Kiddushin – Chapter 3 – Lesson 4

Table of Contents

• The acquisition has expired and the principle of causality in legal effectuation
• One delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, monetary acquisition and prohibition-acquisition
• Acquisition as a halakhic object versus monetary ownership, and kiddushin that are not “ownership”
• Ownership as a metaphysical bond and examples of the human being’s “periphery”
• Dividing testimony: one’s wife is like one’s own body, and one’s property as one’s periphery
• Conditions in divorce and legal effect as an “object”: both divorced and a married woman
• The Ran: with money, the acquisition has not expired because the obligation of the money still remains
• Kiddushin after thirty days in the Talmud: she is betrothed even though the money was consumed
• “Money that returns” in Bava Kamma and the explanation of “obligation” in betrothal through money
• Two understandings: he betroths with the original money or he betroths with the debt
• Shulchan Arukh, Rema, Beit Shmuel: money, document, and intercourse after thirty days

Summary

General Overview

The text presents the problem of the acquisition having expired in kiddushin of the form “Behold, you are betrothed to me after thirty days,” and develops an approach according to which acts of acquisition create a metaphysical-halakhic reality and not merely a system of norms. From this principle it builds a causal explanation according to which there is no “action at a distance” across time, and therefore a legal effect that does not take hold immediately with the action cannot come into being later unless something continues the action that applies it. It then proposes a central distinction between betrothal by money and by document or intercourse according to the Ran, and discusses sources in Gittin, Bava Kamma, Sanhedrin, and Kiddushin in order to ground the idea that the acquisitional bond and the legal effect are real “objects” that generate norms, and that sometimes one can speak of a legal effect existing even when its consequences do not appear in the usual way. The conclusion summarizes that the money creates an obligation (“money that returns”) that bridges the gap in time and explains how a legal effect can take hold after thirty days, and it opens two basic possibilities: whether the kiddushin takes effect through the original money or through the debt itself.

The acquisition has expired and the principle of causality in legal effectuation

The text states that according to the Ran, in any act of acquisition, including kiddushin, it is impossible to perform the act now and delay its legal effect to a later time, because “the action has already come to an end,” and therefore there is nothing left to bring about the legal effect later on. The text explains that the sages understand this not as an arbitrary normative enactment but as a necessity built into reality, because the act is supposed to create a result in reality, and if it was not created immediately, it cannot arise out of nothing thirty days later. The text compares this to the principle of causality in physics, and formulates it by saying that just as there is no “action at a distance” in space, so too there is no “action at a distance” along the axis of time, and therefore cause and effect in Jewish law behave as they do in the physical world. The text concludes that behind the Jewish law there stands a “spiritual or meta-legal reality” that has its own constraints, and the norms are products of that reality rather than the reverse.

One delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, monetary acquisition and prohibition-acquisition

The text brings Gittin 42b about a Canaanite slave who was declared ownerless without receiving a bill of emancipation and is called one delayed from receiving a bill of emancipation, and presents the language of later authorities according to which the master has a monetary acquisition and a prohibition-acquisition, such that when he declares the slave ownerless the monetary acquisition lapses but the prohibition-acquisition remains. The Talmud states that one who injures such a slave gives the money to the master, and Tosafot explains this by way of the fine of “thirty shekels for a slave” together with the reasoning, “What difference is there to me whether he killed him entirely or killed him halfway?” The Pnei Yehoshua objects that the comparison is not parallel, because “thirty shekels for a slave” is a fine, whereas compensation for injury is money meant to compensate the injured party, so there is no reason to pay the master when he is not the one who suffered the loss, especially since the slave is alive and one could seemingly pay him. The text suggests an understanding of the Pnei Yehoshua according to which payment for injury goes to “the owner of the property that was damaged” and not necessarily to the one who actually suffered the loss, and from this there emerges an implication of ownership even after the monetary acquisition has been relinquished.

Acquisition as a halakhic object versus monetary ownership, and kiddushin that are not “ownership”

The text distinguishes between using the term acquisition in the sense of creating a legal effect and using it in the sense of monetary ownership, and explains that the confusion around the phrase “a woman is acquired in three ways” stems from the fact that usually an act of acquisition creates ownership, but in principle it creates a legal effect even when there is no “acquisition” in the proprietary sense. The text quotes Nachmanides: “A woman is not her husband’s property,” and presents this as an early position and not something born of modern sensitivities. The text brings the Shitah Mekubetzet on “his money-acquisition may eat of it” regarding the wife of a priest, according to which the meaning is not that the woman is the husband’s monetary acquisition, but that the marital bond was acquired with money, and the act of kiddushin was performed through money. The text concludes that the term “acquisition” in the context of marriage refers to applying a legal effect and not to ownership of the woman.

Ownership as a metaphysical bond and examples of the human being’s “periphery”

The text argues that ownership is not a bundle of rights of use but a “metaphysical bond” between a person and a thing, and the legal rights are consequences of that bond rather than the essence of ownership itself. The text discusses items from which benefit is prohibited and explains that the view that such prohibited items “belong to me” is not proof of ownership without rights, because one who takes an item from which benefit is prohibited is considered a thief, and ownership does include rights, only the Torah forbids using them; the dissenting view serves precisely as opposite proof for the claim that ownership without rights does not exist. The text brings the requirement that one’s animal rest on the Sabbath and presents an understanding according to which the obligation is not only about the person’s action but about the fact that his animal must not perform labor, and from this ownership is described as a bond that causes a person’s “periphery” to perform labor on the Sabbath. The text cites the Rogatchover on Bava Kamma 17 regarding the investigation into liability for damage caused by one’s property, and explains the side according to which the very fact that the damager is one’s property creates liability because the property is one’s periphery, while negligence serves as an argument for exemption that severs the periphery. The text adds in the name of Rav Shlomo Fisher in Beit Yishai that the liability of a person who causes damage under compulsion—for example, someone asleep with a stone in his lap that falls—is due to the fact that his body is his periphery, and therefore even when there is no “human act” there is still responsibility for the action of the periphery.

Dividing testimony: one’s wife is like one’s own body, and one’s property as one’s periphery

The text brings Sanhedrin 9 about dividing testimony in the case of the testimony “So-and-so sodomized me willingly,” and explains that Jewish law accepts “he and another witness join to put him to death,” because a person cannot render himself wicked, and therefore the part of the testimony concerning himself is not testimony, while the part concerning the accused remains. The text brings the Raavad, who distinguishes between testimony about oneself and testimony about a relative—“So-and-so sodomized my brother”—where the testimony is heard in full but the witness is disqualified, and then “if part of it is invalid, all of it is invalid.” The text notes that in the Talmud there is a distinction regarding “So-and-so had relations with my wife” because “one’s wife is like one’s own body,” and in the initial assumption even regarding “So-and-so sodomized my ox,” and from this it is argued that there is a closer bond between a person and his property than between him and a family relative. The text uses this to strengthen the claim that ownership expresses a metaphysical bond and not merely rights of use.

Conditions in divorce and legal effect as an “object”: both divorced and a married woman

The text raises a question in the laws of conditions: in a bill of divorce “on condition that she not drink wine for thirty days,” how can the divorce take effect after thirty days without the problem of the acquisition having expired? The text brings in the name of Rav Shimon Shkop that during those days the woman is “both divorced and a married woman,” and explains this by way of a distinction between contradictory properties and objects that are not contradictory, using the example of “salty and sweet” as opposed to “salt and sugar.” The text states that if “married woman” and “divorced woman” are descriptions of a set of laws, then this is contradictory; but if we are speaking of two legal effectuations as metaphysical objects that “rest” upon her, then there is no contradiction at the level of reality, and the contradictions appear only at the level of the norms derived from them. The text explains that where one side imposes a prohibition and the other side imposes the absence of prohibition, the practical result is prohibition, because “what determines things is the positive law and not the negative law,” and therefore this is not a matter of the laws of doubt such as “in a rabbinic-level doubt one rules leniently,” but a double certainty of legal effectuations. The text brings another example, that of a designated maidservant, and quotes the Pnei Yehoshua, who innovates that in the case of a married woman kiddushin does not fail to take hold because of the severity of the prohibition, but because she is “not in the marketplace,” and therefore even where the ordinary prohibition is absent, the kiddushin may still fail to take hold because she is another man’s wife.

The Ran: with money, the acquisition has not expired because the obligation of the money still remains

The text returns to the topic of “Behold, you are betrothed to me after thirty days,” and brings the Ran, who distinguishes between acquisition by physical possession and acquisition by money, and states that with money, “even though he did not say, ‘Acquire from now,’” this works because “the obligation of the money still remains in existence.” The text explains that the Ran understands that kiddushin by money can take effect after thirty days even if “the money was consumed,” because the coins are not like a loan and not like a deposit, and therefore there is continuity that prevents the acquisition from having expired. The text concludes that according to the Ran, kiddushin by document and by intercourse after thirty days do not simply work, because they do not create such an obligation. The text brings the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad in the case of one who says, “Take hold of this cow, but you will not acquire it until after thirty days,” where Maimonides rules “he has not acquired it” without the phrase “from now,” and the Raavad argues that if the cow is in the buyer’s domain on day thirty-one, then it is acquired, “just like ‘Behold, you are betrothed to me after thirty days,’” and from here a practical difference is developed as to whether the mere presence of the object in the buyer’s domain creates continuity even without an obligation.

