Wimpfheimer_ Is it not so.pdf

54 ❙ Barry Wimpfheimer
Rava said: A teacher of children, (a gardener), a butcher, a cupper, and
a town scribeÐall [if they lend something] while at work constitute a
loan in the owner's presence.
Rava is not merely being coy or staging a scene. Despite his initial playfulness and
the outburst yet to come, there is signi®cant substance in his remark. The terse form
of his legal comment is standard for Talmud, as is the subtlety of his lesson.
A number of innovations emerge from Rava's statement. According to
tannaitic law, ``owner presence'' occurs if the owner is hired either simultaneously
with the animal or prior to its hiring. Rava's groupÐthe teacher, butcher, and so
onÐstretches the law to include laborers who are in constant service.²¹ Their labor
is not contracted discretely; it is under continuous contract. The most radical case of
owner presence in tannaitic sources is one in which owner and animal are both hired
for agricultural purposes but work in di²erent ®elds. Rava's group includes workers
in di²erent industries altogether. Perhaps most signi®cantly, Rava's remark implicates
an entirely new legal concept of employmentÐpublic service.²² For this
group, no individual contract is necessary. The butcher need not be slaughtering my
animal to be considered in my employ; slaughtering anyone's animal renders him or
her in everyone's service.
But Rava's employees are not entirely disadvantaged by his legal innovation
and their status as public servants. Rava's statement limits the exoneration of the
borrower to the time when these servants are actually serving.²³ Unlike tannaitic
law's discretely contracted owner, for whom the exoneration of the borrower knows
no time limits,²⁴ the borrower from the public servant reverts to a position of
liability when the lender is not performing a service role. Whereas the contracted,
discretely hired lender exonerates the borrower even at night, Rava's continuously
employed public servants are only considered in service when they are at work. Rava
nuances the law by treating a new category of employee to a new interpretation on
the notion of exonerationÐan interpretation that is at once more lax and more
stringent. Rava's genius as a legal thinker is evidenced here in his ability to nuance
the interstices of law, expanding the legal scope in moderation.
The combination of Rava's account of intellectual gamesmanship and the
aptness of his lecture elicits a personi®cation of the lecture that is not at all