The Man Who Hung the Doors

About This Talk

Hilchot Zechiyah u'Matanah opens the laws of acquiring what belongs to no one. Chapter 1 rules that ownerless things in deserts, rivers and streams go to the first hand that closes on them, that fish and beasts in another man's vivarium are his however large the enclosure, that a boat acquires fish that jump into it because the water and not the boat is what moves, and that a convert who dies without a Jewish child leaves no heirs at all, so his estate becomes ownerless with no neighbor's right of pre-emption; it then fixes how intent must match the act across two fields with one boundary marker, rules that seizing the deed acquires only the parchment, that one spade stroke takes a bounded field but only an ox team's strip in an unbounded one, and that where the sovereign's law recognizes only the recorded name we follow the sovereign. Chapter 2 lists the qualifying acts: eating produce establishes a purchase but never ownerless land, as the woman who ate a date palm's fruit for thirteen years discovered when a man who pruned the tree once took it, while slight acts suffice here, plastering a cubit opposite the entrance, setting out mattresses, plowing to leave the field fallow; the intent is then read off the work itself, both sides of the vine against one, small stones gathered with the large against large alone, one water opening against a second outlet; building an open shell acquires nothing while hanging the doors acquires everything; and benefit arriving through the ordinary course of nature, sown seed or a partition over a sinking wall, acquires nothing, while a claimant mistaken about which convert's estate he seizes still acquires though one who thinks the land is his own does not. Chapter 3 turns to gifts: words alone transfer nothing and the recipient must lift, draw, act or receive a deed, except where nothing needs to change hands, as with a waived debt or an object already in his safekeeping; the giver must define what he gives or the recipient takes nothing at all; conditions must be restated both ways, positive before negative, condition before deed, and possible to fulfill; a gift conditioned on return is valid, yet "return it to me" voids a consecration that plain "return it" permits; a free gift may not be made to a gentile though it may to a resident alien whom we are obligated to sustain; a gift to a married woman or a Canaanite servant lands with the husband or master unless its use is earmarked; and giving a servant everything frees him first, while holding back the smallest item leaves him with nothing.