Reading a Man Who Cannot Answer

About This Talk

Zechiyah u'Matanah 10-12 completes the treatise by handing the law of gifts over to interpretation. Chapter 10 establishes how far bare speech reaches: give a maneh to so and so is paid after death because a sh'chiv me'ra's words are considered as if already recorded in a legal document and the property already transferred, with no suspicion that he meant a buried maneh; a statement that he loaned money or entrusted an object binds with no ma'amad sh'loshtam, and a promissory note he apportions cannot be waived by the heir, since ordinary note transfer is only Rabbinic while here the Sages reinforced their decision and conveyed upon it the power of Scriptural law; an acknowledgment that a maneh in his possession belongs to someone is not paid unless he added give it to him, lest he spoke only so his heirs would not be called wealthy, though a sincere acknowledgment with no suspicion of subterfuge is paid regardless, and where he said give it the orphans cannot later claim he paid, while a bare acknowledgment leaves them believed on a sh'vuat hesset; witnesses to a father hiding money are heeded if he seemed to be conveying his wishes, a third party's report only where he could have taken the money himself, and a man who learned the sum and the hiding place in a dream and found both exactly was told that words from dreams neither avail nor impair; money sent through a third party reaches the intended recipient's heirs if he was alive at the handover and returns to the estate if he was not, since a deceased person cannot acquire; sums named with no sequence abate proportionately and a creditor expropriates from each in proportion, while the word afterwards gives the first named priority and sends the creditor to the last recipient and backwards; and let so and so live in this house or eat this palm's fruit transfers nothing, living and eating being like speech and sleep, while give him the house so that he may live in it transfers it entirely. Chapter 11 puts numbers on the words: banai excludes daughters even beside a single son, Tovia takes unless he is known as Rav Tovia, rival Tovias yield to the Torah scholar then the neighbor then the relative and finally to the judges' own assessment; a portion is half when he says so and so should receive one and a sixteenth when he says give one, with authorities who say a fourth, while wine is a quarter, an eighth to pour into jugs, a twelfth for cooking and a sixteenth for a small cup, measures the Rambam forbids extrapolating anywhere else; a wife given a portion like one of the sons counts later-born sons in but takes only from property he held when he spoke; movable property means his utensils and not his wheat and barley unless he said all of it, servants are movables and a lower millstone is not unless he said everything that can be carried, and a Torah scroll's status is unresolved but not expropriated from a recipient who took it; as is appropriate for him adds the sum to the firstborn's portion or the wife's ketubah while naming it as the portion or for the ketubah leaves them an election, and a creditor told the sum is for his debt collects only the debt; four hundred zuz and let him marry my daughter is two gifts, the clauses reversed makes it conditional; two halves of a date palm satisfy the date palm and a building of a hundred and twenty korim satisfies a promise of a hundred, since everyone who gives a gift gives generously; a shekel a week becomes whatever the children need because his intent was not to starve them; and do not eulogize me is honored while do not bury me from my estate is refused, since he may not make himself a burden on the community. Chapter 12 then takes up the after you clause: my son should inherit works from a dying man and fails from a healthy one; to you and after you gives the second the remainder unless the first was fit to inherit, in which case the second takes nothing because a gift to an heir is an inheritance and an inheritance never ends, restored only by an explicit statement that this is a gift with a limit set to it; the first recipient enjoys the property and may not sell its body, one who advises him to sell being called wicked, though a sale to an outsider stands while one to an heir is void, and his creditors reach the proceeds only and after his death nothing at all; a woman told to you and after you while unmarried makes her later husband a purchaser the second cannot reach, while one already married leaves the husband exposed, and a sale during the marriage stays with the buyer as the only party who spent money, with the incident of the estate left to a mother and then to heirs showing a son-in-law inheriting nothing from a right that never ripened; a deed giving the body to a son now and the fruits later stops both from selling, with attached produce going to the son because a person feels a closeness to his son; from today and after my death makes a healthy man's gift a dying man's gift, a dated deed transfers in his lifetime even without those words since a man transferring after death would not have dated it, and during my lifetime and in my death binds at once; and the treatise ends by observing that perfectly righteous men and men of spiritual stature would not accept gifts from other men at all, trusting in God rather than in generous men, as Proverbs says that one who hates gifts will live.