The Gold Chapter – Money and Acquisition Through Money – Lesson 3

Table of Contents

• Money, goods, and acquisition in the formation of a legal sphere
• Halut as a foundational concept and its distinction from rights
• A slave delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, prohibition-based acquisition, and monetary acquisition
• Responsibility, guilt, and property as a person’s “periphery”
• Halut as resolving apparent contradictions in the laws of conditions
• The act of acquisition in Jewish law as an act that imposes halut
• Acquisition by money, pulling possession, and reading the Mishnah’s phrase “acquires the money”
• Purchase-money, loans, “a loan is given to be spent,” and Maimonides
• The Sabbatical cancellation of debts, store credit, and value as a deposit
• Practical implications: taking collateral by force, one forbidden to benefit, and debt repayment
• A bank deposit, interest, and the iska permit
• Determining money versus goods by motivation, and arriving at the opening of the chapter

Summary

General Overview

The text presents a conceptual development of money, goods, acquisition by money, and barter as part of the formation of a legal sphere that regulates economic relations, and it places the concept of halut at the deep foundation from which ownership and acquisition are derived. It argues that ownership and halut are not identical with a bundle of usage rights, and that ownership-halut can exist even without monetary rights. On that basis, it reinterprets the act of acquisition by money and the meaning of the Mishnah’s phrase “acquires the money,” and distinguishes between a loan debt and purchase-money as a deposit of “value” belonging to the seller. From there it arrives at the opening of the chapter, “Gold acquires silver,” and explains that the discussion there is not about an essential definition of money and goods, but about pathological cases of exchanging money for money, where criteria such as marketability and importance are needed in order to determine which side is the coin and which side is the commodity.

Money, Goods, and Acquisition in the Formation of a Legal Sphere

Economic relations move from a natural mode of use and exchange to a legal framework that creates concepts such as ownership, acquisition, an act of acquisition, and halut, and sets money opposite goods, while goods can also function as monetary value. The central question becomes how to distinguish between goods and money, and when something functions as equivalent to money and when as goods. Acquisition by money is presented as a mechanism in which the money is both payment and sometimes also the act of acquisition itself, whereas for movable property an additional act of pulling possession is required.

Halut as a Foundational Concept and Its Distinction from Rights

Halut is described as a fundamental concept of a “legal state,” such as the halut of terumah, the halut of betrothal, and the halut of ownership, and as a change in legal status created by an act of imposition. The text rejects the understanding that “imposing halut” is just a puffed-up way of saying “I became the owner,” and argues that halut is a conceptual object in its own right that cannot be reduced to a description of rights. It illustrates this through the claim that haluyot are “objects” and not “properties,” and therefore different haluyot can combine even when the practical laws cannot apply together in the same way.

A Slave Delayed from Receiving a Bill of Emancipation, Prohibition-Based Acquisition, and Monetary Acquisition

The Talmudic text in tractate Gittin 42 presents a case of a slave “delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation” after having been declared ownerless, where his master no longer has monetary acquisition over him but still has prohibition-based acquisition. Tosafot explain that damages paid for injury to such a slave go to his master, by analogy to the law of the thirty-shekel payment for a slave, and the Pnei Yehoshua objects that there the payment is a fine and not ordinary monetary compensation, so no proof can be drawn from it regarding injury damages. The text suggests that the novelty is that damage payment goes to the owner of the damaged object, and that even with a slave delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, ownership-halut remains without usage rights, so ownership is a meta-legal bond that is not identical with monetary rights.

Responsibility, Guilt, and Property as a Person’s “Periphery”

The Rogatchover on Bava Kamma 17 is cited to explain the law of one’s animal resting on the Sabbath, according to which an animal’s act of labor on the Sabbath is considered a Sabbath violation of its owner because his property is his “periphery.” On that basis, a conception in tort law is explained according to which liability for one’s animal is not necessarily the result of negligence or guilt, but of responsibility stemming from the bond of ownership itself. The distinction between responsibility and guilt is also emphasized through examples such as a person who causes damage under compulsion, and in the discussion of ministerial responsibility versus personal responsibility.

Halut as Resolving Apparent Contradictions in the Laws of Conditions

Rabbi Shimon Shkop, in his essay on conditions at the end of tractate Gittin, is cited as arguing that in a conditional bill of divorce, during the interim period the woman is both divorced and still a married woman, and the text explains the difficulty as a contradiction between legal descriptions and laws. It formulates that instead of saying she is “both married and divorced,” it is more accurate to say that “the halut of marriage and the halut of divorce” both apply to her, with haluyot being objects that accumulate like “salt and sugar” in a dish. The laws in such a case are described as derived from “the law of what is present rather than what is absent,” and not as a mechanism of doubt, because this is a certain dual status and not an uncertainty.

The Act of Acquisition in Jewish Law as an Act That Imposes Halut

An act of acquisition is defined as an act that imposes halut, and not necessarily ownership-halut, so even a contract is an acquisitional act in the halakhic sense. The betrothal of a woman is described as imposing the halut of betrothal by three methods—money, document, and intercourse—without the woman becoming property, and there can be prohibition-based acquisition without monetary acquisition. The legal sphere is presented as a world with its own internal existence, in which haluyot are created and disappear through legal acts, parallel to changes in the physical world through physical actions.

Acquisition by Money, Pulling Possession, and Reading the Mishnah’s Phrase “Acquires the Money”

The Mishnah at the opening of the chapter states, “Gold acquires silver, but silver does not acquire gold… movable goods acquire the coin, but a coin does not acquire movable goods,” and concludes that in acquisition by money for movable property, giving coins without pulling possession does not complete the acquisition but only creates the sanction of “He Who Punished.” Rashi explains that silver is defined as money because it is more readily spent, while gold is treated as movable goods, and therefore pulling possession of the gold is what determines the acquisition. The text raises the difficulty: how can “if he pulled the goods, he acquired the money,” if money seemingly is not acquired at all but merely creates a debt? It suggests that the Mishnah means a real acquisition of abstract “value” belonging to the seller, and not merely a future debt.

Purchase-Money, Loans, “A Loan Is Given to Be Spent,” and Maimonides

Abaye in Kiddushin 6 rules that “one who betroths a woman with a loan, she is not betrothed,” and Rashi and Maimonides in the Laws of Marriage, chapter 5, explain that betrothal requires something that exists at the time of betrothal, whereas with a loan “she has already spent that dinar and its benefit has passed.” Maimonides in the Laws of Sale distinguishes between a debt created “because of the sale” and a loan debt: with purchase-money one can, in an unusual case, acquire movable goods even without pulling possession, but with a debt not arising from a sale there is no acquisition until pulling possession or some other valid mode of acquisition. The text suggests that purchase-money is like a deposit of value belonging to the seller but held by the buyer, whereas in a loan the borrower holds nothing that belongs to the lender, only a future obligation to repay. Therefore, “a loan is given to be spent” is a property of a loan and not of money as such.

The Sabbatical Cancellation of Debts, Store Credit, and Value as a Deposit

The Mishnah in tractate Shevi’it, chapter 10, states that the Sabbatical year cancels a loan whether documented or undocumented, but that “store credit is not cancelled, and if he turned it into a loan, then it is cancelled,” and likewise “a laborer’s wages are not cancelled, and if he turned them into a loan, then they are cancelled.” Maimonides’ commentary to the Mishnah defines store credit as the accumulation of small amounts until they add up to a sum for payment, and explains that this is not like the normal pattern of a loan debt. The text rejects explanations that hang the distinction merely on motivation—kindness versus efficiency. It formulates that the Sabbatical cancellation of debts eliminates a future obligation in a loan, but does not transfer existing property of the lender to the borrower. Therefore a deposit and purchase-money are not cancelled, because they are “mine,” and from here it sees a source for Maimonides’ ruling in the Laws of Sale that purchase-money is like a deposit.

Practical Implications: Taking Collateral by Force, One Forbidden to Benefit, and Debt Repayment

The Rema in Choshen Mishpat, section 4, is cited as distinguishing between a loan debt and purchase-money or wages regarding the possibility of taking collateral by force, and the text explains this as the difference between something that is “mine” and a future obligation to give. In the sugya of “one forbidden to derive benefit from his fellow may nevertheless repay his debt,” the permission is explained as “driving away a lion,” because he is merely preventing a future loss and not giving a new benefit, and the text connects this to the structure of a loan in which the lender has no property in the borrower’s possession. It notes that according to this understanding, with purchase-money the outcome would be different, because there the debtor possesses value that belongs to the seller, so payment by a third party is not necessarily just “driving away a lion.”

A Bank Deposit, Interest, and the Iska Permit

The text argues that depositing money in a bank is a deposit of value and not a loan, and consequently most discussions of interest, the Sabbatical cancellation of debts, and pruzbul do not begin at the Torah level in the same way. It explains that when there is no physical cash but only records, this sharpens the existence of “value” as an abstract legal asset belonging to the depositor. It presents interest as a division of profits in a transaction rather than payment for “waiting money,” and from that perspective sees the framework of the iska permit as a genuine description of the transaction and not a fiction, while distinguishing between deposits and other cases that may indeed count as a loan.

Determining Money Versus Goods by Motivation, and Arriving at the Opening of the Chapter

Examples from later authorities (Acharonim) are presented regarding payment for idleness in exchange for work, and the text states that the goods are whatever the transaction is really for, whereas the consideration that is not specifically desired functions as money even if it is an object. It concludes that the beginning of the chapter deals with the pathological case of exchanging money for money, where one cannot say that both sides are goods or that both are money without establishing an asymmetry between coin and commodity. The criteria of what is “more readily marketable” and what is “more important” are presented as tools for making a local determination in such transactions, and not as an essential definition of money and goods. The text emphasizes that there is no single objective definition of money; rather, the classification depends on the agreement and intentions of the parties in each transaction.

