Lost to Him and to All Others

About This Talk

Chapter 16 builds the law of the found object on the identifying mark: single needles may be kept but two together are announced because their number identifies them, scattered coins are kept while a tower of three is announced and a circle or line is a doubt one should not even pick up, a wallet or empty wallet is announced, money inside the counter line belongs to the storekeeper or money changer while money on or beyond it goes to the finder because a store is not a protected courtyard, and buried treasure in an old wall belongs to the finder because it was lost to him and to all others, which Scripture's phrase about an article lost by him and found excludes, with a new wall decided by a knife's handle or a wallet's opening and unmarked money split at the wall's midpoint, and the Rambam's own ruling that a rented house yields to the last renter while a house let to three gentiles at once becomes an inn where everything found is the finder's. Chapter 17 turns to acquisition: nothing is acquired until it reaches the hand or domain, so seeing or even falling upon an object is worthless if another takes hold, an agent acquires for the one who said acquire it for me but loses the chance once he hands it over, a deaf mute, an incompetent person or a minor cannot acquire for a competent adult though two deaf mutes do by ordinance against strife, reins are acquired but not the animal, a protected courtyard acquires unknowingly while a field needs its owner standing beside it and declaring it, the four cubits acquire like a courtyard but only in an alleyway or an uncrowded place and never in the public domain or a colleague's field, a female minor acquires through her courtyard by derivation from a get placed in her hand while a male minor cannot because a man's courtyard derives from agency he cannot appoint, and a man acquires the finds of those sustained by his household, his daughter who is a na'arah, his Canaanite servants and his wife, but not those of a son he does not sustain, his Jewish employees, or a divorced wife. Chapter 18 refuses true documents: a found promissory note is withheld even with validated signatures and the debtor's own admission, lest it was paid and the parties are colluding to expropriate land from a purchaser, since a missing lien clause counts as a scribal error, and it is returned only where the note explicitly creates no lien and the debtor acknowledges it, while a get goes to the woman on a distinctive mark such as a hole beside a letter but not on a color, a healthy man's gift document is withheld and a deathbed gift returned only while the giver lives, a ketubah is never returned, court valuations and records of final judicial acts always are, and a document wrongly handed back is nonetheless valid and may expropriate.