The Golden Chapter: Money and Monetary Acquisition – Lesson 8

Table of Contents

• The laws of acquisition by money and the need to identify coin and commodity
• Pathological transactions: money exchanged for money and Rabbi’s dispute over the criterion
• Sources in the Talmud for the different views and presentation of the baraita on the measure of a perutah
• Identifying the coin from formulations of valuation and the relativity between currencies
• A perutah in betrothal: perutah as a minimum value, not the name of a coin
• Less than a perutah and the definition of “the status of money” in Rashi and in the topic of half a measure
• A perutah’s worth in Media: the status of money determined by another market
• The Talmud’s proof from the baraita that gold is coin, and the practical implication for redemption of the firstborn
• Dividing the baraita by types of practical implications and the connection to the coin/commodity discussion
• Rashi and Tosafot on “for buying and selling” and the explanation in the laws of overcharging and changing exchange rates
• Machaneh Ephraim on a coin that was disqualified, and a proposed new reading of Tosafot
• Redemption of the firstborn, calculating the surplus, and a difficulty in Rashi’s wording in light of the Ritva

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the laws of acquisition by money as an asymmetric acquisition, where you have to identify which side is the “coin” and which is the “commodity,” because drawing possession of the commodity effects acquisition, while drawing possession of the coin does not. It distinguishes between money as “payment in a transaction” and money as a “measure of value,” and shows how the parties’ intention defines when an item functions as monetary value, even if in itself it is merchandise. It then shifts the focus to pathological cases of exchanging coin for coin, presents Rabbi’s dispute between his youth and his old age (importance versus marketability), and analyzes the baraita about the measure of a perutah as evidence for what counts as coin and what counts as commodity, with practical implications for betrothing a woman, buying and selling, and redemption of the firstborn. It also includes analyses of Rashi, Tosafot, Machaneh Ephraim, the Ritva, and the halakhic meaning of “a perutah’s worth” as a minimal money-status rather than the name of a coin.

The laws of acquisition by money and the need to identify coin and commodity

Acquisition by money is defined as coin against commodity, and so it is asymmetric, unlike barter, which is merchandise against merchandise. The buyer is the one who gives money and receives merchandise, and the seller is the one who receives money and gives merchandise. The definition of what is money and what is merchandise usually comes from the parties’ intention. An item like tomatoes can be commodity in itself, but function as money, as monetary value, when the object of the transaction is the chair and the tomatoes are being given only for their value. Money functions both as a technical format for transferring payment and as a quantitative measure of value, and a coin like a shekel is a representation of value without “substance,” whereas a tomato has intrinsic value, so in its essence it is not money, even though it can function as monetary value in a transaction.

Pathological transactions: money exchanged for money and Rabbi’s dispute over the criterion

The Mishnah that deals with exchanging silver dinars for gold dinars and the like addresses a symmetrical situation in which both sides are money, so there is no natural asymmetry of “the object of the transaction” that would determine which is coin and which is commodity. Rabbi’s view in his youth says that gold is the coin because it is more important, and in his old age Rabbi retracts and says that the criterion is marketability, so silver is the coin and gold is the commodity. The explanation compares gold coins to something like a thousand-dollar bill as opposed to a one-dollar bill, to illustrate that something less marketable functions less as coin. The practical implication is that when exchanging gold for silver, drawing possession of the gold—the commodity according to his old-age view—acquires for both sides, while drawing possession of the silver—the coin—does not acquire.

Sources in the Talmud for the different views and presentation of the baraita on the measure of a perutah

The Talmud notes that Rabbi in his old age retracts from his youthful view and brings sources that support both directions, after the topic of se’ah for se’ah. Rava presents a Tanna who holds that gold is coin and brings a baraita that defines the measure of a perutah in stages: a perutah is one-eighth of an Italian issar, an Italian issar is one twenty-fourth of a silver dinar, and a silver dinar is one twenty-fifth of a gold dinar. The baraita ties practical implications to three areas: betrothing a woman with a perutah, buying and selling with an issar, and redemption of the firstborn with the silver-gold ratio.

Identifying the coin from formulations of valuation and the relativity between currencies

The text argues that when you formulate it as “X is one of Y,” then Y is the measure of value and therefore functions as the coin relative to X. This comes from the intuition that you do not define the value of money in terms of merchandise; rather, you define the value of merchandise in terms of money. From this it follows that the status of coin/commodity is relative: an issar is coin relative to a perutah, but commodity relative to a silver dinar. The criterion of importance creates a simple ascending scale in which the more expensive thing is more important and therefore “more money,” while the criterion of marketability may reverse part of the scale, because importance and marketability are not always directly proportional, and sometimes something very cheap is not marketable because it has no purchasing power.

A perutah in betrothal: perutah as a minimum value, not the name of a coin

The text asks why you need the perutah-issar ratio for betrothing a woman if you can simply betroth her with a perutah coin, and suggests that the term perutah is not necessarily the name of the smallest coin, but a minimum value measured relative to the Italian issar. It argues that the halakhic “perutah’s worth” is not synonymous with a coin actually called a perutah, and therefore a small coin in circulation may not suffice for betrothal if it does not reach one-eighth of an issar. It describes a common view among halakhic decisors, according to which a perutah’s worth is calculated based on the metal value of ancient coins, not according to the minimal purchasing power in the current market, and emphasizes that the whole discussion assumes coins with metallic value, not purely conventional currency.

Less than a perutah and the definition of “the status of money” in Rashi and in the topic of half a measure

The text brings Rashi’s view that someone who steals less than a perutah’s worth has not violated a prohibition, and explains this by saying that less than a perutah is not “half of money,” but rather does not have the status of money at all. Therefore the law of half a measure as a quantitative category does not apply to it. It compares this to the discussion at the beginning of tractate Sabbath about lifting without placing down, where the deficiency is understood as a deficiency in the quality of the act, not as a lesser quantity of the same act, and raises the possibility of discussing the implication for throwing less than four cubits in the public domain. The conclusion is that the measure of a perutah defines a qualitative boundary from which onward something is called money, and below that there is no monetary validity, even if in practice it can combine with larger sums.

A perutah’s worth in Media: the status of money determined by another market

The text cites a Talmudic passage in tractate Kiddushin about someone who betroths with a date that is not worth a perutah in this place but is worth a perutah in Media, and concludes that what determines the matter is the existence of “the status of money,” not the specific local value. It explains that a perutah’s worth is usually an indication that an item has the status of money because it has purchasing power, but if it can be shown that it has the status of money somewhere else, then one can betroth with it here as well, even though here it is worth less than a perutah. This yields the understanding that the measure is not a self-standing numerical target, but a sign of whether payment was given that has the status of money.

The Talmud’s proof from the baraita that gold is coin, and the practical implication for redemption of the firstborn

The Talmud explains that if gold is coin, then “the Tanna measures by something fixed,” and so it makes sense to measure silver coins relative to fixed gold. But if gold is commodity, it is not appropriate to measure by it, because its value rises and falls. It formulates a practical implication for redemption of the firstborn, where measuring value in gold avoids situations in which sometimes the priest returns surplus and sometimes the father has to add more, and it concludes, “learn from this that it is coin.” The text notes that the Talmud focuses on the last section because only there does gold appear, and suggests the possibility that gold serves as the absolute coin, with the other currencies measured through it.

Dividing the baraita by types of practical implications and the connection to the coin/commodity discussion

The text distinguishes that the practical implication for betrothing a woman is not an exchange of coin for coin, and therefore does not decide what is coin and what is commodity in the sense of the Mishnah; it only establishes the minimum value required for betrothal. It argues that the practical implication for buying and selling already deals with exchanging currencies, and therefore is relevant to determining coin/commodity, while the practical implication for redemption of the firstborn directly concerns the silver-gold ratio and the question of what fixed value is measured in. It stresses that even when a currency is coin relative to merchandise, the whole discussion only arises where the case is money against money.

Rashi and Tosafot on “for buying and selling” and the explanation in the laws of overcharging and changing exchange rates

Rashi explains that the practical implication for buying and selling concerns the laws of overcharging, when one sells a dinar for more than twenty-four issarin, and the text understands from this that the dinar serves as the coin and the issar as the commodity. Tosafot objects that sometimes the issarin are cheap, so there is no necessity that saying “more than twenty-four” is overcharging, and proposes an explanation in which the novelty is a case of an obligation for twenty-four issarin when the ratio had been twenty-four to a dinar, and afterward it changed to a rate of thirty-two. In that case, he cannot discharge his obligation with twenty-four issarin, and must give a dinar or thirty-two issarin. According to Tosafot, the novelty is that the silver dinar is the coin, and so we do not say, “the dinar became more expensive and the issarin stayed the same”; rather, we treat the change as though the commodity changed relative to the coin.

Machaneh Ephraim on a coin that was disqualified, and a proposed new reading of Tosafot

Machaneh Ephraim cites the Tur in Choshen Mishpat, section 74, about someone who sold merchandise and fixed payment in a coin that was later disqualified, and concludes that this only makes sense if the coin has metallic value and can be melted down, not if it is merely conventional currency. He raises a difficulty from Tosafot: if a coin loses value, payment should have to be completed according to the original value. He argues that disqualification is a drop in value to zero, and therefore one should apparently always have to make up the difference, rather than suffice with the disqualified coin. He quotes in the name of Maharshaldam that Tosafot teaches a principle in loans: when the value of the currency drops, one has to repay according to the value it had originally. He then proposes disagreeing, saying there is no proof from Tosafot, because a sale for twenty-four issarin is considered as if one said, “I am selling to you for a dinar,” since twenty-four issarin are a dinar. Machaneh Ephraim formulates this to mean that only a “round” amount equal to a dinar requires adjustment for exchange-rate changes, while other amounts remain the fixed numerical amount. The text rejects this as a dubious reading and argues that Tosafot is coming to establish a general principle of coin and commodity, not an exceptional law limited to the amount of twenty-four.

