Q&A: An Analogy from a Common Case
An Analogy from a Common Case
Question
An analogy from a common case.
In Tosafot on tractate Kiddushin 3b (toward the bottom):
“And now the earlier difficulty is resolved, for the verse is speaking where her father betrothed her, and there it derives shame and depreciation from betrothal through her father, which belong to her father. And here this is what it means: if you would say that we should derive from shame and depreciation, in the case of betrothal effected by her own action, that it should belong to her father from shame and depreciation—for certainly from the father’s betrothal one cannot derive them, since those are entirely through her—but initially it derived shame and depreciation, which are not through her, from her father’s betrothal, and afterward one can derive what is through her from what is not through her father.”
The details don’t matter all that much for our purposes.
What we have here are three laws, where the first is somewhat different from the third, and you can’t derive one from the other. So how is it possible to derive the second and then the third—the second is similar enough, but the third isn’t? How can the conceptual question about law C depend on whether law B exists or does not exist?
Answer
You’re assuming that the comparison is based on similarity. But it’s possible that the comparison is a method in the Torah by which anything sufficiently similar can be derived. And therefore one can derive B from A and C from B, even if in the end there isn’t enough similarity between A and C.
Something like this we find regarding a “city of gold” ornament. The Talmud in chapter Tolin says that we do not find a dispute from one extreme to the other, meaning that one sage would obligate a sin-offering and the other would say it is permitted. A three-way dispute is brought there in which one of the tannaim says it is permitted and another obligates a sin-offering. The Talmud rejects this, saying that there is a third tanna there who says it is rabbinically forbidden, and with that it is possible to have a dispute from one extreme to the other.
An even more extreme example is brought in Kehillot Yaakov on the melakhah of building with utensils, in the name of Rabbi Isser Zalman Meltzer, in an article. “Building” means assembling parts in order to create a cavity or enclosed space (building a house from wood or stones). One derivative category is creating a cavity not by assembling parts—a tent. A second derivative category is assembling parts without creating a cavity—making cheese. This is more extreme, because if you look at the relationship between a tent and making cheese (the two derivative categories), you won’t see any similarity between them, even though both are derivative categories of building. The similarity between them passes through the primary category of building.
Discussion on Answer
Those are two examples of two distant things whose similarity is established because of some third thing between them (which resembles each of them).
In the case of building, the basic case is building, and one is liable in every case that resembles it, so there’s no problem with there being two cases that are similar in different ways—bottom line, both of them resemble building. But here the extreme case is the starting point?
What do the city of gold and building have to do with this?