Weekly DAFootnotes Bava Kama 79-85 Issue #12 Week of 27 Tishrei-3 Cheshvan 5762 / October 14-20, 2001 By Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, Dean, Ohr Somayach Institutions ===================================== BURGLARS AND ROBBERS The penalty of double payment which the Torah assigned to the “ganav” - burglar - does not apply to the “gazlan” - robber. Our Sages explain that the sneak-thief’s crime is graver because he demonstrates that he is more afraid of man than he is of Hashem. What is an example, they ask, of the gazlan who robs his victim in broad daylight and equates his lack of fear of Heaven with his lack of fear of man? Rabbi Yochanan cites the example of the people of Shechem who are described (Shoftim 9:25) as setting ambushes on the mountain tops and robbing everyone who passed before them. To understand who these robbers of Shechem were, we must return to the era of the shoftim - judges and leaders - who ruled Israel before there was a king. One of the Shoftim, Gideon, had 70 sons from his wives, and a son, Avimelech, from his concubine in the city of Shechem. After his death, Avimelech gained the support of his mother’s family and townsmen in Shechem in murdering all of his brothers and establishing himself as the ruler of Shechem and all of Israel. After three years of his rule, Hashem punished both Avimelech and his Shechemite conspirators by creating dissention between them. The people of Shechem turned against Avimelech and lay in ambush to slay him. These ambushes soon turned into instruments of robbery of anyone who passed by on the highway. Rabbi Yochanan’s example of the Shechemite robbers is challenged by Rabbi Avahu: If the people of Shechem had to hide in their places of ambush, he argued, it is an indication that they feared to be seen in the open and therefore can not come under the title of gazlan, the fearless daylight robber. Equal to the challenge, Rabbi Yochanan responded that the Shechemites were indeed fearless robbers; their reason for hiding in ambush was to avoid being seen in advance by their intended victims and causing them to flee. This same Rabbi Yochanan is quoted as ruling elsewhere that an armed robber is considered a ganav despite his daylight action because he subsequently hides himself in fear of being caught, in contrast to the fearless gazlan. This sort of hiding, Tosefot points out, would have also forced us to place the Shechemites in the category of ganav if not for Rabbi Yochanan’s rejoinder that their concealment was not out of fear of capture but out of concern that the victim would escape. Bava Kama 79b ===================================== CELEBRATION OR CONDOLENCE? When the Prophet Yeshayahu foresaw the miraculous manner in which Jews would all eventually return to Eretz Yisrael, he compared it to the situation of a woman in childbirth: “Before the pains of birth come, she will release a male child” (66:7). This is an analogy to the return of Jews to their land, barren of them for so many years, now virtually giving birth to them without pain because the nations of the world will bring them back to her. What does this passage have to do with the custom of Jews of Ashkenazi origin to make a shalom zachar party the Shabbat eve preceding the brit milah (circumcision) of a boy? The answer lies in our gemara’s account of an event involving the Sages Rav, Shmuel and Rabbi Asi who came together to a celebration called “yeshua haben.” Rashi explains this as a feast celebrating the redemption (yeshua) of the first born son (haben). Tosefot, however, cites Rabbeinu Tam who understands this term as a reference to the celebration made upon the birth of a son. He translates “yeshua” not as redemption but as release, a reference to the release mentioned in the above prophecy of Yeshaya - a release of the child from the womb of his mother. Exactly when this celebration takes place is not mentioned in Tosefot. Rabbi Moshe Isserlis (Rema) in Shulchan Aruch, Yore Deah (265:12), cites the opinion of the Terumat Hadeshen (269) that the celebration takes place “on the Shabbat eve after the birth of a son, when people come to visit the home of the newborn.” This is what is called a “shalom zachar.” Several reasons are offered for the choice of this particular evening. The Terumat Hadeshen writes that this is the evening when all people are home and capable of making the visit. In the midrash there is an approach that circumcision is comparable to offering a sacrifice, and no sacrifice, an actual animal one or a virtual human one, can be considered fit as an offering to Hashem before experiencing the sanctity of one Shabbat. Then, too, there is the explanation of the Drisha that the visit to the home of the newborn is actually a condolence call to console the baby who mourns for the Torah knowledge he forgot. This last explanation, based on a gemara (Mesechta Niddah 30b) which states that while yet in his mother’s womb the baby is taught the entire Torah, and just as he enters the world an angel touches his mouth and causes him to forget it all, may serve as a response to the challenge presented to this entire concept of shalom zachar. Rabbi Yechezkel Landau, the rabbi of Prague and author of Responsa Noda Biyehuda, argues that this cannot be a celebration of the safe birth of the child as understood by Terumat Hadeshen, because we should then make a similar celebration for the birth of a girl. He therefore leans towards explaining the “yeshua haben” in our gemara as the celebration (known in Sephardic circles as “brit Yitzchak”) on the night before the brit milah. But if we accept the aforementioned explanation regarding the condolences for loss of Torah, we can easily distinguish between the son who is obligated to study Torah and the daughter who is not. Bava Kama 80a ===================================== If you like this e-mail please share it with a friend. ===================================== To subscribe to this list please e-mail DafYomi-subscribe@ohr.edu To unsubscribe e-mail DafYomi-unsubscribe@ohr.edu ===================================== (C) 2001 Ohr Somayach International - All rights reserved.