Redemption of the firstborn, calculating the surplus, and a difficulty in Rashi’s wording in light of the Ritva

The text explains that redemption of the firstborn is five selaim of silver, which are twenty silver dinars, and since a gold dinar is twenty-five silver dinars, this comes to four-fifths of a gold dinar. Therefore, if a gold dinar is given for redemption, it should require returning one-fifth. It notes that with changing exchange rates, the amount returned should vary in terms of silver dinars, and raises the difficulty of why Rashi writes, “the priest returns him five dinars,” rather than calculations of four or six. The Ritva points out that the wording “sometimes the priest returns to him” does not fit if there is always a fixed return of one-fifth, and proposes explaining that it means sometimes more than five or less than five depending on the exchange rate, even though the wording is awkward. The Ritva adds a conceptual explanation: if gold is coin, then the Torah measured the redemption of the firstborn in terms of fixed gold, even though the formulation of the measure is “five silver shekels”; but if silver is coin and gold is commodity, then it means specifically “five shekels” of silver. He concludes that the implication of the ruling depends on whether silver or gold is the coin. The text suggests understanding Rashi’s “five dinars” as a way of expressing “one-fifth of a gold dinar” on the standard scale, while in practice the number in silver dinars changes according to market rates.

Okay, so basically, right, the context is that we’re talking about the legal rules of acquisition through money. And with acquisition through money we saw that, unlike barter exchange, it’s an asymmetric acquisition, because in barter we give goods for goods, while with money we give money for goods. Money, coinage, right, not silver the metal, but coinage as against produce/goods—that’s what’s called money in exchange for merchandise. And therefore it matters to know which of the two sides here is the money and which is the merchandise, or in other words, who is the buyer and who is the seller. Meaning, the buyer is the one who gives money and receives merchandise; the seller is the one who receives money and gives merchandise. Now, usually our definitions of what counts as money and what counts as merchandise come from the intention of the parties. If the thing that is the goal of the transaction is the merchandise, then the thing given merely for its value is the money. Say I want to buy a chair, and I come to you and offer you tomatoes in exchange. If the point of the deal was the chair, then the chair is the merchandise and the tomatoes are simply being given as money’s worth. I could just as well have given you matches or something like that; I gave you monetary value in the form of tomatoes. But even though tomatoes are goods, they’re actually functioning here as money, as money’s worth, from the standpoint of the definition in acquisition through money—who is the money and who is the merchandise.

We saw that money has another function too, and that’s basically as the yardstick of value. Right? How do we measure value? In terms of money—one shekel, two shekels, ten agorot, and so on. So here money functions as a quantitative measure of value, not as the silver coins that are the technical means of transferring value from one person to another. Those are two different functions of the concept of money. So when I give tomatoes as money’s worth in exchange for the chair, the tomatoes are functioning here as money in the sense that they are the consideration in the deal, but they are not money in the sense that they don’t have a fixed value—they are not representations of value. A one-shekel coin is a representation of value; it has nothing of itself. A tomato also has substance, right, not just form, and therefore a tomato by essence is not money. Here in the transaction it’s playing the role of money when it is given as money’s worth and the chair is given as merchandise.

From here we saw that the discussion in the Mishnah, which speaks about exchanging silver dinars for gold dinars, for example, or copper and silver and so on, is not a discussion of the fundamental question what is money and what is merchandise—we know that from our economic understanding—but specifically of pathological transactions, where general economic understanding can’t show me who is the money and who is the merchandise. We need criteria in order nevertheless to define what is the money and what is the merchandise. Why is it important to define that? For example, because pulling the merchandise into one’s possession effects acquisition both of the merchandise and of the money; pulling the money into one’s possession acquires nothing. So we need to know what counts here as merchandise and what counts as money. Is the chair the money, or is the chair the merchandise? Are the tomatoes the money or the merchandise? In other words, I need to know.

On both sides there isn’t really money. In the case of the Mishnah it’s the opposite: tomatoes versus a chair is goods versus goods, and even so that is not barter but acquisition through money, because the tomatoes are only money’s worth. In the Mishnah we’re speaking about a situation where money is given for money, not goods for goods, so once again it’s symmetric, and therefore I still have no definition of which is the merchandise and which is the money. But that’s not the same as tomatoes versus a chair, which is also symmetric, because there it’s symmetric because there are goods on both sides. Here it’s symmetric because there is money on both sides. But we still need a criterion that will tell me what is the money and what is the merchandise.

With tomatoes versus a chair there was a criterion: the goal of the transaction is the merchandise, and what is given as value is the money. What happens when I exchange gold coins for silver coins? Here both sides are basically money. Usually each of us probably needs either gold coins or silver coins, because for different reasons it serves his needs, so there is probably no asymmetry here in terms of the purpose of the transaction. Then you need importance, or significance, or some other nonessential technical criterion, to determine what is the money and what is the merchandise.

So in Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s youth, he said that gold is the coinage. Why? Because gold is more important. Meaning, he proposed the criterion of importance—some criterion for identifying which side is the money in the transaction. And in his old age he retracted and said that the criterion is marketability. Meaning, what is more readily marketable is the money, and silver coins are more marketable than gold coins. Gold coins are like a thousand-dollar bill versus a one-dollar bill. Clearly the one-dollar bill is more marketable than a thousand-dollar bill. A thousand dollars is something heavy; it’s not something that readily circulates in commerce. Not everywhere will people accept it and give you change. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t spend it so easily and simply. The same with gold coins: less marketable than silver coins. And therefore the silver coins are the coinage, and the gold coins are the produce/goods. That is Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s conclusion in his old age, and that is also what is written in the Mishnah. And therefore the practical difference is that when we exchange gold coins for silver coins, taking possession of the gold acquires the gold for me and the silver for you; taking possession of the silver acquires nothing, because that is the coinage. Okay?

Now, the Talmud itself discusses this. At the beginning it brings that in his old age Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi retracted from his youthful view. After that it brings sources that agree with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his old age, and sources like Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his youth. So last time we saw the case of a se’ah for a se’ah, from which it comes out like Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his youth. The next example that appears in the passage is the measure of a perutah. And that too is basically brought as a source that agrees with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his youth, that gold is the coinage. Let’s see.

Rava said—this appears immediately after the se’ah-for-se’ah section, the segment we learned in the previous class—Rava said: this tanna holds that gold is coinage. Here there is a tanna who holds that gold is the coinage, the money. Meaning, he holds like Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his youth, not like Rabbi’s final conclusion. As it was taught in a baraita: “The perutah they spoke of”—what does “they spoke of” mean? There are all kinds of Jewish law contexts in which the measure of a perutah appears: regarding theft, regarding redemption, regarding betrothal of a woman, all kinds of things like that. So it has to be at least a perutah. How much is a perutah? So the baraita says. As it was taught: “The perutah they spoke of is one-eighth of an Italian issar.” One-eighth of an Italian issar. What practical difference does it make? For betrothal of a woman. To betroth a woman you need a perutah, so you need to know how much a perutah is. It’s one-eighth of an Italian issar.

An issar—how much is an Italian issar? One twenty-fourth of a silver dinar. One part in twenty-four of a silver dinar. What practical difference does that make? For buying and selling. If you buy an issar or sell an issar in silver dinars, then, for example, the laws of overcharging apply—we’ll see that in a moment. A silver dinar is one twenty-fifth of a gold dinar. What practical difference does that make? For redeeming the firstborn son. The redemption of the firstborn is done with silver sela’im, and you want to know what their value should be in terms of gold dinars, so the practical difference is for the redemption of the firstborn.

First of all, one point: let’s just try to remember the ladder. We basically have perutah, issar, silver dinar, gold dinar. Okay? Eight perutot make an Italian issar. Twenty-four Italian issarim make a silver dinar. Twenty-five silver dinars make a gold dinar. We already encountered this—that a silver dinar is four percent of a gold dinar, one twenty-fifth of a gold dinar. Let’s say 4,800 perutot make a gold dinar. If you multiply 8 times 24 times 25, you get the ratio between a gold dinar and a perutah.

Now that’s the first point. Second point: when you see something like this—for example, “The perutah they spoke of is one-eighth of an Italian issar,” or “an issar is one twenty-fourth of a silver dinar,” and so on—who here is the merchandise and who is the coin? Can you infer such a thing from the wording? What do you say? I’ll remind you again—we saw this in the previous class too—when there are goods versus money, the money is considered the thing whose value is fixed, and we place the… what? Here the eighth is money. Okay, which means that gold is what? The coinage, right? Meaning, basically when we measure everything in gold, then gold is coinage. If I measure the Italian issar in a silver dinar, then apparently in that same way the silver dinar is the coinage relative to the Italian issar. Okay? Because the fact that I say—yes, it’s just changing the side, but basically an issar equals, twenty-four issarim equal—or one issar, sorry—one issar equals a silver dinar divided by twenty-four. Right? If I were to write “a silver dinar equals twenty-four times an issar,” then the issar would be the money and the gold dinar here would be the coinage. Why? Because the thing whose value I want to define is the merchandise. The yardstick by means of which I define it is the money. We said that money is basically the measure of value, the scale of value. Therefore, in this whole list, whatever appears second is always the money.

If I tell you, for example, “this chair is worth twenty-five dollars.” Okay? So what is the money, the dollar or the chair? Right? If I tell you “the dollar is one twenty-fifth of a chair,” that sounds artificial, right? It sounds nonsensical; nobody says it that way. Why not? Because you don’t define the value of money in terms of merchandise. The definition is always: how much is the merchandise worth—defining the value of the merchandise in terms of money. So when I look at this set of definitions in the baraita, the defining thing is always the money, and the thing being defined is the merchandise. So if I now go back to the baraita: “A perutah is one-eighth of an Italian issar” means that the Italian issar is the money relative to the perutah, and the perutah is the merchandise, the produce. And when I say that an issar is one twenty-fourth of a silver dinar, that means that the silver dinar is the coinage and the issar is the produce.

So already here we can see that basically everything is relative. Right? If you ask whether an issar is coinage or produce—well, it depends relative to what. Relative to a perutah, the issar is coinage; relative to a silver dinar, the issar is produce. Okay? You can also see that if we say that gold is the coinage, that means importance determines it, right? That’s like Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his youth. Remember what the criterion was in Rabbi’s youth? No—if it’s importance, yes, sorry, importance. Importance. Meaning, if it were marketability, gold would come out as produce. If it’s importance, then gold is more important, so it is the coinage. So in Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s youth he thought that gold is the coinage, which means that he is going by importance. Then now everything is clear. Right? Perutah versus Italian issar—which is more important? Obviously the Italian issar. What is more expensive is always more important. Okay? So clearly the hierarchy rises in the direction of the money. What is more important is more “money-like.”

By contrast, if I were to say according to the measure of marketability, then I don’t know if this whole ladder completely reverses, but at least it partly reverses. Say silver versus gold, for example: gold would be the produce and silver would be the coinage. Silver versus an issar is also a question. On the face of it silver is more important. But which is more marketable? The issar is more… what? If I went by money—but I don’t know how much silver was worth then compared to today. Right, no, what I’m saying is that importance doesn’t always have to be in inverse proportion to marketability. When something is very, very important it’s pretty obvious that it is less marketable—that’s gold. If you have two things and one is a little more important than the other, but both… think about it: which is more marketable, ten shekels or fifty shekels? So ten shekels is more important? No—but people use both fifty shekels and ten shekels freely; it depends what they want to buy. Okay? But if you tell me “the big ones,” as they used to say in America, right? A gold coin worth a thousand dollars. So that’s less marketable because it’s very, very important. So the scale of importance and the scale of marketability have some kind of inverse relation, but not completely. All right? What is more important is not always less marketable.

So when I speak on the scale of importance, the hierarchy in this baraita is totally understandable. On the scale of importance, obviously it goes from less important to more important, up to gold. On the scale of marketability, it’s not entirely clear. On the scale of marketability, it is clear that gold is not marketable, or less marketable than silver. Silver relative to an issar is not clear; maybe it’s less marketable, but not obviously. Issar relative to perutah—I’m not at all sure. Because a perutah is worth almost nothing, so the question is to what extent it really circulates in commerce. Say, ten agorot isn’t more marketable than a shekel; on the contrary, a shekel is more usable. Right? Because ten agorot is so small—what can you do with it? So once something becomes really, really unimportant, then it also ceases to be marketable. So there’s some kind of parabola here, in the relation between marketability and importance.

Anyway, the Talmud—as we’ll see later—sees here some kind of ascending ladder, and apparently what measures it is importance. Therefore it derives from this baraita that gold is the produce, in line with Rabbi’s earlier view. That’s the second point. Third point: what exactly does it mean to define a perutah for the matter of betrothing a woman? Here the whole thing is really unclear. First of all, because if you need a perutah, then what’s the problem? I have a perutah coin; with that I betroth a woman. Why do I care how much it’s worth in terms of issarim? An issar is eight perutot, right? A perutah is one-eighth of an issar. Suppose a perutah were one-tenth of an issar—the value of the perutah went down. So then pay with issarim too. He’ll have perutot, pay with issarim. What? You can’t pay with issarim? How do you pay with issarim? One issar is more than… it’s eight perutot. Change in what? In perutot? So what have we accomplished? You got perutot. How much change do I get? Seven perutot? No, what is seven perutot? Then there’s no difference. If you give an issar and get back seven perutot, you gave a perutah. What difference does it make? I betrothed a woman. Right. So why do you need to know the ratio between a perutah and an issar? Just give the perutah; the woman is always betrothed. He needs to betroth her with a perutah. You’re betrothing her with an issar. So? You’re betrothing her with an issar, and you want to get a perutah back. Fine, you want to know from an issar how much change has to be given when I betroth a woman? It sounds very strange.

Meaning, on the face of it, you want to know whether the woman is betrothed or not. She’ll always be betrothed with an issar. She’ll always be betrothed, because you gave a perutah. I think what’s really going on here is a big question: what is a perutah? What is a perutah? On the face of it, a perutah is the smallest coin in circulation, right? That’s what’s called a perutah. But it’s not quite that simple. Because it could be, for example today, that the value of a present-day perutah—there are coins… I don’t think there are even five-agorah coins anymore, right? There are ten-agorah coins. I think according to most opinions ten agorot is not a perutah. It’s not worth a perutah. To calculate the present value of a perutah they do an exact calculation based on the Italian issar and silver—I don’t know exactly what it comes to, but it’s more than ten agorot. Maybe a shekel, I don’t know, something like that.

That means it is not true that every smallest coin is automatically worth a perutah. Because there are probably coins that are really so tiny, and therefore they also would not be marketable, as we said before—that a perutah is not something marketable because you need a pile of perutot to buy something. You can buy a match with a perutah, but it’s not really a coin that circulates in commerce. And apparently not every smallest coin will by definition be a perutah. It depends on the question how much it’s worth. Meaning, if it’s something that can actually be used in the marketplace, then it is a perutah. And that I measure against an issar. If it is one-eighth of an issar, then it is a perutah. But if it is one-tenth of an issar, then the practical difference is not only whether, if I give her an issar and get back nine perutot, she is betrothed or not; rather, even if you gave her a perutah she would not be betrothed. Because that perutah is a coin called a perutah, but it is not the halakhic “worth a perutah.” The halakhic worth-a-perutah is not synonymous with a coin called a perutah. The coin called a perutah is the smallest coin on the market. But “worth a perutah,” by which one betroths a woman, is a minimum value, and not always does the smallest coin on the market have that minimum value. The minimum value is set by the issar, not by the coin.

So if it is one-eighth of an issar, then if the value of the perutah dropped, you can give a woman a perutah and she won’t be betrothed. It’s not only a practical difference regarding how many perutot you get as change from an issar. She won’t be betrothed. On the contrary, it also makes a practical difference if you—say I betrothed her with an issar. How much change does she now need to give me back? I want the minimum, to give her exactly what betroths her. So ostensibly she should give me back nine perutot because that leaves us with a perutah, right? But no. Because if a perutah is worth one-tenth of an issar, and she got a perutah, she is not betrothed. She needs to keep one-eighth of an issar, which is 1.25 perutot. She would have to give me back 8.75 perutot in change in order to be betrothed. Meaning, the concept of perutah is not the name of a coin. These passages are terribly confusing, so today I’m speaking on the plain meaning. The concept “perutah” is not the name of a coin. It is a minimum value. Therefore you have to measure what the value of a copper perutah is so that one can use it to betroth a woman.

It is not by definition that if you gave her a copper perutah, she is betrothed because you gave her a perutah. Why should I care how much it is in terms of an Italian issar? Bottom line, you have to give her a perutah. No. When they say you have to give her a perutah, they mean one-eighth of an issar; they don’t mean “a perutah coin.” What’s the point? Because that is the value. Apparently one-eighth of an issar is something that can buy. Say there is no merchandise in the market at all that you can buy with a single perutah. You can buy something with two perutot—say a box of matches costs two perutot—but if there is nothing in the world you can buy with one perutah, then the perutah is a coin in the market, but it can’t buy anything. So it is money in the sense that one can build up from it a sum of money with which to buy some merchandise, but that single coin itself is not really money, because in practice you can’t do anything with it. It is fit to join with others, some kind of half-measure of money, but it’s not really money. Okay?

So that’s already an interesting note: when we understand that a woman is betrothed with a perutah, or “five perutot are…”—we tend to understand that they mean the smallest coin in the market. According to that, by the way, we would always know the value of a perutah; no calculations would be necessary. The smallest coin today is ten agorot. So that’s a perutah by definition! No matter how much ten agorot is worth, by definition the smallest coin is a perutah. No. A perutah is a certain value, and therefore the question is: what is the scale? Well, here it is: the Italian issar.

Now, we’ll discuss later—and we’ll see later—that the coins being discussed here are not the conventional coins about which I gave the whole introduction. We can already see this from the fact that each of them is made of a different metal. So clearly the coin also has intrinsic value. It’s not just a conventional object like a hundred-shekel bill or something like that. There is a certain metal here with a certain value, and the more expensive the metal, the more the coin is worth, because its real value is indeed greater. That is the value of the metal, not of a conventional coin. All right?

Now in that sense, there has to be a certain value in Jewish law that will be called “worth a perutah,” even if it does not correspond to the smallest coin in the market. The question now is how I define that value. The accepted assumption among halakhic decisors—by the way, not everybody agrees with this, but the accepted assumption is that we attach ourselves to the value that existed there then. We don’t look at what the smallest market purchase is today. We really ought to go to today’s market, see what the cheapest merchandise is, what the minimum is that I can buy with one coin, and that coin should count as a perutah—it is money. But no. We discuss the Italian issar. The Rosh discusses this, but on the face of it it was made of silver. Less silver, and therefore it is not a dinar; twenty-four of them make a dinar. It is made with a smaller quantity of silver, but it is a coin made of silver, okay? So if that’s so, I can try to estimate today how much such a quantity of silver is worth in shekels. One-eighth of that is what will be called the value of a perutah. That’s how they calculate it today.

Right. The scale is their scale, not ours. Right. Right. Meaning, therefore—and again, I’m not justifying this approach, I’m just describing it—because it could very well be that this is incorrect and we should really go by what is accepted today. But what is accepted among halakhic decisors is that we try to translate the value of the metal that existed then into contemporary terms. How much are ten grams of silver worth today—that would be the value of a perutah; or I don’t know, one gram of silver would be the value of a perutah. Even though in today’s market it might buy nothing, or conversely cheaper things might also buy. But we stick to the monetary value that existed then. That is an interesting question, really, why—but that is what you see here in the passage. Otherwise this whole discussion has no place. What’s the problem? Take the perutah—the smallest coin—and betroth a woman with it. That’s a very interesting remark about this whole matter.

Maybe two remarks. There is a view of Rashi that someone who steals less than the value of a perutah has not violated a prohibition. “Worth a perutah” means worth a perutah. One-eighth of an issar? No, one-eighth of an issar. So one who steals less than that has not violated a prohibition. They ask: why has he not violated a prohibition? There is the category of a partial measure. There is a dispute between Rabbi Yohanan and Reish Lakish, and we rule Jewish law like Rabbi Yohanan, that a partial measure is forbidden by Torah law. So he did violate a prohibition! Maybe he doesn’t get lashes, maybe I don’t know what, maybe he doesn’t have to return it because people waive such a tiny amount, but he certainly did violate the prohibition of theft. So why does Rashi say he did not violate a prohibition?

There is an argument—if I remember correctly it’s somewhere in the Maggid Mishneh or Kesef Mishneh—that explains it like this: what is a partial measure? Suppose, for example, an olive-sized measure is twenty grams. Okay? So suppose I eat five grams of pork. I ate pork, I’m only lacking in quantity. The quantity is not enough for lashes. So I don’t get lashes, but there is a Torah prohibition here. That’s called a partial measure. “Partial” doesn’t literally mean half, of course; it means any amount less than the measure. So there is a prohibition, you just don’t get lashes, because for lashes you need a quantity. The quantity is lacking but the quality is there—it is pork. There just isn’t enough pork. That is a partial measure.

The claim is that according to Rashi, if you take a third of a perutah—in value, I mean—then you stole nothing at all. It’s not a partial measure, because less than a perutah is not money at all. It’s not money in a small quantity. It is not called money at all. A perutah is not the minimum quantity of money. Less than a perutah is not money at all. “Money” begins at a perutah. Once you have the value of a perutah, that thing has the designation of money. What? Is there something less than a perutah? Sure—he steals a perutah coin that is worth less than one-eighth of an Italian issar. Exactly. That’s why I say: it’s a matter of value. That is exactly the point. Otherwise what you are saying gives this whole discussion no meaning. What can one steal that is less than a perutah? Maybe one match out of a matchbox, where you can’t buy one match, but it’s worth less than a perutah. A match, maybe a pin, let’s say. If you steal that, you are exempt because you didn’t steal money. It’s not that you stole money but not enough of it. They say something similar at the beginning of tractate Sabbath. The Talmud there discusses carrying out and carrying in on the Sabbath. For there to be a forbidden carrying out, I need lifting from a private domain and placing in a public domain. What if I only did the lifting, or only the placing? Then I’m exempt. The Sefat Emet asks there: why shouldn’t he be liable under the law of a partial measure? He performed half of the act of carrying out. Why shouldn’t there be a Torah prohibition because of partial measure?

So he says: that is half of an action, not half of an object. Meaning, if I have an object of an olive-sized amount of pork and I ate only a third of it, that’s called a partial measure. But if I did half an action, that’s not a partial measure. Why not? And here there are different explanations. One explanation says that the law of partial measure was said about an object, not about an action. If that’s a formal scriptural rule, I don’t know exactly. But the more substantial explanation is different. Once you only did lifting without placing, you didn’t perform carrying out in a smaller amount. It’s not carrying out at all. There is a deficiency in quality, not just in quantity. Because carrying out is an act composed of lifting and placing together. If you do lifting and placing of a small amount, that would be a reduced carrying out, a small amount of carrying out. But if you do only lifting without placing, then there is no act of carrying out here at all, because the act of carrying out is defined as lifting plus placing. So no—partial measure is always when the “partial” is quantitative. The quality is the same quality; you only lack quantity. But here, the quality is absent; there is no quality of carrying out. You didn’t do an act of carrying out at all; you only did lifting. Lifting alone is not carrying out. It’s not a weak form of carrying out; it is not carrying out at all. Because carrying out requires lifting and placing.

Therefore, according to this, one could hesitate about the case of someone who throws—he intended to throw four cubits and he threw two. These are passages in tractate Sabbath too. In the public domain, if I throw four cubits, I am liable. If I move something four cubits in the public domain, I am liable. What if I threw two cubits or one cubit? Ostensibly, partial measure. But in the Talmud it appears that no—he is exempt. There is no Torah prohibition on that. Why not? And they explain it according to the principle of the Sefat Emet, because it is partial in an action, not in an object. There is no object from which I took a smaller quantity. Rather, it’s an action: instead of four cubits I threw one cubit or two cubits.

But according to what I explained before, that’s not so simple. Because here there really is a quantitative half. The quality is there in one cubit exactly as in four. What is lacking here is only the quantity of that same quality. In that sense this does resemble a partial measure of pork, or a partial measure of a coin, or a partial measure of some value or another, and not lifting as one component out of the carrying-out action of lifting and placing—because there the “half” is a half in quality, not just in quantity. But two out of four is not a half in quality. Anyway, there is room to hesitate.

In any case, what do I want to say? That in the case of money too, when I steal half the value of a perutah—right? One-sixteenth of an Italian issar—then I stole it. So Rashi says you are exempt. Why is there no partial-measure prohibition? The claim is that it’s not money in a small quantity, lacking only quantity, but that in such a tiny amount such a thing is not considered money at all. Not considered money at all. Because there is a minimum value from which on we relate to it as money. When you are below that minimum, it is not money in a small quantity; it is simply not money at all. Because it has no purchasing power in the market. It is less than the minimum value, so it is not considered money at all. And therefore, according to Rashi, he is exempt because less than a perutah is not money.

What do we see? That indeed the definition of value determines a minimum from which on it is called money. Not every coin that circulates and is used in the market is called money. No. It has to have a certain value from which on it has the status of money. Without that, it does not have the status of money, even though it is money, it’s in your wallet, you take it out, you buy things with it in the store, everything is fine—but it is not called money because it lacks the minimum value. There are others, by the way, who argue that there is partial measure with a perutah, but Rashi says there is not.

In that sense, for example, this resembles one cubit out of four cubits when one throws in the public domain. There too the relation is quantitative, and one can say that a throw of one cubit is not really a throw at all, it’s nothing, just moving from place to place. So the quantitative difference turns into a qualitative one, exactly what we said about part of a perutah. Therefore there too, even though it is only a quantitative half, there would be no law of partial measure.

Another example I wanted to bring: the Talmud in tractate Kiddushin says, what happens if someone betroths a woman with a date, with something worth money, the fruit of a date palm—a date. He betroths with a date. The Talmud says that if it is not worth a perutah, then of course she is not betrothed; if the date is cheap and not worth a perutah. But if it is worth a perutah in Media, in some other land, then she is betrothed. The Talmud says there that she is doubtfully betrothed, perhaps it is worth a perutah in Media. What do we see from here? That if I know it is worth a perutah in Media, then she is certainly betrothed. Since I don’t know, it’s only a doubt. Leave the Talmud aside for a second; I’m talking now about what emerges from the subtext of the Talmud: if it is worth a perutah in Media, then she is certainly betrothed. Why? Here it is not worth a perutah. True, here it isn’t, but that is its local value here. Here its value is less than one-eighth of an Italian issar. So why is she betrothed?

The answer apparently is that in order for this thing to effect betrothal—what is this perutah measure? It isn’t really a measure with independent significance. The measure of a perutah is really just an indicator of whether you gave her money. Meaning, if you gave her something worth less than a perutah, it is not considered that you gave her money, as we said with Rashi, that there is no partial-measure law in money. Whatever is below the minimum value does not have the status of money at all. This is not a deficiency in quantity; the quality is different. In this case quantity turns into quality.

