Lecture from 4 Tevet 5767
This transcript was produced automatically using artificial intelligence. There may be inaccuracies in the transcribed content and in speaker identification.
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Table of Contents
- Metaphysical infrastructure versus legal convention
- The effecting of ownership and the difference between “mine” and usage rights
- Modes of acquisition in Jewish law and situmta
- Benefit prohibitions, “yours,” and commandments were not given for benefit
- A slave awaiting a deed of release, an acquisition of prohibition-status, and compensation for injury
- Conditions in betrothal, retroactivity, and Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s critique of “clarification”
- Legal effects as entities, “married and not married,” and the distinction between objects and properties
- Implications for Hebrew law and implementation in state law
Summary
General Overview
The text continues the distinction between Jewish law and civil legal systems through the claim that Jewish law has a metaphysical foundation of “halakhic facts” that do not depend on social agreement, whereas ordinary legal systems are mainly conventional and built from agreed-upon norms. The central claim is that halakhic norms are derivatives of legal effects and juridical entities that precede them, and therefore in Jewish law one can find situations in which “it belongs to me” is not interpreted as a bundle of usage rights but as the reality of an ownership-effect even without rights. The examples range from ownership in cases of benefit prohibitions, through a slave awaiting a deed of release and an analysis of the Pnei Yehoshua’s reading of Tosafot, to the mechanism of conditions in betrothal and the way Rabbi Shimon Shkop explains intermediate states that are not a logical contradiction on the level of legal effect, but only a difficulty on the normative level. On that basis, the text argues for interpretive caution when importing halakhic concepts into state law, because concepts that sound identical in language, such as “ownership” or “acquisition,” may differ in essence.
Metaphysical Infrastructure versus Legal Convention
The text presents ordinary legal systems as conventional-agreement-based systems that define norms of what is permitted and forbidden according to principles of justice, social order, and morality. Jewish law is presented as a system that is not merely the product of agreement, but rests on binding “halakhic facts”; first there is a reality of legal effect, and only afterward are the norms derived from it. This distinction is presented as the basis for discussing the incorporation of Jewish law into state law and the question whether we are even dealing with the same concepts when the language sounds similar.
The Effecting of Ownership and the Difference Between “Mine” and Usage Rights
The text defines the concept of legal effect in general, and proprietary legal effect in particular, as the distinction between saying that a person is an owner and saying that an ownership-effect “rests” on the object. It argues that in ordinary law, ownership is understood as an agreed arrangement of usage rights and restrictions, whereas in Jewish law rights and prohibitions are consequences of a prior reality of acquisition. It emphasizes that even if the legal effect has no legal consequences in terms of usage rights, there can still be an ownership-effect that exists as a fact.
Modes of Acquisition in Jewish Law and Situmta
The text notes that Jewish law also has room for conventions such as situmta, the commercial practice of merchants, and even says that according to most opinions this is of Torah-level validity, while according to some opinions it is rabbinic. Alongside that, it emphasizes forms of acquisition defined by Jewish law itself, such as pulling movable property and acts like locking, fencing, or breaching land. It presents acts of acquisition as interpretive acts meant to understand what the Torah defines as effecting a purchase, rather than as arbitrary institutional decisions. It sharpens the point that the claim is not that there are no conventions in Jewish law, but that Jewish law is not reducible to conventions alone.
Benefit Prohibitions, “Yours,” and Commandments Were Not Given for Benefit
The text brings a dispute among medieval authorities (Rishonim) over whether things prohibited for benefit are considered a person’s property, with the Torah merely forbidding him to use them, or whether they are not his at all, noting that leavened food on Passover is an even more complicated case. It presents a practical implication regarding another person’s use of the item against the owner’s wishes, and asks whether there is any prohibition if there is no ownership, or whether there is still a restriction when there is ownership without the possibility of use. It cites the law of the four species on the first day, which must be “yours,” and explains that if benefit-prohibited items are still his, he can fulfill the commandment with them because “commandments were not given for benefit”; but if they are not his, he cannot fulfill the commandment because the requirement of “yours” is lacking. This is used to argue that searching for the meaning of ownership only through usage rights misses the point, because ownership is first and foremost a fact of legal effect, while the norms are derivative expressions of it.
A Slave Awaiting a Deed of Release, an Acquisition of Prohibition-Status, and Compensation for Injury
The text defines a Canaanite slave as having two layers: a prohibition/status layer of personal legal standing, and proprietary monetary rights of the master. It describes a case in which the master renounces his monetary rights in the slave, but the slave does not become free until he receives a deed of release, creating an intermediate state of a slave awaiting a deed of release, in which there is no monetary acquisition but the slave-status remains. It cites the Talmudic text in Gittin 42b that one who injures such a slave “must pay the owner,” and notes that Tosafot asks how that can be, while the Pnei Yehoshua explains Tosafot as saying that this status is called by the medieval authorities (Rishonim) an “acquisition of prohibition-status,” hinting that the acquisition has not lapsed in the sense of the ownership-effect, even without usage rights. It emphasizes that the novelty here is even sharper than in the case of benefit prohibitions, because after the renunciation the slave could sue the master in religious court if he used him, and yet some sort of belonging still remains, explaining why only the master can give the deed of release and why compensation for injury is attributed to him, even though the speaker himself admits that the passage is complex and does not enter into the question why one pays him if he has lost no usage rights. He adds that the master’s obligations depend on his rights, so once the rights are renounced, the obligations likewise disappear as part of the same two-sided arrangement.
Conditions in Betrothal, Retroactivity, and Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s Critique of “Clarification”
The text presents the concept of a condition as applying a legal effect dependent on a future condition, and distinguishes between a condition phrased as “if,” in which the effect takes place when the condition is fulfilled, and one phrased as “on condition that,” in which the effect takes place now but depends on future fulfillment; if it is not fulfilled, it is retroactively undone or never takes effect from the outset, depending on different formulations. It formulates a difficulty of backward causation in time for the “on condition that” case, and cites the Baal HaIttur, who writes that a person who betroths “on condition that” can retract during the interim before the condition is fulfilled. It then brings Rabbi Shimon Shkop’s objection that if one understands the future payment as merely revealing a reality that already existed retroactively, then a later verbal retraction should not be able to undo a betrothal that has already turned out to be valid, because “speech does not come and undo an act.”
