Bava Basra 67 - 71 - Issue #46
18 - 24 Teves 5755 / 21 - 27 December 1994

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This publication is also available in the following formats: Explanation of these symbols

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The Mind of the Kind

The Case:	Reuven made a deathbed gift of a house to Shimon. He described this house as being large enough to contain 100 barrels. When the executors of his will measured the house they found that it was large enough to contain 120 barrels.
The Question:	Do we award Shimon the entire house or only that portion (5/6) of it which is the area required for 100 barrels?
TheRuling:	Rabbi Ashi argued in favor of giving Shimon only the area required for 100 barrels. But he was overruled by the Sage Mar Zutra on the basis of a law found in the Mishnah. When one sells a field the purchaser does not acquire items such as a cistern or aviary which are installed in the field but are not an integral part of it. When he presents a field as a gift, however, even these items are included because we assume that one who gives something away does so in a generous spirit and intends to include them as well. In similar fashion, he concludes, we assume that Reuven intended to give Shimon the entire house but was unaware of its exact measurements and only mentioned the figure of 100 barrels to stress that he was giving a major gift.

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One of the kinyanim - symbolic expressions of acquired ownership - which make a transaction of land irrevocable is chazaka - making some physical improvement in the acquired property. Does each property purchased require a separate chazaka?

If the two properties are of a diverse nature, such as a quarry for extracting sand and a riverbed for finding precious metals, a separate chazaka is required for each. But if one purchases ten fields for agricultural purposes he acquires all of them by making a chazaka on just one of them even if they are all in different parts of the world. The explanation for this rule finds expression in an oft-repeated Talmudic dictum:

"All parts of the world are connected to each other."

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General Editor: Rabbi Moshe Newman
Production Design: Lev Seltzer
HTML Design: Eli Ballon, Michael Treblow

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