Okay, we talked about the concepts of money, merchandise, acquisition through money, and exchange. As I went along I described the development of these concepts; they’re interwoven with the formation of a legal sphere, a sphere that regulates the economic relations between people. And concepts arise here like ownership, property, an act of acquisition, legal effect, and of course money versus merchandise. With merchandise there is also the possibility of exchanging it, and money serves us for acquisition through money. I mentioned that merchandise can also function as something of monetary value, and today we’ll still have to see that—we’ll talk about it—so how do we nevertheless distinguish between merchandise and money? When does merchandise function as monetary value, and when does it function as merchandise?

Before I continue to those matters, one more remark to complete what we’ve seen. I hope that today I’ll finish the conceptual introduction to the chapter. Anyway, that was the plan—to devote three meetings to it. I want to talk about this concept of legal effect, because I think it represents something very deep in the process I described. Reuven? Yehonatan. Yehonatan, okay. It represents something very deep in the conception I described. When I speak about a distinct legal conceptual system, one of the foundational concepts is legal effect. The concept of acquisition, the concept of ownership, are really examples or particular cases of the concept of legal effect. There is also the legal effect of terumah, the legal effect of kiddushin, the legal effect of ownership. A certain legal state—if the legal state changed, that means we applied a legal effect. Okay? That’s basically the meaning of the matter.

Now I want to sharpen a bit what that means. Usually people understand that when I say I applied ownership, the intent is that I became the owner; or I applied the legal effect of kiddushin, meaning I betrothed the woman. You know those jokes about the army? In the army they don’t walk; they execute walking. “Battalion, we executed walking.” They’re incapable of saying “we’re walking.” What? It reminds me of some joke by Richard Feynman. You know him? A Jewish-American physicist, Nobel Prize winner. He was a huge joker. He has several cult books—Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, for example, and others. In one of them he describes some conference—what was it, sociologists maybe, or psychologists? I don’t remember exactly—where someone at the conference says some sentence like “people usually interact visually and audibly.” In short: people talk. That’s the way at an academic conference they want to tell you that people sometimes talk.

So ostensibly, also within Jewish law, instead of saying “I bought something,” I say “I applied the legal effect of ownership to the object”; I executed walking. That’s often how people understand this concept—but it’s not correct. In Jewish law, the concept of legal effect does not express the same thing as “I became the owner.” There’s a connection between the two, but it’s not the same thing. I want to show you that.

Look, the Talmud in tractate Gittin 42 says—you know there is a Canaanite slave and a Hebrew slave. A Canaanite slave is acquired by me like my ox or my donkey; he is my property. Now I have in him what is called an ownership of prohibition-status and a monetary ownership. Meaning, monetary ownership is that he belongs to me; what he produces belongs to me; I can assign him tasks, labor, and the like. Ownership of prohibition-status is his halakhic-legal status: he is a slave, and that has various implications—he is obligated in commandments like a woman, and things like that.

What happens if I declare the slave ownerless? I abandon my rights in the slave? This is called “awaiting a bill of emancipation.” What does that mean? The slave basically no longer belongs to me, because I abandoned my rights in him, so monetarily he is not my property, he doesn’t belong to me; but in order for him to stop being a slave, I have to give him a bill of emancipation. At the stage when he still hasn’t received the bill of emancipation, he is called one “awaiting a bill of emancipation.” That means I still have in him ownership of prohibition-status, but I no longer have monetary ownership.

Now the Talmud says that if someone injures a slave in that state—a slave awaiting a bill of emancipation—then he pays the damages to his master. That’s what the Talmud says: you pay the injury compensation to his master. Tosafot ask: why? After all, if I pay, I injured the slave, I damaged his arm; I caused damage. To whom did I cause damage? To the slave, not to the master. Because if he still belonged to the master, then the slave is the master’s property—it’s as though you damaged his cow, at least monetarily. You don’t have to say that the human relationship to him is like a cow, but monetarily he is defined as the master’s property. But once he is awaiting a bill of emancipation, the master no longer has monetary ownership of this slave. So who was harmed here, who was injured here? The slave. So why do I pay the master and not the slave? That’s Tosafot’s question.

Tosafot answer: because with the “thirty shekels for a slave”—when my ox kills a slave, there is a fine of thirty silver pieces that must be paid. That fine, even in the case of one awaiting a bill of emancipation, goes to his master. Tosafot say: what difference is there between killing him entirely and half-killing him, meaning injuring him? Killing completely or half-killing is the same thing. Just as the fine of the thirty shekels for a slave goes to the master even though he’s not really his master anymore—he’s awaiting a bill of emancipation—so too the injury compensation goes to the master. That’s what Tosafot say.

The Pnei Yehoshua asks about this: what does shemitah have to do with threshing—what’s the connection? In the case of the thirty shekels for a slave, not only is there no slave anymore, but there we’re dealing with a fine. A fine, unlike monetary payment, is punitive payment. Monetary payment means I owe you money and I pay you the money I owe you. I damaged you, I borrowed from you, things like that. So I pay you what I owe you; that’s a civil legal obligation, let’s call it that. But a fine is what you’d call criminal liability, not civil liability. A fine is punitive payment. The whole idea of a fine is that monetarily I don’t really owe you, but the Torah wants to punish me, and the punishment is that I pay.

Now it’s true that once I’m paying, I pay the injured party—after all, what am I going to do with the money, throw it into the sea? So I do pay the injured party. But I’m not paying you as compensation; it isn’t a monetary obligation, it’s punitive payment. The Pnei Yehoshua says: in the case of the thirty shekels for a slave, when my ox killed a slave, what I have to pay there is not compensation but punitive payment, a fine. What’s the indication? The amount is fixed. The thirty shekels for a slave are always thirty silver pieces, no matter how much the slave was worth, no matter anything. The Talmud itself says that. When the amount is fixed, that indicates this is a fine and not compensation, because compensation is however much I owe—that’s what I have to pay. Damage: however much damage I caused, that’s what I pay, because it depends on how much damage I caused. But when there is a fixed fine for all kinds of slaves in all situations and all cases, then that means it’s a fine.

So the thirty shekels for a slave are a fine, and regarding that the Torah introduced the novelty that the fine goes to his master. And there’s also a lot of logic in that, as you said earlier: the slave is already dead—to whom should I pay? I have to pay, I have to be punished, so money has to be taken from me. What should be done with that money? I would have paid the slave, but he’s dead, so they tell me: pay his master. Fine, what can you do—the main thing is that you be punished, the main thing is that money comes out of you.

Right—but with injury compensation, according to everyone, this is compensation, including Maimonides, who has a unique approach on this matter; but the Pnei Yehoshua says there that this is so even according to Maimonides. Injury compensation is compensation—it’s reimbursement for damage I caused you. Compensation has to be given to the one who was harmed; you pay the one who was harmed, not just pay arbitrarily. It’s not like punitive payment. So what is Tosafot saying: “what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him partially”? If the thirty shekels for a slave go to the master, then injury compensation also goes to the master? Nonsense. The thirty shekels for a slave are a fine, and there is no slave to pay, and the payment is punitive, and in any event it has to be paid, so they pay the master. But injury—first of all there is a slave here, there’s someone to pay, and second, it’s compensatory payment, not punitive payment. Pay the one who was harmed—the one who was harmed.

Now what the Pnei Yehoshua answers is a bit vague; it’s not entirely clear what he means. I think he means the following—and if not, then this is what I answer. The claim is that with injury payment or damage payment, it’s not true that I pay the injured party; I pay the owner of the object that was damaged. Usually that’s the same person. Who was harmed? If I damaged a donkey, then the injured party is the owner of the donkey, right? Or if I burned a house, the injured party is the homeowner. So usually the owner of the damaged object is the person harmed as a result of the act. But here’s an exceptional case. The one actually harmed is the slave, but the owner of the object that was damaged is the master. Therefore I pay—hold on, I’ll explain, let’s see if there’s a question—therefore I pay the damage amount according to the assessment of the damage, how much I damaged. But the addressee of the payment, to whom I transfer the money, is the master, because he is the owner of the damaged object.

But we need to notice carefully: there is an additional novelty here. That is one novelty in the laws of damages. But beyond that there is another novelty here, namely that even in the case of one awaiting a bill of emancipation, the master is the owner. But he isn’t the owner—he already declared him ownerless, he has no monetary rights in him anymore. So even if I accept the novelty in the laws of damages that the money has to be paid to the owner of the damaged object, why and from where comes the second novelty—that in one awaiting a bill of emancipation, the original owner is still considered the slave’s owner? Even though he abandoned him, he’s no longer his, he has no monetary rights whatsoever here.

So I once had an argument about this with the lecturer I had in Bnei Brak. I made this claim, and he said no, he didn’t accept it. We went to a religious court before one of the other teachers in the yeshivah, and he represented me. He said to him: why do the medieval authorities (Rishonim) use the term “ownership of prohibition-status” for what remains in the case of one awaiting a bill of emancipation? There’s no monetary ownership, but there is ownership of… Why is it called ownership? There is a status, a personal-status standing—you are in this sort of status of a slave. But why is it ownership? What does that have to do with ownership?

Seemingly, this expression hints that the master is still the owner of the slave, despite having declared him ownerless, despite having no monetary rights in him anymore. Can there be a state where a slave is my property—or something is my property, it is owned by me—and yet I have no rights of use in it whatsoever? Can there be such a thing? My claim about the Pnei Yehoshua is that yes. That’s the situation here. It’s called ownership of prohibition-status because the ownership really is still intact. The owner is the owner of this slave who is awaiting emancipation. He has no rights of use in the slave, no monetary rights. But the concept of ownership is something beyond the collection of rights.

When I—just a second—when I own something, that gives me many usage rights. But it is not correct to say that ownership is the collection of usage rights. No, it isn’t. Ownership is some sort of meta-legal relation, metaphysical if you like, between me and the object, which has consequences in terms of rights. I have rights, and someone else may not use it without my permission. Those are the consequences of being the owner. They are not the very definition of being the owner. My being the owner means there is an ownership relation between me and it, or that an ownership legal effect applies between me and it. There is my ownership legal effect upon it.

