One-Page Learn · The Halachos at a glance
הִלְכוֹת נִזְקֵי מָמוֹן
Damages to Property · Chapters 3-5
Sefer Nezikin · What It Ate and Where • Who Should Have Been Watching • Not Permitted to Pay
60×
The area growing crops
are valued against
3
Warnings before the field's
owner may slaughter
10
Conditions Joshua wrote
into every deed
½
Damages when the animal
ate what it never eats
Ch 3Shen: The Tooth, and the Domain It Closed In
- His field, everything; the street, nothing. Eating produce is an animal's ordinary behavior shen, so damage done in another's property is paid in full, from the owner's choice field (Exodus 22:4). The identical mouthful in the public domain costs nothing but the benefit, since produce left in the street is expected to be eaten. (3:1)
- Benefit is priced as cheap fodder. Sesame seeds worth a dinar eaten in a courtyard cost a dinar; eaten in the street they are reckoned as barley or fodder at the low price, because that is what the owner would have bought anyway. Wheat that sickens the animal costs nothing, since there was no benefit. A chewed garment or utensil is half damages in either domain, being a deviation. (3:2-3)
- Geography decides, to the inch. In the marketplace, walking or standing, benefit only, even turning its head to the sides; off the market and standing at the corner, full damages. From the storefront, benefit; from inside the store, full. A beast that seizes and eats meat pays in full, but a dog that eats small sheep or a cat that eats large cocks is a deviation at half. (3:7, 3:9)
- How it got in is the whole question. An animal that slipped on a stone and fell into a garden owes benefit only, even walking row to row all day. One that went down in the ordinary way, or was pushed in by another, or slipped in and returned, pays in full, because the first stage was negligence and an animal that knows the way to a garden goes back. (3:11-12)
- Bring goods in uninvited and the risk is yours. A potter whose wares are smashed by the householder's animal is owed nothing, and if the animal is injured on them he pays. With permission, or where the householder undertook to guard them, it reverses. A woman left alone to bake whose dough killed the household goat was made to pay for the goat. (3:13-15)
RememberLiability tracks the place the mouth closed, not the appetite: the same animal, the same produce, a different domain, a different bill.
Ch 4The Gate, the Watchman, and the Bill
- A gate that withstands an ordinary wind. Enclose the sheep behind one and you owe nothing if they get out. If it will not hold an ordinary wind, or the walls are shaky, you never enclosed them, so you pay even when they dug out, the gate broke at night, or thieves broke it down. Strong gate broken at night, nothing; thieves who lead them out, the thieves pay. (4:1)
- Some debts a court cannot collect. A man who breaks down a sturdy fence before another's animal is liable. One who breaks a shaky fence, or sets poison before the animal, cannot be held liable under mortal law but carries a moral obligation. One who leads or drives the animal to a third party's crops is liable outright. (4:2-3)
- Handing it over can keep it yours. An unpaid watchman, paid watchman, renter or borrower assumes the owner's responsibility. But give the animal to a minor or one not competent and the owner pays even if it was tied, even if guarded excellently and it dug out, since the negligence was the handing over. Leave it in the sun and he pays even so, because discomfort makes it flee. Of five men charged with one ox, liability follows whose lapse let it out. (4:4-7)
- A borrowed ox keeps its owner's record. Borrow an ox already classified as a gorer: if the borrower knew of the tendency, owner and borrower each pay half; if he did not know, the owner pays everything. An ordinary ox that becomes a gorer in the borrower's hands loses that status on return, because the domain changed. (4:8-9)
- Growing crops are never priced alone. For produce still drawing from the land, value an area sixty times the size of what was eaten, before and after, and pay the difference, even for one stalk of grain. Fruit that has ripened and no longer needs the land is paid at full value, a se'ah for a se'ah. (4:13-14)
RememberThe standard is not a perfect enclosure but a gate that would hold on a normal day; below that line, every later misfortune is counted as your negligence.
Ch 5Not Permitted To Be a Source of Damage
- Three warnings, then the knife. An animal pasturing in others' fields, even before it has damaged anything, brings its owner a warning on three occasions. If he still will not watch it, the field's owner may slaughter it in a ritually acceptable manner, to keep the loss small, and tell him to come and sell the meat. The reason: it is forbidden to cause damage and then pay for it, and even indirect causation is forbidden. The Ra'avad and Rabbenu Asher dispute the slaughter, and the Shulchan Aruch follows them. (5:1)
- Whole trades closed by decree. No raising small animals or small beasts in Eretz Yisrael where there are fields and vineyards; forests and deserts are permitted, and Syria everywhere. Babylonia was equated with the Land, since most fields there were Jewish-owned. One may hold a small animal 30 days before a festival or a son's wedding, otherwise indoors. Pigs nowhere; dogs only chained, except a border town, chained by day and loosed at night. (5:2, 5:7-9)
- Joshua's ten conditions on the land itself. Pasture a small animal in a thick forest without asking, never a large one, and neither in a thin forest. Gather worthless wood and wild grass. Cut a new branch under a year old, only from the shaded side. A new spring to its town. Fish the Kinneret with a small net. Turn aside behind any fence. Break through vines when lost. Cross private land when the road is mud. A corpse with nobody to bury it acquires its place. (5:3)
- A calendar for crossing, and a mercy for leaving. Solomon ordained that passersby may walk private field paths all summer until the second fall rainfall, when the seeds take root; in Babylonia the cutoff is when dew descends. And a shepherd who repents sells his herd a little at a time, never all at once, lest the forced loss frighten him out of repenting. (5:4-6, 5:10)
RememberThree chapters of exact pricing end in a prohibition on using the price: you may not cause damage and then pay for it. And the trade is closed gradually, so that closing it does not ruin the man closing it.