Unit 7 · Fair and Kind: Talmud in Everyday Life

The Mishnah is the older, shorter part of the Talmud. Rabbinic tradition says Rabbi Judah the Prince arranged it, around 200 CE. It has six big parts called orders. One order is called Nezikin. The word means ’damages.’ It is about harm, money, courts and fairness.

Three of its tractates are called gates. A tractate is one book of the Mishnah. Bava Kamma is ’the first gate.’ Bava Metzia is ’the middle gate.’ Bava Batra is ’the last gate.’ Long ago they were one very long book. Later they were split into three parts.

Bava Metzia is about everyday things. What do you do with a lost wallet? What is a fair price? When do you pay a worker? The Gemara, the later discussion, asks questions about each rule. This chapter follows those questions.

The first Mishnah of Bava Metzia is short. Two people are holding one tallit, a cloak or coat. One says, "I found it." The other says, "I found it." Each one says the whole thing is theirs. The Mishnah rules that each one takes an oath. Each swears they own no less than half. Then they divide it.

Why an oath? The Gemara asks this right away. It gives an answer. If people could just grab and claim, some would grab what is not theirs. A serious promise makes a person stop and think. The Gemara then asks more questions. What if one says it is all his, and the other says only half is his? The Mishnah has an answer for that too.

Readers of the Talmud love this opening. Rashi, a teacher in France about 1,000 years ago, explains each word. Later rabbis wrote whole books on this one page. For the course, notice two things. The rule protects both people. And the rabbis keep asking ’but what if?’ That is the way the whole Talmud moves.

The rules about lost things start in the Torah. In Deuteronomy, the fifth book, there is a command. If you see your neighbor’s ox or sheep wandering, do not look away. Bring it back. The same goes for a coat or anything lost. Jewish tradition calls this hashavat aveidah, returning a lost object.

The second chapter of Bava Metzia takes that verse and asks questions. What counts as lost? What if you do not know whose it is? What if it is a live animal that needs feeding? Do you have to pick up something dirty? The rabbis answer each one. The verse says ’do not hide yourself.’ So a person may not pretend they did not see.

The Gemara also protects the finder. If returning a thing would cost the finder more than it is worth, the rules change. An old, honored person is not made to carry a heavy sack through the street. The law asks for kindness, but it is a fair kind of kindness.

How can a finder know who lost a thing? The Mishnah’s answer is the siman, a sign. A sign is a mark that only the owner would know. A purse with coins in it has a sign. The owner can say how many coins, or what the purse looks like. Fruit in a basket has a sign: the basket.

Some things have no sign. The Mishnah lists them. Scattered coins in the street. Scattered fruit on the road. A baker’s loaves, which all look the same. Loose bundles of grain. No one could prove such a thing was theirs. So the Mishnah says the finder may keep it.

When a thing has a sign, the finder must announce it. In Temple times there was a special stone in Jerusalem. Finders stood on it and called out what they found. Someone who lost a thing came and gave the sign. If the sign matched, they got it back. The Mishnah says the loser gives the sign. The finder does not tell it first.

The rabbis had a word for giving up: ye'ush. Say a coin falls into a river. The owner sighs and says, ’It is gone.’ Rabbinic tradition holds that the owner has let it go. A finder who pulls it out later may keep it. The owner gave up hope, so the coin is no longer theirs.

Now comes a harder case. What if the owner does not even know the thing is lost yet? Two famous teachers argued about it. They were Abaye and Rava, who lived in Babylonia around 300 to 350 CE. Abaye said: no. The owner has not given up, because they do not know. Rava said: the owner would give up if they knew. So it counts already.

The Gemara records both views. Later tradition follows Abaye here. This is one of only six cases where the law follows Abaye over Rava. But the point for us is the way the argument goes. Each side brings proofs. Each side answers the other. Both voices stay on the page.

Long before there were price tags, people bought by weight. A seller put a stone on one side of a scale. Grain or oil went on the other side. A cheating seller could use a light stone or a bent scale. The Torah speaks to this. Leviticus says to keep honest scales, honest weights and honest measures.

The Mishnah turns the verse into daily rules. In Bava Batra, the last gate, it says a seller must clean their measures. Sticky oil or wet flour can stick to a cup. Then the buyer gets less. So a wholesaler cleans the measures once a month. A shopkeeper cleans them twice a week. The scale is wiped after every weighing.

The Gemara adds a strong warning. It says a person may not even keep a false weight in the house. Not to use it, just to have it. Why? A false weight is a temptation. Jewish tradition reads this as a rule about trust. If buyers cannot trust the scale, the whole market breaks.

Sellers set prices. But the Mishnah says there is a limit. Charging much more than a thing is worth is called ona'ah. The word means ’wronging’ or ’overreaching.’ The Torah says in Leviticus, ’You shall not wrong one another.’ Rabbinic tradition reads that as a rule about prices.

How much is too much? The Mishnah gives a number. If the price is off by one-sixth, that is ona’ah. The Mishnah uses coins of its day. A sela was worth 24 small coins called ma’ah. Four ma’ah over on a sela is one-sixth. At that point the buyer may ask for the extra back. If it is even more, the buyer may cancel the sale.

