukkah, and the object itself bears no commandment-obligation. The result is a clash between the commandment of sukkah and the prohibition of the vow, and therefore a vow can create a situation in which it is forbidden to sit in the sukkah even though the person is obligated to do so.

Rabbi Shimon Shkop and the Avnei Nezer: Purpose and “The Reason of the Verse” Instead of Metaphysics

Rabbi Shimon Shkop and the Avnei Nezer are presented as offering a different distinction: the difference between object-based and person-based is not metaphysical but depends on the purpose of the prohibition. A person-based prohibition is one whose purpose is to prevent spiritual harm to the person, while an object-based prohibition is one whose purpose is to protect the thing itself, such as something holy that a person might damage. The text says that this approach does not fit well with the language of the medieval authorities or with the Nimukei Yosef, but it does express a difficulty with the standard explanation, which makes the difference sound like only a change in wording.

The Nimukei Yosef, a Positive Commandment Overriding a Prohibition, and “One Does Not Feed a Person Something Prohibited to Him”

The Nimukei Yosef asks why the positive commandment of sitting in a sukkah should not override the prohibition involved in a vow, “he shall not profane his word.” The Minchat Chinukh answers that a vow includes both a prohibition and a positive commandment, and therefore a positive commandment does not override it. A comment is then brought that this is difficult, because a positive commandment and a prohibition that are subject to annulment do in fact get overridden by a positive commandment according to places in the Talmud and according to the Rashba in Yevamot. The Nimukei Yosef answers that since vows are an object-based prohibition, “one does not feed a person something prohibited to him,” and Rabbi Shimon Shkop objects that every case of a positive commandment overriding a prohibition seems like feeding a person something prohibited. The text formulates a possibility that the Nimukei Yosef distinguishes between override, where the prohibition is effectively permitted at the personal level, and a case where there is a legal effect of prohibition in the object that is not canceled by the force of a positive commandment. Therefore, a positive commandment does not simply erase the prohibition when there is a real legal effect on the object.

The Kehillot Yaakov: From Here, Torah Prohibitions Are Person-Based Prohibitions, and the Dispute Among the Medieval Authorities Over What the Standard Model Is

The Kehillot Yaakov brings a proof from the Nimukei Yosef that if the normal case were object-based prohibitions, then the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition could never operate. It therefore follows that Torah prohibitions in general are person-based prohibitions, and only vows are object-based prohibitions. Against this, the text presents other medieval authorities who hold the opposite, namely that Torah prohibitions are object-based prohibitions. It formulates the root of the dispute as the question of what the novelty in the Talmud is: are oaths the exception as person-based prohibitions within a world that is otherwise entirely object-based, or are vows the exception as object-based prohibitions within a world that is otherwise entirely person-based? The Ritva on Shevuot 20 is cited as saying that one cannot make analogical extension from a prohibited matter because all Torah prohibitions are person-based prohibitions, and only with object-based prohibitions is analogical extension possible.

Later Authorities: Rabbinic Prohibitions as Person-Based and Torah Prohibitions as Object-Based, and the Proof from Netivot HaMishpat

The text presents a common assumption among later authorities that rabbinic prohibitions are person-based prohibitions, while Torah prohibitions are object-based prohibitions. Netivot HaMishpat in section 234 is cited as claiming that one who violated a rabbinic prohibition unintentionally does not require repentance, whereas with a Torah prohibition even an unintentional violation requires repentance. He brings proof from the rule that in a rabbinic prohibition “first we act, and afterward we consider the objection.” The explanation is that rabbinic prohibitions are rooted in “you shall not deviate,” and so the core problem is disobeying the Sages’ command; accordingly, in an unintentional case there is no rebellion and no problem in the object itself. In Torah prohibitions, by contrast, the act itself is seen as inherently problematic even without awareness, and therefore an unintentional transgression still carries the significance of wrongdoing.

Three Meanings of Object-Based and Person-Based, and the Distinction Between the Medieval Dispute and the Language of the Later Authorities

The text argues that the dispute among the medieval authorities over object-based and person-based is not identical to the way later authorities use the terms. It defines one meaning as the distinction of Rabbi Shimon Shkop and the Avnei Nezer according to the purpose of the prohibition. It defines a second meaning as the original meaning in the discussion of vows and oaths: is there a legal effect of prohibition in the object, or is this just a norm with no legal effect? It defines a third meaning as the usage of Netivot and similar writers: is there “something in the object” in a physical or causative sense that produces spiritual harm, like “it dulls the soul,” as opposed to a norm that does not depend on any quality in the object. It connects this to the division between two aspects of repentance: repairing damage in reality versus seeking reconciliation for rebellion.

Naziriteship: a Law Concerning the Person, a Legal Effect on the Person, and the Placement of the Mishnah

Naziriteship is presented as being discussed under the heading of vows, yet it does not seem to be an object-based prohibition on specific objects, because the prohibitions apply to all wines in the world and not to one defined object. The text presents the simple view that naziriteship consists of laws concerning the person: the prohibition of drinking wine, cutting one’s hair, and becoming impure are all restrictions on the person. It sharpens the point that within person-based prohibitions there are two possibilities: a prohibition as a “floating norm” with no legal effect at all, or a prohibition in which there is a legal effect, but the legal effect is on the person. It raises the possibility that naziriteship is the fourth category in the Mishnah because it is a law concerning the person with a legal effect on the person, unlike oaths, which are laws concerning the person without legal effect.

The Rosh, Avnei Miluim, and the Maharit: the Nazir Is “Grasped” and His Body Becomes Sanctified

The wording of the Rosh on page 18 is cited: “A nazir, even though he is forbidden with respect to wine, it is not that the wine is forbidden to him; rather, the naziriteship depends on his body.” The text explains this as a legal effect on the person that turns him into a nazir, and from that the prohibitions follow. Avnei Miluim infers from this that the prohibitions of a nazir are not “a prohibition equal for all,” because they apply only to the group of nazirites, similar to priests. The Maharit, section 53, is quoted: “A vow is a law in the object… an oath is a prohibition concerning the person, but his body is not itself grasped by it… and naziriteship is that he himself is grasped by the vow and his body becomes sanctified, analogous to a priest, and therefore he becomes prohibited automatically.” The text emphasizes that the prohibitions themselves are understood as prohibitions that the Torah imposes on nazirites after the person enters the status of nazir, not as prohibitions the person creates, as in an ordinary vow.

The Ran: a Vow Takes Effect on an Oath, but an Oath Does Not Take Effect on a Vow, and a Vow Also Includes a Personal Dimension

The Ran on Nedarim 16 is cited as explaining that a vow takes effect on an oath because the legal effect on the object is not blocked by an oath, which exists only at the personal level. An oath does not take effect on a vow because the vow, beyond its legal effect on the object, also creates a prohibition concerning the person that stems from the prohibited object. Therefore, an oath that tries to obligate the person against an existing prohibition cannot take effect. The text adds that a vow also includes an element of injury to the object, reflected in the law of misuse of consecrated benefit with respect to konamot, which requires bringing a guilt-offering for misuse, alongside lashes for “he shall not profane his word” as the personal dimension.

The Rosh on Slaughtering on the Sabbath Versus Feeding Carrion: Two Different Object-Based Systems

The text brings from the Rosh that it is preferable to slaughter for a sick person on the Sabbath rather than feed him carrion, on the grounds that carrion is an object-based prohibition whereas Sabbath violation is a person-based prohibition, and object-based is more severe. It explains that this fits with the distinction between “object-based” in the sense of a halakhic legal effect and “object-based” in the sense of a real influence, like “it dulls the soul,” where the phrase “and you shall become defiled through them” is applied to forbidden foods. It adds Tosafot on the statement “With the animals of the righteous, the Holy One, blessed be He, does not bring failure through them,” as a context in which forbidden foods are presented as a reality one cannot really “maneuver around,” because the spiritual damage occurs even unintentionally.

The Concept of Legal Effect Through a Slave Awaiting a Bill of Emancipation: an Ownership of Prohibition as Ownership of the Body

The text moves to a deeper discussion of the concept of “legal effect” through the discussion of “a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation” and the Talmud’s question whether he has a fine payment. It cites Tosafot, who conclude that if the fine belongs to his master, then compensation for bodily injury also belongs to his master, based on the principle “what difference is there between killing all of him and killing half of him?” It then presents the Pnei Yehoshua’s difficulty that a fine is a penalty rather than compensation, so it is not clear how one can derive tort law from it. The text offers an answer according to which even after the slave is declared ownerless, the master still retains ownership over the slave’s body until the bill of emancipation is given, while the rights to produce have already lapsed. Therefore, “ownership of prohibition” is literal ownership. It concludes that in torts one pays the owner of the damaged object, and in the case of a slave the owner of the object is the master even though the one actually harmed is the slave. From here it follows that the halakhic presumption of ownership is a bond that cannot be reduced to a list of rights.

Ownership as a Metaphysical Bond and Its Implications: Torts and the Sabbath Rest of One’s Animal

The text formulates the idea that ownership is not just a bundle of rights but a “metaphysical bond” from which rights and restrictions flow, and even if the rights lapse, the bond can remain. It brings from the Rogatchover two implications: liability for tort damages on the basis of “I and my property are one,” where a person’s property is a peripheral extension of the self, and the Sabbath rest of one’s animal, where the animal’s labor on the Sabbath creates a Torah prohibition for the owner by virtue of “so that your ox and your donkey may rest.” It describes the distinction between degrees of periphery, where the body is closer than property, and the fact that the question “is it mine or not mine” determines a Sabbath prohibition even though the issue belongs to the laws of ownership.

