The Golden Chapter: Money and Monetary Acquisition – Lesson 1

Table of Contents

• Opening of the lecture and conduct at the institute
• Attendance clock and stipend
• Recordings, Moodle, and supplementary materials
• The purpose of studying the “Golden Chapter” and a conceptual introduction
• Using a historical description as a model and not as fact
• Barter, its dead ends, and the invention of money
• Money as convention, coinage, and “a coin whose form is destined to be nullified”
• A philosophical analogy: name versus description, and its implications for the value of money
• Value, quantification, and an absolute unit of measurement
• The shift to digital records and money as measurement alone
• Bitcoin as a commodity and not as a conventional currency
• The need for legal regulation: ownership, debt, and consideration
• Ownership versus rights of use, and the shift from morality to law
• One delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, prohibition-based ownership, and a novel idea about compensation for injury
• Ownership as a meta-legal bond: the Sabbath rest of one’s animal and damages caused by one’s property
• The ten exiles to which the Sanhedrin was exiled

Summary

General Overview

The text opens with administrative remarks for a lecture at the institute on the “Golden Chapter,” emphasizing attendance, recordings, and supplementary materials, and then moves into a conceptual introduction that tries to define money, value, exchange, and acquisition through a developmental description that is not meant as a binding historical account. It argues that barter gets stuck, and therefore money was created as an agreed medium of exchange that enables trade, and that money is a concretization of the abstract concept of value, having no intrinsic use but only value set by agreement. Out of the legal regulation required once money appears, concepts such as ownership and acquisition emerge, and the speaker stresses that ownership is not identical to rights of use, bringing halakhic and conceptual examples for this. At the end, a saying from the Talmud in tractate Rosh Hashanah is cited about the ten exiles to which the Sanhedrin was exiled and that in the future redemption will come from there.

Opening of the lecture and conduct at the institute

The lecturer says that the lecture is not intended for Zoom, though anyone who wants can join. He clarifies that the course is intended for students and that every student is supposed to be assigned to a rabbi-teacher whom they can meet in the study hall for problems, comments, and advice, and he asks anyone assigned to him to come for an initial meeting. He emphasizes that one can also turn to another rabbi-teacher, and that they can contact him as well by WhatsApp, email, or in person.

Attendance clock and stipend

The lecturer says that students need to arrange a number for the attendance clock in the office so that their attendance hours will be counted, and that the stipend depends on attendance, with a required minimum, and at the end of the semester they calculate everything. He describes common malfunctions with the clock and asks students to keep track, note irregularities, and submit a correction form at the end of the semester. He says they do accept corrections, but they have to be submitted in order not to lose the stipend.

Recordings, Moodle, and supplementary materials

The lecturer records the lecture and says the recordings will be uploaded to the course’s Lamda/Moodle, and also to his website for those who are not comfortable with Moodle. He says he will also upload written summaries and preparation sheets to Lamda for those who want to study around the topic, and notes that there is also a site called “HaHatzaa LaSeder” for guided study parallel to what they will do here. He emphasizes that the recordings are meant for review or for someone who was unable to come, and that in principle participants are supposed to attend in person.

The purpose of studying the “Golden Chapter” and a conceptual introduction

The lecturer presents the “Golden Chapter” as dealing mainly with the laws of overcharging, monetary exploitation and verbal exploitation, fairness in commerce, and monetary relations between people, and notes that the next chapter deals with the prohibitions of interest, and that the two chapters together describe financial conduct between people. He says that in the first part of the chapter there are discussions that require defining basic concepts such as money and monetary equivalent, acquisition through money versus acquisition through exchange, what acquisition is בכלל, and what the difference is between a loan, a sale, and barter. He presents these introductions as a foundation that explains why the laws sometimes look like a disconnected collection, and argues that defining the concepts will organize and clarify many topics.

Using a historical description as a model and not as fact

The lecturer says he will use a historical description of the development of transactions and acquisitions, but he is not a historian and does not claim factual precision. He says that his claim is that this is how things “must have been” in order to expose their meaning today, and he gives ample disclaimer in case of inaccuracies.

Barter, its dead ends, and the invention of money

The lecturer describes an initial situation in which people directly exchange objects according to needs, without legal concepts such as acquisition, ownership, the moment of purchase, or formalization, and in which there is no defined difference between ownership and a right of use. He argues that barter can hardly function in a complex commercial world because it requires a double coincidence of wants and products, and therefore “the world of commerce is stuck,” and as life becomes more sophisticated, the deadlock gets worse. He describes the solution as the invention of money as a readily accepted and agreed medium that enables one to buy from anyone holding merchandise without having to search for someone who specifically needs what you have, and he presents this as a brilliant invention that removes barriers and lubricates the processes of trade.

Money as convention, coinage, and “a coin whose form is destined to be nullified”

The lecturer defines conventional money as something that has no intrinsic use, and whose value is not derived from use or from supply and demand of a commodity, but from the decree of a king or government. He says that the king can cancel one currency and issue another, and therefore a person can remain with nothing when the value of the currency is nullified. He points to the replacement of currencies after revolutions and to the Bar Kokhba coins as an expression of the fact that a coin draws its power from the sovereignty that minted it. He cites the Talmudic phrase, “a coin that has a form, and that form is destined to be nullified,” and explains that the form is the expression of the agreement stamped by the king, from which the value of the coin is derived.

A philosophical analogy: name versus description, and its implications for the value of money

The lecturer brings Bertrand Russell’s distinction between pointing by means of a name and pointing by means of a description, and explains that a name is an arbitrary conventional designation, whereas a description depends on facts. He applies this to religious language when he says that “God” is a description, whereas the Tetragrammaton is a name that does not describe a property and is therefore called the proper name. He compares money to a name in the sense that its value depends on convention, whereas the value of merchandise depends on properties and on market reality.

Value, quantification, and an absolute unit of measurement

The lecturer argues that money is the objectification of an abstract concept called value, and that in a barter world value is perceived as relational between objects, without an “absolute” attribution to each object. He explains that once a unit of value such as a shekel is created, one can say that a tomato “is worth two shekels” and a table “is worth five hundred shekels,” and from that the exchange ratio between them is derived, whereas previously the exchange ratio itself was primary. He compares this to measuring length, and explains that when a unit like a cubit becomes a defined unit “like a meter,” there arises a demand for precise measurement and for discussions such as Rabbi Chaim Naeh and the Chazon Ish. He argues that the criticism of “millimeters” in Jewish law is mistaken, because once the unit is absolute, one must measure that way.

The shift to digital records and money as measurement alone

The lecturer says that after the concept of value was concretized through money, one can give up the physical coin and work with records such as banks and credit cards, because the money-object itself has no significance, only the purchasing power it measures. He distinguishes between two uses of the term “money”: as an object that is handed over as consideration in a transaction, and as a unit of measurement of value even without a transaction. He says that the modern process cancels the first use and leaves money primarily as a measure of value.

Bitcoin as a commodity and not as a conventional currency

The lecturer describes digital currency as a concept in which value creation depends on the difficulty of mining through solving puzzles and computational power, and therefore its value behaves like supply and demand for a commodity. He says that Bitcoin resembles money in that there is no tangible object one can point to, but it is “closer to a commodity” than to money, because it does not rest on sovereign agreement but on scarcity and cost of production.

The need for legal regulation: ownership, debt, and consideration

The lecturer argues that the invention of money improved commerce but complicated economic thought and created a need for legal regulations such as the moment of acquisition, taking possession of merchandise versus money, questions of debt, and changes in the value of money. He presents an asymmetry between merchandise and money and raises the possibility that debt and sale proceeds are “ownership of value” rather than ownership of a particular bill, and he emphasizes that the debtor can spend his money without this being considered theft, even though he is still not acting properly, because “repayment of a debt is a commandment.”

Ownership versus rights of use, and the shift from morality to law

The lecturer describes how, in the earlier situation, taking an object is primarily a moral violation of another person’s right of use, whereas in the legal world there emerges the claim “this is mine,” which establishes a prohibition of theft even when there is no injury to use. He illustrates this through the category of “this one benefits and that one does not lose,” as a moral framework that is not identical to the legal prohibition. He argues that the concept of ownership became detached from rights of use, and that one can be an owner without having a right of use.

One delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, prohibition-based ownership, and a novel idea about compensation for injury

The lecturer brings tractate Gittin 42, describing one delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation as a slave whom the master has abandoned in monetary terms but has not given a bill of emancipation, and notes that compensation for injury goes to the master. He brings Tosafot, which compares “killing him entirely” to “killing half of him,” and the question of the Pnei Yehoshua that injury is monetary compensation for the victim, so ostensibly it should go to the slave and not to the master. He proposes a thesis according to which compensation for injury is given to the owner of the damaged object, even if that owner is not the one who enjoys the rights of use, and connects this to understanding “prohibition-based ownership” as a bond in the slave’s very person that remains without rights of use until the bill of emancipation is given.

Ownership as a meta-legal bond: the Sabbath rest of one’s animal and damages caused by one’s property

The lecturer cites the Rogatchover on tractate Bava Kamma 17 and brings the example of the Sabbath rest of one’s animal in order to show that ownership creates a bond in which one’s property is a “periphery” of the person, and therefore the Sabbath desecration of one’s animal is considered, in a binding sense, the owner’s Sabbath desecration. He parallels this to the question of liability for damages caused by one’s property and presents an inquiry whether the obligation is only because of negligence in guarding, or because of the very fact that “my property caused damage,” while distinguishing that in a case of unavoidable accident the severing of the bond exempts one from liability. He concludes with a note about the dispute between Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai regarding the Sabbath rest of utensils as related to this point.

