Question on Tosphot Bava Metzia page 14

This essay deals with the question someone bought stolen land and improved it. When he gives it back from whom does he collect the value of the improvements? The thief or the owner?
And what if



You have a person whose land was stolen, the owner (נגזל)
The thief is the גזלן . The person that bought the stolen land from the thief is  the buyer (לוקח).
The land goes back to the owner (נגזל) with the improvements (שבח). Rav says the buyer (לוקח) gets the money he paid for it, and also the value of the improvements from person th thief (גזלן). [Bava Metzia page 14B]
Tosphot relates this law to the law [Bava Metzia page 103a] that concerns a person that goes into the field of another person and does improvements (שבח). The law stated by Rav is thus: when the improvements are more, then the owner (נגזל) pays for the expenses, and thief (גזלן) pays nothing.
My question is, "Why not?"
Bear with me while I try to say over why I think this is a problem.
First of all I want to make it clear that on page 103a the improvement is independent from the expenses.
On page 14 the law of Rav refers to paying improvements that are more than the expenses. [Of course, in my question there are no such things, so obviously he does not pay the expenses.] My point is that the owner נגזל) pays the least amount because of the law on page 103. The thief pays the improvements because of Rav's law on page 14. This page 14 law does not come from page 103 . And you can ask "From where does it come?" Well, one  option is to say it comes from the deed of sale. But if that is the case then  the thief should pay the expenses also. And in  fact he ought to pay the improvement also if we are going by the deed of sale!
I am not asking a rhetorical question here. I really do not know what Tosphot is doing  on page 14.
Anyone with an answer is welcome to share it here.
Later note: I think after this I wrote some answer to this question in some later blog entry.
Here is what I wrote in Hebrew about this subject:
א) ב''מ יד: יש פה שלשה אנשים: נגזל,גזלן, ולוקח מן הגזלן והקרקע שנגזלת. הקרקע חוזרת לבעלים עם השבח שהשביחה הלוקח. רב אמר שהלוקח גובה מחיר הקרקע ושבחה מן הגזלן. תוספות אומרים שהדין של היורד לתוך שדה חבירו בלי רשות שמקבל היציאה שייך לפה. זה דין של רב בדף קג. ושם רב אומר ידו על התחתונה. זאת אומרת שאם השבח פחות מן היציאה, אז הנגזל משלם את היציאה. ואם היציאה פחותה, אז הוא משלם את היציאה. ועכשיו אפשר להבין כוונת התוספות פה בדף יד:. פה יש שתי אפשריות. א) השבח יותר מן היציאה. ב) השבח פחות מן היציאה. מצב הראשון הוא המצב שרב דיבר עליו. שם הנגזל משלם את היציאה, והגזלן משלם את השבח. [פה כוונת רב היא שהגזלן משלם את השבח היתר מן היציאה, היינו ההפרש. וזה שלא ככוונתו בדף קג. אולי יש פה איזו קושיא?] במצב השני שהשבח פחות, אז הגזלן אינו משלם כלום, והנגזל משלם את השבח. וזאת היא השאלה שלי. למה הגזלן אינו משלם את היציאה? אם אנחנו הולכים לפי מה שכתוב בשטר, אז הוא חייב לשלם את היציאה. אם אנחנו לא הולכים לפי מה שכתוב בשטר (אחריות לאו טעות סופר היא) אז גם השבח אינו משלם.
I see in my Hebrew note that I did have an answer for this problem.

Yet  without philosophy, people tend to pick up the attitudes of the age. They unknowingly absorb the spirit of the times from their environment, and think it is obviously what the Torah means.



Like Steven Weinberg said: The  major advantage learning philosophy--  is to protect oneself from other  philosophies.

And I think that my point of view is born out by experience. In the world where this anti-learning-philosophy attitude is prevalent, we do find large kaleidoscope of attitudes and worldviews --none of which have any correspondence with the actual world views presented in the Torah and Talmud. It seems to me that without learning philosophy, one is simply not equipped with any intellectual tools that one needs to even be able to discern incoherent world views.

On the other hand,  academic philosophy is a real problem, nowadays especially in the English speaking world where the accepted world view is that of Linguistic/Analytic philosophy.

Yet the irony of this situation is that the philosophical foundations of materialism, in a proper metaphysics, are in worse shape now than they have ever been.



The truth is that the evils detailed by atheists in religion are by no means unique to religion but are simply characteristics of human nature.
It is noteworthy, however, that the heaviest blows against materialism in the 20th century have been delivered, not by philosophy or religion, but by science itself. The Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics, proposed by Niels Bohr (1885-1960), although metaphysically poorly motivated in some respects, represents a stark anti-realism that merely bewilders the physicists and philosophers who literally appear not to have the philosophical background to address it properly. It has proved easierjust not to worry about it and to lapse back into a naive materialism.




Much as Thomas Sowell has said, this incoherence is found in people who don't understand the virtues and advantages of their own land, but idealize some foreign hell hole as Utopia.

Most versions of relativism involve a reinterpretation or redefinition of moral judgements. What is common to all of the redefinitions of moral concepts is that they leave out everything moral. 


Second, it has been argued from time to time that moral relativism presents a simpler picture of the universe than objectivism. Objectivism postulates these entities, objective moral values, that we could explain the world just as easily if not more easily without. Therefore, the burden is on the objectivist to prove the existence of these things.

I think this argument is insincere; that is, nobody ever became a relativist because of this. It was invented after the fact to confuse objectivists.

The argument is exactly analogous to the following argument for mathematical relativism: Objectivism postulates these entities, objective numbers and numerical relationships, that we could explain the world just as easily if not more easily without. Therefore, the burden is on the objectivist to prove the existence of these things. Since he cannot do so, I conclude that all mathematical statements are arbitrary and subjective.

I have tried to show that, like most false philosophical theories, moral relativism dissolves under clarification. 

http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/PSEUDOSC/Postmod.htm

"Calling twentieth-century philosophy superficial gives it too much dignity; vacuous is the closest term."

The Gra saw the energy of spiritual rot of Shabatai Tzvi was subsumed into Hasidut

The excommunication of the Gra  had in it two points that were common to all the different excommunications against.

The Gra saw the energy of spiritual rot of Shabatai Tzvi was subsumed into Jewish cults.


There were many  excommunications, but the two points that come up in all of them was disparaging learning Torah and disparaging Torah scholars. Though cults have been hard at work to deny these two allegations by a parade and show of learning Torah, it is still hard not to see that the Gra was right. I do not mean that this is something you can see looking in from the outside, but rather if you are in the actual world of cults it is hard not to admit that both of these complaints are based on actual attitudes that continue today--very strongly.

Now I don't  know if it is right to excommunicate people for things, even if they would be 100% true, but the Gra did feel that these were serious issues.

The excommunication of the Gra did not treat this as a minor problem. The actual text stated that  one is not allowed to sit in 4 amot [yards] of a chasid, nor talk with a chasid, nor marry the daughter of a chasid etc. It is interesting that this excommunication did not single out secular Jews.
I mean there have always been secular Jews and Jews of various degrees of religiosity. Why not excommunicate Jews that go to Collage? Or other such things? Why specifically Hasidut?


Part of the answer is that the essence of something is what  makes it what it is. That is when we talk about the essence of a thing we mean that something else of the same essence would be put into the same category. When there is a  claim to be of the same essence as the Creator of the Universe and this does not spark outrage in the general world of , then we know something is off.

The problem of the provability of the connection between Shabati Tzvi  with later Jewsih cults was the reason it was not mentioned in the actual text of the excommunication. That was in those days. Today we have lots of evidence of this connection. Cookies that were placed in the writings of the Shatz and Natan from Gaza that you find in all books of Ashkenazic Mysticism. The connection is undeniable. Even if you don't see how that stuff got into Ashkenazic Mysticism never the less it is there.



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Speed reading when it comes to Talmud studies does not require much of an explanation.

There are two major kinds of learning in the Talmud. One is the learning of the Sugia [subject]. The other is speed reading. Speed reading when it comes to Talmud studies does not require much of an explanation. It simply means saying the words in order and going on without worrying whether you got it or not.

This type of fast learning I found very helpful when it came to learning Physics at Polytechnic Institute at N.Y.U..


The other kind of learning is called learning the Sugia (subject). This does mean to some degree learning a particular subject with the commentaries. But it also means getting a general feel for the subject. This kind of learning is hard to define.
Two examples may help to describe what I mean. Lets us take the subject (סוגיא) of work done on Shabat not for its own sake. מלאכה שאינה צריכה לגופה. This is a subject which you really could not understand by speed reading alone. The reason for this is that the subject itself is spread all over the Talmud  and the particular Tosphots that deal with it are not in Tractate Shabat at all but rather in Yoma page 34 and in  Ketubot and in Bava Kama.