Legal Effects as Entities, “Married and Not Married,” and the Distinction Between Objects and Properties
The text presents a solution attributed to Rabbi Shimon Shkop according to which, during the interim period, the woman is both married and not married, and the future payment confirms one legal effect and removes the other. It compares this to a kind of “many worlds” interpretation. It describes a criticism heard in the yeshiva in Yeruham that this solution creates an even graver logical contradiction than the problem of acting backward in time, and responds by means of a logical distinction between objects and properties: contradiction exists between properties and norms, such as “salty” versus “sweet,” but not between objects like “salt” and “sugar,” which can coexist. It applies this by claiming that legal effects are entities, not norms, and therefore two legal effects can rest on the same object without contradiction, while the contradiction appears only when one translates them into practical norms of what is permitted and forbidden. It argues that these cases are usually between an entity and an absence, that the entity prevails on the halakhic plane, and that this explains why on the normative level one practical ruling emerges without contradiction even though there are two legal effects.
Implications for Hebrew Law and Implementation in State Law
The text argues that the difficulty comes from mixing modern “legal glasses” with Jewish law, where the basis is entities and legal effects rather than “floating norms” not derived from prior facts. It concludes that when speaking about partially drawing Jewish law into state law, and about concepts like “ownership” or “acquisition,” one must check whether these are truly the same concepts or only the same word, because situations like “yes, a married woman, and not a married woman” or “yes, mine, and also not mine” do not fit an ordinary legal system. It ends by saying that next time he will show practical interpretive mistakes that result from this confusion and connect them to issues in Hebrew law that were discussed previously.
Full Transcript
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so what I want to do today is really continue in the direction we started last time. Basically, we’re in the middle of describing the distinction between Jewish law and civil legal systems, and the point I started discussing last time was the metaphysical foundation underlying Jewish law. Legal systems, in practice, usually see themselves as a collection of norms—that is, they determine what is right to do, what is forbidden to do, and that’s it, according to principles of justice, social order, morality, things of that sort. Okay? We’ll try this experiment in light of the claims that came up here and see whether there’s room for it, so—
[Speaker B] We’ll try and see whether there’s room for it here. Yes?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If more people join, then an issue could actually arise.
[Speaker B] Here—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] I see someone else here.
[Speaker B] No, I don’t believe there’s… Itzik, it’s not double the people… you think? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Okay, so let’s move on before we drown. Sorry for the shaking and all this here, okay. I’ll set it up. So we’re really dealing with the differences between Jewish law and legal systems, and one of the differences we started discussing last time was the metaphysical infrastructure at the base of Jewish law. Ordinary legal systems are systems that are essentially conventional—conventional in the sense that they are agreement-based. That is, they are built on conventions: some group of people decides, or the legislator decides on their behalf, on a certain norm, and then there is a norm of what must be done, what is forbidden, and so on. In Jewish law, at least that’s how I think about it—I’ll try to demonstrate this, and last time I think I also showed it a bit—the character of Jewish law seems to me not to be conventionalist, not agreement-based, but rather the result of what we might call halakhic facts. That is, there are halakhic facts that are imposed on us; they are not subject to some agreement that we happen to accept. Last time I began talking about the concept of a legal effect in general, and a proprietary legal effect in particular, and the claim was that there is a difference between saying that I own some property and saying that this property has an ownership-effect of mine resting on it. A lot of times that may sound like two sentences expressing the same thing in different words, but in fact, it seems to me these are two sentences saying different things. Not only with regard to ownership—this is true of legal effects generally; that, I think, is the meaning of the whole concept of a legal effect. And the claim was the following, and I illustrated it with the case of a slave awaiting a deed of release, just briefly, so I’ll go back over it so we can get back into it.
The concept of ownership, too, is basically interpreted in legal systems as something conventional—that is, something that results from an agreement by society about the ways in which a person acquires certain property or sells certain property, and that’s how monetary relations among the members of the society are regulated: what is forbidden to do, what is permitted, what belongs to whom and what does not, what I may touch and what I may not touch. Basically, everything is the result of decisions, conventions, social agreements—how these things are done, how one acquires, how ownership is determined. In Jewish law there is a certain metaphysical infrastructure that says that when I own a certain object, then something rests on that object, some sort of entity called an ownership-effect. There is an effect of my ownership resting on the object. The legal consequences—the consequences that say that therefore I may use it, and therefore others may not use it without my permission—those are consequences of that legal or meta-legal fact, and they are not necessarily subject to social agreement. There is room for agreements in Jewish law too. In Jewish law there are acquisitions like situmta and so on, which is an acquisition based on commercial custom. Meaning, even if there is some form of transaction that is practiced today, and in the original Jewish law—in the Sages or in the Shulchan Arukh—it is not mentioned, that doesn’t matter. If the public accepts that mode of acquisition, then it is a valid mode of acquisition from a halakhic standpoint as well. That is the concept of situmta; according to most opinions it is even of Torah-level force, and according to some opinions it is rabbinic. But I’m speaking specifically about the acquisitions that are defined within Jewish law itself—acquisitions like pulling movable property, or locking, fencing, or breaching land. If I want to acquire land, how do you acquire land? I do some act that indicates ownership over the land. I fence the land, I lock it, put on a door, or something like that, and in that way I indicate or show that I am the owner of that land. That is the act that actually acquires the land for me, with the seller’s consent of course, but that is the act that acquires the land for me.
So these acts, which are given acts, are set by Jewish law. Jewish law didn’t convene some kind of committee to decide, okay, which acts should we decide will be effective to acquire land or movable goods. There were no such meetings. The process was interpretive. We are trying to understand what the Torah defines as an act that acquires movable goods or acquires land. There is also room for conventions, as I said earlier—that’s the concept of situmta. They too can take effect. That is, even in Jewish law there is room for that kind of thing as well. My main claim is that it’s not only that. Not that there are no conventions at all in Jewish law, but that Jewish law is not only conventions. It also contains additional aspects, aspects imposed on us—legal facts.