Usually, if there is an ownership legal effect and I am the owner, then I also have monetary rights. But here is an example of a situation in which the ownership legal effect still exists—I am the owner of the slave—but I have no monetary rights in the slave. That is an indication that the concept of ownership is not exhausted by the collection of rights. The concept of ownership has a standing of its own: either I’m the owner or I’m not. It usually has implications in terms of a collection of rights, but sometimes that won’t happen. So the ownership exists and the rights that derive from it do not appear. Okay? That’s basically the claim.

What about damages? Is the slave like his asset? Even if a slave who is completely mine causes damage, I don’t pay. The Talmud in tractate Bava Kamma says that a slave and a minor are “bad in their injury,” meaning they can cause damage and I am not obligated to pay. So the claim that ultimately comes out of the Pnei Yehoshua here is that the concept of ownership is not identical with the statement that I have monetary rights. The concept of ownership is a statement about a factual state, metaphysical if you want, that there is a relation between me and the object or slave or property. Okay? Usually that relation gives me usage rights, but not always. Sometimes it appears without usage rights, and I am still the owner. So that’s the claim.

I’ll give a few examples. For instance, the Rogatchover says this in Bava Kamma 17; there are collected notes of the Rogatchover there. He says, for example, regarding the requirement that my animal rest on the Sabbath. There is a Torah law—the Talmud says that my animals must rest on the Sabbath. They may not desecrate the Sabbath. Notice: this is not leading an animal with a load. Leading an animal means I am doing labor by means of the animal; the transgression is mine, only I’m doing it via the animal. Fine, that’s clear. I’m talking about my animal’s Sabbath rest. My animal’s Sabbath rest means when the animal itself does some forbidden labor on the Sabbath, independently of me. I violate a Torah prohibition. I am required that my animal rest. If my animal carries from private domain to public domain, I violated a Torah prohibition. Not for me—it does it on its own. I violated a Torah prohibition; that is called my animal’s Sabbath rest.

This is how most of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) understand it. Let’s leave aside that there are also views that want to identify this with leading an animal, but the simple understanding is not like that. Now the Rogatchover asks: why? What is the idea? Are animals obligated to keep the Sabbath? He says the idea is that the animal is some sort of extension of me. This is basically part of my own Sabbath observance. Just as my body has to observe the Sabbath, so too my property has to observe the Sabbath. It is simply part of my resting—not because I am now doing an act with the animal, which would be leading an animal, but because the very fact that the animal does a forbidden act on the Sabbath is considered a sort of desecration of my Sabbath. It isn’t labor in the sense of capital punishment; one is not stoned for this, but it is a Torah prohibition punishable by lashes. Okay?

What does it mean that it is an extension? Meaning, of the person? Animals are an extension of a person? How did they get to that? Who is “they”? The sages? It’s the Torah. The Torah says, “so that your ox and your donkey may rest,” and the sages understand that apparently what the Torah means is that oxen and donkeys are some kind of extension of me, and the rest demanded of me is in fact broader than just my body. My property also has to rest. Apparently, yes. Okay, fine.

And accordingly, according to the Rogatchover for example, there is a discussion among later authorities about liability claims for damages. How does it work? Why can one sue me for damage caused by my animal? The Rogatchover talks in this context. Some understand that one can sue me because I was negligent in guarding it. I am at fault; I was negligent in guarding; I should have watched the animal and didn’t. But there are medieval and later authorities from whom it emerges that the conception is different. The very fact that my animal caused damage makes me responsible for what it did—not because I was negligent in guarding. They are not making a claim against me about fault. This is not fault but responsibility.

Fault means I did something wrong, therefore I have to pay. Responsibility is not necessarily connected to fault. Yes—I think Ohana said this, the current Speaker of the Knesset, following the Meron disaster. He said, “I am responsible but not guilty,” and everyone laughed. There’s nothing to laugh about. Responsibility and guilt are different concepts. Sometimes I am responsible for things even though I am not guilty. There are many examples of this, okay? Ministerial responsibility, as it’s called, is an example—unlike direct responsibility, personal responsibility. Personal responsibility means you are guilty of what happened. Ministerial responsibility means you are responsible for what happened. You are not guilty—we did not find direct guilt in you—but you are responsible for what happened.

By the way, it’s not so simple that there is such a thing in law. In fact a friend of mine—he now headed the commission that investigated the prisoners’ escape from Megiddo prison, Menachem Finkelstein, he was a former major general, military advocate general, then a district court judge—he addressed exactly this issue, and he recently taught me that in fact, legally speaking, they never really demanded ministerial responsibility; it was always personal responsibility. Meaning, they never imposed responsibility on someone if they did not find fault in him. Even though conceptually, the concept of ministerial responsibility includes responsibility without fault. He’s speaking about these things right now in various lectures and so on, because it’s some sort of novel point.

In any case, for our purposes, the claim is that there is a difference between responsibility and fault. And when my ox causes damage, at least according to certain conceptions, I have to pay not because I am guilty, because I was negligent in guarding, but because I am responsible. If my ox gored, then the responsibility is mine; I have to compensate the injured party. The Rogatchover says: it’s exactly the same thing. Why is it so? Like my animal’s Sabbath rest: because the ox is an extension of me, and if it did something, it is as though I did it. This is not fault, but as far as responsibility goes, I am responsible for it as though I did it.

Incidentally, a person who causes damage is liable even in a case of compulsion, where there is no fault—when he is asleep. The Talmud in Bava Kamma discusses a stone lying in his lap, and I am asleep and meanwhile the stone falls and causes damage; I have to pay. Here too this is not fault but responsibility. It may depend on a dispute among the medieval authorities whether one is liable even in total compulsion. Whoever says that in total compulsion one is also liable—then this is really only responsibility and not fault. Whoever says that in total compulsion one is not liable, only in partial compulsion, then perhaps he always leaves some dimension of fault, and therefore in total compulsion, where there is no fault, one is indeed exempt. That may depend on a dispute among the medieval authorities.

The barrels—but when he walks with barrels, there they say it’s compulsion. I didn’t understand. There is that case in Bava Kamma, the one about someone filling the public domain with barrels. Yes, okay. And there too there is the idea that he is compelled. What does that mean? Could he not walk? What does it mean “one who fills the public domain with barrels”—so what, I can’t walk? But opposite that there’s the one who stumbles at a corner; if I’m not mistaken he is exempt. I don’t remember; I’d have to look. Maybe point me to the passage and I’ll look there. In general, a person who causes damage is liable even in compulsion—that’s the principle.

So for our purposes, what the Rogatchover is basically saying is that my relation to my property is not exhausted by the fact that I have usage rights in it, but by the fact that it is my property, that I am the owner. The implication of that is that I have usage rights, but ownership is not the collection of usage rights; ownership is what gives rise to those usage rights. But the practical consequence is that it can also be present where the usage rights are absent, as in the case of one awaiting a bill of emancipation, and I am still the owner. So that is a very nice implication of this point.

Where did the penny drop for me on this? We once discussed it when I was teaching in Yeruham. We were talking about conditions. Say someone divorced a woman conditionally. Okay, so Rabbi Shimon Shkop, in his essay on conditions at the end of tractate Gittin, at the end of his novellae on Gittin, writes there that as long as the relevant stage has not arrived—for example, he divorces a woman on condition that she not drink wine for a month—okay, what is her status during that month? He says: she is both divorced and a married woman. After a month we’ll see how the wave function collapses. But at the initial stage she is both a married woman and divorced.

I say this casually and continue on, preparing to keep going in the lecture, and someone stops me and says: wait a second—what do you mean, both a married woman and divorced? If she is a married woman then she isn’t divorced; if she is divorced then she isn’t a married woman. What you’re saying is an oxymoron, a round triangle. A married woman is not divorced; divorced is not a married woman. What do you mean she is both a married woman and divorced? How can one say such a thing? Both triangular and round.

I paused for a second, because it had seemed totally natural to me. And I paused and said: wait, it can’t be that I missed something so stupid. I thought for a moment, and then the penny dropped. It’s nice—questions of this kind that suddenly come from the outside force you… It doesn’t mean I made a mistake, it just means I have to rethink what I said. And I think I did rethink it and understood what I had said and I hadn’t made a mistake. But it forced me to think.

I said to him: look, I had a friend once—still a very good friend—and we used to exchange examples. He has examples and there are examples; we exchange examples for all sorts of things in general. I once asked him whether he had an example of something that has no opposite. I can’t find one, I told him. So he said: what do you mean? A dove has no opposite. A cloud. A chair. And again I asked myself: wait—so how did I miss that? I mean, I couldn’t find anything that has no opposite. Then I understood that I had been looking among attributes or predicates. Every predicate has an opposite. Like what the Ramchal says a bit about the governance of unity and the governance of justice. But every predicate has an opposite. Objects do not have opposites. There is no opposite of an object. There is an opposite property. Salt is not the opposite of sugar. Salty is the opposite of sweet. They have opposite properties. Objects don’t stand in a relation of opposition to one another, right? That’s irrelevant; objects are objects—you’re sugar and you’re salt, and opposition doesn’t apply. Opposition is a relation between properties.

Therefore, if a certain item is salty, then it cannot also be sweet at the same time—completely salty and completely sweet, okay? In that sense, salty is the opposite of sweet. But sugar and salt are different; they are not opposites. They are simply two things. Opposition is a relation between properties. Therefore all the examples he gave me of things that have no opposite were objects. And I had been looking for something that is a property and has no opposite. I didn’t find any. Okay?

