WEEKLY DAFootnotes #21
Bava Metzia 23-29; Issue #21
30 Kislev - 6 Tevet 5762 / 15-21 Dec. 2001
FINDERS OR KEEPERS
A Jew's responsibility to return a lost object to its owner is sometimes complicated by not knowing who that owner is. In such case the Torah instructs the finder to hold on to the object "until your brother claims it and then you shall return it." (Devarim 22:2)
Simply read, the word "drosh" (claims) refers to the owner asking for the return of his lost object. But this cannot be the intent of this passage, for it is self-understood that one cannot return a lost object before someone claims it. This led our Sages to interpret the word "drosh" in a different way. It means, they concluded, to investigate. The finder has an obligation to investigate the person making the claim to ascertain that he is not a swindler making a false claim on the item. Only if the claimant can produce witnesses that he is the owner, or if he can provide "simanim" - positively identifying characteristics - of the lost object, may it be returned to him.
Tosefot presents a challenge to this conclusion from a later mishna (28b) based on this very same passage, which interprets the investigation of the claimant in an apparently different manner. Investigate your brother, says the mishna, to determine whether he is a swindler, and if you decide that he is such, you must not return the lost object even if he provides positively identifying characteristics regarding it. This seems to be in conflict with out gemara that such identification is sufficient to substantiate a claim.
One resolution offered by Tosefot is that the real meaning of the passage is that any claimant is believed when he provides simanim. The later mishna is referring to a special decree which the Sages instituted when they saw that swindling in regard to claiming lost objects became rampant. They required that a claimant had to first produce witnesses who could testify that he was an honest man. As a Torah hint to their decree they read into the above passage the need to investigate whether the claimant is a swindler, and only after his honesty has been established can he be trusted to provide simanim and regain what he lost.
Bava Metzia 27b
ENOUGH FOR EVERYONE
"Like the feast of King Solomon in his day" is how our Sages (Bava Metzia 83a) describe an exceptional meal.
How numerous were the guests at his royal table and how did this massive hospitality affect the national economy?
The answer to the first question can be found by calculating how many people can be fed by what is described in Melachim I 5:2-3 as the amount of flour, animals and fowl which were the daily requirements of the table of this very wealthy king. The great Biblical commentator, Rabbi Yitzchak Abarbanel, came to the conclusion that there were 60,000 people each day at the royal table!
As to the effect on the national economy of supporting so massive a royal retinue, the answer is provided by the passage (ibid. 4:20) immediately preceding the above account. In our gemara this passage which speaks of "Yehuda and Yisrael as numerous as the sand by the sea, eating, drinking and rejoicing," is cited as evidence of the large Jewish population in Eretz Yisrael during the period of the first Beit Hamikdash, in contrast to the much smaller number in the period of the second one. Its connection to the following passages is pointed out by another great commentator, Rabbi Meir Leibush Malbim. Jews in Eretz Yisrael during that period were so great in number and so blessed by Heaven with prosperity that they were capable of supporting such a large royal table and still have plenty for themselves to eat, drink and rejoice with.
Bava Metzia 28a
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