The ten exiles to which the Sanhedrin was exiled

The text cites a Talmudic passage in tractate Rosh Hashanah 31a: “The Sanhedrin went into exile ten times: from the Chamber of Hewn Stone to the shop area, and from the shop area to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Yavneh, and from Yavneh to Usha, and from Usha to Yavneh, and from Yavneh to Usha, and from Usha to Shefar’am, and from Shefar’am to Beit She’arim, and from there to Tzippori, and from there to Tiberias. And Tiberias is the deepest of them all, as it is said: ‘And brought low, you shall speak from the earth.’ Rabbi Yohanan said: And from there they are destined to be redeemed, as it is said: ‘Shake yourself from the dust, arise, sit enthroned, Jerusalem.’”

Okay, I see there are people joining us on Zoom. In principle this class isn’t meant for Zoom, but whoever wants to join, fine, health and happiness. Okay, we’re going to study the Golden Chapter, or more precisely, topics from the Golden Chapter. We’ll see how much we manage to cover and how far we get. First of all, a little about the format. Maybe before the format, a bit about how things work here at the institute, for those who are new and don’t know. So every student — mainly the students, yes, this is only for students — each one of you is supposed to have a faculty mentor. You’re supposed to get a message from the office telling you who the mentor is that you work with. Usually it’ll be someone whose class you’re taking, but not always. In other words, it’s at least as important that you have an overlapping hour with him when he’s sitting in the study hall, so you can catch him if something comes up, if you need something, to talk, and so on. So everyone should make sure to check who the mentor is that they’re working with. If for someone that’s me, I ask you to come over to me for an initial meeting. In principle, anything that comes up — problems, comments, just wanting to talk, consult, whatever — you can go to the mentor assigned to you, or to anyone else as well. Meaning, that’s just the default. As far as I’m concerned, everyone is of course welcome, including those who aren’t in the group officially defined as mine. You’re welcome to come over about any issue, also on WhatsApp, by email, physically in the study hall, gladly — so feel free. About the clock too: whoever still hasn’t arranged it should get a number for the clock at the office so your hours of attendance will be counted. In the end the scholarship depends on attendance; there’s a minimum attendance required in order to receive a scholarship. At the end of the semester they do the accounting. Now there are always problems with the clock — sometimes people forget to scan their finger, sometimes they scan and it doesn’t register. There can be all kinds of issues. It’s worth keeping an eye on it every few days to see what’s going on. If you see some problem, write it down so you’ll remember. Say, on Monday I was here for three hours, I forgot to scan my finger at the end, or it didn’t register the scan at the end. At the end of the semester collect everything you wrote down and submit a correction form. They accept it, nobody suspects anyone of lying and so on, but you have to make the correction because otherwise you simply won’t get the scholarship. So that’s an important point worth paying attention to in your day-to-day conduct. That’s more or less about the institute. In every class — as you can see, I record the class. The recording will go up on Moodle — or Lamda, as it’s called now — on the course page there; it’s defined as a course there, and also on my website for whoever wants. Or for someone who isn’t a student, maybe it’s more convenient to see it not on Moodle but on the website, so you can see it on the site, in the Golden Chapter series. Beyond that, on Lamda I’ll also upload summaries of the classes, written summaries of the classes, and also source sheets for whoever wants to study around the class. I don’t assume that people study around it; that’s a limitation that unfortunately exists here. Really there should be some dedicated study session around the class, but not everyone manages that. So I can’t assume that everyone does it. Whoever does — blessings upon him. So I’ll upload preparation sheets to the Moodle site so that whoever wants to study around the class can use them and study from them. There’s also the “proposal for the seder” site, which is guided independent study. Whoever isn’t participating in the course here and wants guided study in seder, that also exists on the Golden Chapter; it parallels what we’ll be doing here. So you can see that too on the Moodle page for the proposal for the seder. Okay? So I’ll upload the preparation sheets there, I’ll upload the class summaries there, and I upload the class recordings there. Now in principle, whoever participates is supposed to be present. Meaning, you need to show up here. The recordings are intended either for someone who wants to listen again, or for someone who couldn’t come for reasons beyond his control. Okay, so that’s the basic idea.

All right, so we’re dealing with the Golden Chapter. The Golden Chapter in principle mainly deals with the Jewish laws of overcharging, but also verbal mistreatment, fairness in commerce, and things like that. But beyond the instructions for how to conduct commerce, we need to understand — yes, in the next chapter it’s the prohibitions of interest, so all in all these two chapters more or less speak to us about monetary relations between people, how relations between people are conducted through money. But the first part of the chapter contains discussions that are connected, directly or indirectly, to defining basic concepts. When we want to talk about how to conduct trade, how to make transactions, and so on, we need to define what trade is and what transactions are; define the concepts. Now these concepts are usually tied at the navel to the question of what money is, what something equivalent to money is, what the difference is between them, what acquisition by money is as opposed to barter acquisition, for example — or in general, what acquisition is at all. What is a loan as opposed to a sale? How do you define this transaction called a loan as opposed to a sale, as opposed to barter, as opposed to other acquisitions? These introductions — that’s what I’m going to deal with in the first meetings. I’m simply going to try to define the concepts.

Now, in my view, I think this is maybe the most important topic in the whole chapter. After that you already get into specific questions, each passage and what it deals with. But these introductions, I think, shed a very broad and very foundational light on how the economic and commercial world works, which is the infrastructure for the Jewish laws that deal with that world. But as you’ll see, the Jewish laws that deal with that world derive directly from the definition of basic concepts. And I think that many times people don’t deal with the definition of the basic concepts, and therefore dealing with Jewish law looks like a kind of collection of disconnected items, where the underlying logic at its base isn’t entirely clear. And you’ll see — I hope you’ll see — that after we define the basic concepts, a lot of things will simply fall into place and you’ll immediately understand why this is so and why that is so, and things will look, I think, more ordered and much clearer. Therefore, in the first classes, as I said, I’ll give conceptual introductions. From those conceptual introductions I’ll also use some sources from the chapter, but in general this is a broader overview, and there too, in the preparation sheet, I give you less in the way of study guidance for what to learn before class, because the class deals with a lot of abstract matters. There’s no point in bringing sources and asking you guiding questions and so on. It’s not a specific passage where I can tell you: learn it and think about questions A, B, and C. Okay? It’s a general introduction. So therefore the first sheet, for example, which I’ll upload today, basically tells you to run through the first pages of the chapter and I’ll accompany that with the introductory classes. And after we finish that, we can start going into more and more specific passages.

Okay. One final note before I begin: I’m going to use a historical description of how transactions came into being, acquisitions, what money is, barter. I’m not a historian and I’m not committing myself to the claim that this is how it actually happened. What I claim is that this is how it should have been, had to have been. In other words, I’m using history only to show from within it the meaning of things as they are today. I’m not committing myself — I haven’t done archaeological digs and I have no idea what really happened there. What I assume is that it wasn’t very far from what I’m going to describe, but I’m saying this in advance: if there’s someone here who knows history and catches me on an inaccuracy, then I’ve already issued my advance disclaimer. Okay? I’m not a historian, this is not a history class even though it’s phrased in historical language. I’m trying to show how things developed because essentially they developed that way. Meaning, it doesn’t matter right now whether in practice that’s what happened; behind the scenes, it seems to me that this is basically what was there.

All right, so let’s begin — not with the younger to the smaller, I’ll start and then continue. Okay? In the most primitive, earliest state, people had certain things and they used them. And they would exchange things for things. If you have tomatoes and the other person has chairs, he wants tomatoes, you want chairs — you exchange. Okay? So that’s basically a state of barter. I’m not even calling it barter acquisition yet. Barter acquisition will appear later. At this stage I’m not yet talking about the concept of acquisition; there is no such thing as acquisition at all. Acquisition is a legal concept. And back then life was natural life: fine, you needed chairs, he needed tomatoes, you take and exchange, nobody defined from when you acquire, in what manner you acquire, what it even means to acquire, what it means to be an owner. All these legal definitions are more sophisticated phenomena that arrive at a later stage. At the initial stage we make transactions — not transactions in the legal sense, but I want tomatoes, you want chairs, we exchange. Here, take the chairs, I’ll take the tomatoes, and everything is fine. Okay? I wouldn’t even define that as barter acquisition. Later, the concept of barter will become a legal acquisition. After the concept of acquisition comes into being, they’ll take the earlier concept of barter and turn it into barter acquisition. Now it too becomes an acquisition — although it will preserve characteristics of primitive transactions. We’ll see all this later; all these things have direct halakhic implications.

At that point, for example, there also wasn’t a distinction between an act of acquisition or ownership and the right to use. If it’s with you, you use it. If it’s not with you, you don’t use it. There’s no question of who the owner is, some formal definition, whether you register it in the land registry, all kinds of legal proceedings, formalization of economic relations between people. Rather, the whole business was simple and natural. You needed something, you took it, you gave, you used, you went, you came — there’s no legal regulation of the commercial world. So how did we nevertheless manage to complicate life so much and get to what we know today? The root of the matter — and it’s really a very important point that’s easy to understand, most of you understand it — is that barter can’t work. It can’t work. Why? Or at least it’s very hard to operate with barter.