The rule cuts both ways. A buyer who pays far too little has wronged the seller. The Mishnah protects the person who did not know the price. Historians point out that markets in the Roman world often had no fixed prices. So this was a real protection. It gave a shopper a way to complain.

The same Mishnah chapter takes a surprising turn. After prices, it talks about words. Just as there is ona’ah in buying and selling, it says, there is ona’ah in words. The Mishnah gives examples. Do not ask a seller ’how much is this?’ if you have no plan to buy. That raises a hope and drops it.

The Mishnah goes on. If a person has changed their ways, do not say, ’Remember what you used to do.’ If someone joined the Jewish people from another family, do not bring up their past. Those words hurt. The Gemara adds that shaming a person in public is very serious. It compares the face going pale to a kind of bloodshed.

Then the Gemara compares the two kinds of wronging. Which is worse, money or words? It says words are worse. Why? Money can be given back. A hurtful word cannot be taken back. The Talmud does not just care about fair prices. It cares about a person’s dignity, their sense of worth.

Many people in the time of the Mishnah worked by the day. A farmer hired helpers for the harvest. A builder hired carriers. Such a worker needed the money that night to buy food. The Torah knew this. Deuteronomy says: pay him the same day, before the sun goes down, for he is poor and counts on it.

The Mishnah in Bava Metzia makes it exact. A worker hired for the day is paid any time that night. A worker hired for the night is paid any time the next day. A worker hired by the week or the month is paid when the job ends. If the employer holds back pay past that time, the Mishnah says he breaks a Torah rule.

The Mishnah also protects the employer, the person who hires. If the worker never asked for pay, the employer has not broken the rule. If the employer handed the pay to a shopkeeper to give the worker, he is not to blame. The rule is not meant to trap anyone. It is meant to get a poor worker fed tonight.

The Gemara tells a story. A man named Rabbah bar bar Chanan hired porters to move barrels of wine. They dropped the barrels, and the wine spilled. He was angry. He took their cloaks as payment for the loss. The porters went to Rav, the great teacher of Babylonia. Rav told the man: give back the cloaks.

The man asked, ’Is that the law?’ Rav quoted a verse from Proverbs: ’that you may walk in the way of good men.’ He gave back the cloaks. Then the porters said, ’We are poor. We worked all day. We have nothing to eat.’ Rav said: pay them their wages. The man asked again, ’Is that the law?’ Rav quoted the rest of the verse: ’and keep the paths of the righteous.’

Readers have argued about this story for centuries. Some say Rav found a real rule here. Others say Rav was asking a scholar to go beyond the rule. Jewish tradition has a name for that: lifnim mishurat hadin, inside the line of the law. This chapter began with an argument over a coat. It ends with mercy for hungry workers. The Talmud holds both.

In English, giving to the poor is called charity. The word comes from a Latin word for love. The Hebrew word is different. Tzedakah comes from tzedek, which means justice. In Jewish tradition, giving to the poor is not only a kind feeling. It is something the poor are owed. It is a matter of fairness.

The Torah sets this up. In Leviticus, a farmer must leave the corners of the field for the poor. That is called pe'ah, the corner. Dropped grain stays on the ground for them too. In Deuteronomy, a person must ’open your hand’ to a poor neighbor. The Mishnah has a whole tractate called Pe’ah about these rules.

The Mishnah’s first lines in Pe’ah are famous. They list things that have no set limit. One is the corner of the field. Another is acts of kindness. Another is study of Torah. Jewish readers have taken this to mean that giving has no top. There is a least amount, the rabbis said, but no most.

Who has to give? The Gemara in tractate Gittin gives a surprising answer. Even a poor person who is fed by tzedakah must give tzedakah. Why? Because giving is part of being a person, not a thing only rich people do. A small gift from a poor person counts fully. This is a well-known teaching in Jewish life today.

How much? Jewish custom, based on the Torah’s tithe, is about a tenth of what you earn. The rabbis also set a top. At a meeting in a town called Usha, about 1,900 years ago, they ruled that a person should not give away more than a fifth. The reason is kind: a person who gives too much may become poor too.

Rabbinic tradition also cares how you give. The Gemara says the poor person’s face matters. If someone gives with a sour look, the gift loses its worth. A kind word with the gift counts as much as the gift. Some Jewish readers today say this is the heart of tzedakah: the dignity of the one who receives.

The Mishnah describes a room in the Temple in Jerusalem. It was called the chamber of secrets. People who wanted to give slipped money in with no one watching. Poor people from good families took money out the same way. No one saw who gave. No one saw who took. Nobody had to feel shame.

The Gemara tells a story about a rabbi named Mar Ukva. Every day he dropped coins by a poor man’s door and hurried away. One day the poor man decided to see who it was. He waited by the door. Mar Ukva and his wife saw him coming and ran. They hid in a hot oven so the man would not see them. Mar Ukva chose burnt feet over shaming a neighbor.

About 800 years ago, a Jewish scholar named Maimonides wrote a ladder of giving. It has eight steps. Near the top is giving where neither person knows the other. At the very top is helping a person so they no longer need help at all: a loan, a job, a business partner. Jewish groups still teach this ladder.

In Genesis, Abraham is sitting at his tent door on a hot day. Three strangers appear. He runs to them. He bows. He brings water for their feet. He asks Sarah to bake. He serves the meal himself and stands while they eat. Readers of the Torah have long seen Abraham as the model of hospitality, welcoming guests.

The Gemara in tractate Shabbat makes a bold claim from this story. Rav Yehuda said in the name of Rav: welcoming guests is greater than receiving the Shekhinah, the Divine Presence. How does he know? In the story, Abraham seems to be speaking with God when the strangers appear. Yet he turns to greet them first.

This teaching is written on the walls of many Jewish homes and schools. In Pirkei Avot, a sage says, ’Let your house be open wide, and let the poor be members of your household.’ Jewish families of many kinds, Orthodox, Conservative and Reform, invite guests to Shabbat meals. Many say this page of Talmud is why.

The Gemara in tractate Nedarim tells a story about Rabbi Akiva. One of his students got sick. No one went to see him. Rabbi Akiva went himself. He swept the floor and tidied the room. The student said, ’Rabbi, you have brought me back to life.’ Rabbi Akiva then taught: whoever does not visit the sick, it is as if he sheds blood.

The same page has a saying from Rabbi Acha bar Chanina. Each person who visits takes away one-sixtieth of the illness. Others asked: then sixty visitors would cure anyone? The Gemara answers: only if each one cares as much as the sick person cares. The point is not magic. The point is that visits help.

Why is this a duty? The Gemara in Sotah gives a reason. It says God visited Abraham when he was healing. So people should visit the sick too. Jewish tradition calls this bikkur cholim, visiting the sick. Many synagogues in Chicago and everywhere have a bikkur cholim group that visits hospitals.

The Gemara in Sukkah compares two things. One is tzedakah, giving money. The other is gemilut chasadim, acts of kindness. Rabbi Elazar says kindness is greater in three ways. Money helps only the poor; kindness helps rich and poor. Money uses only your hand; kindness uses your whole self. Money helps only the living; kindness can honor the dead.

The Talmud also asks who is owed this care. In tractate Gittin, the rabbis rule that Jews support the poor of other peoples along with the poor of the Jewish people. They visit the sick of other peoples. They bury the dead of other peoples. The reason given is darkhei shalom, the ways of peace.

Readers today differ on how far these words reach. Some see them as a practical rule for living side by side. Others see them as a full call to care for every person. The course does not settle that. But notice the move: a rule made for one group is opened to the stranger. The two threads of this course, argument and mercy, meet here.

Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest, from Friday sunset to Saturday night. Jewish tradition holds that the Torah forbids work on that day. The Mishnah lists 39 kinds of work. Digging, carrying and lighting a fire are on the list. So what happens if a wall falls on someone on Shabbat?

The Mishnah in tractate Yoma answers. If rubble falls on a person, you clear it away. Even if you are not sure anyone is under it. Even if you are not sure the person is alive. You keep digging until you know. The rabbis called this pikuach nefesh, saving a life. It sets aside almost every other rule.

The Gemara asks: how do we know? Several rabbis give proofs. Rabbi Shimon ben Menasya says, break one Shabbat for him, so he can keep many Shabbatot. Shmuel gives a verse from Leviticus: the rules are given so that a person ’shall live by them.’ He adds: and not die by them. The Gemara says Shmuel’s proof is the strongest.

The Mishnah in tractate Sanhedrin describes a courtroom. A person is on trial for their life. Before the witnesses speak, the judges warn them. A mistake here cannot be undone. Then the judges explain why one life matters so much. The first human, they say, was created alone.

From that, the Mishnah draws a lesson. Whoever destroys a single life is counted as if they destroyed a whole world. Whoever saves a single life is counted as if they saved a whole world. The Mishnah adds another reason. Since all people come from one person, no one can say, ’My father was greater than yours.’

This line is quoted all over the world today. It is carved on memorials. It appears in films. Scholars note that old handwritten copies say ’a single life.’ Some later printed copies say ’a single life of Israel.’ Most historians think the shorter words are older. Either way, Jewish readers have used this Mishnah to teach that every person is a world.

The Mishnah in Yoma gives more cases. On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jewish tradition holds that adults fast all day. But a sick person who needs food is fed. A pregnant woman who smells food and feels faint is fed. The Mishnah says to listen to doctors. If the sick person says they need food, they are fed even if the doctors disagree.

Are there limits? The Gemara says yes, a very short list. In Sanhedrin, the rabbis say a person may not kill another to save their own life. The Gemara asks a sharp question: who says your blood is redder than his? Later rabbis count only three rules that may never be broken, even to live. Every other rule gives way to life.

Today, Jewish doctors, nurses and volunteer ambulance drivers in many cities answer calls on Shabbat. Orthodox, Conservative and Reform rabbis all teach that this is right. They point to Yoma 85. Rabbinic tradition turned a feeling, mercy, into a rule you can follow at 8 a.m. on a Saturday. That is what this unit has been about.