Kiddushin after thirty days in the Talmud: she is betrothed even though the money was consumed

The text brings Kiddushin 59a, which asks, “If no one else came and betrothed her during the thirty days, what is the law?” and explains that the question stems from concern about the acquisition having expired: perhaps the first man’s kiddushin cannot take effect after thirty days, and therefore even if no one else came, she is not betrothed. Rav and Shmuel rule, “She is betrothed,” and add, “even though the money was consumed,” and the reason is that “these coins are not like a loan and not like a deposit.” The Talmud explains that this is not a deposit, because with a deposit “it is consumed in the owner’s domain,” whereas here “it is consumed in her domain,” and it is not a loan, because “a loan is given for spending,” whereas here “he gave it to her in the form of kiddushin.” The text proposes an understanding according to which a loan means that the recipient has nothing at all that belongs to the giver, whereas here there is “something non-concrete” equal to a certain amount that remains owed, and therefore even if the coins are gone there is still a basis for the kiddushin.

“Money that returns” in Bava Kamma and the explanation of “obligation” in betrothal through money

The text brings Bava Kamma 70 regarding “one who stole and sold on the Sabbath,” and Rami bar Hama’s setup: “Cut a fig from my fig tree and thereby acquire my stolen item,” and explains that since when they sue him in court they will not say, “Go pay,” because he is “liable with his life,” therefore “the sale too is not a sale.” The text quotes Rav Shimon Shkop, who explains that acquisition by money works in that receiving the money creates an obligation in exchange for it, and the money is considered “payment” because a debt stands opposite it; therefore money that does not create a legally claimable debt cannot effect acquisition. The text identifies the obligation of which the Ran spoke with the concept of “money that returns,” that is, giving money that generates a reciprocal obligation that continues to exist and makes it possible for the legal effect to take hold later.

Two understandings: he betroths with the original money or he betroths with the debt

The text presents two formulations for explaining kiddushin after thirty days in the case of betrothal by money. One possibility is that the kiddushin is done with the money given at the beginning, and the debt merely bridges the gap in time so that the acquisition not expire. A second possibility is that the kiddushin is done at the end of the thirty days through the debt itself, so that there is no gap between act and legal effect, and the difficulty—“one who betroths with a loan, she is not betrothed”—is answered by saying that the debt here is not an ordinary loan but a state that is “neither loan nor deposit,” in which there remains value belonging to the giver in the recipient’s possession. The text emphasizes that the choice between these formulations is expected to affect details of the law and to emerge as a dispute among medieval and later authorities.

Shulchan Arukh, Rema, Beit Shmuel: money, document, and intercourse after thirty days

The text brings the Shulchan Arukh, which rules: “One who says to a woman, ‘Behold, you are betrothed to me with this perutah after thirty days,’ even though the money was consumed within the thirty days, she is betrothed after thirty days,” and explains that this law was stated regarding kiddushin by money. The Rema brings: “And some say that if he betrothed her with a document, and it is not extant after thirty days but was torn or lost during the thirty days, she is not betrothed,” implying that if the document still exists, then she is betrothed. The text notes that a practical hierarchy has been created according to which money works even if the money was consumed, a document works only if the document still exists, and intercourse leaves nothing behind and therefore does not work after thirty days according to certain understandings. The Beit Shmuel explains that the reason betrothal by money works is that “since she must return it,” “it is as though the money is still extant,” and adds that with a document, if it was lost, “nothing remains after thirty days,” and even if the document still exists but is not in her possession—for example, if it lies in the public domain—there is a problem. From this, the text sees in the Beit Shmuel a ruling that it is the initial transfer that effects the kiddushin, while the debt or the continued existence of the document merely prevents the acquisition from having expired. The text concludes by summarizing that the Ran resolves the topic through obligation and “money that returns,” proposes two basic paths for understanding the mechanism, and states that next time he will try to clarify what exactly a debt that is “neither loan nor deposit” is, and what the implications are of the dispute between the two formulations.