So why am I saying this? When I say that in a dish this dish is both entirely salty and entirely sweet, I said nonsense—it’s an oxymoron. If it’s salty then it isn’t sweet; if it’s sweet then it isn’t salty. A round triangle—it’s the same thing, okay? But if I say that in the dish there is both salt and sugar, did I say anything problematic? No. Well, you can put both salt and sugar into the same dish, right? Its taste will be mixed. It won’t be both entirely salty and entirely sweet—that’s a contradiction. But the fact that it contains both salt and sugar—there’s no problem with that at all, right?

What does that mean? That when I say a woman is both a married woman and divorced, that’s a round triangle. That’s a contradiction. If she is a married woman she isn’t divorced; if she is divorced she isn’t a married woman. But if I say that the woman has the legal effect of being a married woman and the legal effect of being divorced, that’s like saying that in the dish there is both salt and sugar. Because legal effects are objects; they are not properties. When I say that the woman has upon her the legal effect of married womanhood or the legal effect of divorce, what I said is that she is basically carrying two backpacks on her back. Two, yes—she has two garments, two outfits: the outfit of a divorcee and the outfit of a married woman.

If I had said that the laws applying to her are both the laws of a married woman and the laws of a divorcee, I would have spoken nonsense. Because if they are the laws of a divorcee then they are not the laws of a married woman—they are opposites. Is she permitted to marry or is she forbidden to marry? You can’t say both at once. But when I say that she has upon her the legal effect of married womanhood and the legal effect of divorce, that’s like saying the dish contains both salt and sugar. Because legal effects are not a property; legal effects are objects. Androgynos? Yes, you could say that. But the signs of an androgynos are objects. He simply has such signs. What will his laws be? There there are no contradictions. If the law is such, then it is not such. Yes, that’s true—that’s a good example.

This means that the concept of legal effect, as I said earlier, is not to say that I have usage rights in the slave or in the object, to say that I have the legal effect of ownership upon it. No. Legal effect means that a legal effect sits upon it. It is a concept, an object. The implication of the metaphysical state that there is an ownership legal effect upon it is that I generally have usage rights. That’s an implication. So the properties are an implication of a state that is a factual, metaphysical state, okay? Or meta-legal, if you like.

Therefore there is no contradiction in saying that the woman has upon her the legal effect of married womanhood and the legal effect of divorce. I cannot say that she is both a married woman and divorced, or that both sets of laws apply to her. That cannot be. If she is permitted to a priest, then it is not true that she is forbidden to a priest. If she is permitted to marry because she is divorced, it cannot be that she is forbidden to marry because she is a married woman. In other words, either she is permitted or she is forbidden. You can’t say she is both permitted and forbidden, because permitted and forbidden are laws. But to say that she has upon her the legal effect of married womanhood and the legal effect of divorce—that is a description of a state. It is not laws.

You can ask what the laws will be in such a state. Say that during that month the woman has upon her both the legal effect of married womanhood and the legal effect of divorce simultaneously. What laws will apply to her? Yes. So usually people say: usually they apply stringently. And that’s not correct—that it’s because of stringency. Even Rabbi Shimon describes it that way, but that description is incorrect. It isn’t because of stringency; rather it is both this and that. That is not the same thing as stringency.

I would phrase it differently: what applies to her is the positive legal state and not the absence. The positive state, the existent and not the non-existent. What do I mean? Suppose I say she is both a divorcee and a widow, and I ask whether she is permitted to a priest. Widow or divorcee, never mind. Is a priest allowed to marry her? On the side that she is divorced, there is a prohibition on marrying her, right? On the side that she is a widow, there is no prohibition. But there is also no obligation. It is not obligatory to marry her; there is simply no prohibition. Meaning, the status of widowhood is the absence of a status in relation to a priest. There are no laws upon her. She may marry, she may refrain from marrying—do whatever you like. There are no restrictions. The status of a divorcee is not an absence; it is a positive legal state. Because she is divorced there is a prohibition on a priest marrying her. The positive legal state always overrides the law of absence. That’s the rule.

Why do I say this is not the same thing as stringency? Usually it looks like stringency, because a positive legal state is always a prohibition. But not always. A positive legal state can also be an obligation. And if the positive legal state prevails, then it will be an obligation, not a prohibition. Okay? But let’s leave that. Even without it—what will happen in a rabbinic-level doubt? Suppose there is a married woman and a divorcee on a rabbinic level. I say she is both a married woman and a divorcee on a rabbinic level. We will still go stringently. Stringently in the sense I mentioned. Why? Because this is not by the laws of doubt. It is not because I am in doubt, and in a rabbinic-level doubt one may be lenient. No. Rather, it is both a married woman and a divorcee. So she is a divorcee; on the divorcee side of her, she is forbidden to a priest. What difference does it make that it’s rabbinic? Then she is rabbinically forbidden to a priest. But she is certainly forbidden, not forbidden because of doubt. She is both a married woman and a divorcee. Therefore it is not correct to describe this under the laws of doubt. These are doubled laws of certainty. Okay?

If we move into a case where she is possibly a married woman—well? So what is “possibly a married woman”? If you say she is possibly a married woman, then the laws of doubt apply. If you say she is both a married woman and a divorcee, that is not a state of doubt. That is certain duality. If she is certain in a certain status, and dual in two different concepts, then it is certainty. Okay. But if she is in doubt whether she is a married woman—if she is in doubt whether she is a married woman, then the laws of doubt apply. Then you follow the laws of doubt. Obviously. That’s what the laws of doubt were said about. What I’m saying is that in dual status, the laws of doubt do not apply. The laws of doubt speak about doubtful situations, about a state of doubt. Dual status is not a state of doubt; there different laws apply. They are very similar, and therefore confusing, but they are different. It’s certain, not out of doubt.

For example, what would happen if I had a doubt whether she is a married woman or divorced, and I am in doubt—is that a double doubt? May one be lenient? No. It is one Torah-level doubt, because at the Torah level she is either divorced or a married woman—at the Torah level. And if I am in doubt, that is one doubt, not a double doubt. Where can it be that she is a married woman and divorced in the same status? I told you: if I divorce her conditionally, on condition that she not drink wine for a month. As long as the month has not passed, I do not know whether she is a married woman or divorced, right? If she drinks wine then she is not divorced; if she does not drink wine then she is divorced. So as long as the month has not yet arrived, she is both a married woman and divorced. That is Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s claim.

If someone imposed a condition there. Yes, her husband did. The husband. Right. Yes. Wow. That really is interesting. Okay. So it comes out that she is a married woman and divorced only at the end, right? What didn’t I understand? It comes out that she is a married woman and divorced only at the end—after a month there will be… No, it depends on the type of condition, whether it is an “if” condition or an “on condition that” condition. I’m not going into all the details now.

So the claim ultimately is that legal effects—yes, the legal effect of married womanhood, the legal effect of ownership, and so on—are really descriptions of a state. It is not a legal statement that I have ownership legal effect on something or kiddushin legal effect on something. It is a meta-legal statement, or metaphysical if you like. It has legal implications, okay?

Now when I say that when I performed an act of acquisition I applied the legal effect of ownership to the object, you understand that this is basically the meaning of the juridification of commerce. Because the natural commerce I described at the beginning—okay, let’s exchange, you’ll use this, I’ll use that—basically doesn’t even speak in terms of rights. Each person just uses what is in his possession. It’s something conducted in a completely natural way without regulation, without legal definitions. Here suddenly we discover that there is a whole conceptual or real sphere which is basically the product of legal acts. You don’t see these states with your eyes; it’s not a physical state, it’s a legal state. That sphere was created in the process I described earlier, which created the economic-legal regulation of relations between human beings. Concepts were created, an entire world of meta-legal, metaphysical concepts, and now you can talk about realities. I have ownership legal effect; I don’t have ownership legal effect.

Yes, I think I mentioned the connection regarding the application of kiddushin. I said that although the Mishnah says that a woman is acquired in three ways, it is not true that the husband becomes the owner of the woman. She does not belong to him. So what does “is acquired” mean? “Is acquired” means that I do this act and apply to her the legal effect of kiddushin. An act of acquisition is an act that applies a legal effect. When that legal effect is ownership, then the act that applies it is what in our ordinary jargon we call an act of acquisition. But in Jewish law, an act of acquisition is any act that applies a legal effect, not specifically the legal effect of ownership. When I make a contract with you, I perform an act of acquisition. I didn’t buy you by that act, but I did apply the legal effect of the contract. From now on we are bound to one another. An act that has legal significance is called in Jewish law an act of acquisition.

Therefore, to say that the woman “is acquired” means that the legal effect of kiddushin is applied in three ways: money, document, and intercourse. It does not mean that the woman belongs to me. Okay? You can say that I have in her ownership of prohibition-status in some sense, but not monetary ownership. She is not… I have no ownership rights in the woman; she does not belong to me. Okay? There is some prohibition-status or personal-status standing that is applied by the act of kiddushin. It has monetary implications too, mainly rabbinic ones, but those are implications; that is not the thing itself.

For our purposes, what this whole matter says is that the concept of law, or the legal sphere that was created in the process I described, has some existence of its own. Alongside the physical world, we now have a legal world. And in that legal world we can speak about reality just as we speak about physics. There are rules and laws, legal effects are created and legal effects disappear, and we perform actions that change the legal world just as physical actions change the physical world. This is perhaps the strongest expression of what was created in the process of juridification, the conceptual regulation I described in previous lessons. Okay? That world is basically what was created.

Good. Moving on. Now I want to enter the concept of acquisition through money. How is acquisition through money performed? How do we determine what is money and what is merchandise? When does the legal effect of ownership take hold? Yes? We need to create regulations. Now we need to define what happens there.

In exchange acquisition—in the earlier period—you would give me a donkey, I would give you a cow, and everything was fine. No one asked himself from what point it was acquired. The moment I took the donkey, I took it; you take the cow, you took it; and each one used what was by him. No acquisitions and legal effects are being defined, there’s no moment, there’s no legal regulation. Once money arose, different sorts of transactions arose as well: acquisition through money, as distinct from barter. In acquisition through money, we saw that money functions on two levels: first, it is the consideration for the merchandise I buy; and second, sometimes it can also be the act of acquisition itself. In practical Jewish law that applies only to land, immovable property. In movable goods one also needs physical pulling. Money, according to Jewish law at least, does not acquire. Okay? But on the conceptual level, say in land, the money is not only the consideration; it is also the act that applies the legal effect of acquisition to the field or house that I bought. Okay?

