WEEKLY DAFootnotes #46
Bava Batra 79-85; Issue #46
28 Sivan - 4 Tamuz, 5762 / June 8-14, 2002
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DATE PALM AND CEDAR
The tzaddik (righteous Jew) is compared by David Hamelech to both the date palm tree and to the cedar. "The tzaddik will blossom like a date palm tree and flourish like a cedar." (Tehillim 92:13)
Each of these trees has its own special quality which is missing in the other, explains Rabbi Chiya bar Lulayni. The palm tree yields fruit whereas the cedar does not. The cedar, on the other hand, grows back after it is cut down while the palm tree does not. The tzaddik has both of the qualities with neither of the shortcomings. He yields fruits and returns to life after being cut down.
Rashbam's explanation is that the tzaddik is like the palm tree in that he not only gains a reward for his righteousness in this world but that it also yields a fruitful reward for him in the World to Come. He is like the cedar in that he is blessed with a son like himself who perpetuates him after he is gone and in that he bounces back even after a setback.
Maharsha applies both metaphors of palm and cedar to the reward of the tzaddik. He cites a gemara (Mesechta Kiddushin 39a) which states that a tzaddik enjoys the fruits of reward for his good deeds in this world and its principle remains intact for the World to Come. The palm represents the fruit he enjoys here while the cedar symbolizes the reward in store for him in his renewed life above.
The cedar, he also suggests, is not only symbolic of perpetuation through offspring and bouncing back from setback as the Rashbam explained but also of a much more important sort of resurgence after being cut down. It is a symbol of the afterlife which the tzaddik will enjoy after he is cut off from his earthly existence.
Bava Batra 80b
GETTING A BARGAIN
"Bad, bad, says the buyer, and then goes away and boasts of his purchase." (Mishlei 20:14)
Like so much of the Book of Mishlei this is a proverb regarding the acquisition of Torah wisdom based on experience in daily life. When a consumer is negotiating the price of an item he wishes to acquire, it is common strategy to point out to the seller all the "bad" features of that item in order to justify paying less for it than the seller demanded. Only after he succeeds in thus lowering the price does he go away and boast how he is clever enough to buy bargains.
This is comparable, writes Metsudot in his commentary on Mishlei, to the Jew who acquires Torah wisdom at great expense of physical and economic sacrifice. At the time he may also have a sense of paying too high a price for his acquisition. Eventually, however, he will be proud of the suffering he endured because of his realization that his reward will be relative to his pain.
This comforting thought of the wisest of man, King Solomon, is preceded by his warning to shun the excessive sleeping and eating which are obstacles to learning Torah.
In our gemara this passage is cited as a possible rationalization for granting a purchaser the unilateral right to back out of a transaction in which he was promised good quality wheat and received wheat of poor quality. The Mishneh states that in such a case the buyer has the option of backing out, but the seller does not even if he wishes to do so because the price of even poor quality wheat has risen beyond the price he received.
Since it is the way of buyers to deprecate the item they wish to acquire it was suggested by our gemara that this is the reason why the buyer in our case of poor quality wheat can refute the seller's claim to a right for backing out because he failed to deliver the promised merchandise. He can claim that he really never expected to receive good quality because he was negotiating on the basis that it was poor quality to begin with. In actuality, however, the reason why he enjoys this unilateral privilege is because he was the one who was the victim of deception and not the seller.
Bava Batra 84a
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