Okay. We’re now dealing with the case of betrothal that takes effect later: “You are betrothed to me after thirty days” — “after thirty,” meaning after thirty days. Last time I spoke about the problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended,” what the Ran says: in an act of acquisition, and likewise in betrothal — really, in any act — if you performed the act and you want to delay the legal effect, so that it takes effect only later, that’s impossible. It’s impossible because the act has ended. And either way, the legal effect should occur immediately when I perform the act, because the act creates the legal effect. If that doesn’t happen immediately — because I didn’t want it to happen immediately, I said only after thirty days — then it can no longer happen at all, because there is nothing left that can make it take effect after thirty days, since the act has already run its course. The act has already been done, so in effect there is nothing left to generate the betrothal. The claim, really, is that what probably underlies the Ran’s conception — and I’m going to expand on this a bit now — is that at the foundation of Jewish law there stands some kind of reality. Meaning, the Ran is basically saying: if I could — that is, if I relate to Jewish law as a set of rules meant to achieve justice, or I don’t know what, to achieve whatever Jewish law wants to achieve — then there’s no problem at all with deciding that I perform an act of betrothal now and it takes effect in thirty days. What’s the problem? There’s no verse forbidding it. It’s simply a decision by the Sages based on reason. So why do they decide that it isn’t possible? What’s the problem? I want to betroth a woman in thirty days; everything is fine. I can do it conditionally, I can do it delayed by thirty days, there is no principled obstacle. It seems that the Sages understood that it simply isn’t possible. Even if we really want it, it can’t be done. Why can’t it be done? Because if I performed the act, then the result has to occur immediately. Somehow there seems to be a statement here about reality. Meaning: I performed some action here, and it has to produce something in reality, to impose something in reality. And if that thing happened, fine. If it didn’t happen, that’s it — you can’t generate it ex nihilo after thirty days. Now, if these weren’t realities but only rules, then what would stop you from saying it will be created in thirty days? What’s the problem? Everything is in your hands — decide whatever you want. And all the more so when I say this is without verses, when the Sages just decide on their own reasoning that it’s impossible. Rather, it’s clear that the Sages saw the act of betrothal as creating some sort of reality in the world. And then we have a principle of causality here, like the example I brought from gravity: there’s no action at a distance. Just as there is no physical action at a distance, there is also no action at a distance along the time axis. And clearly there is some assumption here that cause and effect in Jewish law are like cause and effect in the physical world. Meaning, you did something, it creates something, so that something has to be created immediately — that’s the principle of causality. In other words, if it wasn’t created immediately, then it can’t be created at all, because without a cause it can’t be created. So we’re applying the principle of causality in the same sense in which we encounter it in physics; we’re also applying it to Jewish law. And that means that probably behind our halakhic conception there sits an assumption that we’re talking about a certain kind of reality — spiritual reality or meta-legal reality — but it is reality. And therefore there are constraints. There are things I cannot do in reality, even though maybe it would make sense to do them and I’d want to do them, but it simply can’t be done. Meaning, if there is no reality, then there is no such thing as “can’t be done.” Whatever you decide is what you do; it’s just a matter of definition. Whatever you define is Jewish law. I now want to try to show a little of the meaning of all this — where it comes from, why this is so, what exactly it means, what this reality is. I’m saying that the principle that “his act of acquisition has ended” expresses this conception, as though we are talking here about reality. Okay? That’s why I’m getting into this discussion, because the principle that “his act of acquisition has ended” is really the result of viewing Jewish law as though it were a kind of reality. Now let’s see where that comes from, what exactly it means, what this reality is. Here I’ll begin perhaps with the Talmud. The Talmud in tractate Gittin 42b discusses whether there is a law of a fine regarding a slave whose bill of manumission is being withheld. What does that mean? There is a Canaanite slave. A Canaanite slave is the master’s property, like his ox or his donkey. How does the slavery end? By giving him a bill of manumission. If he gives him a bill of manumission, he becomes Jewish — he is freed and becomes Jewish. In principle this is forbidden to do: “You shall work them forever”; that’s the nullification of a positive commandment. But if I do it, it ends the slavery. What happens if I renounce ownership of the slave but do not give him a bill of manumission? Meaning, the monetary rights I have in the slave no longer exist. But I didn’t give him a bill of manumission, meaning he is still a slave. So that is what is called “a slave whose bill of manumission is being withheld.” Now, in the language of the later authorities (Acharonim), they say that the master has in the slave a monetary acquisition and a prohibition-status acquisition. Once I renounce ownership of him, the prohibition-status acquisition remains, but the monetary acquisition has lapsed. He is no longer my property — meaning, what he does no longer belongs to me. He is no longer my property because I renounced him in the proprietary sense. But his status as a slave still exists as long as he has not received a bill of manumission. Now the Talmud there says that if someone injures such a slave — someone injures a slave whose bill of manumission is being withheld — then the money goes to the master. So Tosafot there asks why. Why does the money go to the master in such a case? Who lost anything from this injury? The slave, because he no longer belongs to the master; his earnings belong to himself. So why should the master be compensated when the master is not the one who lost? So Tosafot says: because regarding a fine, we find that it goes to his master. If an ox kills this slave, then there is the fixed payment of thirty for a slave, and that goes to his master. So Tosafot says: what difference is there between killing him entirely and killing him partially? Meaning, if killing him goes to his master, then injuring him — which is, so to speak, half of killing him, killing part of him — that too goes to his master. So the Pnei Yehoshua there asks on Tosafot: these two things are not alike at all. The thirty for a slave is a fine, a fixed amount. Injury payment is money, compensation for the loss I caused. The thirty for a slave is a penalty, a fine. It’s not meant to compensate anyone. Especially since the slave died; you can’t compensate him anymore. So how does Tosafot compare the thirty for a slave to payment for injury? When the Torah innovates a fine, then it said what it said. Meaning, it said that there is a fine even though no one is really owed anything here, there is no duty of compensation. But the Torah innovated that nevertheless there is an obligation to pay a fine, and it also innovated that it is paid to the master. Especially because when the slave dies there is no one else to pay. You want to punish the owner of the ox that gored the slave. Now to whom do you pay? He has no heirs, nothing, so you pay the master; otherwise you won’t succeed in punishing the person who caused the harm. So therefore it is obvious that for the thirty of a slave it goes to his master, and even for a slave whose bill of manumission is being withheld it goes to his master. Because the thirty for a slave is not compensation for a loss, so the fact that the master was not the one who lost — who cares? It’s a fine. The point is simply: why don’t we say he should pay it to charity, say, by default — and instead it goes straight to the master? Right, exactly. They could have said pay it to charity; they could have said throw it into the Dead Sea. Fine — but they say pay the master. That’s not difficult. You can ask a question — not an objection. A question: why specifically the master and not charity, or the priests, or I don’t know, the Temple. But that’s not an objection; there’s no problem there. Here, in our case, says the Pnei Yehoshua, it is an objection. Injury damages are compensation; you compensate the one who lost. The master didn’t lose here. The one who lost is the slave. Especially because here the slave is still alive. He was injured, but he’s still alive. It’s not like the case of a slave who dies and the thirty for a slave — what would be the problem with giving it to the slave? Now the Pnei Yehoshua there says in his answer — he phrases it a bit unclearly. I understood him one way. I had an actual “Torah court case” with my yeshiva lecturer over this Pnei Yehoshua when we learned it. I understood it one way and he disagreed with me, so we went to adjudicate it before one of the other senior yeshiva teachers, and he represented me better than I represented myself against my own lecturer. So what was there? He says as follows. The Pnei Yehoshua, I argued, is saying this: the payment for the injury, the injury damages, has to go to the owner of the property that was damaged. Now notice: that is not the definition “the one who suffered the loss.” The definition is “the owner of the damaged property.” Usually, of course, the one who suffered the loss is the owner of the property — that’s what happens in the normal case. But there are situations where the one who suffered the loss is the slave himself, yet the injury payment is made to the owner of the property and not to the one who was harmed or the one who suffered the loss. That’s the claim. Now this of course assumes that even though I renounced ownership of the slave, some relation still remains between me and the slave — a relation of ownership. Because you could have said that he remains in the status of a slave but in no sense belongs to me, so I’m not his owner. No — I’m not his owner at all; he just remains in the status of a slave until I give him a bill of manumission. What I want to claim here, in order to resolve the Pnei Yehoshua’s question — or perhaps that’s what he himself is saying, if I’m right — is that despite having renounced all my rights in the slave, I am still defined as his master, his owner; he is mine, he belongs to me. When we went to that “Torah court case,” he asked the adjudicator — one of the other senior yeshiva teachers, just incidentally, my own teacher was a greater Torah scholar, but never mind — we went to him and he presented my position. So he said, listen, why do they call this situation a “prohibition-status acquisition”? That’s what he asked the judge. They call it a prohibition-status acquisition, not merely a prohibition-status. “Prohibition-status acquisition” means there is some proprietary dimension here. He didn’t agree with me, but he represented it, I think, more effectively than I would have. In any case, this recalls the issue of betrothal between a man and a woman, because there too, when the husband acquires the woman, she doesn’t now belong to him in the monetary sense. Right, but there she doesn’t belong to him in any sense. Fine, but that too is a prohibition-status acquisition. It’s not a prohibition-status acquisition in the sense of ownership. Okay, but imposing prohibitions is not a prohibition-status acquisition in the way it is with a slave. No — for example, with a woman who eats terumah: regarding a slave, “the property acquired with his money may eat of it.” Regarding a woman there are two verses. In one place it says “the property acquired with his money may eat of it,” and the Sages derive from that that a priest’s wife may eat terumah; elsewhere it says “every pure person in your house may eat holy things.” And some want to say that one verse refers to betrothal and the other to full marriage. And the Shitah Mekubetzet writes that when they bring “the property acquired with his money may eat of it” regarding a woman, they do not mean to say that the woman is the monetary acquisition of her husband, but rather that the marital bond was acquired by money, was effected by money. The act of betrothal was done with money, so she is called “his monetary acquisition” not in the sense that she belongs to him. Right — so it’s not an acquisition in the sense that she belongs to him. So in the series I’m giving on the second chapter of tractate Kiddushin, I gave a few introductory lectures there, and one of them was in fact devoted to this question: is the husband the master of his wife? Meaning, is he her owner? There are arguments like that, but it’s not true. One can show very clearly that it isn’t true. What confuses people is exactly the fact that it’s called acquisition. It says there, “A woman is acquired in three ways” — by money, by document, and by intercourse — and it sounds like I’m buying her. And people don’t understand the concept of acquisition in Jewish law. Exactly — imposing a legal status. Meaning, when you perform an act of acquisition, the meaning is that you want to impose the legal status. Without the act, the status will not take effect. Now it’s true that ownership is also one of the legal statuses in Jewish law, and more than that, it’s the most common one. Meaning, usually when we perform an act of acquisition we really are imposing ownership, but that’s just because it’s the common example. In principle, when I say you performed an act of acquisition — when I conclude a contract or create a partnership or something like that — I perform an act of acquisition. What did I acquire? I didn’t acquire anything. It simply expresses a firm intention so that the contract should take effect, should be valid — meaning, binding. Okay? Therefore when I say “the woman is acquired,” the meaning is that the legal status of betrothal is imposed by money, by document, and by intercourse. And that is what confuses people into saying: “A woman is acquired” — apparently they buy her, she belongs to me. Nachmanides writes explicitly that a woman is not the monetary property of her husband, and he says this as an objection to the Talmud. Meaning, not only does it not emerge from the Talmud, but even when it does seem to emerge from the Talmud he refuses to accept it, because a woman is not the monetary property of her husband. So these are not apologetics for today’s feminists; the medieval authorities (Rishonim) saw this as something obvious. Fine, I wrote a long article on that issue. In any case, let me get back to our topic. So the claim I want to make, Moshe — maybe this is what the Pnei Yehoshua says — is that I have an acquisition in the slave; he is mine. Now here I really do mean acquisition in the sense of ownership. I am the owner of the slave, I am the slave’s master, he is my slave, even though I have no monetary right in him whatsoever. So what exactly does that mean? In what sense can I perhaps say that? I’m the one who can free him, give him a bill and make him free. But in what sense is he acquired to me, does he belong to me? And yet I have no rights at all. What does that mean, “the thing itself”? The fact that I can free him — I’m the only person in the world who can make him free — that’s the power I have. Fine, so the Torah gave me a power. But what does that mean? Why is that called his belonging to me? In what sense does he belong to me? He doesn’t belong; I have a power. Say I’m a bully — I’m also the only person who can beat you up, so does that mean you belong to me? I run the fastest here. Even if a hundred other people ran, only I could free him? I also run faster than you — that’s just a technical matter. The question is: when we talk about ownership, we’re not just talking about control. Ownership means that I have certain rights in the thing — meaning, it belongs to me in some way. And the question is: what way? He doesn’t belong to me in any way. I cannot derive any right from him. So what is the thing that is acquired to me? The thing itself? And by freeing him, that makes him free? Fine — at the moment I’m asking a question; in a moment I’ll give an answer. But that’s the question. In what sense is the slave called my property? Okay. My claim is that what we see from here is that when you talk about ownership — when I own some thing — that does not mean the collection of rights I have in the thing. Ownership is a metaphysical relation. There is a relation between me and the thing; that is the relation of ownership. Usually, that relation has legal implications: I have rights of use, others cannot use it without my permission; that is the meaning of the object’s belonging to me. But those are implications of ownership; they are not ownership itself. Ownership itself is the very fact that there is a metaphysical relation between us. That is what it means that I own something. It has legal implications — that I can use it, others cannot use it, and so on. And that is exactly what I’m driving at: that Jewish law really assumes some kind of metaphysical reality, and the halakhic norms are only products of that reality. It’s not that Jewish law is a collection of norms. Jewish law is factual determinations of reality, and the norms are products of that reality. And therefore if I changed the reality, the norms change. But in that sense there can be a situation in which I am still an owner in the metaphysical sense — someone with metaphysical glasses would see a thread connecting me to the thing, a relation between us — but on the legal level this has no expression at all. I have no rights. In a moment I’ll bring another example, though in practice it’s hard to find examples of this. Let me give an example, say, from prohibited benefit. There is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether things from which benefit is prohibited no longer belong to me at all because they are prohibited for benefit, or whether they do belong to me, only I am forbidden to benefit from them. “It’s like a lion crouching on it,” or something of that sort. Now, apparently, those who say that prohibited-benefit objects do belong to me would also be evidence for what I’m saying here. Because they belong to me even though I cannot derive any benefit from them at all — I have no rights. So in what sense do they belong to me? Apparently that would be evidence that ownership does not consist merely in the bundle of rights it gives, but is some kind of reality. But that’s not true; that’s not a good proof. If anything, it’s actually the opposite proof. Because what’s said there is this: clearly I am also the owner with respect to rights. If you take my prohibited-benefit object, you are a thief. Obviously. There is no obligation of restitution because it is not worth a perutah, but you are a thief; you took something that belongs to me. I’m speaking according to the opinions that say it belongs to me, okay? So you are a thief. Okay? Meaning, if I make use of it — say it is prohibited benefit, and I decide anyway to use it — I transgressed, but I did not use something that is not mine. There is no other person who can prevent me from making that use, because it doesn’t belong to anyone else; it belongs to me. Therefore there it is exactly, by definition, “like a lion crouching on it.” It is completely mine, including all the rights. So from there one cannot bring proof that ownership is something different from the collection of rights. The fact that ownership exists there is because the rights also exist there. There is only a prohibition against using those rights. With eating pork, there is no prohibition of benefit, there is a prohibition of eating, so the limitation is partial. If there were also a prohibition of benefit, the limitation would be total. But in principle that does not change the fact that all the rights are mine; the Torah simply forbids me to make use of them. Why do I say this is apparently the opposite proof? Because what does the opinion say that it does not belong to me? It says there is no such thing as ownership without rights of use. If anything, one could understand from here the opposite proof, because I would say fine, there is a prohibition of benefit, but that still does not contradict the fact that it should belong to me. So they hold not only that the prohibition of benefit removes from me the ownership of the uses — because I said before, no, it only forbids me, it does not remove my ownership of the uses — they hold not only that it forbids me, but that it also removes ownership of the uses, and moreover that once ownership of the uses has been removed, I am no longer an owner at all. Okay? Fine. So from there, for example, we cannot bring a clear proof to our issue. Let me bring perhaps another example from which one can see this. “Like a lion,” right? Another example: the resting of one’s animal on the Sabbath. The resting of one’s animal — what is that? I am obligated that my animal rest on the Sabbath, that it not perform labor on the Sabbath. Say my animal is grazing grass; in principle it is transgressing the prohibition of reaping. That creates a problem of the resting of one’s animal. Now there the Talmud says this is permitted because “that is what it wants” — it needs it for itself in order to live. Right. So therefore that’s not a problem. But in principle, if the animal goes from one domain to another, if the animal does things that are just labors forbidden to me, there is a prohibition of the resting of one’s animal. Okay? This is not a capital offense, it’s not one of the thirty-nine primary categories of labor, but it is a Torah prohibition from “so that your ox and your donkey may rest,” right? That is the resting of one’s animal. Now according at least to some of the medieval authorities (Rishonim), the prohibition is not a prohibition on the person’s action with the animal, but rather the person is obligated to ensure that his animal not perform labor on the Sabbath. What does that mean, really? It means that the relation of ownership between me and the animal has some metaphysical significance, because if all ownership were was a bundle of rights of use, then how do you get from that to the conclusion that my animal is forbidden to perform labor on the Sabbath? If I say that my animal may not perform labor on the Sabbath, that means there is some metaphysical relation between me and it, and when it performs labor on the Sabbath, some kind of periphery of mine is performing labor on the Sabbath. Meaning, property that belongs to me is a kind of periphery of me. Let’s say my body is a more immediate, narrower periphery of me; my property is a broader periphery. But the concept of the resting of one’s animal means that my property is seen as some sort of periphery of me. So that means that its belonging to me is not merely a statement that I am permitted to make uses of it, but that there is some relation between me and it. There is another example. The Rogatchover actually brings these two examples in Bava Kamma 17. There is a collection of the Rogatchover arranged by tractates. He brings it there in the context of the well-known inquiry of the later authorities regarding liability for damage caused by one’s property. If my property caused damage, I have to pay. The question is: why? One possibility is that it is because of negligence in guarding it. I didn’t guard it properly, therefore I have to pay. A second possibility: the very fact that it is my property obligates me to pay. Yes, exactly — although if I wasn’t negligent they will exempt me, but not because the negligence is the ground of the obligation. The ground of the obligation is that my property caused damage. A practical difference they mention, for example, concerns burden of proof. My animal damaged your animal; you sue me. Now it’s unclear whether I was negligent or not. Do I need to prove I wasn’t negligent, or do you need to prove that I was negligent? Apparently, “the burden of proof rests on the one who seeks to extract money from another.” You want to extract money from me — prove that I was negligent. But this is a dispute between the Pnei Yehoshua and the Hazon Ish, who disagree about it, and there is an opinion that says no, I have to bring proof that I wasn’t negligent. So the later authorities understand why: because really, what obligates me is the very fact that my property caused damage, and that certainly happened here. I can exempt myself if I prove that I was not negligent, so I need to bring proof that I wasn’t negligent because I want the exemption. If negligence were the ground of the obligation, then you would have to prove that I was negligent, because you are suing me to pay you. Okay? So that’s the inquiry. Then the Rogatchover asks: fine, if I was negligent then that’s why I have to pay. But what is the other side of this inquiry? In other words, why does the very fact that my property caused damage obligate me to pay? So what? I’m saying negligence is a claim for exemption, but fundamentally the very fact that it is my property obligates me to pay. Why? Says the Rogatchover: the same as the resting of one’s animal. Since the animal is some kind of periphery of me, when the animal causes damage it is basically as though I caused damage, and therefore I have to pay. If I guarded it properly and wasn’t negligent, then in effect I detached the animal from me; it is no longer my periphery in that regard. But the fundamental obligation is because the animal is my periphery. Yes. I once saw in Rav Shlomo Fisher’s Beit Yishai, he writes there about… actually I also heard it from him orally once. He writes about a person who causes damage being liable even in a case of compulsion. Say someone falls asleep with a stone in his lap — the Talmud in Bava Kamma — and while he is asleep, the stone falls and causes damage. So he is liable. A person is always forewarned, whether awake or asleep; even under compulsion he is liable. So he says: did the person cause damage in such a case? The answer is no, because the person is asleep. Okay? What caused damage was his body, not he himself. The person is the soul. When you make decisions, the body is the instrument through which you implement your decisions. But the person is when he decides, when he is awake and making decisions — that is called a human act. So when a person is asleep, his body caused the damage, not he himself. Why then do we obligate him? Because his body is his periphery. Meaning, with respect to the periphery, even when he is asleep. Right — meaning, or I don’t know if “has to ensure,” but you’re already assuming he has to ensure, meaning there is already a claim of negligence. I’m saying irrespective of the negligence claim. Not that he has to ensure, but that he has to pay. Let him not ensure it — but he still has to pay, because he is responsible for what his periphery does. So his body is the closest periphery. His property is a more distant periphery. But still, the same idea applies: the relation between a person and his property is a kind of metaphysical relation, okay? And not just a collection of monetary, legal rights. The rights are a product of the metaphysical relation. There is a third example. The Talmud in Sanhedrin 9 speaks about “splitting the testimony.” What happens if a person says: “So-and-so sodomized me willingly”? Meaning, we had sexual relations — sexual relations between two men, okay? — and it was done with my consent. I testify that it was done with my consent. Now there is another witness to the act, and you need two witnesses. So I am one of the witnesses. Now as to “a person cannot render himself wicked,” I cannot testify about myself. But the question is whether I can testify about the one who committed the act — say I am the passive party, okay? So the question is whether I can testify about the active party. The Talmud says — it’s a dispute among Amoraim there, but the practical Jewish law ruling is: he and another witness combine to put the other man to death. Why? Because we split the testimony. What does that mean? We do not believe me about myself, that I was sodomized, but we do believe me that he committed the act. We divide my statement. Now what happens if I testify about my relative? “So-and-so sodomized my brother.” Then the Ra’avad says there we do not split the testimony. Why? Because there I am testifying about a relative, not about myself. When I testify about a relative, that is invalid testimony. When I testify about myself, that is not testimony at all because I am an interested party; I am not a witness. Here I am a witness, but a disqualified witness. Why does that matter? Because when I say, “So-and-so sodomized me willingly,” the “me” part — the part about myself — we never heard at all. It isn’t testimony; it was never said as testimony. So all that remains is the part “so-and-so committed sodomy,” and that we accept. But when I say “so-and-so sodomized my brother,” then we hear all the testimony, both that he committed the act and that it involved my brother. It’s just that concerning my brother I am a relative witness, a disqualified witness, and once part of the testimony is invalidated, all of it is invalidated. If part of the testimony is invalid, the whole testimony is invalid. Now the Talmud discusses there what happens if “so-and-so had relations with my wife,” and the Talmud considers that this would be different from “so-and-so sodomized my brother.” Why? Because one’s wife is like oneself. “One’s wife is like oneself” means that this is really just like testifying about myself, and therefore there we do split the testimony. Another thing in the Talmud — at least in the initial assumption — there was an initial assumption there that we would split the testimony regarding one’s property: “so-and-so had relations with my ox.” What do we see again? We again see the same thing: that the relation between him and his ox is closer than between him and his brother, like his wife. Why? Because it is his periphery. Meaning, the concept of ownership really expresses a metaphysical relation between me and my property, and there are consequent implications of rights of use and so forth. Now I’ll illustrate this with an interesting demonstration from the laws of conditions. Suppose I divorce my wife on condition that she does not drink wine for thirty days. What is her status during those thirty days? Like any condition. Like any condition of “provided that she not do this,” then it doesn’t take effect. That’s the question — but then what? Then “his act of acquisition has already ended.” Meaning, in the end it suddenly does take effect. Something in the middle also has to be there. It can’t be… so what is it? What is the status? In the end. Is she married? So what then? What happens after thirty days when she is divorced? The divorce that happened at the beginning takes effect. How? “His act of acquisition has already ended.” That act already happened. It was already done. I gave her the bill of divorce thirty days earlier. How can the divorce suddenly take effect now, when it didn’t take effect until now? So how is that different from the problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended” that we saw in our topic? So the claim is that Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that during those days she is both divorced and a married woman. Quantum superposition, yes — like Schrödinger’s cat. When I spoke about this in the yeshiva in Yerucham — I taught there — when we learned this topic, I said to them: yes, she is both divorced and a married woman, and I intended to continue the lecture from there. Then someone stopped me and said, wait, wait, wait, one second — what do you mean, both divorced and a married woman? If she is divorced then she is not a married woman, and if she is a married woman she is not divorced. That’s a logical contradiction. How can a woman be both divorced and a married woman at the same time? And that just took the air out of my mouth. I suddenly caught myself — not only that it was difficult, but I didn’t understand how I had passed over it so calmly, said it, and thought I could just sail onward. That’s what I thought there, like a perfectly innocent person for one hour, as the phrase goes. Then the light bulb went on, and I said to them this. I remembered that I have a good friend with whom we used to enjoy philosophizing, exchanging examples of various things. I collect examples. Examples of interchangeability and all sorts of things like that. So once I came to him with the question whether he knew of something that has no opposite. I told him I can’t think of anything that has no opposite. He said, what do you mean? A bird has no opposite. A chair has no opposite; a cloud — I don’t know. And then I caught myself: wait, how did I miss so many things and not find anything that has no opposite? Then I understood — this was many years earlier — I understood that opposition is a relation that exists between properties, not between objects. All the examples he brought me were objects. Objects do not have opposites. An object is what it is. What would be the opposite of an object? The opposite of a bird is nothing; there is no such thing. The opposite of salty is sweet. Meaning, there are properties for which a relation of opposition exists between them; they are opposites of one another. But objects are not opposites of one another. Okay? So now I return to our case: married woman and divorced woman. When I say that a woman is both a married woman and a divorced woman, it depends what I mean. If I mean that the laws applying to her are both the laws of a married woman and the laws of a divorced woman, that cannot be, because it is a logical contradiction. Because a married woman is the opposite of a divorced woman. Right — meaning, her legal status is either married or divorced; you can’t say two contradictory things at once. But if I mean — let’s go back for a second to salty and sweet — is there any problem in saying that a certain dish contains both salt and sugar? No problem at all. But to say that it is both salty and sweet — I mean fully salty and fully sweet — there is no such thing; that is contradictory. Either it is salty or it is sweet. Those are two contradictory things, right? Assume that for the sake of the discussion. What is the difference? The difference is that salt and sugar are objects. Objects do not contradict each other. If the dish contains sugar, it can also contain salt. The fact that two objects are there involves no contradiction at all. The contradiction exists between the properties of those objects. So if I say the dish is both salty and sweet, that cannot be. If I say it contains both salt and sugar, there is no problem with that. So if I return to married woman and divorced woman, that is exactly the point. If I understand myself as speaking about the laws that apply to the woman, like properties of the woman, then it cannot be that she is both married and divorced; that is contradictory, like saying both salty and sweet. But if I say that inside this woman there is both salt and sugar, meaning there rests upon her the legal status of a married woman and the legal status of a divorced woman — those two legal statuses are sitting on her back, she is carrying two backpacks. One backpack is called the legal status of divorce and the other backpack the legal status of being a married woman. There is no problem at all with that. Now of course one has to check what the taste of this dish will be. Will it be salty or sweet? But the fact that it contains both salt and sugar is no problem in principle. Here too. I’m saying there is upon the woman the legal status of a married woman, and at the same time there is upon her the legal status of a divorced woman. That is not a contradictory statement. The two statuses can sit on her simultaneously. But the fact that a woman is divorced or a married woman, and all the practical differences that come from that, isn’t that purely just the laws that derive from it? Unless, exactly as with ownership — that’s where I’m going — I want to claim that to say there is upon a woman the legal status of a married woman, and to say that the woman is a married woman, are not the same thing. To say that the woman is a married woman is a bundle of laws that apply to her. To say there is upon her the legal status of a married woman is to say there is sugar in her — not that she is sweet, but that there is sugar in her. The result is that she is sweet. Meaning, when I say there is upon her the legal status of a married woman, that means the legal status is some kind of object. She is carrying on her back this object called “the legal status of a married woman.” As a result there are all kinds of legal implications, exactly as I said earlier about ownership. If I regard it as a kind of object, there is no impediment to saying that there is upon her both the legal status of a married woman and the legal status of a divorced woman at the same time. The problem only arises when I want to determine what laws apply to her. There is a contradiction between the laws, but that is never a problem, because if I ask myself whether she may marry a priest — say after her husband dies, her first husband — no, it depends. On the side according to which she was a married woman and then her husband died, there is no problem; a widow may marry an ordinary priest. But if she is divorced, then it is forbidden. So apparently there is a sort of doubtful situation here, but it’s not a doubt. It is both this and that. Not a doubt. Okay? And then what does that mean? I spoke about “both this and that” in the context of “from now and after thirty days.” How can both men’s betrothals take hold of her? The claim is that it isn’t a doubt, but rather both-and. So from the side of the divorce in her, she would be forbidden to a priest; and from the side of the married-woman status — or now she is an unmarried woman after he died — from the side of the unmarried woman in her she is permitted to a priest, or rather there is no prohibition. Now wherever one side says there is a prohibition and the other side says there is no prohibition, the bottom line is that there is a prohibition. Meaning, what always determines things is the affirmative law and not the negative law, the law of absence. Therefore in terms of the question of which laws apply to the woman, there is no problem. Once the two legal statuses are contradictory only in their consequences — not contradictory legal statuses, but contradictory consequences — then what determines things is always the positive legal status and not the negative one. Therefore this is different from ordinary cases of doubt, for example. Even if these statuses are rabbinic statuses — say being a married woman and being divorced on the rabbinic level — still she would be forbidden to marry a priest, because this is not a matter of doubts where you say a rabbinic-level doubt is ruled leniently. No. She is rabbinically divorced, so she is rabbinically forbidden to a priest. She is definitely divorced; it’s just that together with that she is also definitely a married woman. Okay? Therefore what Rabbi Shimon argues there, when we say she is both a married woman and divorced, what we really said is that to say there is upon her the legal status of a married woman or the legal status of a divorced woman is to claim that there is some object upon her. There is a metaphysical reality concerning her, and Jewish law consists of the norms derived from that metaphysical reality. Contradiction cannot exist in the domain of law, but in the domain of reality there is no contradiction. In objects there is no contradiction; they are simply both there and everything is fine. Both salt and sugar. Okay? So that is another proof for this conception: that at the foundation of Jewish law, when I say I betrothed a woman, what I really did was impose upon her the legal status of a married woman, and from that all sorts of laws are derived that apply to a married woman. But that is a