Suppose I have chairs and I want tomatoes. In order to get tomatoes, I need to find someone who has tomatoes and needs chairs, right? So I give him the chairs and he gives me tomatoes in exchange. What are the chances of finding someone who just happens to have tomatoes and also just happens to need chairs? Why would I find someone like that? Maybe by chance I will, but it’s very difficult. I need to start searching in the market, advertising in the paper: does anyone have tomatoes and want chairs? Okay — it’s not practical. You can’t function that way. The commercial world gets stuck. The commercial world gets stuck. Now, since in ancient times there were very few products, only the basic things you needed, most of which you produced for yourself, and only a small number of things you needed to get from someone else, it wasn’t so terrible. As life becomes more sophisticated, more things are invented, more goods come into being, people have more needs, then the commercial world becomes more necessary, and the deadlock in barter becomes more burdensome. So now what do I do? I also need tomatoes, chairs, cucumbers, onions, tables, carpets, and books. Okay? Already a lot of things. For each of them I need to find someone who has books and needs tomatoes, someone who has chairs and needs tables, someone who has… You can’t function like that. You simply can’t. The commercial world is stuck.

And what people do in such a situation — what they did in such a situation, and again I’m saying this is a historical description but I’m not committing myself to its historical factuality — they invented money. Yes, whatever, some kind of medium that circulates, what the Talmud calls a thing that “goes out in payment.” Meaning, something that circulates in commerce, something available, easy to use, that everybody has. In some periods it could have been salt. In other periods it could have been other things, that’s not important right now. At some stage this was formalized as money, silver coins. What is the role of silver coins? The moment we have money in the market, all the barriers I described earlier are released. Why? Because when I want tomatoes and I have chairs, I don’t need to look for someone who has tomatoes and needs chairs. It’s enough that he has tomatoes. As soon as he has tomatoes, I give him money and he gives me tomatoes in exchange. Then he, with that money, will find someone who has chairs, give him the money, and receive chairs. At first it was a certain metal that everyone wanted and that mediated exchange — fine, like salt, it doesn’t matter right now — some kind of circulating medium that everyone has, that is accessible, agreed upon, has some fixed value of some kind, a kilo of salt or whatever, and you use it as payment for all the goods you want to transfer in trade, in transactions. Okay? That releases all the barriers.

The invention of money is a brilliant invention — you have to understand that. Today it seems obvious to us, kind of self-evident; we’re used to it, we grew up with it. But it’s a brilliant invention. It’s an invention that frees the entire market, something that simply creates a total revolution in the whole market. Four hundred shekels of silver — fine, I’m not getting into the question of when it started. At some point it started. Fine? I’m talking about the stage when it started — what difference does it make when. So the claim is — by the way, there too, four hundred shekels of silver, there’s… In any event, the claim is that money’s role is basically to release all the commercial barriers and lubricate the processes of trade. Essentially, now you can carry them out much more freely. Anyone who has tomatoes, you can buy them from him. You don’t need to look for someone who needs the chairs you have. So there’s no problem: find someone selling tomatoes and buy tomatoes. That’s what we do today. When we want tomatoes, we go to someone who sells tomatoes. We don’t ask him, “Tell me, but do you also need money?” Obviously. Meaning, if he sells tomatoes, in return he’ll get money. What will he do with the money? Buy other things he needs. He too will go to a chair merchant, pay him the money, and receive chairs. There’s no problem — you can always find the person who will supply what you need. And all of this is thanks to money.

Now, in fact, the definition of the concept of money follows from here. What is special about money as opposed to any other commodity? Money is something that, in essence, has no use whatsoever. Usually with a commodity — I have a hammer, a tomato, a table — it has some use. The value of that thing is derived from its use. Meaning, since you can do this and that with it, it is worth such and such. Okay? With money, its value is not derived from any use I have for it. I have no use for it. Money has no use. I’m talking now about conventional money only. When I talk about money — only conventional money. Fine? So I have no use for it. So how is its value determined? The king determines it. Meaning, I determine that a certain coin, or the government, not important — I determine that a coin of this type has the value of one shekel. Okay? What is a shekel? A shekel means that with ten of these you buy a tomato. Fine, not important, something like that. You also need to define what a shekel is. But basically money has a value that is not derived from use. And why? Because it has no use. Money has no use. A commodity has use. So that’s the first difference.

If you want, in halakhic language: a commodity has a principal and fruits. Right? You can own the hammer, and you can have rights of use in the hammer. There is significance to the body of the hammer, the hammer as such, and to what you do with the hammer. Okay? With money, it has no body, no body and no likeness of a body. Okay? That’s why people worship money as an idol. Meaning, because in the end there is no significance to the coin in itself. If you want, replace it with another coin. Fine, what happened? It’s the same thing. There’s no significance to this particular coin that I have. As I said, I’m talking about conventional money. Everything I’m saying now is about conventional money. When you turn something non-conventional, like a metal, into money, that’s a somewhat more complicated story, although functionally it also works like money. But when I want to define the concept of money, I’m speaking only about conventional money. Say, like our banknotes — right? — which are pieces of paper, but people decide that this is one hundred shekels, this is two hundred shekels, and that one is ten shekels. Okay? So in the end the value of money is something conventional, unlike the value of a commodity, which is a function of supply and demand in the market. If hammers are needed, then hammers will become expensive — assuming they are useful to us and needed, meaning if they perform important functions — and if there are few hammers then their value is high. So the properties of the market affect the value of the commodity. The value of money — I’m not currently talking about one currency relative to another — the value of money in itself is the result of agreement or arbitrary determination. Therefore the king, for example, can cancel the value of a coin and issue another coin, whereas he cannot cancel the value of a hammer. The value of a hammer is a fact, just as the king cannot cancel the law of gravity, right? Although in the High Court sometimes they think they can cancel the law of gravity. But there are things the king cannot cancel. Why? Because they are facts. Meaning, the market is a kind of fact. Money is not a fact; money is an agreement. And the king, as the one responsible for the agreement, can decide that now there is a different agreement. Now this coin is no longer the legitimate legal currency, and another coin will be. Okay? That’s exactly a feature of the difference — or a consequence of the difference — between money and commodity. Because money is a matter of agreement, and commodity is an objective factual matter. Therefore commodity cannot be abolished.

Now, in the language of the Talmud, coinage — yes, the Talmud says in our chapter: a coin is that which has a stamped form, and that form is made to be annulled. Meaning, the coin derives its value from the form stamped upon it. But that form isn’t there because it’s a work of art. In a picture too, value comes because of its structure, its form. And that’s an objective value, relative, whatever; you can also argue about the value of a work of art, but in principle that is an objective value because there really is something there with significance. But with money, the “form” is simply the halakhic expression for the agreement established by the king. When he stamps a form on it, he is basically saying: this is the legitimate coin here, and its value is one shekel. Okay? With a picture? What? With a picture. Yes, usually the king’s image would be on that form. That was basically identification of weight. I didn’t understand. Originally it was identification of the weight of the metal. Fine, because again, you’re once more talking about metal, which is not… that has real value, not something arbitrary. The form guarantees it. Yes, but I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about conventional coinage, like the pictures on our hundred-shekel or two-hundred-shekel notes. Okay? So in the end, when we say it has a form and the form can be annulled, that’s exactly the point. Since coinage is a product of agreement, then the king responsible for those agreements can also change the agreement, and then this coin is worth nothing. You can have a box full of coins and remain destitute and penniless the moment the king says that they no longer have value.

A revolution? What? When there are various revolutions. Yes, in India some time ago they did exactly something like that. Right, they blocked conversion? No, no, he wanted, for example, to cancel the value of some coin or other… There was some story there, I don’t remember exactly, with the government there. Because of inflation there? Yes, no, but in India it was something else, it was for political reasons. It’s an interesting story, I don’t remember — really not long ago, I think two years ago, something like that. A symbol of the revolution, the communist revolution. Yes, because it shows that there is a new regime. Whenever a new regime came after a revolution, they would replace the coinage, because the coinage is an expression that the king is in charge. The moment the one in charge changes, you want to express that by issuing new coinage. Right? The coins of Bar Kokhba had pictures of Bar Kokhba. The moment there was no more Bar Kokhba, the coins of Bar Kokhba were already worth nothing, because coinage draws its power from the sovereignty that minted it. Okay? By the way, why is it called a coin? The word for coin comes from being stamped with a form, okay? And therefore it gets its value from that agreement.

Now, here essentially — you know, by way of analogy — in philosophy there is a very famous article by Bertrand Russell in 1905, Einstein’s annus mirabilis, and there also came out a very important article by Bertrand Russell on reference. And there he distinguishes between two ways of referring to something. You can refer to something through a name, and you can refer to something through a description. When I say David Ben-Gurion, I referred to a certain person through his name. When I say “the first prime minister of the State of Israel,” I referred to the same person through a description. What is the difference between these two forms of reference? The description is essential. Meaning, you can’t change the description just by deciding to change it, right? Whoever was the first prime minister was the first prime minister, and whoever wasn’t, wasn’t. But David Ben-Gurion is a matter of agreement; if he had been called Yosef ben Moshe, then he would have been Yosef ben Moshe. So a name is a kind of arbitrary agreed designation. By contrast, the description is a result of the facts; you can’t control the facts. By the way, this has many implications for the divine name, names that may not be erased, appellations versus names — it’s exactly that difference. The difference is whether it’s a name or a description. “God,” for example, in principle is a description, not a name, because in the Torah “elohim” can refer to important people, it’s a term of importance. So the Holy One, blessed be He, who is the most important thing, is simply called God, but that is really a description. By contrast, the four-letter divine name is a name that doesn’t represent… it doesn’t describe anything; it’s simply a collection of letters. What is it… I’m not talking about Kabbalah right now, but in our ordinary language it doesn’t describe anything. It is an arbitrary name. Precisely because of that it’s the proper name. It’s called the proper name. Why is it called the proper name? Because it relates to the essence and not to the qualities. Descriptions relate to qualities. When I say someone is the first prime minister of the State of Israel, that is basically a quality of his. When I say David Ben-Gurion, I’m relating to the object or person who is the bearer of the qualities, whose qualities they are. The name is reference to the body, okay? And the quality and the description… The value of money is like a name. Money is called a shekel. That’s it, and from there it draws its name. You could have called it two shekels, and then it would have been two shekels; it’s arbitrary. By contrast, a commodity — its qualities, its value — are a result of facts. They are simply the properties of the commodity. What you can do with the hammer, what you can do with the chair — that is what determines its value. You can’t change that; it’s not a matter of agreement. So that’s basically an analogy, and I think it’s an interesting analogy for our topic.

In any case, at the stage when money came into being, a need begins to arise to define or regulate legally the relations of commerce and economics. Because in the primitive period, I needed tomatoes, I took tomatoes and ate them, or I took a chair that was with you and sat on it. Nobody had to define who acquires when, and how, and what formal definition, and whether pulling this acquires that, and whether you owe him the money or don’t owe him the money. You don’t owe him anything — give me tomatoes, take chairs, and go home. Fine? Buying on credit hardly exists in barter. Buying on credit is generally buying with money. In principle it could also exist with commodities, but in principle with commodities you usually exchange. You give me this, exchange a cow for a donkey, I take the cow, you take the donkey. Fine? Of course after barter itself becomes a legal acquisition — once we’ve attained the legal concept of acquisition — now we need to define whether pulling the cow acquires the donkey, whether pulling the donkey acquires the cow, and from when. But that’s only after we turned barter into barter acquisition and made it part of our legal field. But all that came into being with the invention of money.

The moment money was invented, there started to be a more sophisticated economic world, and it became necessary to define the transactions: from when do you acquire? Does pulling the commodity acquire the money? Does pulling the money acquire the commodity? How does it work? From when? How much money do you owe me? What happens if the value of the money changes? All kinds of things of that type, things that didn’t exist before. So the invention of money greatly improves the ability to conduct commerce, but it greatly complicates commercial thinking or economic thinking, because now you have to regulate this whole story legally. What do we do with this thing? And you have to remember that money is entirely a matter of regulation, because it’s all conventional. It has nothing objective to it. You can’t look at money and understand from it what is happening. You have to determine legally what happens when you give money, when you take money, when you give a commodity. These are all legal determinations, because these are all fictive questions, conventional questions. So now the need for legal regulation begins, and of course concepts of ownership arise.

Now it’s no longer just that I need a chair, I take a chair and sit on it; you need tomatoes, you take tomatoes and eat them. No. Now there is ownership. From when do I acquire it? Now this is mine; you are forbidden to take it. Not because I need to use it — you are forbidden to take it because it’s mine. That’s a legal statement. Here we moved from morality to law. Meaning, in morality I say: why are you taking it? He needs those tomatoes, why are you taking them? He grew them, he needs them — that’s not nice. In the legal sense I’m not talking about “not nice.” I’m saying forbidden. That’s a legal determination: forbidden, because it’s his. There is a concept of ownership. After the concept of ownership comes into being, now we begin discussing how to apply the concept of ownership, how the concept of ownership comes into being, what the relationship is between the concept of ownership and rights of use. Usually we understand that rights of use are a product of the fact that I am the owner. If I own something, then I have rights of use in it, and others do not. Fine? Once, maybe it was the reverse, or maybe not even that. There were rights of use, but there was no ownership. If there was ownership at all, it only meant that I had rights of use, that’s all. Or maybe the concept of ownership wasn’t needed at all — I have rights of use because, I don’t know, I grew it. It’s natural like that, not legally defined. But now we gradually move to legal regulation of this whole system, and therefore one has to define an act of acquisition, because that’s the act that imposes ownership and determines the moment at which ownership takes effect, yes, from when it begins.

Now let’s look a bit more deeply at what this process actually means. The concept of money — how is it really determined? After all, the concept of money is basically some kind of scale. What does it measure? Fine, an arbitrary unit — but what does it measure? A meter is also an arbitrary unit. Think about a meter, okay? A meter is a unit we established; one could have established other units. There is the yard; there are places where the basic unit of length is a yard, not a meter. Okay? That’s an arbitrary determination. But that arbitrary measuring unit measures something real. There is length, which you measure in meters or measure in yards, right? So the unit you establish for measuring is arbitrary. But what are you measuring? That is not arbitrary. In the past it was — in the past and today basically how much property a state has, how much it represents — no, you’re talking about the value of money itself, how the value of money is determined. I’m talking about a question like in a transaction between two people. Fine? When I tell you, look, this chair costs one hundred shekels, what did I tell you by that? I basically told you that the chair’s worth is one hundred shekels. The concept of value is very important here. Money is basically the reification or concretization of an abstract concept that we can call value. An evaluation of the value of an object. How much it is worth in my eyes, such that I’m willing to give that much for it. That is the concept of value.

Actually, in ancient commerce too, no one gave one tomato for five tables, I assume. That didn’t happen there either. But there it was sort of obvious: fine, apparently ten tomatoes is roughly a chair, or something like that. But nobody needed to quantify the concept of value, because everyone more or less knew how much to pay for each thing in exchange for something else. Once you move to money, you need to define an objective and yet arbitrary unit of value. And then you say: now I need to measure the value of every object. So a tomato is worth two shekels, a chair is worth fifty shekels, a table is worth five hundred shekels. Then I immediately know that the tomato that is two shekels means that two hundred and fifty tomatoes equal a table. But it worked the other way around. When barter exchanged tomatoes for a table, they exchanged two hundred and fifty tomatoes for a table. When they invented money, then they said, okay, now let’s establish a unit: the shekel. The tomato will be two shekels, not important; the table will be five hundred shekels — meaning, we are representing relations that already existed beforehand. But now we call them by name, define a certain unit with which we measure the value of things. Before, the value of things was something abstract; it was some quality of the object. The object’s quality was its value, deriving from its qualities, yes, as I said before — what you can do with a hammer is basically what determines its value. Okay? Now you need to learn arithmetic; before that you didn’t need arithmetic. That’s exactly the point. Because now you count value. Value is an abstract thing. What is value? Value — no one would have even thought, I believe, that the concept of value existed at all in the world before money. What is the concept of value? I know, yes, if you want a table, fine, give me a hundred tomatoes and you’ll get a table. Nobody said, wait a second, what is the value of a tomato and what is the value of a table, certainly not in absolute terms. How can you say how much a tomato is worth? You can say that two hundred and fifty tomatoes are worth a table. Value is always relative. Tomatoes relative to tables are like this, cucumbers relative to chairs are like that. But what is value in an absolute sense? What, how can you say what the value of a chair is? There’s no such thing.

The moment we invented money, you have to establish an arbitrary unit — and why? Because value becomes something not relative but absolute. Every object will have a value in itself, not in comparison to another object. The comparison to the other object is a consequence. Meaning, after the value of the tomato is two shekels and the value of the table is five hundred shekels, the consequence is that two hundred and fifty tomatoes equal a table. What? You can — supply and demand, what difference does it make? I didn’t understand. I agree that it’s supply and demand. What’s the question? But I’m saying, before that you couldn’t say what the value of a tomato is. There is no such thing as the value of a tomato. Value of a tomato relative to what? Relative to tables? Relative to chairs? Relative to cucumbers? Relative to what, in the ancient period? The moment money was invented, something very interesting happened. Objects suddenly have a built-in value. This object is worth two shekels, not one two-hundred-and-fiftieth of a table. It’s worth two shekels. Not comparative; I’m not measuring it against a table. It has value in itself. Okay? And the table also has value in itself, and therefore there is also an exchange ratio between them. But that is a consequence. Before, the exchange ratio was the basic thing. We used that basic thing to create an arbitrary unit of money. After that arbitrary unit came into being, we returned to the exchange ratio, but now it is already a consequence of money. What comes next? Yes, yes. Fine?

So now I can measure — before, you could say what is longer than what. This table is longer than the chair; everyone would tell me yes. But if I asked you, tell me, what is the length of the table? You’d say, I don’t know, what does it mean, the length of a table? You can tell me how many chairs are in a table. What does it mean, the length of a table? The moment you invented the concept of a meter, then you say, ah, this table is one meter eighty. So it has a length not relative to something, but relative to an absolute unit of measure, namely the meter. The meter sits in Paris, as you know — that too is a unit. Doesn’t matter, that’s still after there was already length. That’s after there was already length, and you always made length relative to a cubit. Why? Because it’s still relative. You would measure the table in cubits, and then ask how many cubits a table is. Fine? But once the cubit became a unit of length — not a human arm’s length, but a cubit as a name like a meter — then there is a cubit. Fine, clearly it’s a measure of length, but I’m saying that’s after the concept of length came into being. At first there was no concept of length at all. You could tell how many cubits are in a table because it’s relative. You compare cubits to tables. Once the cubit is something absolute, then you don’t ask how many cubits there are in a table; you ask what the length of a cubit is or what the length of a table is. Not one relative to the other, because a cubit is already a concept defined in itself. Okay?

That, for example, is one of the reasons that in our world, in our halakhic world, cubits are measured in centimeters, and Rabbi Chaim Naeh and the Chazon Ish and all sorts of things like that. Why was it never like that before? Because the cubit of an average person was more or less — fine — you stretched out the arm and said, if I’m longer then let’s subtract a bit, shave a bit off, and that was a cubit. Why? Because everything was relative. Basically it was all about: how many of my cubits is this table? Or how many four cubits, if I want in graves in the laws of ritual impurity, whatever it may be. So I measure four cubits; basically everything is relative. But now no — there is a metric unit. A metric unit is something fixed and precisely defined. If you want to continue using the cubit, then notice: the cubit we use today is not a person’s cubit. It’s like a meter, just a different unit, that’s all. So it’s no wonder that people define the cubit down to the level of millimeters, because all the time they’re measuring: is it enough, is it not enough, did you fulfill your obligation, an olive-bulk or not an olive-bulk. Why? Because the measurement is no longer relative; there is an absolute standard. Just as there is a meter, there is a cubit, and you need to know how much a cubit is, what its length is. Now there is a dispute, and of course when one measures the length of a cubit, one really measures the arm of an average person. That’s where it came from. But it’s not interesting that that’s where it came from. In the analogy I gave earlier between a name and a description, one of the examples in analytic philosophy for that distinction is a town called Dartmouth. Dartmouth is a town that sits at the mouth of the River Dart — Dart-mouth. The mouth of the River Dart. Okay? Now the River Dart dried up, changed direction, it’s no longer near the town of Dartmouth. But the name of the town Dartmouth remains. Why? Because Dartmouth started out as a description of that town — located at the mouth of the River Dart — but now it has become a name. A name doesn’t depend on circumstances, it doesn’t describe, it doesn’t belong to the qualities of the thing. A name is a name, like Jacob or Moses. The same thing… right. The same thing with the concept of the cubit, or the name Isaac. Isaac is called Isaac because Sarah laughed. Fine, but suppose she hadn’t laughed — it doesn’t matter; one could have established his name as Isaac by convention. That thing is a name, not a description, even though it has a real source. The same thing with the cubit. We measure the cubit according to the cubit of an average person. But it isn’t really the cubit of an average person; that’s just our way of checking what this unit of length is. So that unit of length is fifty-seven centimeters — I don’t know exactly whatever calculation each person makes. And now for me a cubit is like a meter. It’s not — therefore these criticisms of the way Jewish law works with millimeters are incorrect. It has to work that way. It can’t work otherwise. Even though in the past they would place the cubit and see whether there was a cubit there or not, today it doesn’t work that way. Today you have to take out a ruler and see if there’s a cubit there or not. Centimeters of cubits, yes? Meaning, a measuring tape that measures in cubits, not in meters. But a cubit is a unit of length. It is no longer a person’s cubit. A person’s cubit is only the source of why we chose that unit of length.

The shrinking of the measures? I don’t know. I don’t know. This gap between… yes, I understand, but no, I’m not inclined to think that this makes sense, because we are in fact trying to estimate the measure of an olive, the measure of an egg, and the measure of a cubit. In the final analysis — true, today it functions as a measure like a meter, but originally how did we arrive at a length called a cubit or an olive or an egg? From real cubits, olives, and eggs. So I don’t think this will solve it. If you claim that the olive of then is different from the olive of today, then you’re right, but if you say this is the olive, then we already have solutions for that. We don’t need all my little theories for this. Fine, if the olive got smaller, then I understand that the olive got smaller and okay, that can resolve the contradiction. But for that you don’t need the conceptual move I’m describing here. Even if that hadn’t happened, even if today it were an olive and then too it were an olive — no, but the olive got smaller, what can you do? You don’t need the move that turns the olive — as they say about Rabbi Chaim, that Rabbi Chaim took the frying pans out of the kitchen. Right, you know that line? Rabbi Chaim, when he talks about the concept of a frying pan — Rabbi Chaim of Brisk, yes? — he has no idea what a frying pan even looks like. For him a frying pan is a theoretical construct, some kind of utensil in which one cooks, fries in oil, with such-and-such properties and such-and-such laws. He doesn’t know how to point and say: this is a frying pan and that is a pot. That doesn’t interest him. He’s talking about some abstract halakhic theoretical construction that has such-and-such laws. Those who know Rabbi Soloveitchik in The Halakhic Mind, about the “mountain of the day” and the “mountain of man” there with the spring and all that, how the man of Jewish law looks at reality — that’s exactly this description. So here too it’s the same thing. True, the cubit comes from a person’s arm, but now for me it’s a meter. That doesn’t matter; it’s a unit of length. Okay?

Now what? The Talmud describes the cubit of the Temple — there were two types of cubit, five handbreadths and six handbreadths, this cubit of… yes, right, there were two cubits, yes. Because it’s all conventional. Meaning, whether a cubit is five handbreadths or six handbreadths is a matter of agreement, so once it is conventional you can agree on five, you can agree on six. Now, this point that I started with is very, very important. The concept of value underwent concretization. Meaning, before, the concept of value didn’t really exist except implicitly. We exchanged tomatoes for cucumbers and chairs. At some stage people suddenly realized that there is such an abstract concept accompanying every object, called the value of the object. Then a need arose to measure it. How do you measure the value of an object? You define a unit of value: shekel, dollar, whatever it may be. Okay? A zuz, yes? A unit of value, and that is basically the basic monetary coin. Okay? A unit of value.

Now, what happens as a result of this is that if in fact every object has a value, then we can basically take the ladder by which we climbed out of the pit and throw it away. Because in practice now — and this is what happens today, by the way — what happens today is that almost none of us actually uses money anymore. We transfer numbers on a computer, credit cards, all kinds of things; it’s all records. And rightly so. There is no significance to money. Money only measures how much purchasing power you have, how much value you possess. Once I have a way to register how much value each person has and to track it, like in a bank account or credit card, then money is unnecessary. It’s superfluous. Once we conceptualized the concept of value, now I no longer need its embodiment in the form of money. Because now I know: this is worth one hundred shekels, this is worth one hundred and fifty shekels. Not shekels in the sense of one hundred and fifty coins each worth one shekel. The value-measure of the item is one hundred and fifty shekels. That is some measure of value of the item. Once I conceptualized the concept of value and understood that there is such a thing, it went from abstract to tangible, and I no longer need the coin that expresses it. It’s unnecessary. Who needs it? Say whatever you like — just write down that I transferred you ten shekels, write down that you received five shekels from me. As long as we have some effective tracking of that, there’s no problem.

To fight for Itai’s basic right to return to life. I’m in shock by this, I’m ninety years old, and it’s obvious, it’s self-evident that whoever… why do I need to be the one who has to fight for it when it’s clear to me that every effort is being made to bring them back, at the top of the priority list — that’s obvious. How many coins is a result of the difficulty of producing such a coin? After all there’s a puzzle in the background that has to be solved in order to mine Bitcoin, in order to produce a coin. Because that’s the substitute — there they’re trying… Digital currency is a completely different concept. Digital currency actually creates value; digital currency is really a commodity. It is not money. Because in effect it represents your level of cleverness, how many bitcoins you managed to mine — or computational power, if you like. The value rises because the supply is small. I can’t believe this is happening. Like any commodity, exactly. Why is it hard to produce diamonds? They’re hard to mine, so they’re very expensive. Right? If there were lots of diamonds, they wouldn’t be expensive. Simple. You mean the base itself? Not the base itself, no, no, no, again, no. It’s exactly like any other commodity. What is the value of a book? What is the value of a table? Based on how much tables are needed, how many tables there are, supply and demand. Everything is fine. How much does it cost to produce a table? How hard is it to produce a table? That’s what determines its value — exactly like Bitcoin. The whole innovation there is that without the king’s agreement, without some central king making an agreement and setting a currency, even without that you can produce a currency that is effective, because in fact that currency is a commodity; in essence it is not money. Even though you don’t see it anywhere, it’s just registered. In that sense it resembles money, because a commodity — what do you mean, there’s a hammer, you have a hammer; it’s not just the value. Bitcoin — you don’t have anywhere something you can point to. I have ten bitcoin — can I point and say, here, I have ten bitcoin? It doesn’t work like that. In that sense it resembles money, but I think it is really closer to a commodity than to money. How can you mine it? The computer does it? You have to solve very difficult puzzles. Really? Of course — otherwise everyone would simply produce as many bitcoins as they want. What? Computational power, not necessarily energy. No one solves those puzzles himself. You need computers with enormous computational power, and they do the work. Virtual money? Yes, virtual money.

In any case, what the coin basically did was to take the abstract concept “value” and turn it into something tangible. Before there was some concept that wasn’t even defined; they conceptualized the concept of value. After they conceptualized it, they created coins representing it with a certain scale, okay? And now we have coinage. What is coinage? Coinage basically — what I said before — unlike a hammer, it has value the way a hammer has value. The difference between it and a hammer is that it has only value. A hammer also has use. A coin has only value; it is floating value. It is just value as a result of agreement. Okay? Therefore, for example, in the earlier terminology I used, a coin has only form without matter. “A coin has a form, and the form can be annulled,” as the Talmud says. It has only form without body. You cannot have one person own the body of the coin and someone else own the fruits of the body. There’s no such thing. What would it mean to own the body of a coin? It has no significance. By the way, we’ll see later that for that reason coinage cannot function in barter, because barter works only body against body. In any case, this understanding of money says that money, first, is a concretization of the concept of value. Concretization meaning it becomes tangible. Now I have an object, an item, a coin or banknote or whatever it may be. And now when you want to transfer value to someone else, you can take out coins or notes and transfer value with your hands, with your fingers. Before, it was… what does it mean to transfer value? It was some concept that wasn’t even clear how one could make use of it. Now no problem: transfer to me value of one hundred shekels. You owe me one hundred shekels, you owe me one hundred and twenty shekels. All these concepts did not exist in the period of barter. What does it mean that you owe me one hundred and twenty shekels? How do we measure what you owe me? At most, you borrowed a table from me, I need to return you a table. Fine? But a loan in the sense of money — yes? A loan — again, you can lend commodities as commodities, a se’ah for a se’ah or something like that, but in principle the concept of a loan does not really exist, at least not fully.

