Q&A: Follow-up to a Question Asked Two Days Ago
Follow-up to a Question Asked Two Days Ago
Question
I asked you about the matter of holiness and ontology, and you referred me to your columns.
I didn’t really understand a few things, and I’d appreciate an explanation:
A. Why, if an oath is a subjective prohibition, does one oath take effect on another oath? Why should I care why it is prohibited? At the end of the day it’s prohibited anyway (to fulfill it, not to violate it).
B. What is the meaning of the prohibition regarding another person’s object—see above? It is not, simply speaking, an object-based prohibition, but to say that the effect applies to the person is also difficult (from Nedarim 2a).
C. I didn’t really understand this whole matter of legal effect. Am I supposed to look at it as a relation between me and the object, or as an additional dimension in the object? I’d appreciate it if you would define legal effect in connection with presumed possession, a vow, and consecrated property.
Sorry for the bother, and thank you very much.
Answer
A. I didn’t understand. One oath does not take effect on another oath. Nor does it take effect on an existing prohibition either (because one is already sworn and standing from Mount Sinai). The difference in Mishnah Nedarim 16 between a vow and an oath regarding a commandment is exactly a consequence of that question. The way of looking at it is that Jewish law operates within a spiritual (ontic) reality, and the reason a vow takes effect on a commandment is that the commandment applies to the person, whereas the vow applies to the object. But with an oath, it too is a prohibition on the person, and therefore it does not take effect.
B. Do you mean when the other person prohibited me from benefiting from his property, or when I prohibited myself from benefiting from his property? I seem to recall later authorities tending to think that this is a person-based prohibition, because in their view an object-based prohibition has to be universal. But I don’t see that as necessary. Even the prohibition of a vow on my own object as applied to me is not universal. True, when I prohibit my fellow’s object to myself, another problem arises, since it turns out that I am imposing legal effects on my fellow’s object. That is indeed less plausible—not because of universality, but because a person cannot prohibit something that is not his. But the rule that a person cannot prohibit something that is not his was stated where the prohibition also applies to the other person (for example, mixed species), not in a prohibition that applies only to himself.
It may be that a vow is a kind of fence around the object and not really a legal effect on it. And when you prohibit your fellow’s object to yourself, you are essentially building a fence between yourself and the object. See my article, “What Is Guilt Offering?”
C. See my article, “What Is a Legal Effect?”