I illustrated this through the concept of a slave awaiting a deed of release, or before that I actually spoke about benefit prohibitions. There is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim) whether things prohibited for benefit are considered my property, except that there is a prohibition against using them—like, say, leavened food on Passover. It is forbidden for benefit. The question is whether that means it isn’t mine at all, or whether it means no, it is mine in the monetary sense, only the Torah forbids me to use it. And that is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). In the case of leavened food, the discussion is even more complicated than with ordinary benefit prohibitions. But with ordinary benefit prohibitions there is a dispute among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). Some say that indeed the object prohibited for benefit—this halakhic prohibition—still belongs to me, but the Torah imposes a prohibition against using it. One possible implication of this would be if someone else used it against my will—I didn’t allow him, and he uses it. The question is whether he has committed a prohibition. If it is not mine at all, then what’s the problem? He can do whatever he wants. I cannot impose restrictions on property that isn’t mine. But if the thing is mine, then even though I myself have no ability at all to realize my ownership—the Torah forbids me all benefit from that thing—it is still mine. And you cannot use it without my permission.
Another implication concerns the etrog on Sukkot, or the lulav on Sukkot. The four species have to be “yours,” belonging to you. That’s what it says in the Talmudic text. Meaning, on the first day one does not fulfill the obligation with four species that do not belong to the person taking them. The person taking the four species has to be their owner. Now the question is: if the four species are prohibited for benefit, do I fulfill the obligation with them or not? If something prohibited for benefit is still considered mine, then no problem—it’s mine, so I can fulfill the obligation with it. You’ll say: but maybe I’m violating a prohibition because I’m benefiting from it—after all, it’s prohibited for benefit? Commandments were not given for benefit.
[Speaker B] Commandments were not—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Given for benefit, so there is no problem of—
[Speaker B] Benefit prohibition, but the question still is—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] If it is not mine, then even if commandments were not given for benefit, still it won’t count as something that is mine, and then I have not fulfilled the obligation. So if you understand that things prohibited for benefit do not belong to me, and there is a legal expression of the fact that they are prohibited for benefit, then this means that beyond the question of whether I violate a prohibition when I use it—and I don’t, because commandments were not given for benefit—the question is whether it satisfies the requirement of “yours.” Do these four species belong to me? Because that is a condition for fulfilling the obligation with them. Without it, I do not fulfill the obligation. So if it isn’t mine, then sorry, I cannot fulfill the obligation with them. If it is mine, then fine, I can fulfill the obligation with something prohibited for benefit, because a commandment is not considered violating a benefit prohibition. Commandments were not given for benefit.
So one example of this is the approach that says that items prohibited for benefit are indeed forbidden to me for use, but still belong to me in the monetary sense. And then the question arises: in what sense do they belong to me? What is the meaning of the fact that they belong to me if there is absolutely no use I can make of them? Nothing—no benefit can I derive from them, no use can I make of them. So in what sense are they mine? The simple answer, it seems to me, is that first of all they are mine because it is a fact that they are mine. When I ask in what sense they are mine, I am always looking for legal consequences. That is, what consequence is there to the fact that it belongs to me? After all, I can’t do anything with it; it gives me no rights. But that very search already begs the question. Because that search itself assumes that the whole meaning of saying that a certain object belongs to me is what I can do with it. But that isn’t true. The meaning of the fact that an object belongs to me is first of all that it belongs to me, because that is a fact. An ownership-effect that is mine rests on it, first of all. It could be that this has no legal consequence at all; it doesn’t matter. Since the legal consequences are not the acquisition itself, they are only an expression of the acquisition. The acquisition is a reality—a metaphysical reality, a legal reality, however you want to define it—and the legal rights derived from that reality are the norms: what may be done with the property, what may not, who may, who may not. But first of all there is the fact, that legal fact.
It does have a halakhic implication, but not on the legal plane: can I fulfill the obligation with the four species on Sukkot? That is a halakhic implication, not a legal one, because whether I fulfill an obligation is not a legal matter; it’s a halakhic question whether I can fulfill the obligation with this thing or not. But that of course is not within the legal sphere; it’s not something that can define the item as belonging to me. It belongs to me so that I can fulfill the obligation with it on Sukkot—that has no meaning. It has to belong to me in order for me to fulfill the obligation, that’s true. But the mere fact that I can fulfill the obligation with it is not enough to define it as mine. It is not a legal right; it does not grant me the ability to derive some benefit from it, because commandments were not given for benefit. It is only for that reason that I may use it. So here we see an initial distinction, perhaps, between the factual determination—or the legal fact—that says a certain object belongs to me, and the question what that means legally. Am I allowed to use it? In what ways am I allowed to use it? Who is forbidden, who is permitted? Can someone use it without my permission? All of that is a consequence of the determination that it is mine. It is not the determination itself.
That is, the legal conception says that when something belongs to me, the meaning of that claim—that the object belongs to me—is that I have usage rights and others do not without my permission. That is the meaning of the statement that the object belongs to me. In the halakhic world, that is not the meaning of the statement; that is a consequence that comes out of the statement. The statement is first of all that it is mine. There are consequences—permissions to use and prohibitions on use—but those are consequences derived from meta-legal facts, from facts that exist prior to the legal sphere.
[Speaker B] But the statement that it is mine is itself a legal statement.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] It’s a statement that has legal consequences—
[Speaker B] And it has a legal definition.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Right, right, of course. It is a very important statement on the legal level, but its foundation is not a norm; its foundation is a fact. A norm is not a fact. A norm is an agreement among a group of people that this should be done and that may not be done. It’s an agreement.
[Speaker B] But where does the definition come from?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, but where does that definition come from? Is that definition given into our hands—can we decide that it isn’t mine? No. That’s the point. There is a legal fact imposed on us: this thing is mine. Now we can look at the implications of that fact, but the norms are only consequences of legal facts. They are not floating in the air, so to speak, as they are understood, say, in ordinary legal systems.
I brought an example of this after the case of benefit prohibitions, where the thing itself has legal significance—almost a contradiction in terms—not just meta-legal but actually legal. Someone who injures a slave awaiting a deed of release. That was the example I ended with last time. A slave awaiting a deed of release means a Canaanite slave. A Canaanite slave has two aspects. He has a status—a personal status, in legal language. A personal status that determines whom he may marry, whom he may not marry, which commandments he is obligated in, which commandments he is not obligated in—that is the prohibition-status of the slave. And then there are my rights to use him. He is my slave, so he belongs to me. I have rights of use—that is the proprietary legal layer. So the slave belongs to me, and he also bears the designation of slave, which has all sorts of other halakhic implications.
What happens when I renounce my rights in the slave? I renounce them. The rights that are a consequence of my ownership I can renounce. Property of mine I can always declare ownerless; that is in my hands. And I renounce the slave. The slave does not become free. A slave—by the way, we are talking here about a Canaanite slave—when he is freed, he becomes Jewish. Meaning, he is a sort of half-convert; when he is freed and completes his conversion, he becomes Jewish.