So if that’s so, what if there is something that has the status of money but its value is one-tenth of an Italian issar—less than a perutah in terms of value—but for some reason I can show that it has the status of money? It could be that a woman would be betrothed with it. And that is what happens with “worth a perutah in Media.” Meaning, if the date is worth a perutah in Media, that means that this date has a value that is indeed called money in Media. Now it is true that here it is worth less; but you can’t say it has no status of money. The very same thing is considered money in Media, so you can only say that here it is money worth less. Usually, what is worth less than a perutah is not money at all, and therefore one cannot betroth with it. Not because it is worth less than a perutah as such; one cannot betroth with it because it is not money. Its being worth less than a perutah is only the sign that such a thing is not considered money at all. But the problem is not the value itself; value is only an indication. Okay? The practical difference is in the case of “worth a perutah in Media.” Here this date is worth less than a perutah, one-tenth of an Italian issar, but since in Media one can buy with it, one cannot say that it lacks the status of money. The very same object is perfectly good currency in Media. Therefore I can betroth with this date even here, because the fact that it is worth money is not in itself the reason one can or cannot betroth with it; rather, it is the reason it has the status of money. So here, even though it is worth less than a perutah, it does have the status of money, and therefore I don’t care that it is worth less than a perutah; one can betroth a woman with it. Because what matters is whether it has the status of money, not how much it is worth. Usually what is worth less than a perutah lacks the status of money, but here, when it is worth that in Media, that is not true, so it does have the status of money. All right?

All these things are really coming to show what is actually written here. What is written here is that when we talk about a perutah, we are not speaking about a type of coin; we are speaking about a certain value of a coin. And now the question is: if it’s not the perutah that I can point to—take this coin, this is called a perutah—then if not that, what is it? He says: one-eighth of an Italian issar. Meaning, the assumption is that the Italian issar is the fixed thing, and its value cannot go up or down because it is the coinage. It cannot go up or down. One-eighth of it is what determines whether you are money or not, and the perutah will be considered money so long as its value is at least one-eighth of an Italian issar. Okay? And the Italian issar is the yardstick; since it is the yardstick, it is the coinage.

Now the Talmud says like this: if you say it is indeed coinage—meaning gold—then the tanna assesses it in terms of something fixed. What does that mean? We measure this silver coin—twenty-five silver dinars make one gold dinar, okay? So the gold dinar basically measures for me the value of a silver dinar: it is one twenty-fifth of a gold dinar. So that means I measure silver in terms of gold. So who is the coinage here? Gold. Gold is the yardstick with which one measures the value of silver, because silver is the merchandise and gold is the coinage, right? Silver is the produce and gold is the coinage. Why? Because, it says, the tanna assesses in terms of something fixed. You assess the value of something in terms of something determinate, bounded—meaning its value is fixed and doesn’t change. If I assess silver in terms of gold dinars, that means the value of the gold dinars is what is fixed. And the value of silver can go up and down correspondingly in terms of gold dinars. Therefore the gold dinars are the coinage and silver is the produce.

But if you say that gold is produce, like Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his old age, that gold is produce—does the tanna assess in terms of something that goes up and down in price? Sometimes the priest would have to return something to him, and sometimes he would have to add to the priest. Rather, conclude from this that it is coinage. Conclude from this. Right, here we’re speaking about the practical difference for redeeming the firstborn son. That a silver dinar—twenty-five silver dinars equal a gold dinar—is relevant to redemption of the firstborn. So he says: if silver were the coinage and gold were the produce, then what sense would it make to tell me how much silver is worth in terms of gold? After all, gold itself has a fluctuating value. So once you give him an amount determined by gold, sometimes the priest would have to give you change, and sometimes you’d have to give him more than five sela’im—five sela’im, sorry, not four sela’im. So you would have to give him more than five sela’im, or he would give you change on the five sela’im. So what is the point of measuring silver in terms of gold? You should measure silver in terms of something with a fixed value, not something that changes, rising and falling in the market. Therefore, obviously, gold is the coinage.

Now this is interesting, because why does the Talmud go specifically to the end? After all, there are three examples here: there is the perutah vis-à-vis the Italian issar, with the practical difference being betrothal of a woman; the issar vis-à-vis the silver dinar, practical difference for buying and selling; the silver dinar vis-à-vis the gold dinar, practical difference for redemption of the firstborn. When the Talmud discusses whether gold is coinage, it only speaks about the last case. Why?

First of all, just simply because only in the last case is there gold, and our discussion is about gold. Only in the last case is there gold. And maybe more than that, definitely more than that. It could be that in fact the Italian issar and silver are not really coinage in the full sense; they are relative coinage. Gold is absolute coinage. Not as against merchandise—but within this basket of coins, gold is always the coinage. And basically everything is measured in relation to gold. There’s just an intermediate step. If I want to measure a perutah relative to gold, it is one 4,800th. So how do I do that? I say one twenty-fifth is a silver dinar, one twenty-fourth of that is an Italian issar, one-eighth of that is a perutah. But really everything is measured in terms of gold. The silver dinar and the Italian issar are intermediaries, just multipliers to let me do the arithmetic. And if so, it comes out that gold is coinage relative to all of them. All the rest are really produce.

That doesn’t mean that if there is merchandise versus an Italian issar—say that’s the transaction, I’ll give you merchandise and you’ll give me perutot, and you’ll give me an Italian issar, perutot, you’ll give me an Italian issar—in such a transaction I would still need to define who is coinage and who is produce. But in an essential sense only gold is the coinage.

Another thing—I spoke about this in the previous class too, and the one before that—the concepts of coinage and produce in these contexts are not absolute, right? Relative to merchandise, all of these things are coinage. The perutah too, the issar too, the silver dinar too, the gold dinar too. When one of these is given in exchange for merchandise, then all of them are clearly coins; obviously they are coinage and the merchandise is produce. Right? Our whole discussion is what happens when you exchange coin for coin. Only there can we discuss which is the money, which is the coinage, and which is the produce.

But look: when we say that a perutah is one-eighth of an Italian issar, they say the practical difference is for betrothal of a woman. Suppose I give a woman a perutah, all right? When I give a woman a perutah, did I exchange that perutah with her for a silver dinar, for an Italian issar? There is no Italian issar here. I took a perutah and gave it to her, and she is betrothed, that’s all. There is no transaction in which I am actually giving you perutot and getting back an Italian issar. If so, what does this have to do with the question of coinage and produce? Obviously everything here is coinage. When you betroth a woman with a perutah, with an Italian issar, with gold, or with silver, it is always coinage. The woman is the merchandise and the money you give is the coinage. “Practical difference for betrothal of a woman” is really speaking about a situation where only one side is money; the other side is merchandise—the woman. There is no exchange of money for money here.

But in transactions of this type, our Mishnah was not speaking, because in such transactions it is obvious that the money is the coinage. Perutah, or issar, or silver, or gold—it makes no difference—it is always the coinage when it stands opposite merchandise. The whole hesitation only exists when you are exchanging one type of coin for another type of coin. Then we have to define which of the two sides is produce and which is coinage. But when I speak about betrothal, nothing is being exchanged for anything. You give her a copper perutah and she is betrothed, that’s all. So why should I care how much that is worth in terms of an Italian issar? It matters to me for betrothal of a woman, but it has nothing to do with the question whether the copper perutah is coinage or produce. Right? It’s irrelevant. Obviously it’s coinage in such a transaction of betrothal.

So they ask: what practical difference does it make that I measure it as one-eighth of an Italian issar? The practical difference is for betrothal of a woman, to know how much the perutah must be worth for the betrothal to be valid. That’s it. So it has nothing at all to do with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi’s question. Therefore there is no point speaking about the first third of the baraita. The first third of the baraita does not relate to our discussion at all.

What about the second third? The second third says that an issar is one twenty-fourth of a silver dinar, and the practical difference is for buying and selling. What is the buying and selling here? So look at Tosafot. “For buying and selling”—Rashi explained: if he sold him a dinar for more than twenty-four issarim, the buyer was overcharged. The practical difference is the laws of overcharging. Are you familiar with the laws of overcharging? If I sell someone at a price lower or higher than the market price, that is the prohibition of overcharging. Less than one-sixth, the sale stands and everything is fine. At exactly one-sixth, the sale stands but the price difference is refunded, either by the seller or by the buyer, depending whether it was too cheap or too expensive. If it is more than one-sixth, then the sale is void; both the money and the merchandise are returned. Those are the laws of overcharging.

Now Rashi says: the practical difference in the relation between the Italian issar and the silver dinar—that it is one to twenty-four—is for buying and selling. Why? Because if I sell you a dinar for more than twenty-four issarim, since twenty-four issarim is the standard ratio, then there is overcharging. Right? For example, if it’s more than one-sixth—what is one-sixth of twenty-four? Four, right? So suppose I sold it to you not for twenty-eight issarim but for thirty issarim, okay? Then there is overcharging. You would have to refund six issarim. No—not refund six issarim, sorry—this is more than one-sixth. If it’s more than one-sixth, the sale is void; you don’t refund the difference. If it is exactly four issarim, then the four issarim are refunded. Okay? So this is the practical difference for the laws of overcharging. “And if it is one-sixth, he must return it.” That is Rashi’s view.

