Weekly DAFootnotes
Bava Metzia 23-29
Issue #21
30 Kislev – 6 Tevet 5762 / 15-21 Dec. 2001 
By Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, Dean, Ohr Somayach Institutions
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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

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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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