The House Stays Standing

About This Talk

A new treatise opens on robbery. Chapter 1 defines the offense and then walks it backwards into the heart: a gazlan takes openly by force, snatching from the hand, carrying utensils out of another's domain, seizing livestock and working it, eating another's produce, while the one who withholds was handed money willingly as a loan or a wage and refuses to return it, both prohibitions sitting in a single verse; robbing a p'rutah's worth breaks a negative commandment that carries no lashes because the positive commandment to return corrects it, below a p'rutah there is a transgression with no duty to return, and it is forbidden to rob even a gentile who worships idols. Return means the article itself, so a beam built into a house would Scripturally require demolition until the Sages ordained payment instead to encourage repentance, though a sukkah beam held without mortar goes back in substance after the festival; three bundles that fell in value still go back in full, a victim may refuse delivery out in the desert, and money is returned inside change or into a wallet that holds money but not into an empty one, where the robber stays liable until he tells the owner. Then desire in the heart alone breaks one commandment, a purchase extracted by pressuring the owner through friends breaks two, and taking by force breaks three, since desire leads to coveting, coveting to robbery and robbery to murder, as with Achav and Navot; and although robbing a p'rutah is like taking a man's soul, where the article is gone and the robber comes of his own volition to pay, one should not accept it but help him and forgive him. Chapter 2 is the anatomy of shinui and ye'ush: an unchanged article returns in substance even after despair and even from the robber's heirs, a change in his possession makes it his at the price it carried on the day of the taking, despair alone grants him only the increase accrued from the despair onward, and despair plus a sale lets the buyer keep it; offspring and shearings follow the despair, consecration or slaughter after despair makes it his only from that moment so the sinner does not profit, increase bought with expense is reimbursed either way, a change is a change of name so that carved utensils, dyed wool, woven cloth, melted coins, beams cut into boards and a lamb grown into a ram are acquired while anything reversible is not, and where the article did not change but merely rose in value it returns whole with the robber entitled to nothing. Chapter 3 prices the wrong and then measures use: a jug worth a dinar that rose to four costs four if his own hand destroyed or alienated it and one if it was lost otherwise, fifty dates are valued wholesale and not singly except where the property is consecrated, an article that survived as itself goes back as it is even if it is now impure terumah or leaven after Passover, riding or plowing with another's animal and returning it sound is robbery that owes nothing until the man becomes habituated and the court assesses his earnings, a courtyard that is normally rented costs rent and one that is not costs nothing, wool spoiled by another's dye is paid at the decline in value, a watchman who puts his hand to a deposit becomes a robber liable even for accidents from the moment he lifts the jug, and a creditor who seizes collateral without the court's license is a robber for all the debt he is owed.