The first lesson in this series started in TT 379, August 6, 1999. Thanks to the wonderful cooperation of Phil and Ita Rochel, these lessons have continued since then. I discussed with Phil the advisability of reprinting the first lesson, for those who read it and perhaps forgot it, and for those who did not read it. He agred to the suggestion and the lesson follows:

Many years ago when I was practicing law, a young Jewish lady law clerk in our office who was living with a Christian man came to ask me a question. Her boy friend's father died, she went to the funeral service held in a church and the minister who officiated began by reading, as she put it "a thing called the 23rd Psalm that begins with the Lord is my shepherd"'. Her question to me was, "Why don't Jews have such things as part or our religion?"

This summer I have the privilege of lecturing in various summer programs for overseas students. In one lady's yeshivah, where thc students were on the highest intellectual level, I gave a lecture on rights or privacy in Jewish law and announced that thc next lecture would be on fraud in sales transactions and monopolies in Jewish law. After the lecture one of the ladies approached me and told me that when she was in graduate school of business she was writing a paper and wanted to compare fraud in sales in different legal systems. She had asked her local orthodox rabbi what the Jewish attitude was regarding the topic so that she could incorporate it into her research paper. His answer to her was, as she put it, "Judaism doesn't get involved in these areas." She told me she asked him "Why don't Jews have such things as part or our religion?" Yes, it was the very same question that I was asked by the young lady lawyer. If the lady lawyer who was totally uneducated in things Jewish asked that question, it was understandable. But for the graduate business student to ask this question as a result of a conversation that she had with her local orthodox rabbi, evidences a lack of education even amongst those who ostensibly should know better because of their education and position occupied by them.

As a result of that after class conversation, I changed the topic of one of my lectures to be a recitation of the major topics of Jewish civil law. There are 427 chapters in Hoshen haMishpat, the part of the Shulhan Aruch dealing with Jewish civil law. I recited the major groupings of topics and spoke a few minutes about each. Almost every student, including several lawyers who were taking the course praised the fact that for the first time they knew that Jewish law does get involved in the everyday business dealings of people. Also business transactions don't always involve businessmen on both sides. When the housewife goes to the local market to purchase a bottle of milk, she is involved in a business transaction, a sale and purchase of merchandise. When a tenant pays rent to the landlord, when a person at an airport asks someone to look after her totebag while she goes to the restroom, when a person gets injured in a car collision, when a person takes out a mortgage from a bank, when a person borrows a book, when a person does renovations in his apartment, to name but a few of the business transactions that a person is involved in during a lifetime. And yes, Jewish law covers all of these topics and so many, many more.

Ask an Orthodox Jew, "If one wants to be pious, which laws should he or she perform?" This indeed is a question posed in the Talmud. (Baba Kamma 30a) Most of us would answer "The laws taught in tractate Shabbat, or tractate Niddah, or tractate Chulin (dealing with kashruth) or tractate Avoth, or tractate Berachot". Indeed, the Talmud, amongst its three answers names the latter two tractates. But the Talmud, in its infinite, infallible wisdom quotes another opinion, that in order to be, pious one should fulfil the teachings of tractate Nezikin (Baba Kamma, Baba Metzia, and BabaBathra).

This last answer makes one ponder. Can the teachings of Nezikin, the relationship between individuals in laws of torts, commercial law, real estate law, sales, wills, contracts loans and a myriad other matters in which we deal with our neighbors every day, be as important as the laws of Shabbat or Berachot or Niddah? The Talmud's answer seems to indicate that the answer is, yes. In fact the Talmud goes on to say that when a person reaches the Next World, the first question he or she will be asked is "Did you conduct your business transactions faithfully?" (Shabbat 31a) On Yom Kippur during the confessional we say that we seek forgiveness for the sins committed in our business dealings. Thus one of the six orders of the Mishna and Talmud is devoted to Nezikin; of the 14 books of Maimonides code of Jewish Law (Yad HaChazaka) over 3 are devoted to the laws of nezikin. In the Shulhan Aruch one of the four parts (three of ten volumes) Hoshen haMishpat deals with nezikin.

With this as background, we shall attempt in future essays to familiarize the reader with some of the laws of nezikin, so that one can be a better Jew and answer Hashem in the Next World, "Yes we dealt faithfully in our business transactions."

The major topics of Hoshen haMishpat are (in the sequence of Rabbi Yosef Karo, (1488-1575) the author of the Shulhan Aruch, who follows the sequence of Rabbi Yaakov Tur (1275-1340): Laws of: [1] judges; [2] evidence; [3] loans; [4] contracts; [5] pleadings; [61 collection of debts,- [7] collections from heirs,- [8] mortgages; [9] agency; [10] guarantees; [11] presumptions regarding ownership of personal property; [12] presumptions regarding ownership of real property;[13] interfering with one's neighbor's property; [14] joint ownership of real property; [15] partition of real property; [16] partnerships; [17]sales; [18] acquisition of personal property; [19] fraud in sales; [20] gifts of a healthy person; [21] gifts made in contemplation of death; [22] lost and found property; [23] inheritances; [24] unpaid bailees; [25] paid bailees; [26] lessors and lessees; [27] borrowers; [28] labor law; [29] theft; [30] robbery; [31] damage to property,. [32] informers; [33] damage caused by one's instrumentalities; [34] damages and injuries caused by a person's actions.

Unlike the Talmud that first goes through three tractates of nezikin with substantive laws of nezikin and only then goes on to the procedural laws of tractate Sanhedrin, which is the order followed by Maimonides, Rabbi Yosef Karo following the sequence of Rabbi Yaakov Tur, commences with the laws of the courts.

The court system consists of three levels, the Great Sanhedrin, the Lesser Sanhedrin and the Beth Din. In some legal systems this would be a three-tiered system, that is, one can take an appeal from the Beth Din to the Lesser Sanhedrin and then to the Great Sanhedrin. With rare exceptions, in Jewish law we do not have a three-tiered system. Each court has its own jurisdictions, that is the type of cases that it can handle.

The foregoing is the first lesson that appeared in this series of lessons.
Questions to quint@inter.net.il

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