Bava Metzia 104: Clarifying into Common Language; Unusual Cases

We just completed a Mishna teaching about the responsibility of the cultivator when his rented, irrigated field dries up or when the trees on his rented land are cut down.   The Gemara wonders why the renter is completely responsible for this change.  In fact, we learn that the Jerusalem Talmud questions whether this must be referring to a stream that is still available if the cultivator digs deeper into the earth.  

We are introduced to another new Mishna.  It teaches that a person who rents a field and leaves it fallow does not get let off the hook.  The field is appraised and the renter pays the landlord half of what the field would have produced if cultivated.  Rabbi Meir translates this into 'common language' and teaches that the landlord is paid with superior-quality produce.

Other rabbis' wisdom is shared when they have translated baraitot into 'common language'.  Rabbi Yehuda teaches that a rich husband must pay for his wife's offerings after having given birth.  This is done in accordance with his wealth, even though she could be considered poor as she owns nothing or very little herself.  This is based on the halacha that a husband is responsible for all of his wife's offerings and debts, including those made before they were married.  

Rabbi Hillel the Elder teaches that the children of Alexandria were destined to hold the status of mamzerim, though men would rape women after their betrothals but before their weddings.  These children should have been called mamzerim, but Hillel would speak with these children and ask for their mothers' ketubot.  The ketubot would say, "when you will enter the chupa, be for me a wife".  This suggests that the women were never married to their husbands, meaning that these children of other men were not mamzerim at all.

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha speaks about the value of collateral being the same as the value of one's debt.  

Rabbi Yosei spoke about in some regions where the ketuba was written in the same format as a loan contract.  This would disadvantage women who were receiving double the dowry as was the custom in their area, but would receive only half of that amount specified in her ketuba.  This is questioned by rabbis who received the instruction from a dying man to give his daughter 400 dinars in her ketuba.  Was he referring to 800 dinars in practice?  Or perhaps 200 dinars, the standard amount?  The rabbis attempt to understand whether this money was intended to be a dowry payment or a ketuba payment. They consider the regional customs and that particular man.  

The Gemara tells of a man who contracted to give the landowner 1000 dinars if he left the owner's field lie fallow.  He left one third of the land lie fallow.  Did he ow 333 and 1/3 dinars in payment?  Or the equivalent amount of choice produce?  Or was this simply an exaggeration, for he went so far beyond the accepted norms of payment in such contractual agreements?

The Gemara then relates the story of a man who cultivated a field with wheat instead of with sesame. The latter had been the agreed upon crop.  Sesame damages the land but yields more immediate profits.  Was the cultivator to pay extra feels to the landlord for his crop, or less than he might for his crop, which yielded what a sesame crop would have yielded?  In this case the rabbis agree that landowners generally prefer quick profits to protections for their land.  Thus that cultivator was not to benefit from protecting the land. In a similar case where the wheat made greater profits, the two were asked to divide the extra profits between them, for the land itself contributed to the excellent yield.

At the end of our daf we are introduced to a new idea.  A joint-venture where one person provides the capital or merchandise for a job and the other manages the venture.  In such cases, profits are shared equally.  Halachically this is called half-loan/half-deposit.  Should the manager die, the person providing the capital may incur quite the loss, for the deposit and the loan re difficult to retrieve unless that loan was not at all used as of yet.  At least two documents are required for this type of venture to be halachic.