consequence. It’s not that I imposed the laws; I imposed the legal status. Do you follow? Perhaps one might say the opposite: first there are the laws, and from them the status follows. No — that there is nothing else. There are the laws. And when one says “a married woman,” one means that whole cluster of laws. Not the other way around; it’s just a shorthand for that. The point is: there are the laws, and when one says “a married woman,” it’s just a turn of phrase to say that this bundle of laws applies to her. And I say no — it’s not just a turn of phrase. To say there is a married woman is to describe reality. As a result, all sorts of laws also apply to her, exactly as I said about ownership. And therefore, for example, theoretically there could be a situation in which she would be a married woman but the laws would not apply to her. Theoretically there could be such a case; there is no contradiction in that. There is, now that I suddenly remember, also an example of this. What about the designated maidservant — half-slave, half-free woman? So she is a designated maidservant who is married to a Hebrew slave. Now someone comes and has relations with her, so he brings a guilt-offering; this is called the guilt-offering of a designated maidservant. Okay? But as a matter of law he did not transgress a prohibition. This is a discussion in the Talmud. There is no prohibition at all — not even an ordinary prohibition, certainly not the sexual prohibition of another man’s wife. There is no prohibition. Okay? But he brings a guilt-offering, because one can bring a guilt-offering even without a prohibition — never mind, I can prove that in various ways. Now the Pnei Yehoshua asks: so why can betrothal take hold with respect to her? Betrothal does not take hold with respect to those liable to excision. With ordinary prohibitions, betrothal does take hold. Where there is not even an ordinary prohibition, certainly betrothal should take hold. And then it follows that if I betroth the wife of that Hebrew slave, this designated maidservant, she will be the wife of two men. And the Talmud says we do not find a woman who is the wife of two dead men — there cannot be a woman who is the wife of two husbands. So the Pnei Yehoshua asks: here, apparently, that could happen. So the Pnei Yehoshua says: no, the betrothal will not take hold with respect to her. It won’t take hold because the sexual prohibition of another man’s wife is different from all the other prohibited relations in the Torah. For all the other prohibited relations in the Torah — say one’s sister — the betrothal does not take hold because of the severity of the prohibition. It is such a severe prohibition, a sexual prohibition, that the betrothal does not take hold. It is outside your range. Okay? But with another man’s wife, betrothal does not take hold simply because she is another man’s wife; she is not “on the market,” she is not available to receive betrothal. The prohibition is a consequence of that, but first of all there is a state of affairs: she simply is not available to receive betrothal, so you cannot betroth her. What happens with a designated maidservant, says the Pnei Yehoshua? She is another man’s wife — true, there is no prohibition on her — but the betrothal still will not take hold with respect to her simply because she is someone else’s wife, even though there is no prohibition. Here again this is an implication. The Avnei Miluim disagrees with him, never mind, but that is what the Pnei Yehoshua argues. So once again we see that to say that a woman is another man’s wife is not to state the collection of laws that apply to her, but to establish some metaphysical condition, some metaphysical status resting upon her, meta-halakhic, metaphysical, whatever you want to call it. The laws are derivatives of the metaphysical state; they are outcomes. And sometimes the metaphysical state can exist without the derivatives, without the laws. Okay? Okay, so now I return to our line of thought. What comes out of all this is that halakhic statuses — the status of ownership, the status of being a married woman, what one does in betrothal, what one does in acquisition — are really the creation of a new metaphysical situation. And for that you need the acts. The acts come to create a metaphysical situation, okay? And the halakhic implications are only implications of the metaphysical situation. If so, that is probably also what underlies this law of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” Because what I said there was that this law really says that there cannot be a gap between performing the act and imposing the legal status. Why? Because there is what is called the principle of causality. The principle of causality says that if the cause occurred, the effect must necessarily be produced. And if the cause is absent, then the effect cannot simply arise without the cause. Therefore either it is produced immediately or it is not produced at all. It cannot be produced after time has passed. Why? What stands behind this? So I said that what stands behind it is basically some conception according to which the act creates something in reality, and that thing is called the legal status. Therefore there is a causal relation here, just as in physics, between the act and the legal status that the act creates. And because of that there are all sorts of constraints resulting from the principle of causality: if the cause occurred, the effect will occur; if the cause did not occur, the effect cannot occur. That is basically the foundation of why the Sages assume that “his act of acquisition has already ended” cannot work. Now I return to our topic. Fine. So we saw the Ran last time, the Ran who talks about “his act of acquisition has already ended.” At the end, in the final paragraph of the Ran, he returns to our topic. He says as follows: “However, when we say that wherever he did not say ‘from now,’ he did not acquire, that is specifically where he acquired by taking possession. But where he acquired by money, even though he did not say ‘from now,’ he acquires, because the obligation corresponding to the money still exists. And this is like one who says to a woman, ‘You are betrothed to me after thirty days,’ where she is betrothed, even though the money has been consumed, because these coins are neither like a loan nor like a deposit, as explained in the chapter ‘Ha-Omer’ in tractate Kiddushin.” What does that mean? It means that when you are talking about acquisition by money, or monetary betrothal, there the law of “his act of acquisition has already ended” does not apply. If you betroth a woman with money or acquire a field with money to take effect in thirty days, and you want the legal status to take effect after thirty days, there is no problem. This does not contradict the fact that “his act of acquisition has already ended” doesn’t work. Why not? Because when you give the money, an obligation corresponding to it is created, and that obligation continues to exist throughout those thirty days, so something remains until the end of the thirty days, and this is not called “his act of acquisition has already ended.” Okay? Therefore the betrothal can take effect, and the same is true of acquisition. And the proof he brings is from our own Talmudic passage. In our passage it says that even if the money was consumed, since it is neither like a loan nor like a deposit — in a moment we’ll see that — and from there comes the proof for what he says. In fact, we find further qualifications of this matter. For example, what happens if the object — but before that, what if I betrothed by intercourse or by document? Apparently that would not work after thirty days. Because there is no corresponding obligation. Giving money creates an obligation, and that remains until after thirty days, so the betrothal can take effect. With document and intercourse, it would not work. Okay? With regard to acquisitions of a field or a cow or something like that — I’m talking about taking possession, or an act of possession on land — there too, as long as I did not give money, the act of acquisition did not create an obligation, and therefore it cannot take effect after time has passed, only immediately. But with money it does work. Now they ask: what happens if I drew an object into my possession — say, you sold me a cow; I drew it into my possession — but we stipulated that the acquisition would take effect in thirty days. Then “his act of acquisition has already ended,” right? But several medieval authorities (Rishonim) say that if the cow is still in my possession after the thirty days, then it does work. Because somehow there is still continuity here; it hasn’t ended entirely. The matter has not completely ceased. There is still something here — we’ll see in a moment. For example, see here the dispute between Maimonides and the Ra’avad. “One who says to his fellow: draw this cow and acquire it only after thirty days — and he drew it — he did not acquire it. And if he said to him: acquire it from now and after thirty days, he acquired it, even if it was standing in a marsh on the thirtieth day, because it is like one who acquired it from now conditionally. If the condition is fulfilled, the acquisition is fulfilled, and anyone who says ‘on condition’ is as though he said ‘from now.’” But all that is when he says “from now.” If he says that he will acquire it after thirty days, he does not acquire it. The Ra’avad’s gloss says: “Abraham says: it seems to me that if the cow is standing in the buyer’s possession on the thirty-first day, it is acquired by him — just as in the case of ‘You are betrothed to me after thirty days,’ where the betrothal takes effect on that day.” What is he saying? If the cow is still with me after thirty days, then even though I acquired it by drawing it into possession and not with money, the acquisition takes effect. He says this is also the explanation for “You are betrothed to me after thirty days.” That could be like the Ran, who says that the obligation generated by the money remains with me until the thirty days are over. The claim is that even where the object is still with me after thirty days, there is some continuity, no gap of “his act of acquisition has already ended,” and therefore it can work. Where will the difference be? What if I betrothed a woman by intercourse or by document? According to the Ran, “his act of acquisition has already ended,” because that does not create an obligation, and therefore the betrothal will not take effect. That only works with monetary betrothal. According to the Ra’avad, no — because according to the Ra’avad, after all, the woman is still with me after thirty days, right? And if the object is still with me, then even if that original act of acquisition didn’t create an obligation, but rather continues until now, that’s fine, because there is some continuity. Drawing a cow into possession, say, is some sort of continuous drawing into possession throughout those thirty days; as long as the cow remains with me the whole time, I’m drawing, drawing, drawing, and at the end of the thirty days that is really the completion of the drawing into possession. So that would be a practical difference between the Ran and the Ra’avad. According to the Ra’avad, it seems this would work also with intercourse and document; according to the Ran, simply speaking, it seems this works only with monetary betrothal, not with intercourse and document. The Ran refers us to our topic here regarding “even if the money has been consumed.” So let’s look at our passage, 59a: “And similarly, one who says to a woman, ‘Become betrothed to me,’ etc.” The Talmud says: “If no other man came and betrothed her within thirty days, what is the law?” So what the Mishnah says is that if I said, “You are betrothed to me after thirty days,” and someone else came within those thirty days and betrothed her, she is betrothed to the second man, right? The Talmud asks: what happens if no one came and betrothed her? What is the question? Obviously she is betrothed to the first man, no? What’s the issue? The issue is “his act of acquisition has already ended.” If someone comes and betroths her in the meantime, she is betrothed to the second man — why? I might have said because the first man’s betrothal did not take effect, and even if nobody else came in the meantime, after thirty days she still would not be betrothed to the first man, because “his act of acquisition has already ended”; the first man’s act has dissolved, it is worth nothing. Therefore if someone else comes and betroths her, that’s fine. But according to that, if no one else came and betrothed her, then she also is not betrothed to the first man. The Talmud deliberates over this. The question is whether the fact that she is betrothed to the second man does not mean that the first man’s betrothal is worth nothing. Rather, it means that the first man’s betrothal will take effect after thirty days. If she was betrothed in the meantime, she is betrothed to you; but if no one comes in the meantime, then after thirty days she will be betrothed to the first man. Or maybe not — maybe the first man’s betrothal is worth nothing, and that is why she is betrothed to the second man. Rav and Shmuel both say: she is betrothed. They say no, she is betrothed to the first man. The fact that the second man’s betrothal can take effect does not mean that the first man’s act is worthless, but rather that the legal status has not yet taken effect before the thirty days, so in the