Q&A: Regarding Coerced Consent
Regarding Coerced Consent
Question
Rabbi, we’ve just been learning in yeshiva the Talmudic topic of coerced consent in divorce bills and sales (your written lectures were very helpful, by the way..). In any case, we got to the end of the week and I still couldn’t understand it. Can the Rabbi explain in simple words how it can be that someone forces another person to sell him his field (say, by holding his head under water until he says, “I agree”), and we take his consent seriously? (“Because of the coercion, he fully resolved and transferred ownership.”) Intuitively this sounds really absurd to me, and I haven’t been able to convince myself with any good explanation… Thank you very much 🙂
Answer
This ruling in Jewish law has always been difficult for me.
In Zekher Yitzhak, he explains it in light of the distinction made by the medieval authorities (Rishonim) that if someone is coerced and gives, it is not effective. He explains that if a person was forced and did not receive money, there is a strong presumption that when the coercion ends he retracts his consent, and therefore in the case of “they coerced him and he gave,” it does not take effect. But in the case of “they coerced him and he sold,” he did receive money, and we do not have a clear presumption that after the coercion ends he wants to undo the sale and also return the money. Therefore, in this case our presumption about his state of mind is not unequivocal, and it does not nullify what he did (“unexpressed thoughts do not undo an act”). And Rashbam באמת bases this on the fact that there are two factors here: suffering and payment of money.
Beyond that, in commerce there are often persistent attempts at persuasion and pressure and so on, and the line between “they coerced him” and persuasion is not sharp. Perhaps that is why it is defined that whenever he consented, it counts as consent.
And even so, I’m still not fully satisfied with all this.