According to this understanding of Rashi, the relation between the Italian issar and the silver dinar really does tell us something about the question who is the coinage and who is the produce. Unlike the first third—this is the second third. Unlike the first third, where we were discussing that I betroth a woman with a copper perutah and they only tell me how much that should be worth in terms of an Italian issar, but there is no transaction here of copper versus Italian issar. Therefore there it makes no sense to ask from that who is the coin and who is the produce, the Italian issar or the perutah. I have no idea. It’s not relevant. Maybe only from the wording of the baraita, which places the perutah in terms of one-eighth of an Italian issar, from the wording I can understand that the Italian issar is the money. But from the example that it is relevant to betrothal of a woman, that isn’t relevant, because I’m not exchanging a perutah for an Italian issar there; I’m just giving a perutah. I need to know how much it must be worth for the betrothal to be valid.

Here, however, with the Italian issar versus the silver dinar, the practical difference is buying and selling, and we are exchanging silver dinars for Italian issarim. In such a case one can derive from here who is the coinage and who is the produce. Because here this is indeed a transaction in which there are different types of money on both sides. And if we frame the Italian issar in terms of a silver dinar, then the silver dinar is the coinage and the Italian issar is the produce. Therefore from here I really can derive the conclusion that if I make a transaction of an Italian issar versus a silver dinar, the silver dinar will be the coinage and the Italian issar will be the produce. Because the case brought here really is a case of exchange, unlike the first case of betrothal of a woman.

So an important point: there is a difference among the cases dealt with in the three parts of the baraita. The first case deals with something that is not an exchange of coins one for another at all, so it does not touch our whole discussion in the Mishnah about, when coins are exchanged, who is coinage and who is produce. The second case in the baraita does speak about exchanging coins: I sell you a silver dinar for Italian issarim; the laws of overcharging apply. So that means that if you determine overcharging according to how many issarim there are here, then that means the value of the issar is being set in terms of the silver dinar.

But Tosafot does not accept Rashi’s explanation, and says: difficult—because sometimes issarim cheapen, as we say in Kiddushin, and it also appears later in Tosafot there, that sometimes the price of issarim rises or falls. So what? Therefore, why if you took more issarim does that necessarily mean there is overcharging? Maybe you took more issarim because the issarim are worth less—their price cheapened. Because remember, the issar is the merchandise and the silver dinar is the coinage, so the price of the issar changes while the silver dinar is fixed. The price of the issar changes, so why does Rashi say that if you sold it for more than twenty-four issarim that is overcharging? Maybe I sold it for more than twenty-four issarim because the issarim are now worth less—there is inflation—and therefore I took more issarim because that is the real value. What do you say? What would Rashi answer to that? Good question, isn’t it? Not difficult at all, in my view.

All right, obviously if the price of the dinar changes, the price of the issar changes, then you go by the relevant price. Rashi is talking about when the situation is the normal one, that twenty-four issarim equal a silver dinar. Then you need to know that ratio in order to know that if you give more issarim, there is overcharging that must be refunded. Obviously if you give more issarim because the price of the issar changed, that is not overcharging. Because in any event we already agreed—even Tosafot agrees—that in an issar versus a silver dinar, the silver dinar is the coinage and the issar is the produce. Meaning, it is obvious that the price of the issar can change; everyone agrees it is measured in terms of silver dinars. And when Rashi speaks about this, he is speaking about a situation where the relation between the Italian issar and the silver dinar is the normal relation, one to twenty-four. So there, if you give the silver dinar for thirty issarim, that is overcharging. What does Tosafot want? Obviously if the price changed, then the overcharging calculation updates accordingly. Fine—he is speaking about the ordinary case.

You understand that if the price really changed, then you could ask Tosafot even more strongly: if the price really changes, then what is the point of setting a fixed scale at all? What is the point of saying that a silver dinar is twenty-four Italian issarim? Sometimes it is thirty, sometimes it is twenty—it changes. So obviously what is being fixed here is the standard situation. Sometimes there are dips, sometimes rises, but this is the standard price. In any event, that’s something you have to say about the case of the baraita. So Rashi is speaking in the case where indeed the ratio is that ratio. If you gave more issarim or fewer issarim, then that really is overcharging, and that is only on the assumption that the price did not change. Therefore it is not clear what Tosafot wants from Rashi.

In any event, Tosafot explains differently. It says: therefore it seems right to explain that if he sold him an object for twenty-four issarim when there were twenty-four to a dinar—so when he sold him the silver dinar, the ratio between a silver dinar and Italian issarim was one to twenty-four, the normal ratio—and afterward the price of the issar fell, the issar cheapened, and now there were thirty-two to a dinar. All right? So now I come to pay you what I undertook. How much do I owe you? Twenty-four issarim. But now the price of a silver dinar is already thirty-two. That’s an increase by one-third, or one-fourth externally. Okay, so the price of the issar fell and now it’s thirty-two. How much do I have to pay you? Twenty-four or thirty-two? This is very reminiscent of the se’ah-for-se’ah case, if you remember from the previous class.

Tosafot says: he cannot exempt himself with twenty-four issarim and say, “It is the dinar that became more expensive, and the issarim remained in place.” Right? What can I say? I undertook to give you twenty-four issarim; take twenty-four issarim. You say to me, wait, but those issarim are worth less. He says no, the issarim are not worth less; the dinar is worth more. The baraita comes to teach that you can’t say that. Why not? Because the issar is the coinage? No—the opposite: because the silver dinar is the coinage. Coinage never changes value; produce changes value in terms of the coinage. That is the novelty of the baraita. Meaning, according to Tosafot, the novelty of the baraita is precisely this: when there is an Italian issar versus a silver dinar, the silver dinar is the coinage and the Italian issar is the produce. Meaning, not only can I derive from here the relation as to who is coinage and who is produce, but that itself is what the baraita comes to say. Not that one can infer it indirectly, but rather this is directly its point.

Rather, he must give him a silver dinar, or thirty-two issarim. Give him back a silver dinar, or give him thirty-two issarim. Because in effect there was overcharging. Okay? So again, according to Tosafot, in this case there really is proof from the baraita that when I exchange an Italian issar for a silver dinar, the silver dinar is the coinage and the Italian issar is the produce. And afterward the continuation of the baraita speaks about a silver dinar versus a gold dinar, and there the topic is redemption of the firstborn, and there it is clear that basically gold is the coinage and silver is the produce. Right? Meaning, the final two parts of the baraita, unlike the first part, really are discussing the issue of who is the coinage and who is the produce in an exchange. Okay?

The Machaneh Ephraim there has an interesting argument—maybe we’ll look at it briefly. In the laws of interest, section 25, he writes: and the Tur wrote in Hoshen Mishpat section 74, “One who lends his fellow ‘on the coin’”—meaning he sold him merchandise and stipulated that he should pay him coin by a certain date, and the coin was invalidated. The coin was invalidated. There are situations where the king invalidates the coin, right? He must give him coin. It sounds specifically like if he stipulated that he should give coin, then he must give him coin that is not invalid at that time. But if he sold him for such-and-such a number of groshen and they were invalidated, he gives him the invalidated coin. They were invalidated, and he gives him the invalidated coin. Because you didn’t say—you didn’t stipulate—that you want it specifically in legal tender, currency that has not been invalidated. You wanted those coins; no problem, take them, even though they were invalidated. A little strange.

The source is in the Tur in section 74 of Hoshen Mishpat. But what good is it to give him a coin that has been invalidated? What does he gain from that? What do you say? It’s worth something. Yes. What does that mean? Clearly it means we are not talking here about a purely conventional coin, right? If it were a conventional coin, what does it mean to give him a coin that has been invalidated? What good is that? What will he do with it? But if you say that the coin—say the Italian issar—was invalidated, the Italian issar was invalidated, but clearly there is here an amount of silver that you can melt down and sell. So true, if it is a recognized coin it may also be worth more than its material value, but that you do not have to give, because they did not stipulate that he must give you a coin that is legal tender. Give him the agreed quantity of silver, and that’s it. So even giving coin still makes sense.

And so too it appears from Tosafot there. But it is difficult for me, because concerning a coin that cheapened, Tosafot wrote in the chapter “HaZahav” that if he sold him an object for twenty-four issarim when there were twenty-four to a dinar, and afterward it cheapened and thirty-two issarim equaled a dinar—this is our Tosafot—then he must give him thirty-two issarim. Meaning, if the value of the coin changed, you have to update accordingly. Right? So if that is so, then if he sold him an object for such-and-such a number of issarim and the issarim were invalidated—here the Machaneh Ephraim is thinking like a mathematician—when the issarim are invalidated, that is nothing but a change in value, a change in value to zero. Meaning, the value didn’t rise by a third or a quarter; it dropped to zero. All right? The value changed by a hundred percent. Still, it is a change in value. So if so, this is like the case where they cheapened, and he should have to give him whatever they were worth originally. Give him infinitely many issarim, or give him I don’t know what—enough issarim so that their material value equals what it was before they were invalidated, or give it in some other coin, it doesn’t matter. Exactly what Tosafot says in our case of an issar that became cheaper should apply as well when the issar becomes invalidated. What difference is there? Invalidated means the value cheapened one hundred percent. Okay?