So what I am suggesting is that every subject  has it own peculiarities that make going into one subject completely different than going into another one.



Learning fast helped me also in physics. When I first applied to Polytechnic Institute of NYU, and they accepted me, they gave me one piece of paper of math to see whether to put me in a remedial math program  or to let me into Calculus 101. I had no idea which side of the paper was up. But since I did not have to start there until Chanuka, I had the three month period from Rosh Hashanah   until then to prepare. And during that time I plowed through [read fast saying the words and going on] the pre-Calculus and Calculus books that I had. And amazingly enough it went in!
But I should mention the reading fast part was done from Rosh HaShanah until Hashana Raba and then I started work on problems and doing so I read everything again forwards and backwards. This all worked well except the Calculus book I had {by Bittner} was economics based and so he did not have right-hand sums and left hand sums for Riemanian Integrals. So when I got to that in the actual Calculus class I was totally unprepared. I started saying  the words and going on. And that helped me very much to at least get to basic String Theory, Group Theory, Abstract Algebra, and Algebraic Topology. So even though there is still plenty of stuff I do not understand, still I learned a lot more than if I had gotten stuck on every last detail. And I think other could benefit from this approach also.
[One slight advantage of this is that when philosophy professors or other amateurs start spouting nonsense about physics, at least you can tell they don't know what they are talking about. Just by this fats method at least you get a feel for the subject.]

The major evil that people do is when they think they are doing a mitzvah.

The Satan is disguised  in Mitzvas.
This concept is also mentioned by the Geon from Villna.

The basic idea is that we  find that the evil inclination does not try to seduce a person into sin by openly advertising what his intentions are. Rather he says, "Come, and let's do a mitzvah." But mitzvas are highly dependent on the particular Halacha [Jewish Law] that apply to any given situation.  nowadays we should no longer call the evil inclination by its common names ["Satan", or the "evil inclination" etc.] but rather call it the name of "Dimion"/"imagination". [דמיון] That means to say:  the major evil that people do is when they think they are doing a mitzvah. [If people would settle for being selfish jerks, we would all be better off than having people that are out to save the world.]


The idea that "the Satan dresses himself in Mitzvot"  Also, many times the Satan will come to you and ask you to do some actual mitzvah. This is another case of the Satan being dressed in Mitzvot.

That being said, we all should learn Torah [i.e. the Old Testament, Talmud and its commentaries, the Zohar, Isaac Luria]. That fact is not the issue here.
Rather the issue is sometimes something seems like a mitzvah when it is not. There are an infinite number of factors which can make this happen. For example the situation is not parallel to the situation the Shulchan Aruch or the Rambam is talking about. That is: there is a mistake in the material facts of the case. Or there is a mistake in understanding the actual Halacha.
Reb Joseph Karo made this point in his commentary on the Rambam. He wrote that people dot understand the Rambam because they don't know the sugia in the Talmud from where the Rambam derives his law.  And the same idea was stated by the Maharshal and the Maharsha about the Shulchan Aruch. The Maharsha said it is proper to rebuke people that decide halacha from the Shulchan Aruch without knowing the sources.

Bava Sali's Path is actually very easy to describe and yet still very mysterious.

Rav Israel [Avuchatzeira].
The last time I was in Israel I was at a pidion haben [the party you make after a first born son is 30 days old] and one fellow started telling me the story of how he got married. It seems he was in a kind of situation in which no one was offering to him a shiduch.[marriage possibilities]
 So he went to Israel Avuchateira in Netivot. It was Friday --a day on which Bava Sali did not accept visitors. But his wife had compassion of this  student and brought him into Bava Sali. He was doing the normal Chok LeIsrael  seder [reading the Bible portion for that week].
He interpreted to start raining blessings on this student in the kind of dialectic that Jews from Morocco used to speak  Within a very short time he found his wife and got married.
I don't know the name but there was apparently a rav in Europe who was the prime  rav there. I think in Antwerp. Once a visitor came to see him and saw in his home pictures of Bava Sali and asked him why does he have pictures from a Sefardi Rav. He answer that once Bava Sali was in France and he this rav came to see him. After the visit he left at 3 PM and a when he arrived at this city it was still 3 PM. [This is called Kephitazt HaDerech]

The son in law of Bava Sali David Buso told me how once in Paris, he and  Bava Sali were waiting for the moon to come out on the last night that Kidush Levana was possible [the blessing on the new moon]. When it seemed apparent that the clouds cover was just too think for the moon to come out on its own, Bava Sali waved his hand and moved the clouds aside.