Now there are two things we have to define here. First, exactly how does the acquisition happen? When does it happen? And what is being acquired? You buy the merchandise, I buy the money? How exactly is this defined? And perhaps beyond that, we have to ask: in a transaction that is not barter but a money transaction, how do we define what is money and what is merchandise? After all, merchandise is monetary value; sometimes I use something of monetary value and for me that functions as money. I can betroth a woman by giving her a chair. I don’t need to give her a coin. So I use the chair as monetary value and betroth the woman with a chair. So when I buy a chair and pay you in money, why is the chair the merchandise and the money the money? Why not say that the chair is the money? It has monetary value; when betrothing a woman one uses it as monetary value; so it too is money. So what defines in each transaction what is the merchandise and what is the money?

That is the beginning of our chapter. “Silver acquires gold; gold does not acquire silver”—the question is: in that act, which side is defined as the coin, the money, and which side is defined as the produce? Produce means the merchandise. Okay? That is basically the question at the start of the passage—but in a moment we’ll see that that is not really the question at the start of the passage. We are still in the introduction; we haven’t started the passage yet.

Good, moving on. So the Mishnah says as follows. “Roeh”? Yes. “Roeh”? “Do not awaken or arouse.” So the Mishnah says like this: gold acquires silver, and silver does not acquire gold. Copper acquires silver, and silver does not acquire copper. Bad coins acquire good ones, and good ones do not acquire bad ones. We’re basically starting the chapter now, okay? The unminted token acquires the coin, and the coin does not acquire the token. Movable goods acquire the coin—that’s what matters for our purposes—and the coin does not acquire movable goods. This is the rule: all movable goods acquire one another.

How so? If he pulled produce from him and did not give him money, he cannot retract. If he gave him money and did not pull from him—there is what is called “He Who Punishes,” but legally you have not acquired. I have to stand by my word, and therefore I basically need to give you the merchandise. But as long as I haven’t given you the merchandise, even if you gave me the money, I can return the money to you and go home as a matter of law; only there will be upon me the censure of “He Who Punishes,” meaning it’s not proper to do such a thing. Okay?

What is this Mishnah saying? That in an exchange of merchandise—when I exchange a cow for a donkey—if you pulled the cow or I pulled the donkey, the acquisition takes effect. On both sides. Even if I haven’t yet transferred the donkey to you, once I pulled the cow, the donkey is already yours. That is in barter, merchandise versus merchandise.

In acquisition through money there is asymmetry. If you paid me and still did not receive the merchandise, you did not acquire. I can return your money and not give you the merchandise. There will be “He Who Punishes,” which means it’s not proper, but legally you did not acquire. But if I pulled the merchandise and you still did not get the money from me, you have already acquired the money. In acquisition through money, what applies the acquisition is the pulling of the merchandise.

Now we need to understand why that is, first; and second, how in general do we define what is merchandise and what is money, as I asked earlier? How do I know how to define what is merchandise and what is money?

And maybe one more thing I can say: Rashi on our Mishnah writes as follows: “Gold acquires silver”—one who buys minted gold dinars with silver dinars, and gave him the gold dinars, the pulling of the gold acquires the silver for the owner of the gold, and once he receives the gold dinars, this one becomes obligated to give him the silver dinars and cannot retract. But silver does not acquire gold. Yes—when there is silver against gold, gold is the merchandise and silver is the coinage, okay? If he first gave him the silver dinars, he did not acquire, and both may retract, for silver coinage is the money because it is more readily accepted in transactions. That’s what the Talmud says—why do we define silver specifically as the coinage and gold as the merchandise? Because silver circulates more readily. And a gold dinar is nothing more than other movable goods and produce, and money does not acquire until one pulls the movable goods. But the pulling of the movable goods does acquire, and neither can retract. And the Talmud explains the reason,” etc. We already saw that Talmudic discussion—why pulling, why pulling is required, by Torah law, by rabbinic law, Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish.

What does this mean? That when I pulled the merchandise, in acquisition through money, when I pulled the merchandise, I acquired the merchandise and you acquired the money. If you pulled the money—or I pulled the money—well, sorry, if you pulled the money, nothing happened; he can return the money to me and cancel the purchase. What does it mean that when I pulled the merchandise, you acquired the money? What did you acquire? What is money? Is there some specific coin by me that can now be yours, that you acquired? No, right? A loan is given for spending. So he didn’t acquire. Meaning: if I pulled the merchandise, I can’t retract and I’ll have to pay you money. But ostensibly it isn’t correct to say that you acquired the money. You didn’t acquire anything; it’s a debt. A debt is basically a future obligation to pay you, but you didn’t acquire anything from me. There is nothing by me that is yours.

So money is a pathological case; it isn’t like merchandise. If I bought merchandise, even if it is still by you, that merchandise specifically is mine. You cannot take that donkey and give me another donkey instead; that donkey is mine. If you take it, you are a thief. But when they say I acquired money that is in your possession, they mean something else. There isn’t in your possession something that is really mine and that you may not take. All the coins you have, you can take, use, do with them whatever you like; I cannot say about any one of them, “Don’t take it, it’s mine.” So what does it mean that I acquired the money? That there is upon you a future obligation to pay me a certain amount. When you pay me, it will be mine, but in the meantime I haven’t acquired anything; only a debt was created. Right? Ostensibly that is what is written. Not that that is what is written—that is what happens.

But I want to claim something else. I want to claim that I acquired the money. And when the Mishnah says that one who pulled the merchandise acquired the money, the Mishnah means what it says: I acquired the money. What does it mean that I acquired the money? What coin or note in your possession belongs to me? None. So what does it mean that I acquired the money?

Here you have an example of what we talked about in previous lessons—not entirely, though there is also that entirely—but of the fact that money has no body, right? It has only form. It has only value. So when they say “I acquired the money,” the meaning is: value of one hundred shekels that is in your possession belongs to me. The concept of value is abstract; it is not a specific object. Money is an expression or illustration of the concept of value. But value of one hundred shekels can be realized in this note or that note or in a chair or whatever. None of those things is really acquired by me. What is acquired by me? Value of one hundred shekels that is in your possession and belongs to me. Okay? That is what is acquired by me.

No, that is not a debt. It is not a debt. A debt means a future obligation to pay. An acquisition of money, when I acquired the money, is not a debt. There is money by you that belongs to me—value of one hundred shekels in your possession is mine. Now it is true that I cannot say about any specific coin that it is mine and stop you, “Don’t touch it, it’s mine.” No, it is not exhausted or embodied in any specific coin or specific note. But there is value by you that belongs to me. The abstraction we made of the concept of value and turned into a kind of abstract object—right, we spoke about this in the first lessons—suddenly now receives meaning. Now one can buy and sell value. Value is merchandise. Value too is merchandise. And when I pulled the cow, you acquired value of one thousand shekels that is in my possession. Value of one thousand shekels in my possession belongs to you.

What disappeared? What disappeared? Nothing can disappear. No specific coin is yours. What disappeared? I owe you that hundred shekels; they are yours. Yes, exactly—there is no issue of responsibility here. So there is no issue of responsibility because nothing was lost; not that there is no responsibility, but there is no need for responsibility. I owe you those thousand shekels; I was and remain obligated. I owe you the thousand shekels no matter what happened to the specific notes or coins in my possession. Even if they all disappeared, I still owe you a thousand shekels. Or: you have value of a thousand shekels in my possession.

Now I want to show you the significance of this, and it’s an interesting matter. The Talmud in Kiddushin discusses betrothing with a loan. A famous Talmudic passage, Kiddushin 6. Abaye says: one who betroths with a loan, she is not betrothed. With the benefit of a loan, she is betrothed, and it is forbidden to do so because of a subterfuge of interest. Fine—that’s not important for us.

Why is she not betrothed if he betroths with a loan? Meaning, say the woman borrowed one hundred shekels from me. Now there is a debt upon the woman; she owes me one hundred shekels. I come to the woman and say to her: be betrothed to me with my one hundred shekels that are in your possession. She is not betrothed. Why? Usually the claim is—and that is usually how people understand it—that kiddushin must be done with something tangible. And even if she owes me one hundred shekels, there is no tangible thing here that is mine. She owes me one hundred shekels in general, and therefore you cannot effect kiddushin; for some reason, there is some rule in kiddushin that one must betroth with a tangible thing. And a loan is “given for spending.” What does “a loan is given for spending” mean? I gave you one hundred shekels. Those hundred shekels are for spending; they are not mine. It’s not that my one hundred shekels are sitting with you. You can buy with them, you can do whatever you want. There is no specific coin of mine that is with you. That is what is called “a loan is given for spending.” Okay? And because of that, she is not betrothed.

That is what Rashi writes there: “One who betroths with a loan, she is not betrothed, for we learn ‘taking’ from the field of Ephron, that he gives something at the time of kiddushin. And a loan is given for spending, and it is already no longer his, and she owes him other money than the money he gave her.” So usually people understand that there really is a rule that he must betroth with some specific thing, and therefore one cannot betroth with a loan.

Maimonides, in the laws of marriage chapter 5: “One who betroths with a loan, even if it was documented, she is not betrothed. How so? For example, if she owed him a dinar and he said to her: behold, you are betrothed to me with the dinar that I have in your possession—she is not betrothed, because a loan is given for spending and there is no existing thing here from which she now derives benefit, for she has already spent that dinar and its benefit has passed.” The dinar she received, she already spent it; it is no longer something from which she can presently derive benefit, and therefore one cannot say he is betrothing her with the dinar he gave her then.