Now in practice, as I said earlier, the claim — the continuation of this process — is that after we created the concept of coinage, which helped us concretize or conceptualize the abstract concept of value, we can now in fact — and this has really happened in recent years — give up the coin. Now we have the concept of value, and we work with value. But we needed the coin along the way, because without it the concept of value could not exist. You need to see it, feel it with your fingers, in order to understand what’s being talked about. You can’t create the abstract concept of value without… how would you explain to a person what value is? Right? It’s the kind of thing you can’t handle. As a concretization of the matter. What if the coin were silver or gold, and had intrinsic value? What again? Once the coin had value — the coin was a piece of silver or gold. Fine, then that’s something else. For me that’s a commodity. Leave it; in my terminology here it’s a commodity, not money. Okay? But today it has no value whatsoever. The coin has some value, like a note… to stop up the mouth of his flask. To stop up the mouth of his flask. Yes, a banknote you can use to stop up the mouth of your flask, fine, but that’s negligible. That’s not what determines the value of the thing. In the end, the claim is that you can’t fully grasp the conceptualization of value unless you created the money that expresses it, that concretizes it, a tangible object.

By the way, the impulse toward idolatry is always — yes, like the calf. Where is Moses? Where is the Holy One, blessed be He? Where is… we want to see something tangible here. The desire to concretize something stems from a genuine point, from some point that when you want to grasp something abstract, you need something tangible that represents it or is itself it. At some stage, of course, we worship the calf instead of the Holy One, blessed be He — and what does that mean? It means that people now want money for the sake of money, not for the sake of its purchasing power. That’s a kind of modern idolatry, but it’s the same mechanism. It’s exactly the same mechanism.

And there was once an article I saw in Nature, I think, or in Science, I don’t remember which one, about some tribe in Brazil called the Pirahã tribe. And they — there are others like them in the world — had a counting system that was a one-two-many system. That is, they had three numbers in their numerical system: one, two, and many. One plus two equals many, two plus two equals many, one plus one equals two. Okay? You can create multiplication tables or addition tables for a system of three numbers of that sort. Okay? Now, someone came to them and tried to check in what sense this limits their thinking. It turns out that if, say, he put batteries in front of them, and said there are five batteries here and six batteries there, and asked them where there are more, they’d say: same thing — this is many and this is many. Same thing. Now, but the difference between five and a hundred they did know. They said here there are more. Yes. Why? Because the concept of more, or the larger concepts, did exist among them in an abstract, implicit way, okay? They just didn’t have the language by means of which they could think about this issue. Therefore the gray zone between five and six is a bit more subtle; they didn’t know how to count, and therefore comparing five and six was a subtler task, and they didn’t know how to do it.

Now, that’s not because they lacked intelligence. After he taught them, they knew, and everything was fine. They just didn’t have in their language the words that could help them think about the matter. Like what people always say about the Eskimos, right, that they have thirty concepts for snow. Thirty different concepts, because each type of snow has another name. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t even distinguish between hail and snow. It all looks the same to me. Because in their world it really is more central, so their language contains distinctions that our language does not. Maimonides, at the beginning of the eighth principle before the Book of Commandments — there are the principles of counting the commandments. At the beginning of the eighth principle, Maimonides says there that in Arabic there is no difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition. Meaning, not that there is no difference — there aren’t two different words for a positive commandment and a prohibition. Now once that is so, you can see there — I won’t get into it — but you can see there that you can’t really understand that these are two different things. More than that, he says there, there also isn’t a shared term. Meaning, there is a term for a positive commandment and a term for a prohibition, but there is no shared word for both. They are not grasped as two species of one genus. There are positive commandments and there are prohibitions; these are two completely different creatures. So someone who grows up in such a conceptual world — you tell him there are positive commandments and prohibitions — he says, why are you putting them in the same book at all? Make a book of positive commandments and make a book of prohibitions, and that’s it. I already said “commandments” — I have a shared word, so I understand that these two things are two species of one genus, of the genus called commandment. There are positive commandments and there are prohibitions. But someone who, in his world — his conceptual world — lacks the concept… Maimonides, by the way, calls it a decree, because “commandment” means positive commandment, and “decree” means both, royal decrees; but in Arabic there is no equivalent term to “decree.” There is commandment and there is prohibition. Now, for them they simply do not see these as two species of one… what connection is there between these two things, between commandment and prohibition? For us, on the contrary, a positive commandment and a prohibition seem obviously to be two species of one genus. We understand that they belong to the same category: positive commandment and prohibition. Now one has to define how.

So what really is the difference between a positive commandment and a prohibition? People don’t understand what the difference is; people don’t know. But all this confusion is created because in our language they do belong to the same semantic field. They both belong to the same genus; there are just differences between them. Okay, so ultimately what I’m saying is that once money came into being, on the one hand of course you need to understand the concept of value before you create money, because otherwise how would the idea of creating money even occur to you if you don’t understand what value is? Money is the unit of measurement of value. But on the other hand, you don’t really understand what value is until you create the concept of money, until it is concretized.

By the way, regarding that article in Nature, I had a claim. They wanted to prove from there that language precedes thought: that if you don’t have the language of one, two, three, four, five, and so on, then you also can’t think about it. But that’s a mistake, because if I didn’t already have it in thought, I couldn’t create the language. How can I create the language in which there are three, four, five, six? Explain to someone the difference between three and four and five and six. If in his unarticulated perceptions, yes, he doesn’t have the numbers, you would not be able to create that conceptual system. Therefore, implicitly the concepts exist before the linguistic terms. But it’s true that only if you produce terms in language do you fully understand the concepts. Then you can use them, solve problems with them, and things of that type. It’s a complicated back-and-forth. There isn’t one direction here. It doesn’t go from concepts to terms, nor the other way around. Rather it goes in a kind of back-and-forth. You have some concept, you create a term, an object; the object takes you back, you understand the concept better, and then you actually give up the object. There is no money anymore; now there are credit cards. You understood well what value is. Once you understand well what value is, you understand that all the money is superfluous; it’s just a unit of measurement.

And now what happens — notice — the concept of money has two uses. I mean the concept, not the coin. One use is metal — exactly — the metal with which one pays when making acquisition by money. Or one gives payment not only in acquisition by money; also in another acquisition, the consideration is given in money. Sometimes it serves as an act of acquisition — money as acquisition or money as payment, I’ll base that on the Ketzot. But — but which three? What? There’s metal-metal, money… No, no, I’m talking about conventional money. Leave it, leave it — conventional money, only conventional money I’m talking about now. Okay? So that’s one meaning: the thing with which you transfer value to someone else. The second meaning is a unit for measuring the value of things, independent of transactions and acquisition by money and transfer of payment and so on. I want to know how much the table is worth. So they tell me eighty-two shekels. True, that means that if I sell you the table you’ll need to give me eighty-two shekels, but that statement has meaning beyond sale transactions. I want to know what the value of the table is. That’s how you measure the value of a table. You couldn’t measure value if I didn’t have a measuring unit like the shekel. So I say: this table is eighty-two units. It’s eighty-two shekels. And that is already the concept of money; it’s not the object money. The object money is the thing with which I pay in a transaction of acquisition by money. The concept of money is basically synonymous with the concept of value — value that has been quantified with a defined standard of measurement. Fine?

When we talk about money — how much money something is worth — we basically mean what its value is. We’re not talking about coins. What is its value, give me the level of value of this thing. Okay? On the other hand, how much money did you receive from so-and-so in exchange for the table — that means, count the coins for me, how many coins did you receive. That’s talking about the objects, money in the sense of the coins themselves. Okay? Now, the process I described earlier, in which we basically give up the objects and remain only with concepts of value, actually eliminates the second use of money and leaves me only with money as a measure of value. Now money is a measure of the value of things. I don’t need to transfer to you this object of a coin, right, as consideration. I can write in the bank that one hundred shekels moved from my account to your account. Okay, that’s all; it does exactly the same job. I no longer need… But I needed to go through the stage of money and concretization and all that, because without it I would never really have succeeded in understanding the concept of value. You could not have invented Bitcoin and credit cards if we hadn’t gone through a stage in which there are money coins, money notes. Exactly like you can’t learn to count unless you concretely show me: this is three, this is four, this is five. After you know that, then when you count again you no longer need actually to see batteries or balls or oranges before your eyes. You can count two, three, four, five; you can use numbers in Pythagorean senses, yes? In abstract notions, Platonic if you like. Abstract notions like that. But in order to teach it, you have to show the child: here you take two things, add three things, count how many you have altogether — five. That’s how you learn to count. Likewise, the concept of value goes through a process until we fully understand it, through the creation of money, coinage.

Okay, now I move from that to the concept of ownership. As I said earlier, it accompanies the emergence of the concept of money because it is basically part of the legal regulation in the more sophisticated world. After we moved from barter to a more sophisticated commercial world, then the concept of money came into being, the concept of value came into being, everything I talked about until now — besides that, of course, there is also the concept of ownership. For example, in a transaction of money I buy a chair from you. Fine? So I pull the chair, and by that the money is acquired for you — the first Mishnah in our Golden Chapter. Okay? Now I have acquired the chair. Did you acquire money? Do you own money? That’s a big question; we’ll talk about it later. Or do I simply owe you money? You don’t have money in my possession. It’s not that there are one hundred shekels in my possession that belong to you — or not necessarily; we’ll talk about that too. Rather, I have some obligation, “it is a commandment to pay one’s creditor,” as it were. I have some obligation to transfer one hundred shekels to you. So you understand that there is an asymmetry between the commodity and the money. One has to define what ownership is, what an act of acquisition is, from when ownership takes effect, how much money I owe you, what it even means to owe you, what it means to owe you money. Is it a future obligation — “it is a commandment to pay one’s creditor” — meaning there’s a commandment to pay you one hundred shekels? Is there value of one hundred shekels that is yours and located with me? That is another conception.

