The Harm That Leaves No Mark

About This Talk

Chovel u'Mazik closes and Rotze'ach u'Shmirat Nefesh opens, and the three chapters walk steadily away from the hands. Chapter 7 begins with damage not evident to the eye, which carries no Scriptural liability since the object is unchanged, and which the Sages nevertheless priced at its full depreciation from the damager's finest property, for rendering food impure, mixing produce into terumah as dimu'a, or forbidding a barrel with one drop of idolatrous wine; the Rambam names it a penalty built so that a ravager could not plead that nothing was owed, with the two consequences that follow from calling it a penalty, that it is never taken from his estate and never imposed on inadvertent or compelled damage. It then maps intent and causation: priests who deliberately render a sacrifice piggul and one who deliberately works with the red heifer or its water repay while the unintentional do not, the man who lets his attention drift from the purification water is liable only in the heavenly court, a Jew's libation does not forbid wine that is not his unless he is a partner, an apostate, or warned and defiant, the man who pulls the pillows from under a falling utensil pays as though he broke it by hand while the man who smashes it in mid air over bare ground owes nothing since it was already broken, burning a validated promissory note costs the whole debt only on the burner's own admission, waiving a note already sold or freeing a pledged servant costs the lost collection, and taking a mitzvah by slaughtering a condemned ox or covering another man's blood costs what the judges dictate, some fixing ten gold pieces; it ends on proof, where the victim swears and collects a plausible claim, cannot claim pearls kept in a sack, and collects a thousand with no oath where the damager admits gold he cannot count. Chapter 8 is the moseir: one who merely points out a colleague's property to a man of force pays everything from his finest property and is collected from his heirs, duress excuses showing but never handing over since a person who saves himself with a colleague's money repays, and nothing is owed where the lawless man already possessed the goods, since it is as if they had burned; a man who hands a disputed property to a gentile is placed under a ban until he restores it, a man seized on a colleague's account is reimbursed only for the annual head tax or the king's hospitality gift and only before witnesses, the voluntary informer is granted no oath at all as there is no greater disqualification, informing is forbidden even about a wicked man and costs a portion in the world to come, the moseir may be killed before he informs once warned and defiant though the Rambam writes in his own voice that it appears to him this is forbidden afterward unless informing is his pattern, and his property may not be destroyed since it belongs to his heirs; the treatise then hands its vocabulary forward, exempting the pursuer and the pursued for the pursuer's broken utensils, holding the pursued liable for a stranger's, exempting the rescuer for everything by a Rabbinic ordinance so that nobody weighs the cost while he runs, and closing on the sinking ship whose cargo is a pursuer and whose jettisoning is a great mitzvah. Rotze'ach 1 then sets intentional murder before witnesses at decapitation whatever the instrument, makes the mitzvah of execution the blood redeemer's and the redeemer whoever is fit to inherit, gives the court the case where he is unwilling, unable or absent, including a father who kills his son, and forbids ransom even of all the money in the world and even where the redeemer forgives, since the victim's soul belongs to the Holy One, while forbidding witnesses and onlookers to execute a willful murderer before he stands before the congregation in judgment; it then inverts on the word already, commanding every Jew to stop a pursuer even at the cost of his life and even a minor, requiring a limb rather than a life wherever aim allows, treating a fetus endangering its mother as a pursuer until the head emerges, extending the law to pursuit for rape which Scripture equates with murder, refusing preemptive force against one headed for Shabbat desecration or idolatry, stopping once the act has begun, declining to heed the pursued woman's own plea, and naming the rescuer who could have maimed and killed instead a shedder of blood liable for death whom the court does not execute; it closes on the second half of its title, that whoever can save a life and does not transgresses the prohibition against standing idly by, in cases from drowning and robbers to hiring others, passing on a warning about a conspiracy and appeasing an aggressor, with the bystander at a pursuit breaking three commandments at once, no lashes given since no deed was performed, and one soul destroyed counted as a world destroyed and one soul saved as a world saved.