The Dinar That Went the Wrong Way

The Hook

The fifth chapter of the laws of marriage is about a coin, and it takes twenty nine rulings to establish that almost nothing is a coin. A prutah is the smallest unit of money there is, worth so little that the Rambam keeps allowing that a thing might be worth a prutah in another town, on a better day. That is the entire threshold. Value is not what this chapter is guarding.

What it is guarding is harder to name, and the fastest way to see it is to line up three cases. A man owes a woman a dinar. He pays her, and after she has taken it he says she is consecrated with it, and she says yes out loud, and she is not married, because she merely took what was rightfully hers. A man speaks to the ruling authorities on a woman's behalf and gets the prosecution dropped, worth immeasurably more than a prutah, and she is not married unless he adds a prutah of his own. And then a man of standing takes a dinar from a woman as a present, hands her nothing at all, tells her she is consecrated by the pleasure she received in his having accepted something from her, and she is married. The coin went the wrong way and the kiddushin held.

What a Man Cannot Hand Over

The chapter opens with the objects a man does not own well enough to give. Consecrate a woman with something forbidden to benefit from, milk and meat, chametz on Pesach, and she is not consecrated, and the Rambam extends it even to a Rabbinic prohibition, chametz in the sixth hour on the fourteenth of Nisan. He does not have it. Nobody has it. There is nothing there to transfer.

Then he draws lines finer than they first appear. If a man transgresses and sells such an object and consecrates with the money, the kiddushin are valid, because money is money. One exception: the proceeds of a false deity, since the prohibition attaches to the money exactly as to the thing, and the same holds for dung produced by cows consecrated to it, on the strength of the verse warning that nothing condemned should cling to your hand. But dung from an ox condemned to be stoned is fine and the kiddushin are binding, because the dung is negligible compared to the ox. Two forbidden animals, two different geometries. Sabbatical produce works, and the ashes of the red heifer, and water drawn for sprinkling. Consecrated Temple property splits by knowledge: unknowing, the kiddushin are valid and he owes the treasury the value plus a fifth; knowing, she is not consecrated. Second tithe fails either way, because until he redeems it, it is not his to use, and the verse says of that tithe that it belongs to God.

Then the priestly portions, where the chapter shows its hand. A priest who consecrates with his share of the offerings has done nothing, because he was permitted only to eat them. A mouth, not a title. But the great terumah, the terumah of the tithe and the first fruits do work, and so does a Levite's first tithe and an Israelite's tithe of the poor. Then the sharpest version of the rule. An Israelite who inherited unseparated produce from his maternal grandfather, a priest, may separate the terumah and keep it, and he can consecrate a woman with it though he may not eat it himself, because he has the right to sell it to somebody who may. But an Israelite who separates terumah from his own grain heap cannot, because all he has is the privilege of choosing which priest receives it, and the Rambam says flatly that this privilege is not money.

Hold those two next to each other. In both cases the man is holding terumah he may not eat. In one he can sell it and it is money in his hand. In the other he can only decide who gets it, and the decision, however valuable to the priest he chooses, is not a thing. The theft rulings end the section on the same note. Property he robbed works only if the owner despaired and the despair gave him title. A man who walks into a neighbor's house, picks up food and consecrates with it has done nothing, and the Rambam adds that if the owner turns up and says why did you not take her something better, he says it to spare the man embarrassment.

Everything That Arrives Too Late

The middle of the chapter is a parade of things that would be money except that they have already happened. He tells her she is consecrated with the dinar she owes him, and she is not, and the reason is blunt: a loan is given to be spent, so nothing presently exists for her to derive benefit from. The benefit was collected months ago. There is nothing on the table.

Then the mirror image. He owed her, and he pays. If they were already engaged and he says the words before she takes the money and she takes it in silence, she is consecrated; if they were not engaged she must agree explicitly. But if he speaks after she has accepted the payment, she is not consecrated even if she agrees explicitly, because nothing has been given to her. She took what was rightfully hers, the debt was discharged the moment she closed her hand, and she cannot demand it again. Consent can supply what silence lacks. It cannot supply an object.

The favors go the same way. A man tells a woman she is consecrated in consideration of his speaking to the authorities on her behalf, and he speaks, and they leave her alone, and she is not consecrated unless he gives her a prutah of his own, because the benefit is regarded as a loan. He tells her she is consecrated for work he will do, and he does it, and again she is not consecrated without a prutah of his own, and the Rambam spells out the mechanism: a worker earns his wages continuously, so by the time the work is finished the wages have become a debt she owes him, and one does not consecrate with a debt. Every hour converted itself into a claim as it passed. There is nothing at the end but a bill.

The collateral rulings show the shape by exception. If he lent her money against collateral and consecrates her with the loan while returning the collateral, she is consecrated, because she benefits from the collateral from that moment forward. Something moved. If he consecrates her with the benefit of extending the loan, letting her keep two hundred zuz for a fixed period, that works too, because she is receiving the use of the money now, and the Rambam adds that such a condition is forbidden because it resembles interest, then notes in one of the driest lines in the Mishneh Torah that his teachers explained the phrase benefit of a loan in a way that is not worthy of mention. And silence carries enormous weight here, in one position only. If he speaks first and she takes the money silently and they were engaged, she is consecrated. If he speaks after she has taken the object for some other reason, silence is worth nothing. The same coin, the same wordless woman, and the ruling flips on which came first, the sentence or the transfer.