meantime she is unmarried. So if someone came and betrothed an unmarried woman, then of course she is betrothed to him. But if no one came and betrothed her in the meantime, once the thirty days pass she will be betrothed to the first man. What about “his act of acquisition has already ended”? Now the question arises: wait, but “his act of acquisition has already ended” — how can she be betrothed to the first man? That is the Ran we saw, right? The Ran we saw saying that with monetary betrothal this problem does not apply; or the Ra’avad, who says that if the woman still remains with him then she is betrothed, and so on. Rav and Shmuel continue and say: “even if the money has been consumed.” The basic question was just what the law is, and they answered: she is betrothed. Now they add another novelty. Not only is she betrothed; she is betrothed even if the money has been consumed and nothing remains of it. “What is the reason? These coins are neither like a loan nor like a deposit.” Fine? “Neither like a loan” — in a second I’ll explain why; that continues in the Talmud, but let me pause here. What is this really saying? Rav and Shmuel say that even if the money has been consumed, it is no longer in the world after thirty days, she will still be betrothed to the first man if no one else betrothed her in the meantime. Why? Because these coins are neither a loan nor a deposit. Let’s try to work out for a moment what would happen if they were a loan or a deposit. If they were a loan — a loan is given to be spent, and they no longer exist in the world. Exactly. Meaning, one who betroths with a loan is not betrothed, because a loan is given to be spent — Talmud 47, right? So if it were a loan, then one couldn’t betroth her after thirty days, because that would be betrothing with a loan. If it were a deposit, then what? Then she would be betrothed because his money is with her and he is betrothing her with it, so she is betrothed. But that is only if the money still exists. If the money has been consumed, there is nothing with which to betroth; it doesn’t exist. Okay? Therefore the Talmud says as follows: the money here is not like a loan and not like a deposit. Because if it were a loan… so how do we understand the Ran’s claim — or really this passage in the Talmud, even before the Ran’s claim? What is this state that is between a loan and a deposit? The Talmud explains as follows: “It is not like a deposit, because a deposit is consumed under the owner’s responsibility, whereas these are consumed under her responsibility. Nor is it like a loan, because a loan is given to be spent, whereas these were given to her for the purpose of betrothal.” What does that mean? The Talmud says this: it isn’t like a deposit — why? What is a deposit? I hand you an envelope with money so that you’ll keep it for me. A deposit. Of course, this money is not given to be spent; it is my money in your possession. You guard it for me, and at the end of the period you return to me the envelope with those same coins I gave you originally. It can’t be different coins; it’s my money. Okay? Therefore, if for example that money is destroyed in your house, it is my money that was destroyed. My money was lost. It may be that if you are a paid guardian and it was theft or loss, then you would be liable, but say it was unavoidable accident — then you would be exempt. It was lost to me. At most there is some responsibility on you, depending on the laws of guardians. But in principle those are my coins, and if they were lost, they were lost to me. Okay? That is called a deposit. The Talmud says therefore that the money here is not like a deposit, because the money with her that I gave her for betrothal — if it gets consumed in the meantime, it is consumed to her, not to me. Okay? These are effectively her coins; they were given over to her. It’s not a deposit. So it is not like a deposit. Why is it not like a loan? Because a loan is given to be spent, while this money was given to her as betrothal money. It wasn’t given to her for any use whatever; it was given to her for betrothal. Of course, after she received it for the sake of betrothal she can do whatever she wants with it — once she has in fact become betrothed by means of it, she can do what she likes with it. Okay? The giving of the money itself is not a loan, because a loan is not in exchange for anything. In a loan you receive money for your own use; do whatever you want with it. Here it was given to you for the purpose of betrothal, and that is why it is not like a loan. Now here one has to understand well what this actually means. The claim — I’ll say it briefly because I also need to discuss it at length, maybe we’ll do that next time — is this: what does it mean that “a loan is given to be spent”? The common conception of “a loan is given to be spent” is this: I lent you money, okay? That means there are one hundred shekels of mine with you. Not a particular hundred shekels — it’s not a deposit — but an abstract sum of one hundred shekels that you basically owe me. There is with you a sum of one hundred shekels that is mine in non-specific coins, unlike a deposit. But according to this, why can’t one betroth with a loan? Maybe because there is a law that betrothal requires specific coins. But the same would then apply to a sale; in a sale too, apparently one could not acquire. Probably in a sale too there is a requirement that the coins be specific, and so on. That is the common conception of a loan. I want to claim that this is not correct. “A loan is given to be spent” means that the lender’s money is a gift. There is no money of mine with you at all — not even non-specific, not even abstract, nothing. Repayment of the loan means giving me back a gift in return. It is not that you have money of mine, like a deposit, only not specific money, and when you repay the debt you are simply returning my deposit. No. You have nothing of mine. The Torah said — “repayment of a debt is a commandment” — the Torah said that you have to pay me back, give me back a gift corresponding to the gift you received. That is the state of affairs in a loan, and that is what “a loan is given to be spent” means. Now why then can’t one betroth with a loan? Simply because there is nothing with which to betroth. No, she received nothing; she needs to receive something that is mine. I’m saying that in the earlier conception it isn’t clear why one can’t betroth with a loan. After all, there is a sum of one hundred shekels of mine with her, and I gave her those hundred shekels, so why can’t I betroth with that? So what if they are not specific coins? Why should that matter? But according to what I am saying now, it’s very clear. One cannot betroth, because there are not with her a hundred shekels that are mine, even non-specific hundred shekels. Okay? So that is betrothing with a loan. What happens with a deposit? With a deposit there are with her one hundred specific shekels, a hundred-shekel bill of mine in her possession. If I betroth her with that, there is no problem at all; I gave her money that is mine, and she is betrothed with that thing. When the Talmud here says that this money is neither like a loan nor like a deposit, what it really wants to say is that this money is a non-specific sum of mine in her possession. It is not a loan because in a loan there is nothing of mine in her possession, and it is not a deposit because what is in her possession is not a specific hundred shekels of mine, but rather a non-specific sum in her possession. So it is neither a loan nor a deposit. And then what does that mean? That if I betroth the woman with that sum in her possession, there is no problem at all; she is betrothed, because she received one hundred shekels of mine. Not a specific hundred shekels, but the value of one hundred shekels was added to her account from me, so she is betrothed. No problem at all. More than that: what happens if the money I gave her was consumed? Why should that matter? Even if the money was consumed, still the sum that she owes me is not specific coins — it’s not a deposit. She owes me a sum of one hundred shekels. Even if those coins were consumed, she still owes me that sum. And if I betroth her with the sum she owes me, there is no problem; she received from me one hundred shekels of mine, and therefore she is betrothed even if the money was consumed. Okay? That is the meaning. Therefore when the Talmud says this is neither like a loan nor like a deposit, that explains, first, why she is betrothed, and second, why she is betrothed even if the money was consumed. I want to show this through the sugya of “money that returns.” Look at the Mishnah in Bava Kamma 70. You see it? “If he stole and sold on the Sabbath, he pays fourfold or fivefold.” A thief who stole is liable for fourfold or fivefold if he slaughtered or sold the animal. What if the slaughter or sale were done on the Sabbath? That is a transgression. He pays fourfold or fivefold. So the Talmud there says: “But isn’t it taught in a baraita that he is exempt?” There is a baraita saying he is exempt from fourfold or fivefold if he did it on the Sabbath. Rami bar Hama said: that baraita of exemption is where he says to him, “Cut a fig from your fig tree and acquire your stolen item for me.” What does that mean? Rami bar Hama’s claim is: when is he exempt? When the sale is carried out in a way that involves desecration of the Sabbath. Okay? If the sale was not carried out in a way that desecrates the Sabbath, then he is liable for fourfold or fivefold. But if the sale is carried out in a way that is itself a Sabbath violation, then not. For example, if he sold it on the Sabbath just by money, by a money sale, there is no issue with that — even though money is set aside and even though selling on the Sabbath is rabbinically forbidden, that is only a rabbinic decree. It would not exempt him from fourfold or fivefold. But if he says, “Cut a fig from my fig tree and acquire your stolen object from me,” then cutting the fig from the tree is labor on the Sabbath, a Sabbath prohibition. In such a case he does not become liable for fourfold or fivefold. That’s what the baraita says. Why? The Talmud says: “And they say: since if he sued him before us in court we would not say to him, ‘Go pay,’ because he is liable with his life, then the sale is also not a sale.” And the Talmud objects that in such a case this isn’t even a sale. Not only is he not liable for fourfold or fivefold; he simply did not sell. Why not? Because if he sued him in court over the fig — say you are the owner of the fig and I now want to transfer my stolen item to you. So you say to me, look, okay, let me acquire — sorry, how does this go? No, sorry, I’m the thief and I want to sell you the stolen item, and you pay me with money, by acquisition through money. Okay? So you say to me: take a fig from my tree; that will be the money with which I acquire from you the stolen item. Fine? Now, when I cut the fig, cut it from the tree, could you — say there had been no sale and I had simply cut it from the tree — could you sue me to pay you the value of the fig? The answer is no, because of the rule that the greater punishment overrides the lesser. I am liable to death for violating the Sabbath, so the monetary liability I would owe you for the fig does not apply. Okay? Therefore cutting the fig does not create a monetary liability if you sue me. Such a cutting of a fig cannot also acquire. Money that could not be sued for in court, had it been theft, cannot function as money that performs an act of acquisition. That is what the Talmud is saying. Meaning, the rule that the greater punishment overrides the lesser means that you cannot sue me for the money if I stole your fig. Here of course I didn’t steal your fig, because I took it with your permission, but it’s an indication that the monetary value you gave me to acquire the animal — meaning, the fig that I cut — is not money that can perform an act of acquisition, because it’s not money that creates a debt that you can sue for. Rabbi Shimon Shkop says: “Since acquisition by money consists in the fact that the giver gives the money first, we are forced to say that the point of acquisition by money is that by receiving the money he becomes obligated in exchange for it.” You give me the fig, and then I owe you the value of the fig — two shekels. Okay? “And by virtue of his intention to transfer the land in exchange for the money, that money is regarded as payment for the land he acquires, and the land is payment for the money. In this respect acquisition by money differs from acquisition by possession, for with possession it is the opposite: he first becomes obligated for the land he acquires.” With possession, he first takes control of the land and only then becomes obligated to pay for it. Here, I take the payment, and by that you become obligated to give me the land. Fine? But how do you become obligated to give me the land? Because when I took the payment, now in exchange for that you owe me something. Right? The seller becomes a debtor. Exactly. And he pays that debt with the merchandise he gives. Fine? Now I took the fig from you and thereby became your debtor. I pay you with the stolen animal, the stolen animal is the debt-payment. But if when I took the fig from you I did not become your debtor — because this is the Sabbath and the greater punishment overrides the lesser — then you cannot thereby acquire the animal I want to transfer to you. Rabbi Shimon Shkop calls this “money that