[Speaker B] But wait, can you say to him: this is the property, I’m releasing him, and now he can say, I don’t want to be Jewish?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, there’s no such thing. He can maybe say that when he enters slavery, maybe, and even there the question is exactly how. It could be that I can force him. Yes. Yes. One can force him. At least according to certain opinions. To be a slave? Huh? To be a slave, certainly.
[Speaker B] The question is whether I can force him to be a slave in the—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Halakhic sense, meaning to accept the status of a half-Jew. A slave is a kind of half-Jew, and after he is freed his conversion is completed and he becomes a full Jew. Is there a status of slave that is a Canaanite slave but not a Canaanite slave? Yes, there is, there is. That is just ownership—meaning, not personal status. It’s just… yes, there is such a slave. But that’s something else. You could call it a hired worker, an intensified hired worker, more than just an ordinary laborer. And the concept “slave,” usually when people speak about it, is the concept I’m talking about here—meaning both aspects of personal status and aspects of ownership.
Now if I renounce the rights I have in that slave, then he no longer belongs to me in the monetary sense. But his prohibition-status remains in place until he receives from me a deed of release. A deed of release is the only way that this slave can move from the personal status of slave to the personal status of a Jew. Renunciation will not help for that. What happened after I renounced him but still did not give him a deed of release? That is what is called a slave awaiting a deed of release. A slave awaiting a deed of release means someone who, in terms of ownership, I have already renounced—he does not belong to me—but he still has the status of a slave, and is waiting, basically, to receive the document from me. So in the meantime he is called a slave awaiting a deed of release. What is his status in that intermediate stage? Seemingly he doesn’t belong to me at all, because I have no rights in him; I renounced him. I have no rights in him. What happens now if someone injures that slave? Someone injured that slave. One who injures a person has to pay. One who injures that slave also has to pay. The only question is: pay to whom? Pay the slave, or pay me? So the Talmudic text in Gittin 42b says that one who injures that slave has to pay the owner. There is no—
[Speaker B] Owner. There is no owner.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s exactly the question. Tosafot there asks what kind of thing this is, how one could say such a thing. We won’t go into all the details right now. Tosafot and the Pnei Yehoshua, who discusses it there in that passage. Bottom line: what the Pnei Yehoshua explains in Tosafot’s view, after a few turns, it seems to me this is what he means—I’m not sure his wording is entirely clear, but it seems to me that’s what he means. What he basically means to say is that when the slave is in the state of awaiting a deed of release, this is not only a prohibition-status. That is, the fact that he is called a slave, and the fact that in the language of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) such a state is already called a case where I have an acquisition of prohibition-status in the slave—that’s what the medieval authorities (Rishonim) call it. In the Talmudic text that term doesn’t appear, but medieval and even more so later authorities (Acharonim) call such a state: I have in the slave an acquisition of prohibition-status. I do not have a monetary acquisition in him. He does not belong to me monetarily, but this status—what I called earlier personal status—is called in the language of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) an acquisition of prohibition-status. What does that mean? Why “acquisition”? What does this have to do with acquisition? Just as there are a mamzer, a netin, a halal—there are many levels of personal status among Jews. So too there is a personal-status level called slave. It is another level among the ten genealogical classes that came up from Babylonia, and there are slaves too. Fine, so he has various laws—whom he may marry, whom he may not marry. Why is this called an acquisition of prohibition-status? It is a hint, I think, that can help us understand this question too—about one who injures him. It is called an acquisition of prohibition-status because in truth the acquisition has not lapsed. The slave is mine, even though I have no possibility of using him.
Now this is much stronger than the previous example. In the previous example, the example was benefit prohibitions. With benefit prohibitions, after all, I do have the right to use them—I’m just forbidden. Meaning, there is a difference between a legal right and a halakhic prohibition. So when there is something prohibited for benefit, leavened food on Passover, and let’s say for purposes of discussion that it is mine, the Torah left it in my possession in some way—then what happens with that thing? At the end of the day, the prohibition on using it—that I cannot use it—is a prohibition of the Torah. If I use it anyway, can someone come to me with a claim? Say to me, listen, you have no permission—in the legal sense. Meaning, sue me in religious court and say, how can you make use of property that isn’t yours? There is no such person. Which means that the impediment preventing me from using the leavened food is not due to someone else’s rights that I am violating. Rather there is simply a prohibition; the Torah forbids me all kinds of things, and it can do that too. That does not belong to the legal layer. Legally, it is entirely mine.
[Speaker B] A lion crouches on it.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, exactly. “A lion crouches on it”—that’s the right expression here. Meaning, a lion crouches on it, metaphorically, and doesn’t let me use the thing. What happens here with the slave is much stronger. Because if I want to use the slave now, after I’ve already renounced him, I won’t get into trouble with the Holy One, blessed be He; I’ll get into trouble with the religious court. Because he isn’t mine. I’m forbidden to do it, meaning the slave can say to me: you are a thief. How can you use me if I don’t belong to you?
[Speaker B] I already belong to myself.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or to someone else. What? To someone else—it’s the same thing. The slave belongs to himself. He already belongs to someone, he isn’t ownerless. But he has to agree—he doesn’t have to agree. Who is “he”? The slave. What do you mean, he doesn’t have to agree? You can’t use him. The master’s command certainly no longer applies here. No, I’ll force him with a whip, whatever—as a matter of social reality, with slaves it is very hard to resist, even if formally he is no longer my slave. We don’t really know this today, but presumably that was the situation then. So apparently in practice one could use the slave even if he didn’t want to, because I had power, I had been the master, for one reason or another. If I do that, the slave can take me to religious court and sue me—I am a robber. Robbery, even more than robbery; once I use a person, that is even more than robbery if he doesn’t belong to me. But there is a legal dispute here; this is really a legal matter. It is not merely that I am forbidden to use this slave; it is not like benefit prohibitions. Here, the reason I am forbidden to use him is because of a legal fact—that he is not mine. So here, on the legal level itself, he really is not mine, not just on the prohibition level. And even in such a case, the Pnei Yehoshua tells us, such a slave—renounced but still awaiting a deed of release, basically renounced monetarily—still belongs to me. It’s just that he belongs to me without any rights; that is, it gives me no rights at all. I cannot use him. He can still take me to religious court if I use him. The rights do not belong to me, but that metaphysical fact, that ownership-effect of mine, still rests on him. That is why only I can give him a deed of release and free him. Otherwise, why should his release depend on me if he doesn’t belong to me, and this is merely a personal status of slave? So why should it depend on a deed that I, as the owner, give him?