The Dinar That Travels the Other Way

Then the chapter turns around. A woman tells a man to give a present to a third party and she will be consecrated to him. He gives it, he says the words, and the kiddushin are binding, because although she received nothing she derived benefit from the fact that her will was carried out, and the other man benefited because of her. Something did move, and it moved through her.

Then the case that reorganizes everything before it. A woman tells a man to take a dinar from her as a present, and she will be consecrated to him. He takes it. He gives her nothing. He tells her she is consecrated by virtue of the pleasure she received in his accepting a present from her. If he is an important person, she is consecrated, and the Rambam says why in one sentence: she derives satisfaction from the fact that he has benefited from her, and for the sake of that satisfaction she consecrates herself to him. The satisfaction is the object. It is present, it is hers, and it did not exist a second before he put out his hand.

Everything that failed in this chapter failed for want of a thing existing at the moment of the words. The spent loan is gone. The paid debt is discharged. The finished favor has become a claim. A dinar given on condition that she hand it back is not kiddushin either way, because either the condition fails or she is left holding nothing. The closing rulings play the same note in miniature. Dates handed over one at a time and eaten as they arrive are a loan by the time the last one is in her hand, so only the last date decides; dates given as a set are hers as a set and she may eat every one, because she is eating her own property. A cup of water is valued as cup and contents together, a cup of wine as the cup alone, and a cup of oil as the oil alone, so if the oil is not worth a prutah the kiddushin are in doubt no matter how fine the cup is.

The Unifying Principle

The chapter is not asking what a thing is worth. It is asking whether anything is happening right now.

The Alter Rebbe makes this the hinge of Chassidic practice. In Tanya he insists that the whole purpose is drawn down through action, that a mitzvah has to land in a physical object and a physical moment, and in Iggeret HaKodesh he treats tzedakah as the paradigm precisely because a coin has to leave one hand and enter another. Good intentions accumulate the way a worker's wages accumulate, into a claim on the world, and a claim is not an act. What has already happened cannot be given, no matter how much of it there is.

And then the important person, the most Chassidic ruling in the chapter, sitting in the laws of marriage centuries before anyone called it that. The whole institution of bringing something to a tzaddik runs on this halachah. Nothing comes back, and the giver is unmistakably the beneficiary, because being received by someone whose receiving means something is itself a gift, delivered in the instant, and it cannot be manufactured privately in advance. The Baal Shem Tov taught his students to see the hand of Providence in the smallest exchange, and this is the legal skeleton of that seeing, a transaction whose visible and actual directions are opposite. The Sfat Emet reads the betrothal between God and Israel the same way, as something renewed rather than remembered, which is why the prophet has it spoken in the future tense rather than as a memory of Sinai. A covenant that only already happened would be a spent loan.

Modern Application

Count how much of what you offer people is a spent loan. The favor you did last year. The years you put in. The thing you gave up for them. All of it is real and none of it is transferable, because it converted into a claim as it happened, exactly as the worker's wages did, and a claim is the one thing this chapter refuses to let anybody marry with. When someone says that after everything they have done the other person should feel something, they are consecrating with a loan, and the Rambam already ruled that there is nothing present to benefit from.

Notice too what the chapter does with explicit consent. It cannot rescue a transaction where nothing moved. She can say yes as loudly as she likes and the debt she was repaid is still hers and still not a gift. Much of what passes for agreement in ordinary life is that yes, sincere assent to a transfer that never occurred. And timing rescues nearly everything else: the same words, the same object, the same silence work if the sentence comes before the hand closes and fail if it comes after.

Then take the important person home with you. There are people whose acceptance of what you offer is worth more than anything they could hand back, and people to whom your acceptance is worth exactly that. Letting someone give to you is not a lesser act than giving. Under this halachah it is the act, and the refusal to be given to, which most people mistake for modesty, withholds the one object some relationships have to trade in. And the cup: what is inside a thing decides what the thing is, against appearances, in a direction nobody standing there would guess.

The Closing

This chapter falls on the nineteenth of Elul, the day after Chai Elul, in a month whose entire business is an accounting. Ishut 5 is an unusually stern accountant. It goes through the pile and sets aside what is not really yours, what you already spent, what turned into a claim while you were performing it, and what you can only pass along rather than give.

What survives the audit is smaller than anyone hopes and closer than anyone expects. A prutah. The smallest coin there is, worth so little that its value is in doubt from one town to the next, and it is enough, and nothing larger will substitute for it if it is not present at the moment of the words.

The chapter that spends twenty nine rulings proving hardly anything counts as money ends by counting the pleasure a woman takes in a man of standing accepting a coin from her hand. Nothing came back and she is married. Stop offering people what you already spent on them, find the one small thing that can actually change hands this morning, and if what someone needs is to be allowed to give, take it.