Does the concept of value — understand this — if I’m talking about the concept of value, yes, suppose I sold you a chair worth one hundred shekels, so I gave you — you pulled the chair — now once you pulled the chair, I acquired one hundred shekels; sorry, the money became acquired to me. What does it mean that the money became acquired to me? One could have said: there is value of one hundred shekels with you that belongs to me; I own it. Now, of course, you can’t point to any concrete one-hundred-shekel note in your possession that belongs to me, right? There is no such defined object. But nevertheless, since the concept of value has already undergone conceptualization for us, perhaps one can now own value. So I can own that abstract thing. Now that abstract thing is simply value of one hundred shekels located with you. No particular coin or note of yours is mine. Nothing. More than that: if you want, you may use all your money, and even though you owe me one hundred shekels and in the end won’t be able to pay me, in principle I cannot restrain that as a matter of law. Afterwards one might say that a religious court would force you not to do that so that you can pay me, but in principle it is not my property that you are spending, so it is not theft if you spend all that money, because no particular hundred shekels within that money is mine. So what is mine? Value. The value of the chair within your assets — you can’t sell your assets because I have a hundred shekels? Nonsense. What? What if the closet is encumbered? That’s something else. There are liens, the laws of liens. What does “encumbered” mean? Why encumbered? In sale proceeds? I sold you a chair, and you want to say that one hundred shekels in my closet are encumbered to you? Right. Right, but it’s not in the closet, it’s not anywhere. So if I were giving you… But don’t give — the fact is that you do not have any concrete hundred shekels in my possession that belong to you. Nothing. I can sell all my property, spend all my money, remain poor and penniless, I won’t be able to give you the one hundred shekels I owe you, and I’ll have acted improperly, because “it is a commandment to pay one’s creditor.” But no one will be able to say to me, don’t spend the money because it’s theft, it’s his money. No — there is nothing in my possession that belongs to you.

So understand what this means. It means that a debt, or sale proceeds — and we’ll still see a difference between those two — but a debt or sale proceeds is basically ownership of value, not of money, not of anything, not of any concrete object — value. There is value of one hundred shekels in my possession that belongs to you. Okay, we’ll see later that this is probably true only of sale proceeds and not of a loan, but in principle these concepts require us to make abstractions, legal regulations. You see that the matter gets complicated. Once there is money and things have value, you need — what? Regulations. And all the complications we deal with were created because of that.

Now I want to talk about the concept of ownership. At the stage when people conducted barter, as I said before, the concept of ownership did not exist. What is ownership? I use this because it’s with me, because I produced it, because I grew these tomatoes or something like that, so I use it. But nobody talked about an abstract concept of ownership, that you are the owner of the thing. What does “mine” mean? “Mine” means — as I said earlier — when you take the tomatoes that are with me, my claim against you at that hypothetical ancient stage is a moral claim, not a legal one. Why are you taking the tomatoes? I want to eat them; I grew them. I wouldn’t speak to you in the language of “this is mine, I’m the owner.” What is this abstract concept? What is an owner? You’re not okay because you took something I want to eat; I grew it. At some stage — again, I’m not committing myself to history, I just want to illustrate the process, what happens in this process — at some stage I begin speaking to you in the language of: wait a second, this is mine. Not because you’re wrong because you’re preventing me from using it. Independently — even if I wanted to throw it into the sea, not use it, are you allowed to take it? In the ancient world, maybe yes. This one benefits and that one loses nothing — since in any case you want to throw it into the sea, so I’ll take it from you, why not? In the world after legal regulation, absolutely not. It’s mine. If you take it, it’s theft. Not because you’re preventing me from using it, but because one may not violate a person’s ownership. That itself is a prohibition. It’s a legal prohibition, not a moral one. The moral prohibition is if I prevent you from using it; the legal prohibition is when I violate your ownership. And for that, you need the concept of ownership.

Now, in the ancient world, rights of use were basically natural. I grew a tomato, so naturally I’m the one who can eat it, right? Who else can eat it? But it wasn’t defined as though I’m the owner. It may be that afterwards the concept of ownership was created to sharpen that point — that in fact this tomato is mine — but it started from use. Once I have rights of use, then I have ownership. At some stage, when we crossed over into legal regulation… it’s found in your possession, as it were. No, not in that period. We said in the ancient period — that’s the moral prohibition, I said, not the legal one. The moral prohibition is: I grew it; I have the right to eat it. Why are you preventing me from eating? But if I wanted to throw it into the sea and not eat it, maybe someone would come and say then take it, because this one benefits and that one loses nothing. On the moral plane, “this one benefits and that one loses nothing” — yes, the medieval authorities (Rishonim) say that. Tosafot in Bava Batra, the Pnei Yehoshua and others. “This one benefits and that one loses nothing” is a moral prohibition, a moral obligation. It’s not a matter of law that you must pay; when one benefits and the other loses nothing, you’re exempt. It’s just the trait of Sodom to object; that’s all. And if you threw it away it’s no longer his. No, I didn’t throw it away; I plan to throw it away. I don’t want to eat it. I feel like throwing it into the sea, fine? Now take it, take the tomatoes, because morally you have caused me no damage. But once it becomes mine, in my ownership, if you take that thing, you are a thief. It has nothing to do with the question of whether you prevent me from using it. Ownership itself stands there as a wall; it does not permit you to take that thing.

I’ll say more than that. After the concept of ownership was created, I want to argue that it became completely detached from rights of use. I can own something without having any right of use in it. For example, with guaranteed property in marriage, something like that. Well, with guaranteed property the question is whether you own it. With usufruct property you own the principal while another has the fruits, but with principal-and-fruits you still can use it. The real estate. What? I can own without… not without the desire to use, but without the right to use. Think, for example, there is Tosafot, there is a Talmudic discussion in Gittin 42, where the Talmud speaks about a slave awaiting a deed of emancipation. And the Talmud says there that someone who injures a slave awaiting a deed of emancipation… the payment goes to his master. Now what is a slave awaiting a deed of emancipation? Maybe a brief introduction: it’s a Canaanite slave whose master has renounced him financially, declared him ownerless, okay? But still did not give him a deed of emancipation. Since he didn’t give him a deed of emancipation, the slave is still in the status of a slave, but the owner has no rights of use in the slave, right? He has been made ownerless, he’s not mine. Financially I renounced him. He has not yet left the status of slave, because in order to leave the status of slave he needs a deed of emancipation.

Okay, says the Talmud: if I injure him, the payment goes to his master. Tosafot asks there why the payment goes to his master. It says: just as with the thirty shekels for a slave — what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him partially? The thirty shekels for a slave goes to his master, fine? So therefore in injury too it goes to his master. The thirty shekels for a slave is when you kill the slave — that’s killing him entirely. And injury is killing him partially, yes, when one injures a slave. Okay, so just as when the slave is killed the payment goes to his master, in this case too when he is awaiting emancipation, so too when he is injured the payment goes to his master. Yes? And in the case of killing, why does it go to his master? What? That doesn’t answer the question. Why in the case of killing does it go to his master? Ah, that’s just taken for granted there? Okay, good question. But even more than that, the Pnei Yehoshua there asks: with the thirty shekels for a slave — after all the thirty shekels for a slave is a fine, right? Thirty shekels for a slave is a fine; every fixed sum is a fine. Okay. Now, a fine is not compensation to the one who suffered damage, right? That’s the definition of a fine as opposed to compensation. A fine is punitive payment, not compensation to the person harmed. Now true, usually you pay the fine to the one who was harmed, but it is not compensation. I pay a punitive amount. Just to whom do I give this money? Fine, I’ll give it to the person who was harmed, but it’s punitive payment. So he says: fine, with punitive payment, if you want to punish the one whose ox killed a slave — yes, the thirty shekels for a slave is when an ox killed a slave, okay? They want to punish me because my ox killed a slave, so I need to pay thirty pieces of silver. To whom do I pay it? The slave is dead. To whom do I pay? Since I have to pay not to compensate someone, but because I deserve punishment. There’s no one to give the money to. To whom should I give it? To the slave? The slave is dead. He has no heirs. So I give it to the master, right? But in injury, injury is not a fine — injury is compensation. Even according to Maimonides, who has a lone opinion on this issue, even according to Maimonides it’s compensation, not a fine. I need to compensate the one who was harmed. Now who was harmed here? When I injured the slave, cut off his hand — who lost from that? The master cannot make him work in any case, because he’s ownerless, he’s not his. The one who lost is the slave. So really, you should compensate the slave, because he is the one harmed. So why are you giving the money to the master?

What? Can he retract? Did the owner here injure him? I didn’t injure him; someone else injured him. I renounced him. That’s it. What does that mean? There’s no such thing as retracting ownerlessness. He can’t retract the ownerlessness. What are you talking about? He made the slave ownerless; that’s it. Let’s ask differently: if that slave acquires something, does whatever a slave acquires belong to his master? No. The slave’s hand is one of the financial acquisitions I have in the slave. The practical difference is that he is still awaiting a deed of emancipation — maybe he is still permitted to a Canaanite maidservant, and even that not — but he is not the owner. What? Right, he isn’t an owner at all. He made the slave ownerless, he isn’t the owner. So why do we pay him the injury compensation? That’s what the Pnei Yehoshua asks.