Once I was praying in Safed a one person came over and told me the story of  how a female relative of his was a secular Jew. From what I remember her husband was slightly sick and she had heard of a rav who had come from Morocco and people were going to him to get blessings. [Even though she was secular she thought, "Why not give it a try?"] She took the long trip from Kiryat Shemona to Netivot [about a six hour drive from the tiptop of Israel to the very bottom].When she arrived she discovered a  disappointing fact,- Bava Sali never saw women or received them as visitors.. She was left with no option but to give her request to the Gabai [the attendant] and he forwarded the request to Bava Sali. He returned and said that Bava Sali asked her to write a check.She did so and in return she received a bottle of water that Bava Sali had blessed. She took it and drove back home.That means she was altogether 12 hours on the road, plus the time she had spend by Bava Sali. When she returned home she put the bottle on the kitchen table and went into the bathroom. By that time she was angry, tired, and frustrated. She opened the faucet in the bathroom and saw the running water and began to think to herself, "Here in my own home I have running water and bottles also! Why did I need to waste a whole day to get an ordinary bottle of water?"
When she returned to the kitchen to her surprise she saw the bottle of water was gone; and in the place where she has set it down was her check.


Sadly today that impressive family line seems to have lost the touch that it had a for at least 5 or more generations.Yet there are still some members of that family that I think still retain some of the holiness. In particular, I am impressed with Shimon Buso --a grandson of Bava Sali who is  in Netivot. From what I can tell he seems to be on the path that Bava Sali himself was on of service of God in the way of learning Torah day and night with self sacrifice.


Bava Sali's path is actually very easy to describe and yet still very mysterious. He learned Torah and kept Mitzvot. Now learning Torah in the Bava Sali way means that he learned Torah, Talmud, Rambam, Zohar, R. Isaac Luria and etc.--all the things that are part of a regular Torah curriculum. It was a path that included learning a little bit of Kabalah, and a lot of Talmud. It included a lot of fasting--from week to week. And it also meant no contact with women unless it was his own immediate family. Also I should mention Bava Sali had a thing about being married. It was kind of a personal law for him not to be without a wife even for a second.


There was once a student in Netivot who used to drive Bava Sali around when  he needed a ride.
Once he drove him to Meron and wanted to fill the gas tank on the way back. Bava Sali told him "Just drive." So they drove the whole five hours from Meron to Netivot on an empty tank of gas.



 He also had zero patience for the so called Kabalists in Israel and thought they were a bunch of fakes. As Bava Sali's daughter once told me:" No kabalist was ever allowed in to see Bava Sali. He never accepted any of them under any circumstances."]

I perhaps should mention the community around Bava Sali was Mesorati [traditional Judaism- not Orthodox] While he was involved in Torah alone the community around him was a working community and he never expressed any disapproval of that. Sefardim in Netivot generally worked and served in the Army and got regular secular Israeli educations. And that is the vast majority of the people that still follow in that tradition.

falling of the generations in their spiritual level

The concept of the falling of the generations in their spiritual level [Yeridat Hadorot] is  mentioned in the Gemara itself concerning Chizkia the teacher of Rabbi Yochanan.
R. Yochanan had answered a hard problem brought up by his teacher and his teacher said "This is no ordinary human being." At that point the Gemara brings up this idea that "If previous generations were like angels, we are like men etc."

However the Rambam disagrees with this idea. He sees no problem in disagreeing with the Geonim [Example in Hilchot Ribit], or the Rif [e.g  in Ketubot] [see in the laws of Mishpatim and the beginning of Mishna Torah where he discuss the rules of deciding Halacha]
Also this idea is clearly in contradiction to the other idea mentioned by the Gemara itself that the law goes by the last Amora [the later Talmudic sage]



Now sometimes the idea of the falling of the generations makes sense. I encounter this all the time when I see the difference between Tosphot and Achronim [later commentaries] that come after the Beit Yoseph.