An Anecdote About Acceptance of Commandments in Conversion: Essence Versus Technique in the Shulchan Arukh

The text argues that acceptance of commandments is the essence of conversion, and therefore there is no need for the Shulchan Arukh to write it as a technical condition, just as in the laws of acquisitions the Shulchan Arukh does not write that one needs intent to acquire even though that is the foundation of the acquisition. It explains that the Shulchan Arukh spells out the techniques for implementing the will—such as money, document, act of possession, circumcision, and immersion—but does not define the essence of the concept itself. It connects this to the claim that in the same way, in the laws of ownership the “metaphysical bond” is not written explicitly, because that is simply what ownership means, while the written law deals with the practical implications of the legal effect.

Last time I started discussing the concepts of object-based prohibition and person-based prohibition, whose source as concepts is actually the Talmudic text at the beginning of tractate Nedarim, where the Talmud distinguishes there between vows and oaths: vows are like prohibiting an object to me, and oaths are like a person prohibiting himself with respect to the object, right? And we talked about the fact that basically it all starts from the order in which things appear in the Mishnah: vows, dedications, oaths, and naziriteship. Vows and dedications are object-based laws, oaths are a law in the person, and naziriteship, we said, is either like oaths or something third; it can’t be just another plain law in the object, because otherwise it would have appeared at the beginning of the Mishnah. We haven’t gotten to that yet.

Now when we talk about the question of what a person-based prohibition and an object-based prohibition even are, I said that the standard explanation is that an object-based prohibition is basically a prohibition rooted in something that exists on the object itself. In other words, some reality occurs in the object itself; a prohibition takes effect on it, and as a result norms are created that prohibit the object to me. But it begins from the reality in the object. Meaning, there is some reality in the object. By contrast, with oaths this is a law in the person, where the standard view of a law in the person is that there is a prohibition on the person, but it has no source in the reality of the object itself. And that’s what I called a floating norm, okay? It’s a norm that isn’t anchored in something in reality, but floats in the air.

I said that the practical differences that come out of this distinction don’t appear in the Talmud. The Talmud doesn’t talk about practical differences; it brings this as an explanation for the order in which the matters appear in the Mishnah in tractate Nedarim. But in fact there are no practical differences discussed in the Talmud itself. Now among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), practical differences are brought, several of them.

One of them, for example, is that you can’t create an oath by analogy, only a vow. What does it mean to create something by analogy? So with a vow, we know that if I want, say, to prohibit this phone to myself, I can say, “This phone is forbidden to me by vow.” That’s language of prohibition. But if, for example, this thing is also prohibited already, I already vowed against it, then I can say, “This is like that,” and transfer the effective prohibition from here to here. That too is a way to create a prohibition on the thing itself. So there’s creating from nothing, and there’s creating from something already existing, right? Analogy is from something existing; actually making a vow is creating from nothing.

With oaths, you can’t do this by analogy, only by actually swearing. Why? The simple explanation is that with an oath there’s nothing to transfer, because there is no effective status on the object. With vows there is an effective prohibition on the object; I take that effective status and copy it over here. Okay, so I have something to take from here and move there. But if with an oath there is nothing at all in the object and nothing in the world—overall, only I am prohibited—then I can’t transfer my prohibition from “I’m forbidden this” to “I’m also forbidden that.” What exactly am I transferring, and to where? There’s nothing on me as such; no reality has taken effect on me. Something slipped my mind there for a second. Yes.

And there’s a rule that you can analogize only from something prohibited by vow, not from something prohibited independently. In other words, if I want to impose a prohibition on this thing, and here there is pork, I can’t say, “This is like that.” That’s an invalid analogy. Why? Because pork is something prohibited, not something prohibited by vow. You can make an analogy only from things whose prohibition was created by a vow, not from things whose prohibition was created by the Torah. The prohibition of pork was created by the Torah, not because I vowed it, and that can’t be used for analogy.

An oath is essentially parallel to something independently prohibited. Meaning, true, I’m the one who swore, and if I hadn’t sworn I wouldn’t have been obligated to do or not do what we’re talking about, but since no effective status applies to the thing itself—then a person-based prohibition, and pork too, is a person-based prohibition. I am forbidden to eat the pork. And therefore you can’t make an analogy from an oath; you can’t make an analogy from an oath because there’s nothing to transfer from one place to another. With a vow you can transfer from place to place. So that’s a first expression, or first practical difference, between vows and oaths, or between object-based prohibitions and person-based prohibitions.

Just as an aside, the Talmud writes parallel discussions both in tractate Shevuot and in tractate Nedarim. The Talmud says that I can make an analogy and say that this thing should be prohibited to me like the day Gedaliah son of Ahikam died. Now that’s very strange—Fast of Gedaliah, right? What does it mean to make an analogy from a day? What does it mean to analogize from a day? Just as I’m forbidden to eat certain things on the Fast of Gedaliah, so too it should be forbidden to me to eat this. But that’s analogizing from something independently prohibited, not from something prohibited by vow. Meaning, I can’t analogize from something that is prohibited to me, right? Because that is a law in the person. That’s exactly what analogy in an oath would be. So why can you analogize as a vow to the day Gedaliah son of Ahikam died?

So the claim is that I’m analogizing to the day. The day Gedaliah son of Ahikam died has an effective prohibition on the day. And that’s an indication—I won’t go into this at length, but just as an anecdote—it’s an indication that from the standpoint of Jewish law, a day or time is a kind of entity. It’s something on which an effective status can take hold. If time or place, as Kant understands them, were only forms of my perception of reality and didn’t actually exist in reality itself, then you couldn’t analogize from them. Because those wouldn’t be things that really exist. An effective prohibition can’t take hold on time. There’s no such thing as time. Time would just be a form through which I look at things. There is no time in the world itself. Okay? So there are various indications of this, but that’s just an interesting side implication.

But let’s get back to our issue. So the difference between vows and oaths—the first practical difference was that you can make an analogy with a vow, but you can’t make an analogy with an oath.

The main practical difference that is brought is a Mishnah in Nedarim 16: vows take effect regarding an object of a commandment, but oaths do not take effect regarding an object of a commandment, because one is already sworn from Mount Sinai. Meaning, if I vow, or say, “This sukkah is forbidden to me by vow,” there is a commandment incumbent on me to sit in the sukkah, but I prohibit the sukkah to myself by vow, and that takes effect. And once that takes effect, I can’t sit in the sukkah, because it is prohibited to me. But if I swear not to sit in the sukkah, or not to sit in this sukkah—assuming it’s the only one here—the oath does not take effect. The oath does not take effect because I am already sworn from Mount Sinai.

Now here too the medieval authorities (Rishonim) say this practical difference emerges from the distinction between a prohibition in the object and a prohibition in the person. That’s why there is this difference between vows and oaths. And why? Because if I swear to do or not do something, then I have not caused any effective status to take hold. It’s simply something imposed on me to do or not do. And if I am already sworn from Mount Sinai to sit in the sukkah, then I can’t now swear not to sit in the sukkah, because I am already sworn to sit. The original oath is a law in the person, and the oath I now want to impose is also a law in the person. And regarding the person, you can’t prohibit him from sitting in the sukkah because he is already commanded to sit. Therefore that oath does not take effect. An oath does not take effect upon an oath.

But if I vow, “This sukkah is forbidden to me by vow,” I am prohibiting the sukkah to myself. So here the prohibition takes effect on the sukkah, not on me. The sukkah becomes an object of prohibition. Now there is no commandment on the sukkah that I sit in it. Sukkot are not obligated in commandments; human beings are obligated in commandments. So there is nothing preventing an effective prohibition from taking hold on the sukkah. Once an effective prohibition takes hold on it, now there is a result. The result is that I am forbidden to sit in this sukkah. That’s already just the consequence.

Meaning, if they came and if I tried to impose on myself a prohibition not to sit in the sukkah, I couldn’t, because I already have an obligation to sit in the sukkah. But if I prohibit the sukkah, there is nothing to stop that prohibition; the sukkah becomes prohibited. Now the result of that is that suddenly it turns out that I am forbidden to sit in the sukkah. Ah, but I’m already sworn from Mount Sinai? Fine, so I’m already sworn from Mount Sinai—so what? I have an oath on me to sit, an oath from Mount Sinai to sit, the commandment of sukkah; and I also have a prohibition from the vow that I cannot sit. There is a clash. And therefore a vow takes effect regarding an object of a commandment, while an oath does not take effect regarding an object of a commandment. Again, this is an expression of the difference between a law in the object and a law in the person.

Now I mentioned Rabbi Shimon Shkop and the Avnei Nezer, who speak in quite a similar way and propose a different distinction between object and person. The question bothering them is precisely this one: what difference does it make whether you tell me that I’m forbidden to use the phone, or that the phone is forbidden to be used by me? It’s just another way of phrasing the same sentence. What is the difference between a law in the object and a law in the person?

They want to make an original and interesting claim: that really this is not, as I presented it until now, some effective reality in the world itself. Rather, the claim is that the difference lies in the question of what the goal of the prohibition is. There are prohibitions whose goal is that I should not be spiritually harmed, okay, or I don’t know, that something shouldn’t happen to me. For example, I’m forbidden to eat pork because eating pork, in some sense, I don’t know, dulls the soul, harms my delicate soul, okay? But if they tell me I’m forbidden to use a sacrifice or something holy, that prohibition is not because my delicate soul will be harmed, but because the holy thing will be harmed. The prohibition—the purpose of the prohibition—is the thing, not me. And that, they say, is a law in the object.

And a law in the object versus a law in the person is not a metaphysical distinction, an ontological distinction, about what exists in reality as I described until now—that’s the accepted explanation. For them, the difference is a difference in the reason for the verse, meaning the question whether the reason for the prohibition, what stands at its center, is the thing, the object—then it’s an object-based prohibition. If what stands at the center is the person, then it’s a person-based prohibition.

Meaning, if the thing is too exalted for me, then it’s an object-based prohibition. If the thing is too lowly relative to me, then it’s a person-based prohibition, because I am the focus—the point is that I not descend to that lower level. But if the thing is exalted, then the point is that I should not damage the exalted thing, so the focus is the thing and not me. Then it’s an object-based prohibition.