I had some debate about this with my lecture teacher in yeshiva. I wanted to argue — and I think that’s also what the Pnei Yehoshua says — my claim was that payment for injury is basically payment that goes to the owner of the damaged object. The amount is assessed according to the extent of the injury. But the addressee to whom you are supposed to transfer the money is the owner of the damaged object. Now usually, the owner of the damaged object is also the person harmed, so therefore that’s obvious, right? If you damaged my ox, you pay me the money because I own the ox, but I’m also the one who lost. But in the case of a slave awaiting emancipation, here is the difference. In a slave awaiting emancipation, the owner is still the master, but the one who was harmed is the slave. So the extent of the damage is assessed according to how much the slave was harmed, but the address to which I transfer the money is the owner of this slave. And the owner of this slave is the master, not the slave.

Here there’s an important point: why is he the owner? One could say, what do you mean he isn’t the owner — after all, he made him ownerless. And I wanted… so that lecture teacher of mine, who didn’t accept this thesis, we went to a Torah court before another lecture teacher, and he was my lawyer. And my lecture teacher, who argued with me, presented my view better than I did. He said to him, look, in the medieval authorities, after all, the acquisitions that a master has in a slave are called by two names: monetary acquisition and status acquisition. Why is “status acquisition” called an acquisition? Why is it an acquisition? What is status acquisition? Status acquisition means that he is a slave. Monetary acquisition means the rights I have in him. Why is it called status acquisition? What is an acquisition? Why is it an acquisition? There is a status in the slave — meaning the status of slavehood, his personal status, his status is that he is a slave. What does that have to do with acquisition? And the claim basically — the one he advanced in favor of my position — was that it is called an acquisition because the slave is mine even though I declared him ownerless. That is the novelty with a slave: until you give him a deed of emancipation, he is yours. What you renounced only means that you lost your rights of use in the slave, but you are still his owner. So all the rights remained, only the obligations not? No, the rights didn’t remain — there are none, the rights are not mine. So the ownership? What obligations? Nothing. The slave stands in his own possession financially. But the status acquisition remains? Right, but the status acquisition is an acquisition in the body of the slave, a sort of financial acquisition in the body of the slave, not accompanied by any rights of use. There are no rights of use because the rights of use were renounced. And still, in the laws of injury there is an additional novelty that one has to say here: in the laws of injury, you pay not to the one harmed but to the owner of the injured object. That is a separate novelty in the laws of injury; maybe it depends on the dispute between Rashi and the Rosh at the beginning of the chapter on injury. But once you accept that novelty, then ultimately what I’m saying is that he still remains the owner. How? He has no rights of use, so how is he the owner? Because the concept of ownership exists independently of rights of use. Rights of use are usually a consequence of the fact that you are the owner, but it is not true to say that being an owner means being the holder of rights of use. That’s not an identity. Ownership is not just a bundle of rights of use. No — ownership is a meta-legal status. There is a connection between me and the thing; that is called my being its owner. Usually that has the consequence that I have rights of use and others may not use it without my permission. Those are consequences. But the concept of ownership itself simply means that there is a bond between me and it.

The Rogatchover, on Bava Kamma page 17, brings two examples for this. One example is the requirement that one’s animal rest on the Sabbath. The fact that an animal that belongs to me has to rest on the Sabbath — I’m not talking about making the animal do work. Making the animal do work is when I perform the labor by means of the animal. The animal’s Sabbath-rest means that the animal itself desecrates the Sabbath, not connected to me at all. In principle, if the animal is eating grass in the field, I would have violated a Torah prohibition of the animal’s Sabbath-rest, except that the Talmud says that’s its ordinary way, meaning it eats for its own needs and that wasn’t prohibited. If the animal carried from one domain to another, then I violated a Torah prohibition — not because I carried by means of the animal; that’s the difference between using the animal for labor and the animal’s own Sabbath-rest. If you let a non-Jew work it? Yes, exactly. So now the Rogatchover says: what does that mean? It means that the fact that the animal is mine, beyond my rights of use in the animal, apparently means there is some bond between me and the animal such that I am its owner. The consequence is that I have rights of use, but that’s a consequence. First of all, the animal is some kind of extension of me, and once it is part of me, it must rest just as I must rest.

You can say because the body of the animal belongs to its master, but in the case of the slave the body of the slave is no longer acquired to the master? No, no, the body of the slave is acquired — that’s what I said before. With the animal, what I want to tell you isn’t the same as with the slave, but rather that you see consequences not connected to my monetary rights in the animal. Why do I need to make sure that my animal does not desecrate the Sabbath? Because my animal is some kind of extension of me — it is basically my expanded self — and if it desecrates the Sabbath, it is as though I desecrated the Sabbath. So this means that the concept of ownership is not exhausted by my having a bundle of rights of use in the animal, but rather there is some bond that turns the animal, or property in general, into some part of me. “A person is close to his ox” — the Talmud in Sanhedrin about dividing testimony there too, it’s the same thing. Why is a person considered close to his ox, and therefore we divide the testimony? According to the witness, we divide only in the case of an interested party. The point is that the ox is part of me; to testify about it is to testify about me. Why say that? The ox is yours, right? Its body belongs to you. Of course. No, it is not part of you. So I’m saying: if it is acquired to me, then why is it forbidden for it to desecrate the Sabbath? It’s acquired to me, so let it desecrate the Sabbath — what’s the problem? Because I have a Torah commandment that an animal acquired to you is forbidden to desecrate the Sabbath. Why? Why? I’m not desecrating the Sabbath — why do animals need to observe the Sabbath? No, but human beings need to observe the Sabbath. What’s that got to do with it? If I do the work with the animal, that’s making the animal labor. But if the animal itself does, I don’t know what, something that is one of the thirty-nine categories of labor — so what? Why is that forbidden? So the Rogatchover argues that it’s simply because this is considered my desecration of the Sabbath. Meaning, the concept of ownership is a concept such that it’s not only that I have rights of use in the thing, but there is a bond between me and the thing; it is essentially the broader self, and as a result of that I also have rights of use. Fine?

It’s like a person who causes damage — this I once heard from Rabbi Shlomo Fisher — a person who causes damage, yes, a person who causes damage is liable even in cases of compulsion. Now if a person is asleep, yes, and there’s a stone in his lap, as the Talmud in Bava Kamma, first chapter, says, and the stone fell and caused damage, he has to pay. Why does he have to pay? Because he caused damage. But he didn’t cause damage — that’s not his body, that’s his soul; he’s asleep. What does the body have to do with him? The body was not under his control. He argues that the body too is an extension of me; it’s not my essential self. My body is also a kind of external extension of me, and I have responsibility for what my extension does. Now, when a person’s body causes damage, then even under compulsion you’re liable, because it really counts as part of you. When your property causes damage, property that causes damage under compulsion is exempt. Right? Under compulsion you’re exempt. An agent is like the one who sent him — that’s another person, that’s something else. I’m talking about property. The bond between the property and the owner. So I’m saying, when my property causes damage, then under compulsion I’m exempt, but when it’s not under compulsion I’m liable. Why am I liable? Because it’s as if I caused the damage. And this depends on the inquiry of the later authorities: why are we liable for property that causes damage, in damages caused by one’s property? Am I liable because I was negligent in guarding it? Or am I liable from the very fact that my property caused damage — that itself obligates me? According to the second conception, that’s what the Rogatchover writes there. According to the second conception, what does that mean? Like the Sabbath-rest of one’s animal, where when the animal desecrates the Sabbath it is as though I desecrated the Sabbath. When my animal causes damage, it is as though I caused damage. But when I was under compulsion, then I in fact tried to guard the animal and the animal went against what I tried to guard. There it severed the bond between me and it, and therefore I’m not liable, because it acted on its own behalf. But as long as I did not guard it properly — if I was not under compulsion — then the fact that the animal caused damage, not the negligence in guarding, but the very fact that my animal caused damage obligates me to pay. Because owning something means that that thing is part of me, and rights of use are implications of that.

An animal and a slave on the Sabbath — is that in the same category? A non-emancipated slave, and if he broke something? So am I his owner? What does it mean owner? Regarding what? Regarding damage. What damage? Awaiting emancipation. Listen — what damage? What happened to him? No, if he broke someone’s leg. He broke someone’s leg? So what? And he’s a slave awaiting emancipation? The Talmud in Bava Kamma says: a slave, a woman, and a minor — their causing injury is troublesome. Even if he’s a slave who isn’t awaiting emancipation, I’m not liable to pay. He’s a person with legal understanding; he can cause me millions of shekels of damages, I can’t be responsible for the damages he causes. But ownership of a slave awaiting emancipation really… look it up. I don’t understand that the ownership of a slave awaiting emancipation — he renounced him, right? Right. So what ownership is there? The claim is that as long as you haven’t given a deed of emancipation, the metaphysical bond between you and him is still in force. Therefore you are considered his owner; you are considered owner of his body. You have nothing in the fruits; you own the body, but the body you still fully own, in the legal sense. Even if you made him ownerless? Right. That’s the uniqueness of awaiting a deed; that’s the uniqueness of a Canaanite slave — without a deed you cannot sever the bond. Fine? Okay, we’ll stop here. Thank you very much. So the dispute of Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai about the Sabbath-rest of utensils — is it about this issue? Maybe connected to that too, yes. The Talmud in tractate Rosh Hashanah 31a says: The Sanhedrin went into exile ten times. From the Chamber of Hewn Stone to the marketplace, and from the marketplace to Jerusalem, and from Jerusalem to Yavneh, and from Yavneh to Usha, and from Usha to Yavneh, and from Yavneh to Usha, and from Usha to Shefaram, and from Shefaram to Beit She’arim, and from there to Tzippori, and from there to Tiberias. And Tiberias is the deepest of them all, as it is said: “And brought low, you shall speak from the ground.” Rabbi Yohanan said: And from there they are destined to be redeemed, as it is said: “Shake yourself from the dust, arise, sit, Jerusalem.”