Q&A: A Pit for Its Vapor
A Pit for Its Vapor
Question
Hello Rabbi Michi.
It is known that there is an opinion that the Torah made one liable for a pit because of its vapor.
Scientifically this seems strange—what is there at the bottom of a pit 5 meters deep that could kill an animal within a short time? In reality, does this happen?
And besides, it seems clear that the Torah made one liable for the impact.
Answer
This is a question I have wrestled with for a long time, especially the case of a pit ten handbreadths deep that kills, and even less than that creates monetary liability (certainly you don’t need 5 meters).
It is true that there are places where a pit contains poisonous vapor and gas fumes, but that is not the case in every pit, and certainly not in a shallow pit (when its width is less than its depth, the assumption is that this is the vapor involved).
On page 50b it is brought that the practical difference is whether the ground itself caused the damage, in which case one would be exempt, or not. According to this, it is possible that for Rav, who holds that a pit is liable because of its vapor, his intent is only to say that one should not exempt the owner of the pit as though the ground itself caused the damage, but rather we treat it as though the pit’s vapor caused it. If so, this is a legal determination and not a physical one.
And on page 54a it is brought that even new vessels burst from the vapor, which is already really strange. And perhaps there too the intent is to say that there is no exemption as though the ground damaged them.
And perhaps this can be connected to the dispute between Rashbam and Tosafot over whether the pit is the walls or the airspace inside it (the practical difference being for one forbidden to benefit from the pit—whether he is forbidden to benefit from its airspace or only from its walls).
Still, all this requires further investigation.
Discussion on Answer
Thanks for the source. I really do not agree. First, vapor is not water. Second, the Talmud certainly did not understand it that way, as can be seen in several places. The difference between opening and digging does not depend on different kinds of pits, but on different ways of creating the pit (and therefore we find: if one is liable for opening it, then all the more so for digging it). Second, “filled it with sponges” is not dealing with a pit full of water. Third, according to Rav one is liable only for the vapor and not for the impact, whereas according to Rabbi Medan these are simply two different kinds of pits. So what exactly is the dispute?
By the way, how do you embed a YouTube video here? To my shame, I can’t even manage to copy pictures.
Maybe the Rabbi doesn’t remember Rabbi Medan’s classes from the yeshiva, but he always tries to show how the Oral Torah is already present within the Written Torah. I’ll offer something like a defense of his approach here, since it is still just a rough theory: it is not really a valid objection to say that according to Rav these are simply two different pits. Apparently this is a dispute over what the standard harmful pit is—the one that is harmful in the majority of cases—the one the Torah was speaking about, under the assumption that the Torah was speaking only about one of the two types. Also, when speaking about the vapor, of course the reference is not to the water but to the vapor—the air—that the animal lacks when it suffocates because of the water. And filling it with sponges is actually very relevant to a pit with water—not a pit filled with water, but one where the water is at the bottom—in order to absorb it and draw out all the water that was at the bottom of the pit. That also explains the height of ten handbreadths. That is a height in which an animal can stand, about 80 cm, and get its head above the water. And apparently the bursting of the vessels is also connected to water, which can seep into earthenware vessels and crumble them, when they are new apparently.
Hello Ailon.
I studied in yeshiva with Rabbi Medan as my teacher; today we are friends, and his classes back then were completely different in character. Back then he soared in the heights of the Maharal; the move down to earth was a change of direction that came later. In any case, I do not accept his interpretation of the Talmud. There is no reason to impose liability specifically for one pit rather than the other. Beyond that, Shmuel holds one liable for both of them, its vapor and its impact.
And if the Talmud wanted to bring a case of a pit in which the damage is caused not by the ground but by the vapor, then according to Rabbi Medan it should have brought a pit in the springtime, not a pit filled with sponges.
In short, this interpretation is completely implausible from the standpoint of the Talmud, and the discussion is a waste of time.
I won’t argue about whether the interpretation is implausible or whether it is worth discussing. I’ll just say that from the plain sense—and also the homiletic sense—there is logic in the Torah imposing liability specifically for a common variation of some reality. For example, for many things one has to say that Scripture spoke of the usual case and not necessarily of that specific thing the Torah mentioned. That itself is a kind of interpretive move, despite its logic, because from within the world of interpretation it would easily be possible to say that a person is liable specifically for one variation of damage alone, as with “an ox, but not a person; a donkey, but not vessels,” and therefore an additional derivation is needed to say that all possibilities are included. From the standpoint of interpretation, one could easily have said that one is liable only for a certain pit. And even from the standpoint of the plain sense, one can say that the Torah described the common reality and does not relate at all to the underlying logic. Shmuel would disagree and say that although the reality the Torah described in the plain sense is one thing, the other case is also included because of the logic of the matter. Rav would disagree.
By the way, my brother suggested an interpretation that because of the structure of the pit—a water-collection pit, which was not cylindrical but a large underground chamber with a very narrow opening at the top through which the water was collected—it is quite possible that a large amount of carbon dioxide accumulated at the bottom of the pit, since it is known to sink and collect at a height of a few dozen centimeters, and that is the pit’s vapor. The animal dies from its own carbon dioxide because of the narrow opening above, which does not allow efficient gas exchange. This would make a lot of sense if the pit is a small pit, a household pit, because then there is not much space and the opening is even smaller.
In the carbon-dioxide scenario too, the case would be where the animal is lying on its side, because something broke or it just got hit, and its head is close to the floor—say, at a height of less than 40 cm.
As for sharing a YouTube video: apparently the solution is to do it through a smartphone. Go into YouTube and from there there is a share option to email or WhatsApp and the like. Right now I have a glitch and can’t verify that this is how it works, but I definitely uploaded through a smartphone, and in general there are more options there for sharing videos and pictures. So it’s worth trying. God willing, when I have a clearer answer I’ll update. Success.
Rabbi Yaakov Medan asks this and/or argues that the vapor of the pit is water that chokes it. Here is a link, and one should look for the written sources he discusses: