Wimpfheimer_ Is it not so.pdf

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Toward a Poetics of Legal Narrative in the Talmud ❙ 77 Bava Batra 22a, ¼iddushei haRitva, Beit habeirah, Talmid haRashba, second position found in Nimmukei Yosef, R. Yesha¦yah Aaron); barber/bloodletter (Rabbenu ¼anan¥el [Arabic term ajam]). 14 For scholars as students in this context, see S. Friedman, Perush, 273, no. 39. 15 MSS Vatican ebr. 117 and Cremona ebr. T. IV 10 change the ®gure of this subsequent discussion to Rav Ashi. Behag Berlin reads Rav. See no. 6 above for explanation of the orthographic shift. 16 The English term ``service'' does not capture the double entendre of the Aramaic term she¥il with its inherent linguistic replication of askingÐas they are doing, and borrowingÐwhich they are claiming. 17 MS Florence II I 8 reads iykhpar (it is forgiven); this is probably an orthographic shift. 18 This is the original text. MSS Vatican ebr. 115 and 117 attest the adding of deshatta (of the year) to parallel the earlier dekalla (of Kallah). MSS Hamburg 165 and Cremona ebr. T. IV 10 witness the translation of this term to Hebrew from Aramaic and the stylized addition of kol (all) which Cremona has in the margins and Hamburg in the text. 19 Shamma Friedman has suggested to me that the language hai man deba¦i is magical language, here being used for a halakhic purpose. See Berakhot 6a and Bava Metsi¦a 84a for examples of this term in magical usage. See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961), 128±30, and n. 24 there; Moshe Benovitz, Masekhet berakhot min hatalmud habavli (forthcoming), sugya 13, perush 15. 20 Perushei R. Yonatan Milunel (Jerusalem, 1975), Bava Metsi¦a p. 38, downplays the ad absurdum element of this story by drawing signi®cance from the speci®cs of the case. R. Yonatan limits such a case to one in which the object being borrowed is the one that the borrower asks the lender for assistance with (this seems to be the original meaning of the biblical verse as well). In this case, the borrowed item is the pitcher, and the borrower asks for the use of the pitcher and its pourer. Rambam, She¥elah u®kkadon 2:1, adopts the simpler reading that this text is ad absurdum. 21 In this interpretation of Rava's ruling, I am consciously assuming a double innovationÐan extension of the exception and a limitation on the same. Others have chosen to credit Rava with only one of these or with di²erent innovations entirely. 22 Among medieval commentaries, the notion of public service as a category is ®rst mentioned by Rabbenu ¼anan¥el, and then reiterated by Nimmukei Yosef and
78 ❙ Barry Wimpfheimer Rabbenu Barukh, Shittat hakadmonim ¦al shalosh bavot, M. Y. Blau, ed. (New York: Blau, 1982), 239. ¼iddushei haRan nuances the notion by claiming that these individuals have special standing because the public pays them. 23 This notion has been the subject of medieval debate. Rashi and Rambam take this to mean the speci®c performance of duty on behalf of the borrower. This view is adopted by R. Yitsak ben Sheshet (Rivash), R. Yesha¦yah Aaron, and ¼iddushei haRitva. Ra¥bad focuses on the ``time of work'' and limits liability to working hours as opposed to meals or sleeping hours. This view is found already in Rabbenu ¼anan¥el, but is promulgated in Ra¥bad's name by ¼iddushei haRan, Rabbenu Meshulam, R. Asher, Nimmukei Yosef, and Beit habeirah, Bava Metsi¦a (Jerusalem, Mekitsei Nirdamim, 1963), 353. Beit habeirah mysteriously joins Rashi to Ra¥bad's position, though this is nowhere evident. 24 In the words of S. Horovitz and I. A. Rabin, eds., Mekhilta derabbi Yishmael (Jerusalem: Wahrman, 1970), 306 (also BT Bava Metsi¦a 95b): ``Once it leaves the possession of the lender to the borrower even for a moment, with its owner [he or she is] not liable, without its owner [he or she is] liable.'' 25 Rabbenu Barukh, 239, keeps salary relevant by changing the law in cases of compensation. By assuming that Rava must be unpaid he is able to contend with the shocking about-face of Rava's response. 26 The names Rabbah and Rava both originate from the conjunction of Rav Abba. The distinction between the two is a convention of scribes and is frequently inexact. In this case, all extant manuscripts have Rava while the print editions based on Soncino editio princeps read Rabbah. See Shamma Friedman, ``Ketiv hashemot `Rabbah' u`Rava' batalmud habavli,'' Sinai 110 (June 1992): 140±64, on the interchangeability of these names when not cited in generational context. The intertext is signi®cant here regardless of whether the ®gure in the intertext is Rabbah the teacher or Rava the student. 27 Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard Dov Cooperman (New York: New York University Press, 1992), 208, writing about Sabbateanism and Hasidism says, ``The chief exponents of both movements were members of the secondary intelligentsia: preachers, scholars supported by others, ritual slaughterers, and teachers.'' This list has considerable overlap with our own! 28 This notion of knowledge as power is informed by the work of Michel Foucault. 29 The medieval commentators are also struck by the image of teachers needing students. In the language of Rivash Responsum no. 436: ``just as the students need the teacher, the teacher needs the students.'' Other commentators struggle with the
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