returns.” Meaning, money can effect acquisition only if it is “money that returns.” What does that mean? It means money whose transfer creates, in return, a debt corresponding to it. Therefore it is called “money that returns.” You gave me money; a debt returns to me. Okay? That is what can acquire. He says: “According to this, the words of the Talmud are well understood, because since at the moment of receiving the money no obligation at all took effect upon the recipient of the money in exchange for the money he received, it cannot be said that the money is payment for the object he transfers to him, and therefore no acquisition can apply here at all.” This is what in the yeshivot is known, in Rabbi Shimon’s terminology, as “money that returns.” Let’s return to the Ran for a moment — or to the Talmud. What exactly is the Ran saying? The Ran says that when I give the woman the betrothal money, a corresponding obligation is created, and therefore there is no problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” This obligation is the “money that returns.” When I gave her the money, in exchange for that the woman now owes me something. I gave her money; she owes me something. So that debt remains after I gave the money. Now we wait thirty days, and I can betroth her because “his act of acquisition has already ended” does not apply. There is something bridging between the act of giving the money and the stage of creating the legal status — namely the debt, the debt created in the process. That is “money that returns,” exactly the same idea. But this itself can be understood in two ways. You can understand that I gave the woman the money, and that giving of money created a debt. Now the woman owes me one hundred shekels. Okay. Now thirty days pass, and I want the betrothal to take effect after thirty days. Two possible formulations. One possibility is to say that the betrothal is effected with the debt, not with the money. The money only created the debt. But after thirty days, the money is no longer in the world — it has been consumed, nothing remains. I am not betrothing with money; I am betrothing with a debt. And this is not betrothing with a loan, as I said earlier, because in a loan there is no debt in the relevant sense. In a loan there is nothing of mine with you. Here there is something of mine with you, though not specific. So I betroth her by giving her that something. Okay? Then that means the betrothal is done by means of the debt, not the money. The money only created the debt. That is one formulation. A second possible formulation is that I am really betrothing with the money, not with the debt. It’s just that the money itself would raise the problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” What preserves, what bridges this gap between the act of giving the money and the stage where the betrothal takes effect, is the debt. Meaning, once the debt dissipates, the transfer of the money is completed. The transfer of the money is an ongoing act. Again, even if the money itself no longer exists in the world, that doesn’t matter. In the final analysis, once I eliminate the debt and the woman has used the money for her needs, I have thereby completed the act of transferring the money to her. And then it is like “from now and after thirty days,” which we discussed — an ongoing act of betrothal. Here too, it is an ongoing act of transferring the money. Where is the difference between these two formulations? The question is whether what creates the betrothal is the money that I gave at the beginning, and the debt only prevents the problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended” because it bridges the time-gap between giving the money and the taking effect of the betrothal; or whether what serves as the betrothal money is the debt — not the money. In that case what I am really using for betrothal is the debt, and then the betrothal occurs at the end of the thirty days. And then this does not solve the problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended”; there is no problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended,” because the act is done after thirty days and the legal status takes effect immediately. There is no gap between the act and the legal status. These are two formulations. We will see later that they have implications, and apparently this is a dispute among the medieval and later authorities. But these are the two formulations by which one can explain why the creation of a debt solves the problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” Now the Shulchan Arukh writes as follows: “One who says to a woman, ‘You are hereby betrothed to me with this perutah after thirty days’ — even if the money was consumed within the thirty days, she is betrothed after thirty days.” He brings our Talmudic passage. But he speaks specifically about acquisition by money, monetary betrothal: “with this perutah,” even if the money was consumed. What about betrothal by document and by intercourse? So I say: according to the Ran, one has to read this Shulchan Arukh simply. It is talking only about monetary betrothal. Indeed, with intercourse and document, “his act of acquisition has already ended.” Okay. But the Rema there brings — astonishingly — in the name of the Ran: “And some say that if he betrothed her by document and the document is not extant after thirty days, but was torn or lost within the thirty days, she is not betrothed.” That implies that if the document is still extant, then she is betrothed. And then it turns out that there is a kind of three-tier hierarchy here: either everything works, or only document and money, or only money. Exactly. Meaning, if you betroth with money for after thirty days, then she is betrothed even if the money was consumed. If you betroth by document for after thirty days, then she is betrothed, but only if the document was not consumed — meaning, only if it still exists. And if you betroth by intercourse, then she is not betrothed at all after thirty days, because from intercourse nothing remains afterward. Now apparently what is written here matches the second conception I mentioned. For with a document there is no debt created corresponding to it. So why, if the document still exists, does the betrothal take effect? So what? “His act of acquisition has already ended” — I already transferred the document. One has to say that because the document is still here, it is like the cow I acquired by drawing it into possession and it is still in my possession. And that bridges the gap of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” In other words, this parallels the first conception we spoke about: when I betroth by money, what effects the betrothal is the money given at the beginning. The debt only bridges the gap so that there won’t be a problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” For according to the conception that I betroth her at the end of the thirty days, I betroth her with the debt, not with the money — then with a document there is no parallel to that. Even if the document still exists, the document has already been transferred. There is no debt here. The betrothal is not being effected at the end of the thirty days. So apparently if the Ran says this applies also to a document, as long as it still exists, then with a document it must still exist because a document does not create a debt. But even regarding money, the role of the debt is not that the debt itself is the betrothal money; rather the debt keeps the money as if it still exists until now, and therefore the betrothal is really by means of the original money, not the debt. One could reject this inference. One could say that true, the document does not create a debt, but if the document remains with the woman throughout the thirty days, then I am transferring the document to her at the end of the thirty days. Then there is no problem: I can also go with the understanding that with money I betroth by means of the debt. I transfer the debt to her at the end of the thirty days, and immediately she becomes betrothed. With a document, similarly, I transfer the document to her at the end of the thirty days, and immediately she becomes betrothed. But that is only as long as the document still exists. With money, the money itself need not still exist because the debt exists anyway; but with a document, since no debt is created, the document itself has to still exist. Therefore the law of the document does not necessarily prove which of the two conceptions regarding monetary betrothal we are working with. The Beit Shmuel there writes in subsection 3: “The reason is that in the case of money, it is as though the money still exists, since she must return it.” Meaning, he understands that the debt is what extends the money. The debt extends the money. And then what does that mean — what am I betrothing with, the debt or the money? With the money, right? Meaning, the giving of the money at that earlier point was the betrothal. It’s just that the existence of a debt in the middle means this is not called “his act of acquisition has already ended.” Then he says: “But with a document, if it was lost or torn, nothing remains after thirty days. The same applies if the document still exists but is not in her possession — it is lying in the public domain.” Now that is an interesting note. What if the document exists, but it is not in her possession? It is lying in the public domain or some other place. If I hold that I am really betrothing her by giving her the document at the end of the thirty days, then that won’t help. The document needs to be with her. But if I understand that the document only has to continue to exist so that there won’t be a problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended,” and the transfer of the document at the beginning is what effected the betrothal, then that’s fine. Meaning, from the Rema I can’t prove this; from the Beit Shmuel I can. That is, in the Beit Shmuel it is clear that the transfer of the document at the beginning, or the transfer of the money at the beginning, is what effects the betrothal, and the debt or the continued existence of the document merely prevents the problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” Okay? In the Rema himself, or in the Ran himself, one could have said otherwise. One could have said that I am really betrothing her at the end. But then indeed the Beit Shmuel’s law is not correct. If it is not with her, then one cannot say that she receives the document or the money at the end. Another note on this matter. The Rema says: “Some say that if he betrothed her by document and it was torn or lost, she is not betrothed.” What is that coming to exclude? “Some say…” meaning, some say this, and others say not this. What do the “others” say? Two possibilities. It could be that with a document there is no such thing as betrothal after thirty days at all, as we learned from the simple reading of the Ran — only with money, because money creates a debt, and with a document that doesn’t help. Then these “some say,” whom the Rema brings, say that with a document it does help, at least when the document still exists. Fine? But then the antithesis he is rejecting is that with a document it is not possible at all to betroth for after thirty days. One could also say the opposite: that the other opinion says that with a document too she is betrothed after thirty days even if the document is no longer here, and these “some say” say only if it is still here. But the question is: what exactly is this “some say” coming to exclude? Right — that’s the question. Okay, so with regard to the Shulchan Arukh, in short, let me summarize, and I’ll stop here because the next stage is already a longer one. So I’ll summarize. Basically, the Ran tells us that the money creates a corresponding debt — this is “money that returns” — and therefore there is no problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended.” I offered two formulations for why there is no problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended”: either the act of betrothal is the act of giving the money at the beginning, and the debt merely means that this is like the cow that remained in my possession, so there is no problem of “his act of acquisition has already ended”; or alternatively, I betroth her with the debt itself. I betroth her with the debt itself, and the betrothal money is the debt. We then asked: so how can one betroth with a debt — after all, one who betroths with a loan is not betrothed? To that I said: no, this debt is neither like a loan nor like a deposit — exactly what the Talmud said. So what is it? A loan is where I have nothing of mine with you. A deposit is where I have with you some concrete object. This betrothal money is a case where I have with you something non-concrete. A value of one hundred shekels of mine is with you, and the Tanna holds that one can betroth with that. Even if the coins themselves are lost, because that doesn’t matter — because I am betrothing with the debt, not the coins. Okay? So next time I want to do two things, or at least I hope I’ll manage both. First, to show what exactly this debt is, this debt that is neither a loan nor a deposit — what kind of different debt this is — and to show that such a thing exists. And second, I want to show the implication of these two formulations. If I am betrothing by money or betrothing by debt, that has consequences. This is probably a dispute among the medieval authorities. Okay.