I said this doesn’t fit so well with the language of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and in the Nimukei Yosef there we’ll try to force it in; there it doesn’t fit. But that’s their proposal. Their proposal simply expresses the difficulty in the standard view of the distinction between a law in the object and a law in the person—why isn’t this basically just saying the same thing? But as I said earlier, if you understand it on the metaphysical level, then what I’m actually saying is that object-based prohibitions have some metaphysical basis from which the prohibition grows. In person-based prohibitions there is a prohibition, but there is no metaphysical basis from which the prohibition grows; the prohibition is simply the fact that the Torah prohibited it. It’s a floating norm, as I said before.

Now the Nimukei Yosef asks—I mentioned this—the Nimukei Yosef asks why shouldn’t a positive commandment come and override a prohibition? Suppose I prohibited the sukkah to myself by vow: “This sukkah is forbidden to me by vow.” Now there is a positive commandment on it to sit in the sukkah, and there is a prohibition of vow, “he shall not break his word.” Let the positive commandment of sitting in the sukkah override the prohibition of “he shall not break his word”; a positive commandment overrides a prohibition.

Actually that’s difficult, as I already noted, because with a vow there is a positive commandment and a prohibition, and one that can be released by asking a halakhic authority, and the Talmud says that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition and a positive commandment that can be released in that way. But sorry, I skipped a step.

So the Minchat Chinukh explains that in a vow there is a prohibition and a positive commandment, and a positive commandment does not override a prohibition plus a positive commandment. And on that people comment that this is not plausible, because this is a prohibition and a positive commandment that can be released by asking, and a positive commandment does override such cases; Rashba himself already comments on that in tractate Yevamot.

The Nimukei Yosef answers differently. The Nimukei Yosef in Nedarim there, on the passage on page 16—there is a Nimukei Yosef on Maimonides’ laws in Rif—so the Nimukei Yosef says differently: since vows are an object-based prohibition, one does not feed a person something prohibited to him. Once the sukkah itself became prohibited because I vowed, now what are you telling me? That a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, so the positive commandment of sitting in the sukkah should override the prohibition of the vow? No: one does not feed a person something prohibited to him.

What does “one does not feed a person something prohibited to him” mean? Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks exactly this: what do you mean, one does not feed a person something prohibited to him? That’s what every case of a positive commandment overriding a prohibition is. You feed a person something prohibited to him because there is a positive commandment. Apparently the Nimukei Yosef understands that no—regarding object-based prohibitions we don’t say that. Regarding object-based prohibitions we don’t say that, only regarding person-based prohibitions. But not regarding object-based prohibitions. When there is something prohibited to him, you do not feed it to him. If there is a prohibition on the person, then the person’s positive commandment overrides the prohibition imposed on the person. But if there is a prohibition in the object, then the object itself is prohibited, and once the object is prohibited, one does not feed a person something prohibited to him.

Let’s formulate it differently. If you understand “a positive commandment overrides a prohibition” to mean that there is no prohibition at all—if it clashes with a positive commandment, then there is no prohibition; it was permitted, the prohibition was never said in such a case—as the Avnei Nezer says, and there are other medieval authorities (Rishonim) who understand it this way—then in a vow you certainly can’t say this. Because in a vow the effective status takes hold on the sukkah; that is a reality, there is an effective status of prohibition on the sukkah. Now you can only discuss what the person has to do: he has a positive commandment, he has a prohibition—what does he do? But you can’t say there is no prohibition. There is an effective prohibition on the sukkah.

Meaning, when there is a clash between a positive commandment and a prohibition in the person, you can say the person should prefer the positive commandment over the prohibition, and then there will be no prohibition, because the positive commandment pushes it away, dissolves it. But where I say that the sukkah itself became prohibited, the obligation imposed on me does nothing to the sukkah. The sukkah is not obligated; I am obligated. And as long as there is an effective prohibition on the sukkah, it is there. Now you can say that my positive commandment should override the prohibition—but no, we don’t say that the positive commandment overrides the prohibition; we say the positive commandment causes there to be no prohibition. But here there is a prohibition, and once there is a prohibition, the positive commandment won’t override it. That’s another way of understanding the Nimukei Yosef.

And Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks exactly this on the Nimukei Yosef. He says: what do you mean? A positive commandment overrides a prohibition—that’s how it is in every case of positive commandment and prohibition. Therefore he proposes his other answer, that a person-based prohibition is when the goal is the person, and an object-based prohibition is when the goal is the object. But in the Nimukei Yosef himself, this does not fit.

Now on this Nimukei Yosef, the Kehillot Yaakov brings proof from the Nimukei Yosef that according to the Nimukei Yosef, how does the Torah ever have the rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition? You could always say: one does not feed a person something prohibited to him. We have to say that Torah prohibitions in general are person-based prohibitions and not object-based prohibitions. And only with object-based prohibitions does the Nimukei Yosef say that one does not feed a person something prohibited to him, because there the thing is prohibited to him, there is an effective status on the thing. But with the rest of Torah prohibitions they are person-based prohibitions, and therefore there is no thing prohibited to him here. There are just two norms that clash in the person: there is a positive commandment, and opposite it a prohibition, and the rule is that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. There is no feeding of something prohibited to him here, and therefore in such a situation there really is no prohibition. Because once the Torah itself tells me to do this, how can you say the Torah forbids it? It tells me to do it, so by definition it was permitted.

Meaning, saying it is merely set aside applies only in a situation where the prohibition still exists regardless, and now the question is whether my clash with it will set it aside or not. But where the whole issue is what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from you, there is no reality here; the question is what is wanted from you. And once a positive commandment overrides a prohibition, what is wanted from me is to do the positive commandment even at the price of the prohibition, so by definition there is no prohibition. You are not violating the divine will; you are doing what God tells you to do, so there is no prohibition here.

But when the prohibition is an object-based prohibition, then there is a prohibition not because of what the Holy One, blessed be He, wants from you or doesn’t want from you; in reality there is a prohibition because there is an effective prohibition on the object. And in such a situation a positive commandment does not override a prohibition. So in effect, from this Nimukei Yosef there emerges, says the Kehillot Yaakov, that the rest of Torah prohibitions must be person-based prohibitions. Because if they were object-based prohibitions, there would be no such rule that a positive commandment overrides a prohibition. Where there are object-based prohibitions, a positive commandment does not override them.

On the other hand, he brings other medieval authorities (Rishonim) who claim that the rest of Torah prohibitions are object-based prohibitions and not person-based prohibitions.

I said that basically this dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) is over how we understand the distinction the Talmud makes between oaths and vows. Oaths are a law in the person and vows are a law in the object. The question is: which one is the novelty? Meaning, are all Torah prohibitions basically object-based prohibitions, like vows included among them, and the novelty is that oaths are person-based prohibitions, that they are the exception? That vows are an object-based prohibition is nothing special— all Torah prohibitions are object-based prohibitions. Oaths are the unusual thing, a person-based prohibition. That is the Talmud’s novelty. Or the reverse. The Nimukei Yosef apparently understands the reverse—so says the Kehillot Yaakov—that all Torah prohibitions are really person-based prohibitions, like oaths. Therefore with oaths there is no novelty; all Torah prohibitions are person-based prohibitions. The novelty is that in vows it’s an object-based prohibition. Okay? The question is which one is the novelty and which one is the standard. And that is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim).

Meaning, there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) over whether all Torah prohibitions—that which is neither vows nor oaths—are person-based prohibitions or object-based prohibitions.

Now that itself is a strange thing, because we know that Ritva, for example, in tractate Shevuot 20, says: why don’t we make an analogy from something independently prohibited, but only from something prohibited by vow? Because all Torah prohibitions are person-based prohibitions. And you can transfer an effective status only from one effective status to another; only with object-based prohibitions can you make an analogy. Just as with oaths you don’t make analogies, so too with all other prohibitions you don’t make analogies. Okay.

The reasoning that—I don’t know if this fits here—but the reasoning that a positive commandment does not override a prohibition in the Temple, that fits Rabbi Shimon Shkop a bit, that these are object-based prohibitions? But I think in the Temple it’s not only with sacrificial prohibitions; it’s with every prohibition that occurs in the Temple, if it’s in the service, so I don’t think it works there. But why is that? What? A different reason, yes, I don’t know, I don’t think it works there.

Now the point is that it is accepted among the medieval and later authorities—mainly among the later authorities (Acharonim)—that Torah prohibitions are object-based prohibitions. That’s the standard assumption. For example, Netivot HaMishpat in section 234 says that if a person transgresses a rabbinic prohibition inadvertently, he does not need repentance. Say you ate poultry with milk by mistake; you didn’t know it was poultry with milk. You don’t need repentance. But with a Torah-level prohibition, even if you transgressed it inadvertently, you do need repentance; with a rabbinic prohibition, no.

He has a proof. The Talmud says that if someone sees his rabbi committing a prohibition, then it depends: if it is a Torah-level prohibition, he has to stop him politely and say, “Didn’t you teach us, our rabbi, that it is forbidden to do such and such?” But with a rabbinic prohibition, first we let the act be done and afterward we ask the question. Meaning, first we let him do what he wants to do, and afterward we ask him about it. So Netivot asks: why? Is there no interest in preventing rabbinic prohibitions? So he says no, because regarding rabbinic prohibitions, if his rabbi is really acting inadvertently—he didn’t notice or something like that—then there is no problem; he didn’t commit any prohibition. Later you ask him only in order to know whether this really is forbidden or permitted. But with a Torah prohibition, even if he transgresses inadvertently, there is a prohibition here, and therefore you have to stop him even if he is inadvertent. You can’t let him commit the prohibition and only afterward ask. That is his proof.