[Speaker B] From the law of a day—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Or two days—
[Speaker B] If we’re in that kind of case.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? The law of a day or two days? No, that law applies when I am working him, so that’s not relevant, obviously. So what’s happening here is actually much more extreme than benefit prohibitions. With benefit prohibitions you could still come and say that the proof is not yet a proof. Why not? Because in benefit prohibitions I actually have both an ownership-effect on the thing and usage rights; all the usage rights are mine. I’m just forbidden, halakhically, to use them. But legally all the usage rights are mine. If someone else wanted to use it, I could forbid him—it’s mine. Meaning that legally it is completely mine, this prohibited-for-benefit item. With the slave it’s not like that. Legally he is not mine; it’s not only a halakhic prohibition—he simply does not belong to me. In terms of usage rights, they are not mine. And still, says the Pnei Yehoshua, this slave is my slave. That is why it is called that I have in him an acquisition of prohibition-status. He is mine. And because of that, if someone injures the slave, to whom does he pay? He pays me, because the slave belongs to me. So there you have a legal consequence too, even though I said it was supposedly without legal consequences. It’s not legal consequences in the sense that I have no usage rights in the slave.
[Speaker B] Why does he pay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What? Why does he—
[Speaker B] Pay?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] That’s a big question. For that we would have to go into that whole passage. That’s what Tosafot is really asking, and the Pnei Yehoshua is trying to explain. It’s a big question; we won’t go into it, because I don’t want to drift into that minefield. Because there is the question: after all, I lost nothing, so what are you paying me for? That payment is compensation for something I lost, but I lost nothing. I couldn’t have used him anyway. Fine, so let’s leave that aside for now; that’s another issue. And what about obligations? What?
[Speaker B] What about obligations? Once you’re released from the rights you have in the slave, what about the obligations? Which obligations? I don’t know—feeding him, taking care of him.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, no, everything, everything. The obligations depend on the rights. That is, one goes with the other. It’s a two-sided arrangement. The moment I release him, I owe him nothing and he owes me nothing.
[Speaker B] And that’s something that doesn’t work in the same format. So what about, for example, an animal that is declared ownerless in a place where it can cause damage—let’s say, yes? You let the animal go where it can do damage.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Then in principle you are exempt. If you declared it ownerless, then you are exempt; it’s not yours.
[Speaker B] An animal is like the parable of a pit that you can’t declare ownerless.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, so I’m saying, that already gets into more specific questions. In principle, if it’s ownerless, then it’s ownerless—that is, I don’t have to pay. There are limitations. Ownerlessness is something in which acquisition can take effect. Right. And with a slave, not. With a slave, it can be—
[Speaker B] It can be in the monetary sense.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. Still, he will probably need to get the deed from me, although I once saw a Ralbag on the Torah, I think, who wanted to claim that even the prohibition-status would now pass to the new master, and that’s a novelty. There are, I think, two laws in Jewish law generally that people cite from the Ralbag on the Torah, and this is one of them, if I remember correctly. Okay, but we won’t get into those details.
So what I want to emphasize is that we see here a separation between the claim that an object—or in this case a certain slave—belongs to me, is mine, and the legal consequences of that fact. It may belong to me without any legal consequences at all, giving me no rights. So what is the meaning of the statement that it belongs to me? If the whole meaning of the statement that it belongs to me were only the fact that it grants me rights, then how can one say that it belongs to me even though I have no rights at all? That cannot be said. Therefore it is clear that there is some more fundamental conception here, one that is true of all ownership, not only in the case of a slave: in all ownership, even those where I do have rights, those rights are derived from a fact that precedes those rights. First of all there is a fact: it belongs to me. As a result of that fact, I also have rights—and that is not the meaning of that fact. It is a consequence of that fact. That fact stands on its own and can exist even without the rights.
Maybe I’ll bring another example that sharpens this even more. In Jewish law there is a concept called a condition. A condition means that when I apply a legal effect—say I want to betroth a woman, acquire a certain object, transfer a certain object—I can do so conditionally. I can say to a woman: you are hereby betrothed to me on condition that you give me two hundred zuz in a month. So if she gives me two hundred zuz in a month, then she is betrothed; and if she doesn’t give them in a month, then she is not betrothed, because I am making the act of betrothal conditional on some future act. Now to get into this whole topic is endless waters. I’ll try to illustrate one problem and one solution that together will sharpen the point I’m making here.
There is a problem of how to conceptualize this process of condition. There are actually two types of conditions; again, I won’t go into all the details. One type is called “if,” and one type is called “on condition that.” One type means: you are betrothed to me if you give me two hundred zuz. If you give me two hundred zuz, you are betrothed, and if not, then not. A condition of “on condition that” is: you are betrothed to me on condition that you give me two hundred zuz. The difference is simple: when does the betrothal take effect? If I say, you are betrothed to me if you give me two hundred zuz, the betrothal takes effect when you give them, and if you do not give them then it does not take effect. If I say, on condition that you give me two hundred zuz, it means you are betrothed now, but it is suspended on your giving me two hundred zuz later, and if you do not give them, then it is undone. Now I’m talking about the second type for purposes of this discussion. You can perhaps even see it in the first type too, but I’m talking about the second type—the kind that takes effect retroactively.
