SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Today's learning is being prepared - showing the most recent day below.
The Damage of Being Seen
Shcheinim 1-3 | Sefer Kinyan
A courtyard stands open for thirty years and nobody complains. Then one neighbor wants a wall, four cubits high, and wants the other man to pay half. Why does the law of neighbors begin by teaching you how to get away from them?
TODAY'S CHAPTERS
RECENT
Reading a Man Who Cannot Answer
He said give my sons a shekel a week, and a shekel a week will not feed them. The treatise on gifts closes with three chapters of pure interpretation, where a dying man's bare sentence carries the force of a sealed deed and a court has to decide what he meant by it. So what would a court find if it had to reconstruct you from one sentence?
The Document Tied to His Thigh
A man dies with a signed, witnessed deed of gift tied to his leg, and the Rambam rules it worth nothing. Three chapters on shushvinut and the gifts of a dying man turn out to be three chapters on what your words actually move. So what do your words actually transfer?
The Cruse He Left Behind
A father hands his eldest son the keys to the wedding apartment and forgets one small jug of his own in a kitchen cabinet, and the Rambam rules that the son owns nothing. Three chapters on gifts turn out to be three chapters on reading a man who never said what he meant. So what did you keep back?
The Man Who Hung the Doors
A field with nobody's name on it goes to whoever acts on it first, and wanting is not acting. Three chapters on unclaimed property and gifts turn out to be three chapters on what a person actually owns. So what do you own?
The Sale Nobody Was Supposed to Make
A man sells his field on Shabbat. The court gives him lashes and lets the sale stand. What exactly is the law protecting when it punishes the seller and keeps his deed?
The Door Comes, The Key Stays
Sell a house and the lock on the front door is sold with it. The key is not. What exactly did you think you were buying?