And now I saw that the Maharshal learned from the words of Tosafot in the chapter “HaZahav” that if he lent his fellow a certain amount and the coins lost value, he must pay according to what they were worth originally. He learns this from our Tosafot. This Tosafot is very foundational; many laws are learned from it. I lend you a dollar, all right? At the time, the dollar was three shekels. When we came to repay, it is worth four shekels. How much do you have to return to me? His claim is: no, four. You have to return to me four. You have to return the original value. All right? And he learns this from Tosafot here. No—the original number was three. The original value is what is now worth four. If you give him three, their value is not the original value, it is the current value. In order to restore the original value, you need to give him four. All right? Yes, or give him the same coin—that is what Tosafot says. Either return the dinar or bring him thirty-two issarim.

According to this, if he lent him two thousand pieces, and originally those two thousand pieces were worth ten dinars, and now they cheapened, then he must give him 2,500 pieces. Right, whatever—it all has to be adjusted. But according to what we have inferred, that is not correct. Now the Machaneh Ephraim argues and explains our Tosafot differently. It is not the same thing. He says—and I’m skipping to where he explains our Tosafot—he says like this: there is no proof from Tosafot in the chapter “HaZahav.” Why? Because that case is speaking about someone who sold an object for twenty-four issarim, and ordinarily anyone who sells for twenty-four issarim is as though saying, “I am selling to you for a dinar,” because twenty-four issarim are a dinar. Therefore he has to give him a dinar.

And even though one could say that it is the dinars that became more expensive—and according to the Maharshal, why can’t he exempt himself with the claim that it is the dinars that became more expensive and the issarim remained as they were? What is he saying? A big novelty—he takes Tosafot completely away from its plain meaning; he flips the whole picture. What does he say? He says like this: I sold you a silver dinar for twenty-four issarim. Tosafot says that if the issarim cheapen, you have to give thirty-two issarim even though we agreed on twenty-four, because you must preserve the original value, right? The Machaneh Ephraim says: that is only because the number there is twenty-four. If you had set it at sixteen issarim and the value of the issar changed, you would still give sixteen issarim. Only because it was twenty-four issarim, if the price rose to thirty-two, do you have to give thirty-two. Why? What difference does it make?

The difference is that twenty-four issarim just happens—or not just happens—to equal exactly one silver dinar, right? So if you set the price at twenty-four issarim, that means you didn’t really mean to speak in terms of issarim; you meant to speak in terms of a silver dinar. It’s not accidental that you chose exactly twenty-four. What you really intended was to speak in terms of the value of silver coinage. So if the value of the issar changes, give me such a number of issarim as will preserve the value in silver-dinar terms, because that is really what you meant. If I told you, “Please bring me 100 agorot”—right?—“this box of matches costs 100 agorot.” All right? What I really said was one shekel, not 100 agorot. Why 100 and not 92 or 105? Because what I really meant to say was one shekel, I just expressed it in agorot. So if the value of the agorah changed, you have to give me a value of one shekel according to the agorah’s new value, whether 105 or 92 or whatever, but it still has to come out to one shekel.

But if I had sold you this box of matches for sixty agorot, not 100 agorot, and the value of the agorah changed, then you give me sixty agorot, not more and not less. Because the price was intended in terms of agorot. So basically the Machaneh Ephraim wants to argue that everything Tosafot says here is not a general principle. On the contrary, the general principle is the opposite: if I fixed it with you in Italian issarim, then the number of Italian issarim remains as it is. What we agreed on is what you give me. In the case where I fixed a round number that is exactly a silver dinar, or 100 agorot that is exactly one shekel—there, if the value changes… and this is what he means when he writes, “and so too it appears from Tosafot in the chapter ‘HaZahav’”—and I skip a bit more—“and so too it appears from Tosafot in the chapter ‘HaZahav,’ who wrote that we need this to teach us that he cannot say ‘it is the dinars that became expensive and the issarim remain as they were.’” Right, that is what Tosafot said: the novelty of the baraita is that you cannot say the issarim are the same price and only the dinars changed, and therefore take your new twenty-four. Why does Tosafot add that argument? Because, he says, in a place where one can make that argument, then indeed it would be a good argument and you would give him the twenty-four dinars you stipulated, not thirty-two. That is what the Machaneh Ephraim infers.

Why does Tosafot bring that reasoning? Because he says that in a place where one can indeed say such a thing, then that would really be a valid claim and you would give him the twenty-four you agreed on and not thirty-two. So why here can’t he say that? Because the amount fixed is exactly twenty-four issarim. Twenty-four issarim is like one hundred agorot, meaning you really fixed a silver dinar. But with any other amount, one really could say either that the issarim became more expensive or the dinars became more expensive or cheaper—the issarim are at the same value.

Now that inference is a bit dubious. The interpretation is interesting, but the inference is dubious. Why? Because there is another explanation why Tosafot says he cannot tell him that the silver dinar cheapened or became more expensive. He cannot say that because the dinar is the money and the issar is the produce. That itself is the novelty. Not because of the amount of twenty-four. The whole line I said earlier is against the Machaneh Ephraim. What did I say earlier? I said that Tosafot is really trying to argue: why can’t I tell you, take the twenty-four you asked from me and not thirty-two? Why is a dinar now worth thirty-two? Because the dinar became more expensive, not because the issarim cheapened. Why do I care that the dinar became more expensive? I undertook twenty-four issarim; take twenty-four issarim. Why can’t you say that? How did I explain it above? Tosafot says you can’t say that. Why not? Because the silver dinar is the money and the issar is the produce. And it is produce whose price changes, not coinage whose price changes. Meaning, according to Tosafot, the novelty of the baraita is precisely that the silver dinar is the coinage and the Italian issar is the produce.

Therefore, if so, what happens if we fixed the price at fifteen Italian issarim? The same thing: the same law would apply, because the Italian issar is still the produce, and I give you the translated value. The Machaneh Ephraim understands Tosafot differently. He claims that the novelty of the baraita—according to him—is not the novelty that the Italian issar is the produce and the dinar is the coinage, because that’s not even true. It is not true that this is coinage and that is produce. On the contrary, usually that would not be so. Only because the amount stated here is twenty-four issarim, which is exactly a dinar, only for that reason do you have to translate it into the updated price of a dinar. But any other amount that we fixed, you would simply give what you stipulated.

What does that mean? That I really can claim that the Italian issar is the coinage and that what became more expensive or cheaper is the silver dinar. According to the Machaneh Ephraim, one can make that claim—or in other words, with an Italian issar versus a silver dinar, it is not correct to say that the issar is the produce and the silver dinar is the coinage. No. It is not clear here what is produce and what is coinage, and therefore I can claim that “that” is what became more expensive. You want to extract from me eight more issarim? Bring proof. The burden of proof is on the one who seeks to take from another. I claim that it is the dinar that became more expensive, not that the issar cheapened. That is at least a possible claim. Once you want to extract more money from me, the burden of proof is on you. Okay?

So who is the produce and who is the coinage with an Italian issar versus a silver dinar? A doubt—meaning, it is not clear, there is no determination, one cannot know. That is what the Machaneh Ephraim says. I claim he is not right, because the whole flow of the Talmud is exactly designed to show us that the Italian issar is the produce and the silver dinar is the coinage. That is the novelty of the baraita. Now if so, it is not logical for the baraita to state this novelty specifically in one special case where it might happen to be true only there, but not prove it regarding other cases where I set the price at exactly twenty-four issarim. That’s not a reasonable way to present the novelty. Therefore, obviously, the baraita does not regard the price of twenty-four as a special price. Any amount of Italian issar that we would have fixed, the law would be the same.

I think the Machaneh Ephraim is not right, and the relation in the baraita is really that gold is coinage relative to silver, silver is coinage relative to the Italian issar, and the Italian issar is money relative to the copper perutah. That is what the baraita is saying. In the case of the Italian issar versus the copper perutah, by the way, it’s only a matter of wording. From the practical difference for betrothal of a woman, one cannot derive it. But from the fact that they measured the copper perutah in terms of an Italian issar, that shows us that the Italian issar is the coinage in that game. That is only linguistic evidence.

In the second and third thirds of the baraita, the proof is substantive. From the fact that you cannot claim that the dinars became more expensive or cheaper, but rather it is obvious that the Italian issar became more expensive or cheaper, it is clear that the Italian issar is the produce and the silver dinar is the coinage. And in the redemption of the firstborn, of course, the same.

Now we come to redemption of the firstborn, because the discussion in the Talmud is about redemption of the firstborn itself. So what happens in redemption of the firstborn? Let’s go back for a moment to the original baraita. The baraita says that a silver dinar is one twenty-fifth of a gold dinar, and the practical difference is for redemption of the firstborn. “If you say it is indeed coinage, then the tanna assesses in terms of something fixed.” Meaning, when you say how much gold value there must be in the redemption of the firstborn, in the silver sela’im you give for redeeming the firstborn, then it says that gold is basically the money, the coinage, and silver dinars are the produce. Okay?

Rashi explains: “The tanna assesses in terms of something fixed”—the tanna assessed redemption of the firstborn in fixed coinage, so that even at a time when it is sold for no more than twenty silver dinars—the silver dinars became more expensive—normally a gold dinar is twenty-five silver dinars, but now the silver dinars rose in value so now it’s only one to twenty, not one to twenty-five—then the priest returns to him five dinars, because the value of gold is always fixed. Gold is the money, so its value is always fixed at twenty-five dinars, because it is the coinage. And silver is produce relative to it. And it is the coins that have become expensive. The gold became more expensive. And if it is sold for thirty, he should not return to him except one-fifth of its value, because its value is always fixed, and four-fifths of its value are the redemption of the firstborn.”

What is the point? The point is this—look. For redemption of the firstborn, one must give five silver sela’im. A silver sela is four silver dinars. That’s the rule. A silver sela is four silver dinars. Five silver sela’im—how much is that? Twenty silver dinars, which is four-fifths of a gold dinar. A gold dinar is twenty-five. So twenty is four-fifths of a gold dinar, right? Meaning, for redemption of the firstborn I really should have to give you four-fifths of a gold dinar. But in practice it is stated in terms of silver dinars. The law is to give five silver sela’im. But the point is that it is not the value of five silver sela’im as such, because silver sela’im can go up and down. The coinage, the coin, is the gold dinar.

Therefore—remember in betrothal of a woman, the perutah for betrothal? Here they tell you to give five silver sela’im. But that does not mean just take five silver-sela coins. No. You have to check how much this is worth in terms of a gold dinar—just like when one betroths a woman with a perutah: I give her a perutah coin, but I have to check how much it is worth in terms of an Italian issar. The fact that I gave a perutah does not mean automatically that she is betrothed. The same here. You have to give five silver sela’im, which are twenty silver dinars, but you have to check how much that is worth in terms of gold dinars, and it has to be worth eighty percent of a gold dinar, four-fifths. Therefore, if I gave you twenty silver dinars, and the value of the silver dinars changed, then I really need to give more… Suppose I gave you one gold dinar for redemption of the firstborn. How much change do you need to give me? Suppose the gold dinar rose in value to… no, sorry, the silver dinar rose in value, so now it is one-twentieth of a gold dinar and not one-twenty-fifth as usual. Okay? Then how much should one give for redemption of the firstborn? A full gold dinar, right? You don’t need to give any change at all. And if it’s thirty? Not twenty. That’s when the value of the silver dinar dropped. And I gave you a gold dinar—then how much change do you have to give? In principle, five silver dinars of change? Because in current terms I get to… wait… no, not five, sorry. I need to get to four-fifths of a gold dinar, right? If the value of a gold dinar is thirty silver dinars, then four-fifths is really twenty-four, right? So he should give you six silver dinars in change. Six, not five. Right? Because in the end, everything has to be translated: the value of redemption of the firstborn is fixed in terms of a gold dinar. In practice I carry out a silver transaction here; the sela’im or dinars I give are silver coins, and the change from the gold dinar is also given in terms of silver. You can’t give the change from the gold dinar in gold—the gold is the gold dinar. If you give change, you give it in silver dinars. The question is how much, and it should be not five but six. Okay? Good—that shows that the silver dinars are the merchandise and the gold dinar is the money, the coinage.

Now according to this, Rashi is a little strange: why does the priest return five dinars? Suppose I gave him twenty silver dinars. Then I basically gave him a gold dinar, right? I basically gave him a gold dinar. How much should I have given him? Four-fifths of a gold dinar, right? That is the fixed value of redemption of the firstborn in terms of a gold dinar. And note well: the fixed value is always the value in terms of a gold dinar, not in terms of silver dinars. So in effect, for redemption of the firstborn one pays eighty percent of a gold dinar. And I gave him twenty silver dinars because that is the standard value. Usually one must give twenty silver dinars—five sela’im times four in each sela. I gave him too much, because now silver has become more expensive, so twenty silver dinars equal a whole gold dinar. What should he give me back? A change of one-fifth of a gold dinar. How much is one-fifth of a gold dinar? Four silver dinars. So why does Rashi say “the priest returns to him five dinars”? Four dinars. Right? A little arithmetic issue. Here there’s a mistake. The Maharshal indeed reads here four dinars—this is an alternate reading in Rashi. But most of the early authorities and commentators preserve the wording as we have it, for example the Ritva.

So the Ritva says like this: “What practical difference does it make? Redemption of the firstborn.” Rashi explained that if the father gave him a gold dinar, the priest returns five silver dinars to him. “If you say that gold is indeed coinage, then it is measured by something fixed,” so that even when the dinar is sold only for twenty silver dinars or less, the priest returns five dinars to him. He quotes Rashi, right? “Because the value of gold is always fixed and it is the coinage, and silver is produce relative to it, and it is the silver that became cheap like produce, which is sometimes expensive and sometimes cheap, while the coinage remains in place. Therefore, if this dinar were sold for thirty, the priest would return only five silver dinars.” Why five? Six. And earlier, why five? Four, right? He keeps saying five silver dinars whether the silver-to-gold ratio is thirty to one or twenty to one; he always says return five silver dinars. That is not right. It should be either six or four, depending whether silver became more expensive or cheaper.

“But if you say that gold is produce, does the tanna assess in terms of something that rises and falls? Sometimes the priest returns to him and sometimes he adds to the priest.” And the Ritva says: this wording does not sit well, because from the phrase “sometimes the priest returns to him” it sounds like whenever there are twenty-five silver dinars to a gold dinar, the priest returns nothing to him. But that is not so, because he always has to return one-fifth of a gold dinar to him. Since the price is measured in a gold dinar, there is no case in which, if you gave a gold dinar, he does not need to return something. He always has to return one-fifth of a gold dinar. So he says one can explain that what it means is: sometimes the priest returns to him more than five dinars, when they are worth more than twenty dinars; but the language of the Talmud does not fit nicely according to this. Fine—five, more than five, or less than five—not exact. It just means he has to return something. Not necessarily five. He must return five, or maybe more than five, or less than five. But the wording is not very smooth.

Then he says: if you say that even if we maintain that gold is coinage, how can the tanna assess it such that he should always give four-fifths of a gold dinar and be done with it, even when that is not worth twenty silver dinars? After all, it is a scriptural decree that he give five silver shekels for redemption of the firstborn, which are five silver sela’im in rabbinic terms, and those are twenty silver dinars. How can one always give less than that amount?

And he answers: the Torah estimated five shekels according to the time when a gold dinar was worth that many silver dinars. But Scripture never measured except in terms of gold, which is fixed and does not rise and fall. In other words, he asks: the Torah’s law is to give five silver dinars—five silver sela’im, which is twenty silver dinars. Why do you think it should always be eighty percent of a gold dinar? On the contrary, the amount fixed by the Torah is stated in silver terms, not in gold terms. So he answers: why? The Torah really said to you “give twenty silver dinars,” just like it tells you “a perutah” in betrothal. By that it really means “give eighty percent of a gold dinar”; it merely expressed it in silver terms. Just as if it said “give sixty agorot” as the price, while in practice you always pay in shekels and not in agorot—it means sixty percent of a shekel; that’s what it means, it just expressed it in terms of sixty agorot. And when the Torah says to betroth a woman with a perutah, it means one-eighth of an Italian issar, not literally a perutah coin.

When it tells you five silver sela’im, it means eighty percent of a gold dinar. Therefore if the gold dinar changed—rather, if silver changed in terms of the gold dinar—then it will not be five silver sela’im; there will be differences. And that is what he says: so that the measure will be equal at all times. For if you say that Scripture measured in silver, since silver is produce and rises and falls in price, after all silver is produce and gold is the coinage—if the Torah tells you “give redemption of the firstborn in five silver sela’im,” then it is really giving you a non-fixed amount, because if the silver dinar is produce then its price is always going up and down. So what, is it reasonable that the Torah gave you a non-fixed amount? A fixed amount must be in terms of gold. Therefore it is obvious that when the Torah said five silver sela’im, it only meant to say eighty percent of a gold dinar. That is what it meant. A little like how the Machaneh Ephraim read Tosafot—that when you say twenty-four dinars, you mean a silver dinar, not twenty-four pieces. So that’s what he says.

Bottom line: wherever you say that silver is produce and gold is coinage, necessarily Scripture measured in gold—that is, that one should give four-fifths of a gold dinar, and “five shekels” is not exact. And wherever you say that silver is coinage and gold is produce, then it was measured in silver and “five shekels” is exact. And since we rule Jewish law like Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi in his old age, that gold is produce and silver is coinage, therefore he always gives five shekels. What does he mean? He means that maybe he explains that Rashi formulates the law in the way it is correct in practice. And in practice, after all, silver is the coinage and not the produce; gold is the produce. Therefore he says: always return five silver dinars.

But maybe one can understand Rashi simply—why does he always speak of five and not four or six? Depending whether the ratio is twenty silver dinars or thirty silver dinars, it should be either four or six. The answer is: Rashi really means four and six; he is just expressing it in terms of… he says “five dinars.” The meaning of “five dinars” is one-fifth of a gold dinar—that is what he means. When Rashi says “return five silver dinars,” he means “return one-fifth of a gold dinar”; he is just stating it in silver terms. But if silver changed in price, then in practice that could be either four silver dinars or six silver dinars.

Right, it’s like if I tell you “return half a shekel.” If the agorot changed, then when I tell you “return fifty agorot,” I did not mean literally fifty agorot; I meant half a shekel. So if agorot rose or fell, it could turn out to be fifty-five agorot or forty agorot. The fact that I say “return him fifty agorot,” because I’m using the normal standard scale—where twenty-five silver dinars equal a gold dinar—means I’m saying “return five silver dinars.” That is just another way of saying “return twenty percent of a gold dinar.” That’s the point. Sometimes it is six, sometimes four. And that is really what Rashi means, according to this claim, and then Rashi’s wording is settled.

All right, I’ll stop here. The rest is really the fully separate second explanation. So that’s it, we’ll stop here.