And therefore he says that someone who transgresses a rabbinic prohibition inadvertently has really not transgressed any prohibition. What is the idea behind this? He says: with rabbinic prohibitions, the standard view is that their basis is “do not deviate.” For Maimonides, for example, their basis is “do not deviate.” Now what does that mean? Suppose there is poultry with milk before me. What is the prohibition of poultry with milk? If I ate poultry with milk, what’s the problem? Poultry with milk in itself has no problem, because otherwise the Torah would have prohibited it. The Torah doesn’t prohibit it. The problem is that I did not obey the Sages. Because it says “do not deviate,” I must not deviate from their words; I must obey them. So if I ate poultry with milk, I did not obey the Sages. That is a person-based prohibition, not an object-based prohibition. Poultry with milk in itself is not problematic. But there is an obligation on the person not to eat poultry with milk because the Sages commanded not to eat it. If you were inadvertent, you didn’t know the Sages commanded it, you didn’t even know it was poultry with milk, or you didn’t know the Sages commanded about poultry with milk—it doesn’t matter, you were inadvertent. In such a situation there is no rebellion against the command of the Sages, because you didn’t know there was a command at all, and the thing itself is not problematic. So what remains? Meaning, there is no problem of rebelling against the command, and there is no problem on the side of the act itself, because it is not problematic in itself. Therefore you did not transgress a prohibition. A rabbinic prohibition done inadvertently is not a prohibition.

With Torah prohibitions, if you don’t know and you’re inadvertent, then there is no rebellion against the command because you didn’t know there was a command. But the act itself that you did is still problematic. If you ate pork, that dulls the soul.

The reasoning that this is not necessarily something in the object? What do you mean? Wait, I’ll get to that in a moment. I just want to set this up first; I’m exactly on the way there.

So the point is that with Torah prohibitions too, if I transgress inadvertently, I don’t know there is a command, so there is no rebellion against the command. But with Torah prohibitions, unlike rabbinic prohibitions, even if I transgressed inadvertently I still committed a prohibition; I need repentance and so on. Therefore I need to be strict: with Torah prohibitions done inadvertently I need repentance.

So this is an example of the assumption of later authorities that rabbinic prohibitions are person-based prohibitions, not object-based prohibitions. There is nothing problematic in the thing itself; the problem is only the command imposed on the person. In Atvun De’Oraita too there is a section where he elaborates to show—at least according to most views—that rabbinic prohibitions are all person-based prohibitions and not object-based prohibitions. But Torah prohibitions are object-based prohibitions—that is really the subtext here.

Now as we saw earlier, this is a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim): Ritva and Rashba, Nimukei Yosef. So why do the later authorities here seem to completely ignore the dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim)? Most of the later authorities assume as something simple that rabbinic prohibitions are person-based prohibitions, and that this is the difference between them and Torah prohibitions; meaning that Torah prohibitions are object-based prohibitions. Why? It’s a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim).

So the claim is—I think these are two different concepts of object and person. When we usually talk about person-based prohibition versus object-based prohibition, what sits in the heads, I think, of the later authorities—say in Netivot and Atvun De’Oraita and those—is the question whether there is something problematic in the thing. When I eat pork, it dulls my soul. That does not mean there is an effective prohibition on the pork. The reality in the pork that causes the problem is a physical reality, not a halakhic effective status. When I vow, then I impose an effective prohibition on the object. The object itself did not physically change; there is nothing in the object that harms me or dulls my soul. What changed there is the metaphysics of the object—I imposed an effective prohibition on the object.

This is the concept of person and object that I mean when I speak about vows and oaths. And the dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) that the Kehillot Yaakov discusses concerns these things—the question whether there is an effective prohibition on the object or whether this is a floating norm. But a floating norm—even the prohibition of pork is a floating norm. Even though when I eat pork it dulls my soul. Why? Because the way pork is materially constituted, whatever it is in pork’s makeup, apparently has some bad effect on the soul. So there is something in pork that is the reason for the prohibition, but it is not an effective prohibition on the pork; there is no effective prohibition on the pork. Rather, there is something in pork that causes the problem.

By contrast, say, honoring one’s father and mother. Honoring one’s father and mother—there isn’t something in father and mother such that, as a result of it, I have an obligation to honor them, something in their body, I don’t know, in their reality. There is nothing like that. I simply have an obligation to honor them.

So prohibited foods—the standard view is that they are object-based prohibitions. But they are object-based prohibitions in that sense of object-based prohibition: in the sense that there is something in them that can cause problematic consequences in my soul. Something really happens in the world. It’s not just that I’m a transgressor in the legal sense, meaning I violated a prohibition, so a minus sign is entered next to my name. That’s called a person-based transgression. An object-based transgression means something happened to me; not just that a minus sign was entered next to my name—something happened in reality if I committed that transgression. It dulled my soul. That is the concept of person and object, and in that sense according to almost all views the Torah’s prohibitions are object-based prohibitions and not person-based prohibitions.

The dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) over whether Torah prohibitions are person-based or object-based is not talking about this meaning of object-based prohibition. It is talking about the question whether there is an effective prohibition from which prohibitions then apply to me, or not—whether these are floating prohibitions with no effective status. Whether it dulls the soul or not is another discussion. It may dull it, it may not dull it—that’s unrelated to this, a different discussion.

And this is exactly the same division you gave some time ago about the two aspects of repentance, right? One is, say, you have some damage and you need to repair it, and the other is that you need reconciliation. Right, so that’s connected to the concept of object and person in Netivot, and to what there is in every commandment, right, exactly.

So the concept—therefore the concepts of object and person have so far, as we’ve seen, at least three different meanings. One meaning is Rabbi Shimon Shkop and Avnei Nezer: the question of what the purpose of the prohibition is—whether the purpose of the prohibition is the object, or whether the purpose of the prohibition is me. A second meaning is the accepted meaning in most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim): whether there is an effective prohibition on the object or whether there are no effective statuses at all but the thing is prohibited. A prohibition that is just a norm, not metaphysics. And the third meaning is the meaning of Netivot and Avnei Milu’im—Avnei Nezer?—the question whether there is something in the object because of which I am forbidden to eat it, something in the object, something in its structure, its physical structure—not an effective prohibition, no effective statuses at all—or whether there is nothing in the object and this is a norm. I’m forbidden to do something. I have to live in the Land of Israel, I don’t know—fine, that’s an obligation on me to do an act. Okay, there is no meaning here of something in the object. You can talk about the holiness of the land, I don’t know. So that is the third meaning of object and person.

Before I move on to explain this a bit more, I just want to note something about the prohibitions of a nazirite. I said that in the Mishnah in Nedarim at the beginning, the prohibitions of a nazirite appear in fourth place. There are vows, dedications, oaths, and naziriteship. Vows and dedications are object-based prohibitions—object-based in the sense that there is an effective prohibition. Oaths are person-based prohibitions, and I explained what I mean by person-based prohibitions—a floating norm. Regarding a nazirite there is a dispute among medieval and later authorities over how to understand it.

First of all, in the standard categories, a nazirite is a special kind of vow. Naziriteship belongs to the section of vows, to vow naziriteship. Okay? So ostensibly I would expect, by this classification, that if vows are a law in the object, naziriteship too should be a law in the object like vows. But it can’t be a law in the object like vows in the simple sense. First, because the structure of the Mishnah in Nedarim doesn’t say that, because otherwise naziriteship should have been brought between vows and oaths. But beyond that, what would be the object of the prohibition? What, does an effective prohibition take hold on all the wines in the world so that I can’t drink them? After all, it’s not one particular wine. Does an effective prohibition take hold on all the wines in the world—who imposed that effective status? How did that happen?

Simply speaking, the things themselves are not prohibited to me because an effective prohibition took hold on them. Rather, there is a law on the nazirite not to eat them—not to drink wine, not to become impure through the dead, and not to cut his hair. Okay? These are laws in the person, not laws in the object. Just in terms of the character of nazirite prohibitions—I’m not talking now about their classification, whether this belongs to vows or not—when you look at the concept of naziriteship, it doesn’t seem to speak of prohibiting objects to me. Rather it speaks of prohibiting me with respect to certain objects or actions. That is the simple understanding of nazirite prohibitions.

Where does the problem still come in? Even in person-based prohibitions—and I said this last time too—there is room to understand them in two ways. You can understand person-based prohibitions as a floating norm: there are no effective statuses, there is just an obligation on the person or a prohibition on the person to do such-and-such. Or you can understand that even in person-based prohibitions there is an effective status, only the effective status is on the person and not on the object.

Take oaths. If I understood oaths that way—if I swear not to use this phone—then on the standard understanding there is no effective status at all, not on the object and not on anything else; I am simply forbidden to use this object. But on the understanding I’m now proposing, there is an effective prohibition. An oath too creates an effective status, only the effective status is not on the phone but on me. Something is created on me because of which I am forbidden to use the phone. But still, something metaphysical is created in reality by the fact that I swore. This too can be called a person-based prohibition; that is, the person here functions as the object. Right? The person is the thing on which the effective status sits, on which it takes effect. The effective status is not on the object but on the person, but it is still an effective status.

Regarding oaths, I said the simple view is that it’s not like that. I even brought the Ran in Nedarim, if you remember, page 16, where the Ran says that a vow takes effect on an oath but an oath does not take effect on a vow. If I am sworn to do something—say, use the phone, I swore to use the phone—and now I vow to prohibit the phone to myself, “This phone is forbidden to me by vow,” that takes effect. Why? Because there is nothing to stop the effective status on the phone. Right? Just as a vow takes effect regarding an object of a commandment generally, so too it takes effect against an oath. So it takes effect, and once it takes effect on the phone, now one does not feed a person something prohibited to him.

But an oath will not take effect on a vow. Meaning, if I have now vowed not to use this phone, and now I swear to use the phone, the oath will not take effect. Why? If the problem is effective status, then what’s the problem? I am imposing the effective status of an oath on myself, and there is an effective prohibition on the phone. So the oath should take effect on the vow just as the vow takes effect on the oath. What is the difference?

The Ran says no, because in a vow there is also a law in the person besides the law in the object. In a vow there is an effective prohibition on this thing, but as a result of that effective prohibition, there is now a prohibition on me to use the phone because there is an effective prohibition on the object. So the effective status sitting on the phone creates a prohibition on me. And now if I swear, I am trying to create an obligation on myself to do something that is already forbidden to me. I can’t; it is already forbidden.

Meaning, there is a clash in the person. By contrast, when there is a vow on an oath, then in the object there is no clash, because an oath has no dimension in the object. An oath has only a dimension in the person. A vow has a dimension both in the object and in the person. As we said, objects are not obligated in commandments. So if the sukkah has an effective prohibition on it, what does that mean? That I am forbidden to sit in the sukkah—not that the sukkah is forbidden to have me sit in it. The sukkah is forbidden nothing. Right? So the fact that there is an effective status on the sukkah merely generates an obligation on me or a prohibition on me.

In the end there is also a law in the person as a result of the vow. Incidentally, with a vow, if misuse applies to such vowed prohibitions, then someone who violated a vow—besides the fact that he violated “he shall not break his word” and gets lashes for the prohibition—besides that, he also brings a guilt offering, a guilt offering for misuse. Misuse with things prohibited by vow—the Talmud says that he brings a guilt offering for misuse regarding a vow. The guilt offering is brought for the damage to the object; the lashes are for the prohibition on the person. You profaned your word, you violated a prohibition, you get lashes. Two different things.

So in a vow there is both a dimension of an effective prohibition on the object and a dimension of a law in the person not to violate the effective status of the object. In an oath—what? With an oath it’s only lashes? Yes, with an oath there is no guilt offering. There is an oath in the guilt offering for robbery, but that’s just something else, a different guilt offering, not a guilt offering for misuse. In the guilt offering for robbery, with an oath regarding a deposit, you bring a guilt offering for robbery. That is another guilt offering, but it’s not for the oath; it’s for the robbery involved. There’s a discussion among later authorities about that, but that is the simple understanding.

Wait, I lost the thread. Ah yes, so I return to naziriteship. In oaths, usually the simple understanding is that there is no effective status at all, neither on the person nor on the object. That is the meaning of a law in the person. In naziriteship there are views that say there is an effective status, and the effective status is on the person; therefore it is a third category.

So if the Mishnah in Nedarim says: vows, dedications, oaths, and naziriteship—vows and dedications are the law in the object, oaths are the law in the person in the sense that there are no effective statuses at all; naziriteship is a law in the person in the sense that there is an effective status on the person. Okay? And this is a dispute among medieval and later authorities.

Rosh, for example, on page 18 says: “And a nazirite, even though he is prohibited with respect to wine, the wine is not prohibited to him. Rather, the naziriteship depends on his body: when he says, ‘Behold, I am a nazirite,’ and consequently he becomes prohibited regarding wine, haircutting, and impurity.” How do you understand this Rosh? Clearly he rejects a law in the object, right? There is no law in the object regarding the wine. But which of the two remaining views does he adopt? A law in the person with effective status, or a law in the person without effective status?

I’ll read his language again: “A nazirite, even though he is prohibited with respect to wine, the wine is not prohibited to him; rather, the naziriteship depends on his body, for he says, ‘Behold, I am a nazirite,’ and consequently he becomes prohibited regarding wine, haircutting, and impurity.” Right? It depends on his body—meaning, once you say “Behold, I am a nazirite,” you turned yourself into a nazirite; a new effective status came upon you, you became a different person. Now you are a nazirite. And nazirites, the Torah prohibits wine, haircutting, and impurity to the dead.

Thus, for example, Avnei Milu’im claims that according to this understanding of the Rosh, a nazirite is a prohibition not equal for all. The Talmud in several places distinguishes between a prohibition equal for all and a prohibition not equal for all. For example, prohibitions on priests: the impurity prohibition of a priest is a prohibition not equal for all. So if they want to learn from the prohibition of priestly impurity to something else, they say: what about the prohibition of priestly impurity, which is not equal for all—not everyone is obligated in it. As opposed to pork, which everyone is forbidden to eat. Okay? The question is whether the prohibitions of naziriteship are equal for all or not.

The simple view is yes. Anyone who vows naziriteship becomes prohibited regarding wine, impurity, and haircutting. But Avnei Milu’im says that according to this Rosh, a nazirite is not a prohibition equal for all. Why? It speaks only about nazirites. Exactly. Once I vowed, I became a nazirite; it’s like a priest. True, it’s not by birth—I vowed it—but after I vowed, the vow does not prohibit the wine to me. The vow turns me into a nazirite. Consequently, when the Torah prohibits wine, it prohibits wine to nazirites. So I belong to that group regarding which the Torah prohibited wine. But if so, then it turns out that the prohibition of wine applies only to a certain group in the public, only to the group of nazirites. So that is a prohibition not equal for all.

By contrast, if I understood nazirite prohibition to be like a vow—that is, I vow, and consequently wine, haircutting, and impurity become prohibited to me—then in such a case anyone who vows becomes prohibited, and that would be a prohibition equal for all. Only if I become another kind of person, like a priest, can you say that only regarding that type did the Torah prohibit it.

Or in other words, let’s formulate it this way: what is the source of the prohibition of wine, impurity, and haircutting? Is this a prohibition the Torah prohibited, or is it a prohibition I took upon myself like a vow? Right—when I vow, I prohibit myself from this phone. Who is the source of the prohibition? Who created the prohibition? I did. The Torah introduced the novelty that I can create prohibitions that the Torah itself did not prohibit. If I create the prohibition, it is still a prohibition—that is the Torah’s novelty.

With wine, haircutting, and haircut—sorry, and impurity—of a nazirite, it is not of that kind. It is not a prohibition I created. All I did was turn myself into a nazirite. From that point onward, the Torah prohibited things to me, just as it prohibits eating pork, and prohibits nazirites to drink wine, and prohibits a priest to become impure through the dead. Okay? So this is basically a prohibition the Torah created, not a prohibition I created. Therefore, for example, according to this approach to a nazirite, you would not be able to make an analogy from it. Maybe you could make an analogy to the nazirite himself—“I am like him”—that would be analogy. But not to analogize from the wine—“this wine is like that wine”—that I can’t do.

See Maharit section 53. No, don’t see it, I’ll read it, it’s short: “A vow is a law in the object and has no connection to the person who vows. An oath is a prohibition in the person, but his body is not seized by it.” Hear that? A person-based prohibition without effective status. “And naziriteship—he himself is seized by the vow and his body becomes sanctified, similar to a priest, and consequently he becomes prohibited.” Meaning, he simply turned himself into a priest. You know the famous joke about the priest. A Jew comes to a rabbi and says, “Listen, I want to be a priest.” The rabbi says, “Look, that’s a problem, I don’t know… how much? A thousand dollars? I can’t explain, but it’s impossible, I can’t do it, even for a thousand dollars. Five thousand? Can’t. A hundred thousand? No, no, listen, it’s very simple. A million dollars? I still can’t.” He says, “Listen, Rabbi, my father was a priest, my grandfather was a priest—I also want to be a priest.” “Ah, if so, then for a million dollars maybe something can be done.”

Meaning, “his body becomes sanctified, similar to a priest, and consequently he becomes prohibited.” The nazirite becomes a priest.

The Rosh we saw earlier basically says that the effective status of prohibition takes hold on the nazirite. But the prohibitions of wine, haircutting, and impurity are prohibitions the Torah prohibits to nazirites. Simply speaking—and later authorities say this too—he apparently understands that Torah prohibitions are person-based prohibitions and not object-based prohibitions. Because there is an effective status of nazirite on the nazirite, but from that point onward he becomes a person to whom the Torah prohibits things, and the things the Torah prohibits are not object-based prohibitions, right? Because the Rosh says the effective status is an effective status on the person, the status of nazirite, but in the prohibitions themselves there is no effective status. Meaning, when he looks at the prohibitions—not the people—the prohibitions are person-based prohibitions. Torah prohibitions are person-based prohibitions.

On the other hand, in Atvun De’Oraita, in section 10, he discusses there too person-based and object-based prohibitions, and he brings that according to the Rosh—there is a long discussion there in Rosh where he brings Baal HaMaor and Raavad and several medieval authorities (Rishonim)—the Rosh says that it is preferable to slaughter for a sick person on the Sabbath rather than feed him carrion.

You know the—there is a long Rosh that discusses what happens when I have a sick person who needs to eat meat. Yes, the doctors say he needs to eat meat to recover and his life is in danger. Now I don’t have kosher meat. So I can do one of two things: either give him carrion, or slaughter an animal for him on the Sabbath, which is of course the prohibition of taking life. The question is what is preferable to do. There are disputes about this; many later and medieval authorities discuss it with all sorts of very interesting lines of reasoning, by the way, in all directions, but that’s another topic.

In any case, the Rosh claims that it is preferable to slaughter. Once I wrote on my website that this is a litmus test for laymen. If you ask a regular layman what is preferable, to slaughter or to eat pork, he will of course say: obviously to slaughter. Pork? Eat pork? Heaven forbid, impossible, you can’t eat pork, awful. If you can avoid that, then slaughter. Of course from the halakhic standpoint, slaughtering on the Sabbath is a prohibition punishable by stoning. Pork is lashes, a lighter prohibition, an ordinary prohibition. Okay? In terms of severity of prohibition, clearly it is preferable to eat carrion or eat pork than to slaughter. But in the taboo consciousness of the average Jew, it’s pork—he won’t eat pork in his life. Okay? Like those who won’t eat on Yom Kippur even though the doctor tells them to eat, because they are righteous and want to keep Yom Kippur. But there’s also “and live by them”; that too is a commandment.