So ostensibly Maimonides is like Rashi. But look at Maimonides in the laws of sale, and the commentators on Maimonides are very perplexed by this Maimonides. They don’t understand where he got this law from; the Raavad comments on him. “And so too Reuven who sold movable goods to Shimon for fifty zuz, and Shimon acquired the movable goods and became obligated in the payment.” Fine? I gave Shimon a chair in exchange for fifty zuz. He pulled the chair, and we already saw in the Mishnah that when one pulls the chair, then with respect to the money he owes me the money, fifty zuz.

“And after Shimon became obligated in these fifty zuz, he had wine or an animal or a slave or the like among his other movable goods, and he wanted to sell them.” Fine? Shimon has some merchandise he wants to sell. “And Reuven said to him”—I’m Reuven, say he owes me the fifty shekels, and you have merchandise I want—“so come, I will give you those fifty shekels, and with those fifty shekels I will buy your merchandise; sell it to me for the fifty zuz of the sale-price that I have in your possession.” And he said yes, he agreed. “Reuven acquired the movable goods wherever they are, even though he neither pulled nor lifted them.” He didn’t pull them; he acquired them by acquisition through money. How do you acquire movable goods by acquisition through money? Didn’t we see that one needs pulling in order to acquire? How did he acquire?

Maimonides says this is an uncommon matter, and the sages did not require pulling in such a case. Because the requirement of pulling is only rabbinic, and an acquisition of this kind using sale-money that you owe me is not common. Since it is uncommon, they did not require pulling.

But Maimonides says: “If it was a debt owed to him not by reason of the sale”—a loan, yes? You owe me one hundred shekels not because you bought something from me but because you borrowed—“and he said to him: sell me movable goods for the debt I have in your possession, and they both agreed, he does not acquire until he lifts or pulls it, or acquires in one of the ways by which movable goods are acquired.”

What is the meaning? One who betroths with a loan does not acquire, as with the woman who is not betrothed. Why not? So this isn’t only about kiddushin; in sales too it works this way. The Talmud says the same rule applies to sale. So it’s not only a rule in kiddushin that you need to give some specific thing; in sale as well, in buying and selling, when I buy via acquisition through money, the money I give has to be some specific thing—only then can I acquire. But if so, why in the case of sale-money does it work? At the beginning of the law Maimonides says that if it is a loan, then one who betroths with a loan does not acquire and one who buys with a loan does not acquire. But if it is sale-money that you owe me, then I can acquire—and apparently also betroth.

Meaning, if the woman bought a chair from me—she didn’t borrow one hundred shekels from me, but bought a chair and owes me one hundred shekels as the sale-price—and now I say to her, “Be betrothed to me with that sale-price,” then according to Maimonides she is betrothed. But in the case of a loan, no. Why not? What is the difference?

A loan is not—it’s like charity. What do you mean charity? Doesn’t a loan also have to be repaid…? What do you mean it doesn’t have to be repaid? Of course it has to be repaid—a loan must be repaid. Never mind, those are… So what is the difference between sale-money and a loan? In both sale and marriage, in both cases the sale acquires? He speaks about sale, but I think the source is betrothing with a loan. The Talmud says the same applies to sale, just as in kiddushin. If Maimonides distinguishes in sale, I assume the same distinction applies in kiddushin.

It’s something abstract. You said good—sale-money is also abstract. You owe me one hundred shekels—what difference does it make whether it is because of a loan or because of a purchase? No, but I betroth you with money, not with the chair. The chair’s benefit is already gone, finished. My answer is that there is a difference between a loan and sale-money.

A loan or sale-money—let’s begin with sale-money. Sale-money—we spoke about this before. Our Mishnah says that if he pulls the chair, the other acquired the money, even though the money is in my possession. What does “acquired” mean? I said he did not acquire; I just owe him money. No—he acquired the money. What does that mean? There is by me value of one hundred shekels that is his. So if he now does—say I am a woman, because he wants to betroth me with those one hundred shekels—there is no problem. He gave me his one hundred shekels and betrothed me, so I am betrothed.

But in contrast, if it is a loan—and here I return to your wording in a new way—if it is a loan, say I lent you one hundred shekels, there are not by you one hundred shekels that are mine. No. There is nothing by you that is mine—not even value, nothing. Nothing in your possession is mine. A loan is an act of kindness. I gave you one hundred shekels—that is a gift. I gave you one hundred shekels as a gift. The Torah obligates you to give me a gift back of one hundred shekels; repaying one’s creditor is a commandment. But it is not that there are one hundred shekels of mine sitting with you—“you have one hundred shekels of mine, return them to me.” No. There is by you nothing that is mine. Only because you borrowed from me, the Torah, as a commandment, tells you: you need to give me a gift back. That is called repayment of debt. One does not “pay” a debt; one “settles” a debt. You are not paying me something you owe me, because you do not owe me what you pay; rather, the Torah obligates you.

And therefore when I betroth the woman with a loan, I gave her nothing—not because there is no specific thing here; there is not even a non-specific thing here. In sale-money there is indeed a non-specific thing, but there is value there that is mine; I betroth the woman with that value, and then she is betrothed. In a loan, the woman owes me one hundred shekels—what does that mean? That there is upon her a future commandment, in another week when the time of repayment arrives, to give me a gift of one hundred shekels from her own money. But that is from hers, not mine. Therefore if I now want to betroth her with that loan, Maimonides says: the one hundred shekels I lent her I already gave her; they are already hers, and I cannot betroth her with something that is already hers. And the one hundred shekels she now owes me—there are no such shekels. She doesn’t owe me anything. In the future, when the time of repayment arrives, there will be upon her a commandment to repay, to give me a gift, but that will be a gift, not the return of money that is mine. So at present I am giving her nothing. Why should she be betrothed?

This is a completely different conception of “a loan is given for spending.” People think that “a loan is given for spending” does not characterize loans specifically; it characterizes the concept of money. It simply means that when I say that these hundred shekels are mine, I don’t mean these particular hundred shekels, because money is given for spending. These hundred shekels, some other hundred shekels—it doesn’t matter. When people say “a loan is given for spending,” they think that’s not a feature of loans; it’s a feature of the concept of money, as distinct from merchandise. When you own money, it isn’t specific money, because money is given for spending; you own it in general. When you own a chair, you own a specific chair and not a generic chair. So they think this is a feature of money and not of loans specifically—also money in deposit.

I claim that this is not correct. “A loan is given for spending” is a feature of the concept of loan, not of the concept of money. It is a rule said in the laws of loans and not in the laws of money. It is not correct that money is given for spending. Sale-money too—you owe me one hundred shekels, and those hundred shekels are money, and yet I can betroth you with them. Why? Because there is value in your possession that is mine. So I don’t care whether it is money or value or spendable—that’s not the point. The point is that it is not a loan but sale-money. In a loan, “a loan is given for spending,” because when you received the money, you received it in order to spend it; now it is entirely yours. There is in your possession nothing that is mine. That is what is called “a loan is given for spending.” Not that there is something in your possession but I don’t care whether it is these hundred shekels or others. No. There aren’t even abstract hundred shekels in your possession that are mine. There is nothing there. That is called “a loan is given for spending,” and that is a feature only of a loan. Regarding sale-money, it is not true.

What? So basically sale-money is a deposit? Basically sale-money is… a deposit? A deposit of mine with you. Exactly. If I deposit one hundred shekels with you in an envelope—a deposit, not a loan—I can betroth a woman with that money, right? According to everyone. Why? Because here there is specific money that is mine. What difference does it make that it is money? So what if money is spendable? She can spend those hundred shekels and put a different hundred shekels for me in the envelope—no problem. With money that is not considered misappropriation of a deposit; with money it does not matter which note. But still, since it is defined as a deposit and not a loan, there is something in the woman’s possession that is mine. So if I betroth her with it, she received something that is mine, and she is betrothed.

In a loan, unlike a deposit, there is in her possession nothing that is mine. So with what am I betrothing her? I am not betrothing her with anything; I am giving her nothing. Sale-money, despite its superficial similarity to a loan, is basically what Maimonides is telling us: sale-money is a deposit. There are one hundred shekels in the buyer’s possession that are mine. I deposited them with him; it is a deposit. Therefore I can buy with them, I can betroth with them, I can do everything. There are one hundred shekels in his possession that are mine. It doesn’t matter that they are not embodied in a particular coin or note. There is value—one hundred shekels—and with that value I can buy, betroth, do everything.

The Raavad indeed says: “This matter has no root with respect to acquisition except regarding ‘He Who Punishes,’” etc. Fine, these are all the objections to Maimonides.

Look at a wonderful proof for this. In the Mishnah in tractate Shevi’it chapter 10, the Mishnah says as follows. Shevi’it—you know there is the concept of the cancellation of debts. Chapter 10 is devoted to the cancellation of debts. If someone borrowed from me, then in the Sabbatical year, the end of the year, his debt expires. “The Sabbatical year cancels a documented loan and an undocumented loan. A store account is not canceled. And if he made it into a loan, then it is canceled. A laborer’s wages are not canceled. If he made them into a loan, then they are canceled.” Court judgments, collateral, and so on—the Mishnah there continues.

Why is it that when there is a loan, the Sabbatical year cancels it, but when there is sale-money that you owe me, the Sabbatical year does not cancel it? What is the difference? In my opinion, this is the source for the law we read earlier in Maimonides, in the laws of sale. Again, the commentators on Maimonides don’t understand what he wants.

Maimonides says as follows in his commentary on the Mishnah: “A store account is what people are accustomed to arrange with shopkeepers, that he takes his needs from him until a sum accumulates and he pays him. This accumulated sum is not canceled in the Sabbatical year.” Yes—when one buys on account in a store, he says: now you owe me ten shekels, tomorrow another twelve shekels, by the end of the week it’ll add up to one hundred shekels, then you’ll pay me. Fine? That is called a store account. He says: “because it is not in the manner of debts, for the shopkeeper did not sell what he sold in order that it become a debt, but rather he simply sells for small sums until it joins with other sums and he then takes what is his.”

Usually when people read this Maimonides—I once heard a lecture by Rabbi Amar on this on Hoshana Rabbah in Petah Tikva—and he was very puzzled by Maimonides; he didn’t understand what Maimonides was saying; he suggested some explanation that in my opinion is incorrect. There is great perplexity around these words of Maimonides. Some want to claim—perhaps you can hear it this way—that in a loan, after all, we are dealing with an act of kindness. When you lend someone money, that is an act of kindness. You do it in order to benefit him; he is poor, he needs money, you give him money. Okay? The cancellation of debts says: I finalize the act of kindness. The person is needy; leave him the money you lent him. Don’t obligate him to return it. That is a continuation of the kindness of the loan.

In sale-money—what remains with you because I say to you “pay me at the end of the week”—that’s not because you are poor. Okay? Also, I don’t want to deal with small change. At the end of the week, one time we’ll settle the account; give me all the money at once. Or at the end of the month; it doesn’t matter. That is not an act of kindness. Consequently, the law of debt cancellation was not said about that. Debt cancellation comes to benefit the poor, but here, when you received the money, it was not because you are poor; I did not do you a kindness; therefore in the Sabbatical year it is not canceled. That is how some explain Maimonides.

But that’s credit. So what? But basically you’re saying that this credit is not a loan; it’s something else. A store account is credit. So what? In practical terms it is credit. It is credit that is not a loan. He will have to pay it, but it is not a loan—it is sale-money. But the explanation I just gave is an explanation based on motivation. There is no essential difference between a loan and sale-money. The motivation is different: in a loan the motivation is kindness, and in sale-money it is efficiency, convenience. And debt cancellation was said only about things that involve kindness to the poor. Therefore a store account, even though it too is basically a loan, is not a loan whose foundation is kindness, and therefore it is not canceled.

What? Like a laborer’s wages. Maybe like a laborer’s wages. The same could perhaps be said there. Maybe he attracts customers that way; no matter. According to Maimonides here, the one who wants the loan is not the shopkeeper but the customer in the store. Both. It’s more convenient for both of them than dealing with small change. Why? He says both. “What people are accustomed to arrange with shopkeepers, that he takes his needs from him until a sum accumulates and he pays him.” Who pays him? The customer. The buyer pays—that’s not the novelty. But whose interest does this serve in the transaction? Both. It’s convenient for both. Why bother with small change every time? Come at the end of the month and pay me everything at once. It serves both parties.

According to that explanation, a bank deposit would not require a prozbul in the Sabbatical year. In a moment we’ll get to bank deposits—you keep anticipating me by one step. We’ll get there in a moment. Okay. I surrender. So that’s the accepted explanation in Maimonides. Also in the laws of the Sabbatical year Maimonides brings it: “a store account is not canceled.” But what does the law actually say? The law says: “A store account is not canceled, and if he made it into a loan it is canceled. A laborer’s wages are not canceled, and if he converted them into a loan they are canceled.”

Look at the Kesef Mishneh: “And it seems to me that the reason is that since the practice is to put it on account from time to time and he is not repaid until money becomes available to him, and it is not the way to pressure him”—it’s not a matter of kindness and me pressing you; rather, whenever money is available, pay me—“it is as though he lent him after the Sabbatical year, which the Sabbatical year does not cancel, and this is the reason for a laborer’s wages,” etc. Fine.

By that logic I can do this with anything, really. I’ll tell him: listen, I didn’t give you a loan; I deposited a deposit with you. I’m a store. You don’t need to define yourself as a fictional store. Just say you deposited money with him—that’s all. Right. A deposit is not canceled. Correct? The Sabbatical year cancels every debt, as it were.

So the claim of the Kesef Mishneh, again, is that it’s just a question of motivations. But in my opinion all of that is forced. I don’t think it’s correct. According to what we saw in Maimonides’ laws of sale, the question doesn’t even arise. What happens in a loan? In a loan there is actually nothing of mine in your possession that you borrowed from me, right? Rather, there is a future obligation upon you, a commandment of the Torah. In another month, when the time of repayment arrives, you will need to give me a gift of one hundred shekels back—a gift, from your own money. In the meantime, until you do that, there is in your possession nothing that is mine.

Now the cancellation of debts comes and says: the Torah that told you to give that gift waives it. The commandment is canceled. You don’t need to give the gift. Just keep your money with you. You don’t need to give him a gift. The future obligations that we imposed upon you are canceled. That is what debt cancellation does. But in a deposit, and in sale-money—which is like a deposit as we saw in Maimonides—there is value in your possession that is mine. Debt cancellation does not take money that is mine and give it to you. Where does debt cancellation say such a thing? Debt cancellation does not transfer my property to you. If it is mine, it is mine. What do you mean? In a loan, debt cancellation didn’t transfer to you anything that is mine; there is in your possession nothing that is mine. It only waives your future duty to give me money as a gift from your own property. The Torah obligated you; the Torah waived it for you. You don’t need to; the obligation we imposed on you is canceled. That is what debt cancellation does.

But debt cancellation does not take something that is mine and transfer it to you. It does not declare my property ownerless. Therefore when I deposit a deposit with you, of course you must return it to me after the Sabbatical year, because the deposit is mine. Debt cancellation does not transfer things that are mine to become yours. That is what the Mishnah says and what Maimonides says—very simply. And that is exactly what he also writes in the laws of sale. That is the difference between a loan and sale-money.

In a deposit, do I also need to make a document or something? What do you mean a document? You don’t need to make a document for a loan or for a deposit or for anything. There is an oral loan and a documented loan. You can make one, and you can choose not to. You want to make a document for the deposit—a deposit contract? Fine. If you don’t want to, don’t. Oral contracts are also valid contracts.

So my claim is that this Mishnah in Shevi’it is not only not difficult; it is the source of Maimonides’ words in the laws of sale. From here he derived the distinction between a loan and sale-money: sale-money is basically a kind of abstract deposit. In your possession there is a deposit of value, at a certain level, that is mine; but it is a deposit, not a loan, not a debt. Debt is a future obligation, a future commandment imposed on you to give me gifts. Here there is in your possession something that is mine. So regarding kiddushin and acquisition, I can use this to betroth and to acquire; and regarding debt cancellation, it is not canceled. It is not canceled because it is mine; they don’t give you things that are mine.

What? And in monetary law it’s something else entirely? No, no—the difference matters whether it is mine or not mine. What do you mean? A legal difference—that’s exactly the point. All these things are the offspring of the formation of the legal sphere, and now we see that two things which to our eyes look exactly the same are, at the level of legal definition, entirely different. And that is precisely the novelty of the legal world: we create legal concepts, and therefore even things that seem completely similar to you depend on how we defined them; their metaphysics may be entirely different. That will have halakhic implications.

For example, there is a gloss of the Rema in Choshen Mishpat, section 4, where the Rema distinguishes between a debt arising from a loan and a debt of sale-money, for example, or wages. The latter can be forcibly seized as collateral, whereas a debt arising from a loan may not be forcibly seized by the lender. “Do not press him,” because one may not bite or press. But with sale-money or wages, it is permitted. And again, in my eyes it’s the same thing, for the same reason: because it is mine. If it is mine, I am allowed to take it even by force. But a loan is not mine; I cannot forcibly take gifts that you are supposed to give me. If you give them to me, you gave them to me; if not, then not. I cannot forcibly take gifts from you.

Another example: suppose I owe money to Reuven, and now someone else comes and repays my debt—he gives Reuven money and removes the debt, okay? So he repaid my debt. What happens if I am forbidden to derive benefit from him? I am not allowed to benefit from him, and he may not benefit me. Yes, the Mishnah says he is allowed to repay my debt. If one is forbidden by vow to derive benefit from another, that other may repay his debt. Why? The Talmud says it is like driving off a lion. What is driving off a lion? Say I am guarding… I mean, I see a lion about to attack your sheep, and you are forbidden to benefit from me. Now I fought the lion and saved your sheep. Is that prohibited? After all, you are not allowed to benefit from me. The answer: it is permitted, because that is driving off a lion. What does that mean? You didn’t benefit from me at all. You had a sheep before, and now you still have a sheep. All I did was prevent possible potential damage to you; I didn’t add anything to you, you didn’t receive anything from me. I prevented your loss. That is not considered receiving benefit from me. That is driving off a lion.

Now when I repay a loan—when someone repays a loan for me—the Talmud defines that as driving off a lion. Why is that driving off a lion? When he repays the loan, that means the lender’s money that was with me becomes mine. So I received money from him? How can that be merely driving off a lion if I’m forbidden to benefit? The answer: because you didn’t receive money from him, because the money that was with me was always mine. All that this repayment did was remove the future commandment that would have applied to me to give him a gift. That is exactly driving off a lion.

Right, exactly—I learned that Mishnah and didn’t understand it. In tractate Nedarim, yes. Okay? This is exactly driving off a lion. And this is exactly what we said earlier in Maimonides: in a loan, when you owe me money, I have nothing in your possession; you have a future obligation to give me gifts. So the Sabbatical year cancels that; one cannot acquire with it; and if someone removes that obligation, that is merely driving off a lion. He gave me nothing. What was mine remained mine. He did not turn something that was not mine into mine.

But with sale-money, all that is not true. With sale-money, if I sold you something, then there is money or value in your possession that is mine. I can betroth with it; the Sabbatical year does not cancel it. And if someone now pays the sale-money—here is the practical consequence—in my view, that would be prohibited. That is not driving off a lion. It is not like repaying a debt. Okay?

So what do we learn from here? This is a very sharp expression of this novelty: the concept of value undergoes a conceptualization and becomes merchandise in the market. We exchange value, transfer value from one person to another. There is value in your possession that belongs to me. What is that value? Can you point to it? No. A loan is given for spending. But nevertheless, it is a concrete concept existing on the legal plane, even though it is the result of abstraction and theoretical conceptualization. It is not a concrete object. That is why the whole process of conceptualization and juridification was needed. And that is the expression of the matter.