[Speaker B] So it gets undone retroactively too? Yes.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes. It can't lapse, not even retroactively, because if a woman was betrothed, you can't terminate that without a bill of divorce. Meaning, if it lapses, it lapses retroactively. Some would say it doesn't take effect, not that it lapses; that is, it never begins to take effect. Its application depends on fulfillment of the condition. Those are already nuances, and there are different approaches about them. How exactly do we explain the process by which this legal effect comes into being? There's something a bit problematic here, because the causality here runs backwards along the timeline. Usually, in ordinary causality, the cause precedes the effect. If A is the cause of B, then A has to occur before B. A result doesn't occur before the cause. On the other hand, with a condition stated as "on condition that," a condition that takes effect retroactively, what comes out is a situation in which causality is operating backward in time. In other words, the cause will occur a month from now, while the effect, the result, was already a month ago, when the betrothal took effect. How can an action done today create consequences a week earlier? That's a problematic point. To solve this problematic point, which has very many expressions among the medieval authorities (Rishonim), and the question is how exactly to define this concept, I'll maybe give one example of the difficulty that comes up among the medieval authorities (Rishonim). The Ba'al Ha'Itur writes that if someone wants to cancel the betrothal—for example, if someone betrothed a woman on condition that she give him two hundred zuz in a month, on condition that she give him two hundred zuz a month from now—after a week he regrets it and wants to cancel the betrothal. Usually, of course, if betrothal was effected and it took hold, there is no such thing as canceling the betrothal, only through a bill of divorce. Meaning, after a week you can't say, wait, wait, stop, I regret it, I don't want it. There is no such thing. Why? Because speech does not come and nullify an act. Meaning, you can't use speech to nullify something that was done through an act. What happens in a case where the legal effect still hasn't taken hold? Right now I'm in the middle of the month, and I'm still waiting to see whether the woman will give me the two hundred zuz or not. Now, after a week during this month, a week has passed, I regret it, and I want to cancel the betrothal. Seemingly, the betrothal still hasn't taken effect, so I can cancel it. But that's true with a betrothal stated as "if," because then the betrothal will take effect in another month when the woman gives the two hundred zuz. But with a betrothal stated as "on condition that," if the woman gives the two hundred zuz in another month, then it takes effect a month backward. And then what will become clear? It will become clear that the woman had in fact already been betrothed, and the act was an act of betrothal. And then after a week I suddenly come and say I don't want it. Yes, the order of times is a bit confusing here. I gave it on the first of Tevet; I betrothed a woman on condition that she give me two hundred zuz on the first of Shevat. Okay? If she gives me two hundred zuz on the first of Shevat, then she is already betrothed from the first of Tevet, and if not, then not. On the tenth of Tevet, on the eve of the tenth of Tevet, I regret it, and I don't want it, and I cancel the betrothal. On the first of Shevat the woman comes and, in a festive ceremony, gives me two hundred zuz. All right? That's the procedure. Now, assuming I hadn't canceled in the middle, there's no problem; that's the concept of a condition. If the woman gave me the two hundred zuz on the first of Shevat, then on the first it became clear that on the first of Tevet she had already been married to me, betrothed to me. But I canceled it in the middle. So if I understand it this way—here all kinds of definitions of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) come in, all kinds of their definitions come in. The Ba'al Ha'Itur writes that in such a case it is possible to cancel the betrothal.
[Speaker B] You don't need a conditional bill of divorce?
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, you don't need anything; you can cancel the betrothal, announce that you don't want it, that's it, retract. Even though it will turn out that afterward she gives me the two hundred zuz, and seemingly that clarifies that she had already been betrothed to me from a week earlier—in fact, the matter was already closed, I just didn't know it until she gave me the two hundred zuz. When she gave the two hundred zuz, the reality became clear to me—that she had already been betrothed to me for a month. So how can it be that a woman who is already fully betrothed to me, I can suddenly cancel that with a mere utterance, with speech? That's what Rabbi Shimon Shkop asks. Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that from here is one of the proofs—he has many proofs—that the accepted conception of conditions is not correct. The conception that says that the action backward in time merely reveals a reality that already existed earlier as well. Meaning, I didn't know it because I still didn't know whether the woman would give me the two hundred zuz or not; the Holy One, blessed be He, already knew, I just didn't know yet, so I'm waiting. The moment she gave it, then the reality was clarified retroactively; it wasn't caused retroactively, but clarified. Meaning, things cannot be caused backward in time; a cause cannot appear after the effect. So therefore the formulation—the initial formulation, which Rabbi Shimon Shkop does not accept—the initial formulation that is proposed says that nothing at all is caused backward in time; it is merely discovered that this is how it had been all along—or not, meaning a month backward. If not, if she didn't give it, then it turns out that a month ago that was not the case. Each time a different reality is revealed to me. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that can't be, because if indeed after she gives me the two hundred zuz it is revealed—in effect, I am living in a world in which this is just ordinary betrothal, without any condition and without anything. I betrothed her on the first of Tevet, period. If that really is the correct description of the mechanism of a condition, then how can one cancel it after a week? So I didn't know—fine, I didn't know—but after the reality becomes clarified to me, then it turns out there was a valid betrothal here on the first of Tevet. How can I cancel it a week later with a mere utterance? So Rabbi Shimon Shkop says that can't be the explanation. He has different formulations in different places; he discusses conditions in many places. I'll choose one of them that is interesting for our purposes. He basically wants to claim that the state in the meantime is a state of doubt. She is both divorced and married. And the future giving is like many worlds in quantum theory—there are such interpretations—it is very similar. She is both divorced and married simultaneously.
[Speaker B] Or married and not…
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] Yes, it will take effect after ten days—married and divorced. Ah, married and not married, yes. Married and not married. And I am—in other words, if she gives me two hundred zuz, she is basically choosing in which of the two worlds she is operating. Are we operating in a world in which she had already been married from the first of Tevet, and then after we enter that world we look back a month earlier and she was married? Meaning, that already means the history too now looks different, because all along she was—only there was also an alternative history, an alternate history. And the giving of the two hundred zuz tells us in which world we are going to live. It's really the many-worlds interpretation, for those who know it; it's exactly the same thing. That's the accepted formulation regarding conditions. So Rabbi Shimon Shkop says this is a formulation that cannot be accepted, at least according to the Ba'al Ha'Itur. He has other proofs for that too from the Ba'al Ha'Itur, because then it really comes out that I am living in a world in which there was a completely ordinary betrothal on the first of Tevet, and suddenly on the eighth of Tevet I announce that I don't want it. That can't be; there is no such thing. You can't nullify by speech something that was done by an act. Therefore, he says no: we are speaking about a situation in which the woman is both divorced and married, and the two hundred zuz activate one and remove the other. They do not transfer them into a world in which that wasn't the case. There is an intermediate state in which she is both divorced and married, and after thirty days only one state continues. It is not clarified backward; rather, only one of them continues. But the status during the interim is a status of both married and not married.
[Speaker B] That's Samuel's view in tractate Kiddushin: betrothed and not betrothed for thirty days. That's exactly what we're learning now.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] What, there in that moonlit sugya?
[Speaker B] "From now and after thirty days"—that's a dispute between Rav and Samuel. Betrothed and not betrothed for thirty days, and afterward not. And Rav says forever. Yes, but Rav says forever.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] But there he did it directly.