At any rate, his claim is: why is it preferable to slaughter for the sick person on the Sabbath? Because carrion is an object-based prohibition, whereas the prohibition of Sabbath is a prohibition on the act of slaughtering, a person-based prohibition. And an object-based prohibition is more severe than a person-based prohibition. A bit like what the Nimukei Yosef said, that one does not feed a person something prohibited. That is the Rosh’s reasoning.

Now one might hesitate here, because the Rosh himself, as we saw earlier, apparently understands that Torah prohibitions are person-based prohibitions. So why does he say here that carrion is an object-based prohibition? Maybe because a sick person is allowed to eat? What do you mean, allowed? That is precisely the question we are discussing. Because he also has the option to slaughter, so he is not forced to eat the carrion. That’s exactly what we’re asking here.

The answer is the same distinction I made earlier. When we talk about whether Torah prohibitions are person-based or object-based, in what sense? In the sense of whether there is an effective prohibition on the thing—the answer is no, these are person-based prohibitions. Only in vows is there effective status. Fine? That is basically what the Rosh says about wine and impurity and so on regarding a nazirite.

Here what the Rosh says is not about whether there is an effective prohibition on carrion. There is no effective prohibition at all. Who imposed an effective prohibition on carrion? There’s nothing here; this is not a vow or something like that. Rather, carrion has an object-based prohibition in the sense that eating it dulls the soul. There is something in carrion that is the basis of the prohibition.

No, so he claims that slaughtering on the Sabbath is an act. But an object of prohibition is more severe. An act is just an act, it doesn’t do anything. Does it dull the soul? No. The claim is that “and you will be defiled by them” was said about prohibited foods, not about all transgressions, in the simple understanding. There are later authorities who want to claim this about all transgressions, but when the Sages derive it from “and you will be defiled by them”—written without an aleph—interpreting it as “your heart becomes dulled,” this refers to prohibited foods. Only where there is an object of prohibition.

So if I do a forbidden act on the Sabbath, there is only a problem with the act; there isn’t something essential there? Right. That’s the claim. Or at least, I don’t know, a different kind of problem. You damage worlds, I don’t know exactly what, but not that this dulls your soul. Yes, that’s the claim. Simply speaking, this applies only to prohibitions of eating.

Tosafot even writes this somewhere. Tosafot says that “the Holy One, blessed be He, does not bring a mishap through the animals of the righteous”—that’s what it says in the Talmud in several places—and therefore if a righteous person does something inadvertently and didn’t notice, the presumption is that no transgression will come from it. The Holy One, blessed be He, will make sure no transgression comes from it. Because “the Holy One, blessed be He, does not bring a mishap through the animals of the righteous.” Tosafot asks: there are places where we see that a transgression did come out of it, even though the righteous person didn’t intend it? Then he says that this is with prohibited foods. Prohibited foods are object-based prohibitions, and once there are object-based prohibitions—wait, how does it go there—there’s no way to turn it into not prohibited. Pork is pork. If you ate pork, then you ate pork.

But with person-based prohibitions, then the Holy One, blessed be He, can already maneuver, so to speak, regarding the significance of the matter—whether it will harm or count against me or not count against me. Yes, I don’t remember exactly now, I just remembered some Tosafot there about the righteous person. What? I didn’t understand Tosafot. If the righteous person committed the prohibition inadvertently, it’s only really a prohibition if it’s prohibited foods—is that what… With prohibited foods, then the Holy One, blessed be He—I don’t remember on which side Tosafot says it—but it seems to me that with prohibited foods the Holy One, blessed be He, makes sure the righteous person won’t stumble even inadvertently. Why? Because with prohibited foods, even if he stumbles inadvertently it will still dull his soul, because that’s the reality. With other prohibitions the Holy One, blessed be He, won’t ensure that. If it was inadvertent, then it was inadvertent; it’s not so terrible, nothing really happened to him from the standpoint of the transgression itself. He’ll bring an offering, do repentance, and everything will be fine. So here he does accept that with prohibited foods it doesn’t happen? Prohibited foods are a law in the object, and a law in the object in that sense, exactly, and then it dulls the soul. But only with prohibited foods does it dull the soul; that’s why I brought Tosafot, and not with the other things.

Okay, so that is basically this issue of object-based and person-based prohibitions. But I want to sharpen it more. I want to talk a little more and sharpen the meaning of a law in the object in its halakhic sense—not in the sense of whether it dulls the soul or not, but the question whether the prohibition is defined on the basis of some change in the world itself, or whether this is a pure norm. Okay? That is the sense I mean.

So I want to present this through a discussion of the concept of effective status. What is effective status? Okay? This concept is used a lot in yeshivot: there is an effective status, an effective status of a married woman, or an effective status of ownership. What does it mean that there is an effective status of betrothal or an effective status of a married woman? Does it just mean that she is a married woman, that the betrothal took effect, yes, that the legal status changed? Or is there some statement here beyond that?

I once heard that some teachers from Midrashiyat Noam went to speak with Rabbi Shagar. Afterwards someone told me—one of them told me—that Rabbi Shagar said that in hesder yeshivot they don’t understand what effective status is. They know how to say the term, but they don’t understand what the thing itself is. In the Haredi yeshivot somehow this is their mother tongue; they breathe the concept, they understand what it means. That’s what he claimed. And I—I don’t remember whether he said this or I added it, I no longer remember—that on the other hand, in the yeshiva world too, maybe they have become accustomed to the concept, but it’s not clear they know how to explain to me what it means. Meaning, they use it because yes, they think they understand. Stop them for a second and ask them: wait, what is the concept, what does it mean? They won’t know how to explain it.

And that’s an interesting point, because that doesn’t mean they don’t understand it. It means they’ve never thought about it, so they don’t know how to conceptualize what they understand. Sometimes you can use a concept without explicitly conceptualizing for yourself what it means, because you understand what it means and you use it. But if someone asks you, wait, stop—define it for me—not clear you’ll succeed. You need the ability to conceptualize things. That doesn’t mean you don’t understand. Only that you don’t know how to formulate what you understand. And it may be that you do understand, okay? Those two things do not contradict each other.

So I want to clarify a bit why it is really so complicated to understand the concept of effective status—or at least to conceptualize or define that understanding. And I really do think that in yeshivot, people who use the concept of effective status do understand it. But none of them, when you ask what it means, will know how to answer. They won’t know how to explain it. And I’ll try to show you what I think it means.

The Talmud discusses a slave whose bill of release is delayed. What is a slave whose bill of release is delayed? A Canaanite slave—there is a Hebrew slave and a Canaanite slave; we are speaking about a Canaanite slave. A Canaanite slave, if he is acquired by his master, then in the language of the later authorities this means the master has a property acquisition and a prohibition acquisition in the slave. Now if the master gives the slave a bill of release, then the slave becomes Jewish. Meaning, a slave is an intermediate state—and this may be a dispute between the Babylonian Talmud and the Jerusalem Talmud, as Rabbi Akiva Eiger claims—whether this is an upgraded gentile or a downgraded Jew, but never mind. He is halfway between Jew and gentile, or he has undergone half a conversion, and when you free him the conversion is completed and he becomes Jewish. He is obligated in commandments like a woman; it’s something in the middle. A woman, as is well known, is not completely Jewish, only half. That’s an ordinary slave.

Now what happens if the master declares the slave ownerless? After all, the slave is acquired to me: what the slave acquires, I acquire; what the slave does belongs to me. Okay, I declared the slave ownerless—he is ownerless. You’re on your own. So he is called a slave whose bill of release is delayed. What does that mean? He doesn’t go free, because a slave goes free only with a bill. If he didn’t receive a bill, he doesn’t go free. On the other hand, the rights I had in the slave have lapsed. I canceled them, I declared them ownerless. So I have no property rights in the slave, but the slave is still in the status of a slave, okay, until I give him a bill of release. When I give him a bill of release, then he becomes Jewish. Therefore he is called one whose bill of release is delayed. Meaning, for now, what is missing for him to be fully free is a bill of release, but in monetary terms he is ownerless.

Now the Talmud asks: does one whose bill of release is delayed have the fixed penalty payment, or does he not? Meaning, if my ox killed a slave, then I pay thirty silver pieces to his master. Fine, that is the Torah’s law. Since it is a fixed amount, it is a penalty payment. Fine, whenever the payment is a fixed amount, it is a penalty.

Now the Talmud says: what about one whose bill of release is delayed? A slave—an ox killed him. Does he have the penalty payment or not? “He shall give thirty silver pieces to his master,” says the Merciful One, and this one is not “his master.” He has no master; the master declared him ownerless. So to whom will you pay? You pay “to his master.” He has no master, the master declared him ownerless, so he has no penalty payment. Or perhaps, since he still lacks a bill of release, we still call him “his master.” In the end he is still delayed only for a bill of release; only if I give him a bill does he go free. So maybe even in that situation, despite the fact that I declared the rights ownerless, I am still considered his master. Okay? So that is the question whether he has or does not have the penalty payment.

The Talmud then says: come and hear. “If he knocked out his tooth and blinded his eye, he goes free through the tooth and he gives him the value of his eye.” If he damaged one of the twenty-four extremities, then the slave goes free, and if he blinded his eye, you damaged him, you have to pay the value of the eye.

The Talmud says: if you say he has the penalty payment, and the penalty payment goes to his master—now if someone else injured him, you give it to his master, but if his master himself injured him, would you give it to the slave himself? It’s talking about a case where his master knocked out his eye or tooth, so the master has to pay him the value of his eye. Now the Talmud says: I don’t understand. If an ox that gored him pays the side payment to his master—that was after all the question above in the Talmud, on the side that it goes to the master—then if the master himself injures him, should he pay the slave? But when others injure him, they give it to his master, so when the master himself injures the slave, he will have to pay the slave? There’s no logic in that.