Only in this way could the difference between sale-money and a loan arise. Because in the natural world, what difference does it make? No—if you owe me money, you owe me money. What difference does it make on what basis you owe me the money? In legal regulation there is a difference, because on the legal level it is something entirely different.

If I return to Rashi, or to the Mishnah at the beginning of our chapter, which says that in acquisition through money, when I pull the donkey, you acquired the money—now we understand what that means. Not that when I pulled the donkey, a debt of money from me to you was created. No—that’s in a loan. Here it is sale-money, not a loan. You acquired the money. When I pulled the donkey, you acquired it. There is value of one hundred shekels in my possession that is yours. One can betroth with it, the Sabbatical year does not cancel it, paying it off is not driving off a lion, all the practical consequences I mentioned. Therefore the Mishnah says: if one pulled the movable goods, he acquired the money—not “he became obligated in the money,” but “he acquired the money.” He acquired. Obligation is in a loan. Here it is “he acquired the money.” Good, I won’t dwell on this further.

Yes, a remark on bank deposits, since you anticipated it earlier. When I deposit money in a bank, is the bank relationship like a loan? The bank now owes me money; there is a debt of the bank toward me. There are practical consequences regarding interest, debt cancellation, prozbul, all these things. I claim that all these discussions never get off the ground. When I deposit money in a bank, it is a deposit, not a loan. It is a deposit. That’s also what it’s called in ordinary language. And I want to claim that also in the legal regulation, the bank has in its possession value of one hundred shekels that is mine. Not a specific hundred-shekel note, not even a non-specific hundred-shekel note—rather, value. The concept of value. Now we don’t even need money anymore, because it’s all just entries, as we discussed. Credit card, records—there’s no money. Money no longer moves from place to place. That doesn’t matter; it only sharpens the point. The concept of value of one thousand shekels of mine that is in the bank is property in every sense. It is a deposit—like if I deposited in the bank an envelope with one thousand shekels for it to keep for me.

If it goes bankrupt, you get nothing—the value disappears. That’s a question whether bankruptcy is a custodian’s misappropriation, but it’s a kind of custodian. It’s a deposit. I’m saying: it depends whether bankruptcy is considered unavoidable accident, theft and loss, a custodian’s liability, okay? But I’m saying: if I see it as a deposit and not as a loan, then all the discussions about interest in banks, all the discussions about debt cancellation and prozbul, what happens with all the debts and deficits and all those things—the discussions don’t get off the ground on the Torah-law level. Rabbinically, even by way of deposit there can perhaps be interest and so on. But all the problems become much lighter, genuinely easier problems. Because it’s not really a loan. I did not lend the bank money in any way.

So with a deposit, do you receive interest? What? A deposit doesn’t accrue interest. It’s a business arrangement. You don’t need a legal fiction of a business arrangement; it really is a business arrangement. The bank’s profits are given to me. It is not paying me for holding the money—that’s the definition of interest, payment for waiting. It doesn’t pay me for holding the money; it shares profits with me. It did business with the money and shares profits with me. That’s the business arrangement. Right, exactly—that’s the business arrangement, except I claim there is no need even to create the arrangement formally. The arrangement with the bank is a genuinely real business arrangement. It’s not a fiction. Usually people treat it as a fiction. They say, basically it’s a loan and we do some trick as if it’s a business arrangement. Each matter on its own. I’m speaking right now about deposits. Each matter on its own. There are things that really are loans. Everything depends on what it is.

When I deposit something in the bank, I am not lending the bank money. When I deposit something in the bank, I am giving it the money to guard for me. Right? In an investment house, this is obvious—nobody talks differently. An investment house: everything they do, they do for me. All the profit is for me. I only pay them for the work. They don’t even share profits with me. I pay them for the work. But they are doing the work. There it is certainly a deposit. There that is not my novelty at all; it’s obvious. There it is certainly a deposit. It’s my money. Right. Why is that a loan? It’s a deposit. I deposited money with the investment house; they do all sorts of things with it and bring me back the profit. Good. Or the loss. Or the loss, yes. If I lost, I lost; if I profited, I profited. I pay them for the work they do—wages. That’s not profit-sharing, because the profits are mine, the money is mine. And all these stories about prozbul for pension funds—is that all just nonsense? I don’t know if it’s nonsense, but at least on the Torah-law level, conceptually it doesn’t hold. Right. At least on the Torah-law level, I think it’s not needed—and not only that, it doesn’t even hold.

Do many medieval authorities write like Maimonides? No. No. Most authorities—again, the question is why. The question is whether they fundamentally reject these distinctions, or whether they say yes, it is like a deposit but not for the reason of value, rather through more technical explanations. Not because they see value as an object, the conceptual structure I am building here in Maimonides.

I just want to finish, because I do want to complete the introduction today. I don’t want to come to the next lesson still in the introduction. Two remarks. First remark: there are several examples—afterward, in the summary, I’ll upload the summaries to Moodle—there are several examples where the later authorities raise a question. Say someone became obligated to me—I worked for someone as a laborer, and he undertook to pay me with a lamb. A lamb? A lamb. To give me a lamb in exchange for the work, okay? Is the lamb the merchandise or is the lamb the money? Some later authorities discuss it. Usually they understand that the lamb is the money. And why? Why not say the lamb is the merchandise, and the work is the payment, the consideration for the lamb? How do you define what is the merchandise and what is the money? There is a whole list of problems like this among the later authorities.

The answer is very simple according to what I’ve said until now. If the transaction was made for the sake of the work—you wanted my work—then the work is the merchandise. When you give me the lamb, I don’t specifically need the lamb. The lamb is worth one hundred shekels; you are using the lamb. You could have given me a chair instead. The transaction wasn’t made for the lamb; it was made for the work. The lamb is the means by which you pay me the consideration. Therefore the lamb is the money. There’s no need to get tangled up; it follows directly from the definitions.

And if I want silver coins and I pay in gold? Wait. I’m getting there in a moment. But there is a whole list of such cases in the later authorities where they get tangled up, and one simply has to ask: what was the motivation for the transaction? The motivation for the transaction is what determines what the merchandise is. The consideration is that thing which is not specifically required—that is the definition of consideration. If you give merchandise as consideration, the merchandise, although it consists of objects, functions as money. Why? Because basically you are giving it on account of its value. You are not giving it because I need a lamb; you are giving it because you need to give me one hundred shekels, and a lamb is worth one hundred shekels. You also could have given me a chair or a one-hundred-shekel bill. Once what you are giving me is not specifically what matters, then it is money. That is the secret, and look at several examples I bring in the summary.

Now here I’ll finish, at the point where our chapter actually begins. Our chapter starts by discussing what happens when I buy gold for silver and silver for gold—both are coins. There they discuss who is the merchandise and who is the money. Or in the Talmud’s language: which is the coin and which is the produce. The produce is the merchandise, and the coin is the coinage, the money. How can you define it? Both sides here are money. I exchange dollars for shekels. Which is the merchandise and which is the money? This is money and that is money. And there is no such thing—you can’t exchange money for money. In barter there is merchandise for merchandise. But with money, an acquisition through money is always money for merchandise. There is no money for money in Jewish law. So when you exchange money for money, it cannot be barter, because money does not effect barter. It has to be acquisition through money. And in acquisition through money there is always built-in asymmetry: one side is the merchandise and the other side is the money.

So earlier we saw that on both sides there was merchandise, and we had to decide which of the two pieces of merchandise is money. Our Talmudic passage deals with the dual, opposite case: transactions in which both sides are money. Which of them is the merchandise? And the Talmud says—well, here ostensibly both sides are desired. I want the silver and you want the gold. You can’t determine it by that criterion. Therefore here the Talmud says there are two criteria: ready circulation and importance—or there, ready circulation and importance. Ready circulation means commonly used, right? Readily accepted in commerce. Yes, exactly. And importance means, yes, gold is more important than silver.

The point of importance and ready circulation is that these are criteria for determining what is the coin and what is the merchandise, what is produce and what is coin. Some people think the passage here is dealing with the definition of the concepts of money and merchandise. That is a mistake. The definition of money and merchandise is what I defined up to now. All of this exists before the Mishnah opens its mouth. The Mishnah starts discussing only after I already know the definitions. But there is here a pathological case where the regular definitions don’t work: I am exchanging one kind of money for another kind of money. In such a transaction, how do I define which is the merchandise and which is the money? Important, readily circulating—there are various criteria. This has nothing to do with the essential definition of money.

The essential definition of money is that thing where I don’t care what it is—whether it is this or something else or actual money. In every transaction, that is called money. A thing that has only value and no independent significance—that is the essential definition of money, and it is not connected to our passage. When our passage speaks about the definition of money, it is speaking only about these pathological transactions of money-for-money, where I cannot apply the usual definitions. Then the Talmud starts discussing circulation and importance and so on, but that has nothing to do with the question of the definition of money or merchandise. Those definitions we know from economics, and that is a given that we know even before the Talmud begins. The Talmud begins after I know that; there are pathological cases where that doesn’t work.

A practical consequence, for example, is that those very things that the Talmud here says are money—say silver is money when I buy gold, so gold is the merchandise and silver is the coin—but that same silver when set against copper will suddenly be the merchandise and the copper will be the coin. Meaning, there is no one thing that is by definition money or by definition merchandise. Each transaction stands on its own. One has to examine what exactly is being defined as merchandise and what exactly is being defined as money. There is no objective definition of the concept of money. Money is a matter of convention, and of the desires of the parties to the transaction. That is what defines what is money and what is merchandise.

Now we understand how the chapter begins. I finished the introduction briefly. Look at the summaries, the recordings, everything is uploaded to Moodle. So we’ve finished the introductions here. Rabbi, have a good week.