[Speaker B] If he remains alive for thirty days, then she is betrothed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there the condition—
[Speaker B] That's if he remains alive.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] And there he did it; there he didn't stipulate—
[Speaker B] A condition, I don't know, maybe you're—
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] saying that—
[Speaker B] in terms of the phrasing, "from now and after thirty days"? What? "From now and after thirty days." Yes, that's the law itself: betrothed and not betrothed.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] No, because there it's what he is doing. We're talking about a condition, and with a condition he didn't do that. We are giving an interpretation of the way the mechanism of a condition works, namely that it is that mechanism. You're saying there are simply possibilities to do this directly, not through the mechanism of a condition. One can just make a statement that this is what I want to happen directly.
[Speaker B] And that's exactly what he's saying here, no? "Be betrothed to me from now if you give me two hundred zuz within—"
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] thirty days.
[Speaker B] Right, but it's the same thing: "Be betrothed to me from now if I stay alive another thirty days," and that's exactly how it is there in the Talmud.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] "If I stay alive"—
[Speaker B] "from now and after thirty—"
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] days is not exactly "if I stay alive." "From now and after thirty days" is, simply speaking—as far as I remember, I'm not currently fluent in the passage—that's not betrothal on condition.
[Speaker B] There is no condition here.
[Rabbi Michael Abraham] There is betrothal from now and after thirty days; that's an ambiguous setting of time. It's not a condition. You're saying that the concept of a condition is interpreted—the mechanism of a condition is also interpreted—as an ambiguous setting of time. Fine. But there they made the ambiguous setting directly; here I am saying the condition behaves that way too. Fine, but his colleagues discussed it there. No, it's not clear what he meant, what the style is. But at least according to one opinion, it's a condition. No, it's like a condition. He didn't make a stipulation there; he said, "from now and after thirty days." Doesn't one opinion say that that's what "from now after thirty days" means? The other opinion says, "from now on condition of thirty days," so that he remains alive, which is also both. All right, I need to look at that passage. "Betrothed and not betrothed"—that's exactly like here. Because that's not the accepted conception regarding conditions; if there were such a passage, they should have brought it. Meaning, I think that—well, I need to see it; I can't answer that now. We learned it on Sabbath. In any case, his claim basically says the following: since the woman is both divorced and married, then now after thirty days, if she gives the two hundred zuz, one of the legal states will remain—or not divorced, again, married and not married. Married and divorced? Yes, but in practice, doubtfully married, doubtfully not married, no? Yes, so that's what he says. No, we'll soon see. No, the expression "doubt" is a delicate expression; we'll soon see what that expression means. He uses that concept, doubt, but it's not—I don't think it's an accurate concept; we'll soon see. This is only betrothal, all of it. Yes, yes, of course, it's all betrothal. It's not about conjugal relations in the meantime. Rabbinically; at the Torah level he can, no problem. Betrothal permits everything. Even before the two hundred zuz, during the month? That's already a big question, but simply speaking yes—if it's a condition that takes effect retroactively, yes. But what if she is with someone else during that period? That's another question. There Rabbi Shimon Shkop brings some of the medieval authorities (Rishonim) that he cites to prove his words. There is a Rashba, I think, who speaks exactly about this situation, but I don't want to get into all the details because for me this is just an example. There is a pamphlet on conditions at the end of his novellae to tractate Gittin; you can see all the references there. In any case, when we learned this in the yeshiva in Yeruham, the students there who asked me got very upset with me. They said, look, what you want to gain is that causality won't operate backward in time. Meaning, you want to propose a definition that solves for us the problem of how it can be that the cause arrives—fine, so you've gained that; nothing operates backward in time, everything operates forward, and from that standpoint that's fine. But the price you pay is much heavier than the price you got rid of. The price you pay is a frontal logical problem. How can a woman be both married and not married at the same time? No, it's a doubt. No, no, no, wait, we'll soon see—it's not a doubt. We'll soon see. The expression the Talmud uses is the expression doubt, but that's not right; it doesn't really mean that. Is it two statuses? In a moment I'll explain. Exactly—there are two statuses on her, and both are on her. And then they tell me, look, you solved for me action backward—you solved action backward in time—but you paid such a price that it wasn't worth it; you threw out the baby with the bathwater. Meaning, now there's a logical contradiction here, so what's better? Why is this logical contradiction preferable to the theory that you can act backward in time? Why is this formulation any clearer than that one? What do we gain with this formulation? So here I stopped for a moment, because to me it sounded so self-evident, but many times you need some little innocent question like that that stops you, and things you're used to suddenly need rethinking—wait, what exactly is going on here? And then this point really became clear to me, the point of legal effect; from there it came out of that lesson. Because the point is the following: when I say—maybe a short logical introduction—when I speak about opposites or contradictions, I am speaking about properties of things. Meaning, salty, say, is the opposite of sweet—never mind, for the sake of discussion sour, however you define it, it doesn't matter right now. But sugar is not the opposite of salt, right? Meaning, opposition between things is—opposition is a property that exists between properties, not between objects. Objects are not one the opposite of the other. Properties are one the opposite of the other. Illuminated is the opposite of dark. Light is not the opposite of darkness. Illuminated is the opposite of dark, but light and darkness are two realities; they are not opposites—they have opposite properties. Salt and sugar are not one the opposite of the other; they have properties that are opposed to one another. Why am I saying this? Because darkness—isn't that just absence of light? Yes, true; light and darkness are a problem because darkness is lack of light, so the question is whether there is even such a thing as darkness, if it is only absence of light. But what I want to say is the following: when I say that in a dish there is both salt and sugar, I haven't said anything problematic logically. But if I say that this dish is both salty and sweet entirely, let's say, just to paint a simple picture here—meaning, only salty and also only sweet, okay, so that there won't be complications—that is a logical contradiction. Either it's this or it's that, right? It can't be. Is there some pilpul here? Yes. So the difference, in essence, between objects and properties is that on the plane of objects there can be contradictions in the sense—because it's not a contradiction. Contradictions cannot exist in the realm of properties. Why am I giving this introduction? Because basically the claim is as follows: when I say that the woman is both married and not married, the question is what I mean. If I mean the legal norms that apply to her, then that is a contradiction. Meaning, either she is married or she is not married. Is she allowed to marry someone else or is she forbidden to marry someone else? What do you mean, both this and that? Both permitted and forbidden? There is no such thing. Either