We continue yesterday's learning about a new principle and its applications. The rabbis consider an entity that has not yet come into the world. For example, the fruit that will grow on fruit trees or the earnings that one will collect in the coming months and years. The rabbis share their different thoughts about whether or not a woman can make a vow that would exclude her husband from benefiting from the work done with her hands - vowing that her hands are sanctified.
They also consider contracts based on this approach. How should we understand the sale of a field that is not yet harvested, for example. One example shows Rabbi Yannai separating tithes from his own garden just in case the fruit plate that regularly arrives before Shabbat should in fact show up on Shabbat itself. This action allows him and his family to have access to the fruit plate on Shabbat.
The Gemara shares other transfers of the acquisition of entities not yet in the world. Rav Nachman Bar Yitzchak suggests that if a man writes a note to a slave saying, "When I acquire you (as a slave) you are acquired by yourself". Thus before the ownership is enacted, before the entity is in the world, ownership is transferred.
Rav Sheshet speaks to a case where a yevama marries her yavam with one witness claiming that her first husband has died. Interestingly the conversation for the first time turns to the yevama's potential feelings for her yavam. What if she loves him? And, as our notes elaborate, what if she hates him? Though our rabbis focus on the halachic implications on future children and on the credibility of witnesses, I find the emotional component more captivating. The rabbis want to understand the emotional connection between the yevama and her yevam in order to understand her motivations and whether or not her decisions are to be trusted. But for a beginner Talmud student, it is thrilling to find attention paid to a woman's feelings - whatever the motivation.
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