Lesson # 198 • Why Study Jewish Law Four years ago today, Parshat R'ei, Phil was kind enough to publish lesson 1, which was entitled, "Why Study Jewish Civil Law?" (TT #379). Since then, Phil has been kind enough to publish an additional 196 lessons on Jewish Civil Law. To mark the anniversary, I thought it would be appropriate to republish that first lesson. 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 of our religion?" This summer I have the privilege of Iecturing in various summer programs for overseas students. In one women’s yeshiva, where the students were on the highest intellectual level, I gave a lecture on rights of privacy in Jewish law and announced that the next Iecture 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 that she asked him "Why don't Jews have such things as part of 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 they occupy. As a result of that 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 his 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 Kama 30a) Most of us would answer "The laws taught in tractate Shabbat, or tractate Nida, or tractate Chulin (dealing with kashrut) or tractate Avot, 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 Kama, Baba Metzia, and Baba Batra). 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 Nida? 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?" (Shabat 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; [6] 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 Parshat R'ei Homepage]
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