forbidden or permitted; it can't be both. But if I say that on this woman there rests a legal effect of a married woman, and also a legal effect of—I don't know what—of not being a married woman, okay? That's like salt and sugar. Those are not properties but entities. I'm saying this in order to sharpen what I said earlier. When I say that a woman—what? That these two legal effects contradict each other? Wait, we'll soon see. No, no, one second—that's already the next stage, in a moment. What I want to claim is that since legal effects are not norms, they are not properties—they are entities; abstract entities, but entities—there can be two contradictory legal effects simultaneously on the same object. It's like having both salt and sugar in the same dish. That contradicts nothing. If I say that the same dish is both salty and sweet, that is impossible; it's a logical contradiction. If I say that a woman is both married and not married simultaneously, that is a logical contradiction. But if I say that on this woman there rests both a legal effect of a married woman and a legal effect of not being a married woman, if there is such a thing, then there is no problem: those two legal effects rest on the woman. Now the question is what to do on the practical level—that is what raises the difficulty. The mere fact that these two legal effects rest on the woman contains no difficulty at all; it is like salt and sugar. Now I only ask myself: all right, what flavor is created? What laws are derived from this metaphysical state? And here I will have problems. So what will I do? Rabbi Shimon Shkop relates to it as doubt. He wants to demonstrate that there are really two sides here, but he doesn't really mean the concept of doubt. He means to say—and in contradictions of this kind there will always be contradictions between an entity and an absence; they won't be two opposite entities. For example, your earlier point was good: it's not the legal effect of a married woman and the legal effect of a divorced woman; it's the legal effect of a married woman and the absence of the legal effect of a married woman. So now what will the laws be? For example, would she be permitted to have conjugal relations with someone else? From the fact that she is not a married woman, that would be permitted; from the fact that she is a married woman, that would be forbidden. What will the bottom line be? Forbidden, because from that side she is indeed a married woman. So from the fact that she is also a married woman, it will be forbidden to her. So now, on the normative plane too, there is no contradiction. No problem—the Jewish law is that it is forbidden. Meaning, the legal effects resting on this woman do not contradict one another, because these are entities. These are not properties, not norms; they are entities. Two entities can rest one upon the other, and this is the expression of what I said earlier: that underlying the halakhic norms are facts. And this is the expression—if there were not facts underlying things in the legal world, it would be impossible to define such a thing. In the legal world, either you are married or you are not. What do you mean, married and not married? Maybe a doubt—yes, maybe. No, but I am speaking here not about a state of doubt. But that's exactly the language of the Talmud there in Kiddushin: doubtfully betrothed. But there it is doubt. I am not talking about a state of doubt; I am talking about both things existing. This is not doubt. I'll give you an example: in places where it would be rabbinic, would we go stringently or leniently? If it were doubt, we would go leniently. But clearly that's not right. We will always follow the legal effect that is a positive entity and not the legal effect of absence. Meaning, what will always determine things is the fact that she is a married woman, not the fact that she is not a married woman. Even if this were on the rabbinic plane, it would not be because we are always stringent, but because what determines things is the entity and not the absence. If a certain woman has on her both an entity and an absence, that means that for purposes of halakhic decision the entity is on her. So there is no problem even on the normative plane. What? If she is betrothed and not a married woman to a priest, she would not eat terumah? If she is betrothed and not betrothed to a priest—no, she would not eat terumah, and the reason is that the fact that she is not betrothed means there is a prohibition on her eating terumah, while the fact that she is betrothed does not mean that she is obligated to eat terumah, only that she is permitted. So that shows that this is an absence. In this case, the entity here is דווקא the not-betrothed one; the "yes, betrothed" is really the absence. Therefore, in a contradiction of this kind there will always be an entity and an absence, and the entity will always prevail over the absence. It's not a matter of stringency. And what about a contradiction of forbidden and permitted? What about a contradiction of forbidden and obligatory? I can't think of such an example. Okay, one has to think. If there is such an example, there may be a problem. The husband's obligation of conjugal rights. What? The husband's obligation of conjugal rights—if she is his wife, but not his wife, then—yes. If she has on her an obligation of conjugal rights, but she is married and not married, then better that he not touch her. If she is not married, there is no obligation; if she is married, then there is an obligation; so the lack of obligation is an absence. And because maybe she is not married, it is forbidden for him to touch her at all? You're saying that's obligation versus prohibition. All right, it's not exactly prohibited, because with an unmarried woman it's not clear what her status is. Okay, one has to think about that case. Look, to clarify this issue one has to enter into many passages; to clarify this question one has to enter into many passages. What I am trying to show is perhaps a sharp implication of the claim that says that underlying the halakhic conception there are entities and not only norms. Here is a sharp implication of that. In a legal system, what there is are norms. Two contradictory norms cannot apply to the same situation. Now when we have difficulty with such a thing, we are essentially putting on legal glasses when we look at Jewish law, but that is precisely the mistake, because Jewish law is not a legal system in the ordinary sense. I return to the point from which I started. This distinction between the entities that underlie the norms—which exists in Jewish law—and floating norms, norms from which no entities are derived, that distinction can very often confuse us and lead us to incorrect interpretations when we approach Jewish law. It's like today, when you constantly live with this combination, so that when you say something belongs to me, you automatically interpret the legal implications of that statement. Yes, exactly. And therefore many interpretive problems arise because we are used to the legal glasses familiar to us, and we come with them in order to interpret Jewish law. Therefore this difference is a very significant difference when we talk about concepts of change, of assimilating Jewish law into state law, partial borrowing, everything we discussed in previous sessions. One always has to pay close attention to whether in fact we are even talking about the same thing. Here it says acquisition and there it says acquisition—but is it the same thing at all? Are we talking about the same concept? Can I import into the legal system such a concept as a real entity, namely: she is both a married woman and not a married woman? Or this is mine and simultaneously also not mine? There is no such thing in the legal system, it seems to me. I am not sufficiently expert in law to state it categorically, but it seems pretty clear to me: no, there cannot be such a thing in an ordinary legal system. But in Jewish law it exists, because these are entities and not norms. Next time I will try to show several mistakes that stem from this same confusion. I will show that these conceptions are not theoretical conceptions, but rather they have implications precisely with respect to the issues of Hebrew law that we discussed, that we began discussing in previous sessions.