Tosafot asks here: even though the work of his hands belongs to himself—despite the fact that the slave’s earnings actually belong to him himself—then why, if I injure the slave, should I pay his master? Who lost here? The one who lost is the slave, not the master. Tosafot says: since the penalty payment goes to the master, injury also goes to the master, because what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him partially? If, on the side that the thirty silver pieces for the slave, when the ox kills the slave, goes to the master—then what difference is there between killing all of him and killing half of him? Injuring the slave is like killing the slave. When you kill the slave it goes to his master, so when you injure the slave it also goes to his master. The Talmud says in several places: what difference is there between killing all of him and killing part of him? Killing half and killing all is the same thing, only a quantitative difference.

Now that really is strange. Why is it strange? Is that logical? Since he stands and gives to the master. Why is that logical? Because he can’t give it to the slave, so then don’t give it to anyone. The master didn’t lose anything—why are you giving it to the master? Throw it into the Dead Sea. Throw it into the Dead Sea. Ah, there is some connection between… what connection is there? Look, I declared him ownerless. Apparently not completely; you still have some right in… what do you mean not completely? Look, I declared him ownerless. So not completely. A slave whose bill of release is delayed—that’s it, he has no rights in him. No rights, but I don’t know, say there is a prohibition acquisition and no property acquisition… okay, so what does that mean? “Prohibition acquisition” is words. He isn’t mine; I am not his master.

I’ll say something more—a harder question. Pnei Yehoshua asks this here. He says: after all, the thirty paid for a slave is a penalty payment. What is a penalty payment? It’s a punitive payment. Yes, really, you pay the thirty for the slave not because someone needs compensation but because you need to be punished. So if your ox killed a slave, you have to pay because you need to be punished. There is no one to pay—the slave is dead—so give it to his master. The point is that you should pay, not that he should receive. So the fact that the thirty for the slave is given to the master is not because he is really his master, and not because he really lost anything—he lost nothing. But the money has to be given to someone, otherwise how will you pay? So you give it to his master.

How can you bring a proof from that—“what difference is there between killing all of him and killing half of him”—for injury? In injury the payment is not a penalty; in injury the payment is compensation. Whom do we compensate? The one who lost. More than that: when you injured the slave, the slave is still here, he exists, he’s alive. In the thirty for the slave, you killed him, so there’s no one to pay. Here there is someone to pay, and not only is there someone to pay, but the whole logic of the payment is to compensate the one who was harmed. Who was harmed? The slave. So what kind of reasoning is Tosafot’s: what difference is there between killing all of him and killing half of him? What connection is there between monetary compensation and a penalty payment? A penalty payment is a novelty of the Torah; the Torah innovated that you should give it to the master. Monetary law is not novelties; in monetary law you have to compensate the one who lost. Who lost here? The slave lost here, not the master.

So about this I once had a legal dispute with my maggid shiur in yeshivah. A legal dispute, yes, metaphorically. We had an argument. Pnei Yehoshua asks this question, and I claimed that what Pnei Yehoshua answers is what I’m about to tell you, and he didn’t agree. He didn’t agree with the reasoning itself. So we went to arbitration before one of the other teachers in the yeshivah. And to my maggid shiur’s credit, it should be said that he also presented my position. He was my defense attorney. He presented it better than I did. Meaning, he said this: he asks the other fellow, the judge, right? He asks him: why is this state of “one whose bill of release is delayed” called a prohibition acquisition? Why “acquisition”? What does that have to do with acquisition? He has a prohibitory status as long as he hasn’t received a bill. Why is it called an acquisition? In what sense does he still belong to the master? After all, the master declared him ownerless. Why is it called a prohibition acquisition? What is the literal meaning of the expression?

So my claim was—and he added this proof, but now he says what the explanation is, and here he brought in what I said, though he didn’t agree with it—what is the explanation? The claim is that even when the master declares the slave ownerless, he is still his master. The slave still belongs to him. He just has no rights he can derive from that ownership. But he is still the owner. You can call it ownership of the body even though none of the fruits belong to him. You can’t make any use of it, but it still belongs to you.

Think of a rented property, okay? Rented for life. Fine? I am owner of the property, of the apartment, and someone else lives in it. All rights of use are his. So in what sense am I the owner? I own the corpus even though all the fruits are really the tenant’s. The same thing here.

In short, the claim is that prohibition acquisition is really acquisition in the literal sense, not a metaphorical expression. The slave belongs to me as long as he has not received a bill of release, even though I declared ownerless all the monetary rights I had in the slave. What I declared ownerless, specifically with a slave—if I simply declare some object ownerless, I declared everything ownerless—but with a slave, a bill of release is needed to remove him from me. Without a bill of release, his body is acquired to me all the time, and if I declared him ownerless, I only declared the fruits ownerless. I can’t make any use of him, nothing he does belongs to me, but his body is mine. And then what? Therefore it is called a prohibition acquisition. The acquisition of the body remains even though the fruits have lapsed. The property acquisition is the fruits, and the prohibition acquisition is the body.

Now there is another novelty. That’s how I understood Pnei Yehoshua. Namely, there is a rule in tort law that you must compensate the owner of the damaged object. That is the rule. Usually the owner of the damaged object is the person who was harmed, right? Say I destroyed your chair. Who lost from it—the chair? You lost from it, right? Now you no longer have a chair; you have a broken chair. So usually the owner of the damaged object is in fact the injured party.

But here, you see, it’s not so. Who is the owner of the damaged object? The master, because the slave still belongs to him. Who was actually harmed by what I did to the slave? The slave. But the rule is that you do not pay the injured party; you pay the owner of the damaged object. And with the slave, that’s the practical difference. You pay his master because he is the owner, even though he was not the one harmed. The valuation is done to determine payment—you assess the slave, how much damage you did—but after you make the assessment and conclude it should be, I don’t know, ten thousand shekels, those ten thousand shekels are paid to his master, because he is the master. That is Pnei Yehoshua’s claim.

I think otherwise I don’t see how one can understand Tosafot here. That’s what he says. He says that from the laws of the penalty payment what do we learn? After all it says “thirty silver pieces he shall give to his master.” And if you say that for one whose bill of release is delayed, I pay to his master, what does that mean? That he really is his master. So what difference is there between all of him and part of him? Then when I injure him too, after all the rule is that I must pay the owner of the damaged object. From the law of the penalty payment I learn that the owner of the slave is the master, not the slave himself. So from tort law as well, I must pay the injury compensation to his master.

I understand the idea of the penalty payment—that you need to pay someone because he is the owner—but in the case of compensation, in the end you harmed the slave. Say he can’t… the one who lost is the slave. Right, he lost, he can’t work and then… But you have to pay the owner of the damaged object, not the one who was harmed. I understand that with a penalty payment, but with money… No, in damages. Say the amount of the days he worked—he didn’t get the money and you pay the owner. Right. My claim is that tort payments are not to compensate the injured party. They are an obligation to pay whom? The owner of the damaged object. Usually that’s the same thing; usually the owner of the damaged object is also the one really harmed. And here you see the practical difference, that it is not.

And one more thing. Say yes, then basically you see that prohibition acquisition is really acquisition. Property acquisition is only the rights. Right. Say there is no ownership in a property acquisition without a prohibition acquisition. I have ownership over the fruits or the corpus for fruits. You have no ownership over the body. Okay.

So the claim basically—why am I bringing this Talmudic passage? Because what we see here is that when I say I own something, in this case the slave, there is something more here than just saying I have a collection of rights in the slave. Right? It’s not just saying that I own the slave; that’s not merely a shorthand for saying that what he says belongs to me and no one else may use him—shorthand for all those laws—that’s what it means that I own the slave. No. “I own the slave” is a metaphysical state. There is a bond between me and the slave.

Usually that also has implications: as a result of that bond, I have rights. And others may not use him without my permission. But even if I canceled the implications, the reality of ownership can still remain in existence. Or in other words, to say that I own something is not simply to say I have a collection of rights in the thing, but to say that there is a metaphysical bond between me and the thing. And this has the implication that I have rights in the thing. Those are implications of my being the owner. They are not the meaning of the statement that I am the owner. And that is what I call effective status.

When I say there is an effective status of ownership that I have over the slave, that means I imposed upon the slave an effective status of ownership. So now I am his owner. Usually, once there is an effective status of my ownership on him, I can use all the rights. If I declared the rights ownerless, then I cannot use the rights, but the effective status remains in place until I give him a bill, which dispels the effective status. But if not, the effective status is still there.

So there is a difference between saying that the woman is betrothed to me and saying that there is an effective status of betrothal on her. Usually when you say there is an effective status of betrothal on her, there is an implication that she is also betrothed with all the laws that result from that. But to say there is a collection of laws—that doesn’t tell the whole story. There is an effective status, and as a result of the existence of that effective status, there are implications.

I’ll give you an example. Rogatchover in Bava Kamma on page 17—there are collected writings of Rogatchover arranged by tractates—so in Bava Kamma page 17, Rogatchover brings two implications of this claim, that ownership is not just a collection of rights.

One implication: we discussed this inquiry last semester. We discussed the inquiry into why a person whose property caused damage has to pay. Is it because he was negligent in guarding it, or does the very fact that his property caused damage obligate me to pay? Rogatchover says: if it’s not because of my negligence in guarding it, then why indeed should I pay? So what if my property caused damage—why should I have to pay because of that? If it’s negligence in guarding, I understand. You were negligent in guarding—bear the consequences, pay. If it’s not negligence in guarding, but the very fact that his property caused damage obligates me to pay, why? Answer: because my property and I are one. My property is like my body.

If my hand caused damage, do I have to pay? Why? Is my hand me? Not at all. My hand is my body. I am the soul. The soul activates the body, works with the body, but the body is a kind of periphery of the self; it is not the self in the real sense. So too my property is a periphery of the self, just a more distant periphery. Therefore a person who causes damage, for example, is liable even in unavoidable circumstances, if he caused damage with his body. But if his property caused damage and it was in unavoidable circumstances, then he is exempt. Why? Because that is a more distant periphery. The closer, more intimate periphery—my body—there, even in unavoidable circumstances I have to pay. In the end I did it. My property too—I have to pay because I did it. “I” meaning my property, which is my periphery. But there, since the periphery is more distant, once it was unavoidable circumstances, then in effect the property did not act on my behalf, it was beyond my control, so it is not considered my extended hand. It is not considered that I did it, and therefore I do not have to pay.

So there are degrees of periphery? Yes, from here to there, yes. I’m saying his body is the most intimate periphery, his property is the second periphery. Say, his wife and child and slave—“their injury is bad,” as the Talmud says in Bava Kamma, because you are not liable for what they do. But still, for example, “we split the testimony,” so we see that a person has regarding his wife—his wife is like his own body. That too is some kind of periphery. We also split testimony regarding property, in tractate Sanhedrin page 9. Even though according to Raavad, we split testimony only between a person and himself, not, for example, regarding relatives. But regarding his property we do, as it says there in the Talmud. And regarding his wife there is also a first thought that maybe we would do it; I forgot the conclusion there. Why? Because his property and his wife are some kind of periphery of himself—it is really self.

The second implication that Rogatchover brings is regarding the resting of one’s animal. On the Sabbath there are the thirty-nine primary categories of labor. There is a prohibition of driving an animal. What is that? When you perform labor through the animal. For example, I plow using the animal, then I violate the prohibition of driving an animal. Okay? I didn’t plow myself but through an animal.

What is the resting of one’s animal? For most views, the resting of one’s animal is not like driving an animal. It is something else—when the animal itself does a prohibited labor. Say my animal carries something out from a private domain to a public domain—I violate a Torah prohibition. Not for me, not related to me, I wasn’t there at all. If my animal carried something from a private domain to a public domain, I violated a Torah prohibition. It says “so that your ox and your donkey may rest,” and “rest” there means not perform labor. So if the ox performs labor on the Sabbath, I violated a Torah prohibition. Not stoning—it is not the ordinary labor prohibition—but another Torah prohibition: the prohibition of the resting of one’s animal.

Now for example, the Talmud says: what if the ox is licking grass? Is it harvesting on the Sabbath? Did I violate a Torah prohibition? The Talmud says no—this is its normal way; it does that for its own sustenance, it wants to live, it needs to eat. What it does for itself is not considered. But if it does an action it does not need in order to live, and it is Sabbath desecration—if a Jew did it, it would be Sabbath desecration—then I too have violated a Torah prohibition. No, a Torah prohibition—perhaps lashes, I don’t know whether there are lashes there because it lacks an act on my part, so maybe there won’t be lashes. But it is a Torah prohibition.

If it’s unavoidable circumstances, maybe it’s unavoidable circumstances, but you have to guard it. Why unavoidable circumstances? Guard it so it won’t do it—what do you mean? That’s exactly the point: you must guard it. “So that your ox may rest”—you must make sure it rests. It doesn’t know how to observe the Sabbath; you have to make sure it keeps Sabbath.

So what comes out, yes—you know the story about the donkey of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair, right? He sold it and it wasn’t willing to work on the Sabbath, and the gentile came and complained: you sold me a donkey that won’t work. So he reassured the donkey, said: don’t worry, I sold you, you’re no longer mine, you can work on the Sabbath. And as long as it was his, it couldn’t work on the Sabbath because of the resting of one’s animal. Okay?

Again the question arises: why? Are donkeys commanded in Sabbath laws? Do donkeys need to keep the Sabbath? Why, if my donkey does labor, do I violate a prohibition? So what is the depth of it? It’s the same thing, because if my donkey did labor, that is like my body did labor. A certain periphery of mine did labor.

Now you understand that whether this donkey is mine or not mine is what determines whether I violated a Torah prohibition. But mine or not mine—that’s civil law. What does that have to do with Sabbath prohibitions? Because in “mine” or “not mine,” the civil-law element is the rights. But what is the basis? Why do I have rights in this ox or this donkey? Because there is a metaphysical bond between me and it. When I say it is mine, that there is an effective status of my ownership on it, that means there is a metaphysical bond between me and it. And that bond, beyond its monetary implications—that it gives me monetary rights in the thing—also has prohibitory implications. For example, this donkey must rest, because if it does not rest, then some periphery of mine did not rest on the Sabbath.

And that is also why when it causes damage I have to pay. What does that have to do with the rights I have in it? If it’s negligence in guarding, again, then fine—I failed in guarding, I have to pay. If it’s not negligence in guarding, but the very fact that it caused damage obligates me to pay, why? Because it is as though I caused the damage. And the understanding is that a person’s property stands in some metaphysical bond with the person himself, and the legal monetary implications are only the result of the matter. When I say I own something, that is not just saying I have rights in the thing. The fact that I have rights in the thing is a result of the fact that I own it; it is not the meaning of the fact that I own it. Because the meaning has other meanings too. Okay? That’s really the point.

And my claim is that to say I have an effective status of ownership on the thing is a metaphysical statement—that there is a metaphysical bond between me and the thing. The implication of this is all the laws that appear in civil law.

Yes, it reminds me—there are claims, just as something I remembered, since I can’t get into the next section because it’s already too long, so I’ll finish with an anecdote. There are claims that cast doubt on whether acceptance of commandments is needed in conversion. You need circumcision, immersion, and presentation of blood and an offering; besides that you also need acceptance of commandments. Now the Talmud says that the Jewish people entered the covenant through three things: circumcision, immersion, and presentation of blood around Mount Sinai. Okay? Where is acceptance of commandments? Acceptance of commandments was at Mount Sinai of course, but it is not presented as one of the parameters that have to exist in the conversion process.

And there are people who want to claim that really this myth that acceptance of commandments is part of the conversion process is a myth, it’s not true. Look, the Shulchan Arukh does not mention it at all. It mentions circumcision, immersion, and presentation of blood—which does not apply today because there is no offering—but circumcision and immersion, and for women only immersion. It doesn’t say acceptance of commandments is needed, because it is not mentioned in the Shulchan Arukh.

Now that is absurd; clearly it isn’t true. Without acceptance of commandments it is worth nothing, the entire conversion is worth nothing. Obviously. It is invalid—not that it is worth nothing because it has no… no, it is simply not a conversion. He did not convert; he is a gentile. A gentile who went through the whole process but did not accept commandments is a gentile.

There may be room to distinguish on the question whether there must be an act of verbal acceptance of commandments as part of the conversion process. That is another question. That can be discussed, and apparently not. But does he need to intend in his heart to accept commandments as part of the conversion process? Certainly yes.

So why doesn’t it appear in the Shulchan Arukh? The answer I gave—and I once wrote an article about this that caused a bit of an uproar—there was some turmoil around the conversions of the state conversion system, where the judge from Ashdod said that they were all wicked and therefore all those conversions were invalid and so on; there was a whole story there. I actually joined his view—not because they were wicked, but because there was no acceptance of commandments. And a conversion without acceptance of commandments is not a conversion.

Then the arguments started: but wait, it’s not mentioned in the Shulchan Arukh. I told them: check the Shulchan Arukh in the laws of acquisitions. Does it say there that you need to intend to acquire? It says you need to lift, lower, pull, give money, possession, document—all sorts of things like that. Where does it say you need to intend to acquire? But that is certainly a clear law. If you did not intend to acquire, you did not acquire. The Talmud in Bava Metzia: if you were standing beside the courtyard and did not intend to acquire, he does not acquire. Only if he intended to acquire. Even if the object is in my courtyard and my courtyard acquires for me. Why? So why isn’t that mentioned?

The answer is because to acquire—the meaning of the concept—is to want to acquire. That is what acquiring means. The Shulchan Arukh doesn’t tell you that you have to want. You don’t have to want; don’t want. If you don’t want, you didn’t acquire. The Shulchan Arukh tells you: look, if you want to acquire, this is what you have to do in order to realize your will. So it won’t tell you that you need to want to acquire. That would be ridiculous. The Shulchan Arukh speaks to someone who wants to acquire. It tells him how to realize that will. So you don’t need the Shulchan Arukh to mention that one needs to want to acquire. The Shulchan Arukh addresses those people who want to acquire, and tells them how to actualize their will.

Exactly the same in conversion. Conversion means acceptance of commandments. That is the meaning of the concept—acceptance of commandments. Now you want to accept commandments upon yourself, to enter the covenant? How do you do that? Circumcision, immersion, and presentation of blood. You don’t want to? Fine, you don’t have to. No one is obligated to want or to accept commandments. But one who wants to accept commandments must do it in this way. So it does not need to be written in the Shulchan Arukh that one must accept commandments. The Shulchan Arukh speaks to one who wants to accept commandments and tells him how to do it. Whoever does not want to accept commandments, health to him, no problem—let him remain a gentile. It is not a condition in conversion; it is the essence of conversion. The essence of conversion is acceptance of commandments. And the rules, the technique of how you do it, are simply how to actualize it in practice. Exactly like in acquisition. The essence of acquisition is wanting to acquire. The technique of how to actualize it is detailed in the Shulchan Arukh.

How did I remember that? Right—also in acquisition, the Shulchan Arukh won’t say that I have a bond to this thing, a metaphysical bond. Why? Because that is the concept of acquisition; it doesn’t need to say that. In the Shulchan Arukh what appears are the implications. If I have a metaphysical bond, there are implications: I have such-and-such rights, and others may not use it without my permission, and all sorts of things like that. But it won’t say there that I have a metaphysical bond. Because that is the meaning of the concept acquisition. When they speak about the laws of acquisition, they are talking about what the laws are for a person who has an acquisition in a thing. But what the concept of acquisition is—that is not defined in the laws of acquisition. Someone who understands what acquisition is understands that acquisition is that. I think that’s why I remembered this anecdote.

Okay, I’ll stop here because the next section will already require more time from me. I’ll stop here.