Tractate Bava Metzia page 14 and page 101

.בבא מציעא יד: קא

I think the רמב''ם held that if someone buys a stolen field from the thief and plants it he gets only the money he paid for the field back, not the expenses.



 He  looked at page י''ד and said it is not the same case as the case on page ק''א. On page י''ד someone stole a field and sold it and the buyer did work on it. The רמב''ם wrote the law just like Samuel קרן יש לו שבח אין לו he gets reimbursed for the amount he paid for the field from the thief   but does not get reimbursed for the improvements not from anyone, not from the thief and not from the owner.

And when the רמב''ם looked at page ק''א he saw a completely different situation. Someone went into the field of his neighbor and planted crops or did some improvements. There the רמב''ם decided as our גמרא does that ידו על התחתונה he gets the least amount either the improvement or the expenses.
In other words the property was not stolen. And even though קרקע אינה נגזלת still there was not even an attempt to claim the property as his own.


In other words what I am saying is that I think the רמב''ם must have looked at this סוגיא completely differently than רש''י or תוספות.



בבא מציעא יד: קא . אני חושב שהרמב''ם קבע כי אם מישהו קנה שדה שנגנב מן הגנב ונטע צמחים  שהוא מקבל רק את הכסף ששילם עבור השדה בחזרה, לא ההוצאות. הוא הביט בדף י''ד ואמר שזה לא אותו מקרה כמו המקרה בעמוד ק''א. בדף י''ד מישהו גנב שדה ומכר אותו והקונה עשה עבודה על זה. הרמב''ם כתב החוק בדיוק כמו שמואל "קרן יש לו, שבח אין לו", שהוא מקבל החזר עבור הסכום ששילם עבור השדה מן הגנב, אבל הוא לא מקבל החזר עבור השיפורים לא מאף אחד, לא מן הגנב ולא מן הבעלים. וכאשר הרמב''ם הביט בדף ק''א ראה מצב שונה לחלוטין. מישהו נכנס לתחום שכנתו ושתל גידולים או עשה כמה שיפורים. שם הרמב''ם החליט כמו הגמרא שלנו אמרה בפירוש כי "ידו על התחתונה", הוא מקבל את הכמות המינימלית או השיפור או ההוצאות. במילים אחרות הנכס לא נגנב. ואף על פי קרקע אינה נגזלת, עדיין לא היה אפילו ניסיוןשל זה שנכנס לתבוע את השדה כשלו. במילים אחרות מה שאני אומר הוא  שהרמב''ם בטח הביט בזו הסוגיא בבא מציעא י''ד אחרת לגמרי מאשר רש''י או תוספות



Link to Ideas in Bava Metzia
Link to Ideas in Shas

"Where can one be?"

"Where can one be?"  This is the question that needs to be answered for people that want to learn Torah? Some of the really great yeshiva like Ponovictch or Brisk are for smart guys. What if one is not so smart but still want to learn Torah?

Sadly most yeshivas nowadays are scams and pretend to answer this question when they go around to rich Jews trying to charity for their supposed public charitable  works. The general run of the mill yeshiva is a private club for the mahco man and his gang of thugs and has nothing to do with learning Torah.
So the question that a simple Jew asked me, "where can one be?" goes unanswered.  There simply is no place for a guy to go to sit and learn Torah for a few hours per day.  Not if he is sincere. [Mea Shearim he called "מאה רשעים"  "a hundred wicked" Mea Reshaim]

This question has bothered me for  along time. To some degree the Shar Yashuv Yeshiva in Far Rockaway was an answer for this dilemma because it was not specifically for smart guys. Nor was it a scam to make a slave population for the rosh yeshiva. It was genuinely for the sake of learning Torah for whom so ever wanted to do so.

r70 g major   r70 midi  r70 nwc

anchoring-bias
I think the ideas in this essay ought to be expanded on in detail in several directions. Some important points like daily schedule [what one does every day without fail is an anchor]., the person one most admires and tries to emulate,[making a conscious decision whom to emulate], with what kind of group to hang out with. And the effects of all this on one's inner self.


() Reb Shmuel Berenabum was thinking along these lines almost certainly when he would consistently point out the importance of learning the oral and written Law. [This is called learning Torah and it means Torah in a slightly expanded form. It does not mean strictly the Five Books of Moses. It includes the Oral Law also which means the books of the sages of the Talmud. I have not counted them. There must be at least ten in all. The two Talmuds, Tosephta, Midrash Raba, Midrash Tanchuma, Eliyahu Raba and Zuta, Avot DeRabbi Natan,   tractates not included in Talmud like mesechet Gerim,  Sifra Sifrei, Torah kohanim.

Reb Shmuel was the Rosh Yeshiva of the Mir in NY.



[]I should mention that in some ways I have tried to retain certain anchors in my life without using that exact terminology. My model of human perfection is my father, Philip Rosten. That means for people that did not know him balance and valence [connection] between different areas of value. That is take certain areas of value, Math, Physics, Mozart, Torah (the Oral and Written Law), Family, Survival Skills, etc and you create a valence between them. This hard to describe but I am pretty sure that people that grew up in older times  remember this kind of thing in their own parents. It is just that my father and mother embodied this kind of balance and valence better than anyone I have ever seen or heard of among the living or those gone.

chapter 6 in Pirkei Avot.

chapter 6 in Pirkei Avot. I do not have  a lot to say about it except in the Mir Yeshiva I heard from that the Mashgiach of the Ponovicth Yeshiva in Bnei Brak considered נושא עול עם חבירו to bear the yoke with one's friend to be the most essential of all the traits. 


I also think that I misunderstood that chapter (which is about the importance of learning Torah). For when I was in Safed,  I understood that chapter to mean I should be doing more learning Torah than I was doing. And since everything in this world has a limit, I probably over extended myself in that direction. 

The reason I say this is that I had a kind of attachment to God in Safed, something that is hard to describe. And I thought at the time this attachment was interfering with Torah study. What I did not realize at the time was that attachment to God is one of the goals of the mitzvot. This you can see in the anonymous commentary at the being of the Mishna Torah of the Rambam. He asked a question. One verse says,  "Do the commandments in order to love and fear God." The other verse says "Love and fear God in order to do his commandments." He answers there are two kinds of fear of God. The lower fear of punishment, and the higher awe of God's greatness. The lower fear is to bring to doing all the commandments, and the commandments are to bring to the higher fear and awe of God. So learning Torah according to this view is not the goal but it is to bring to the goal of attachment with God.

Bava Metzia page 14. The argument between Rav and Shmuel

Ideas in Shas updated  I had some idea that I wanted to add about the argument between Rav and Shmuel in Bava Metzia page 14. Mainly it is the thought about what Shmuel must have asked Rav, "Why would thief pay for the improvements to the buyer when it is the owner who is getting the benefits?" And I think it must be that Rav answered to him, "The owner gives the money for the improvements or the expenditure to the thief and the thief to the buyer." That is I am thinking that Rav must have said that the owner has to do only with the thief and the thief with the buyer. At last that is how I think Rashi and Tosphot both must have looked at this sugia.[That the owner can tell the person that bought the field from the thief דין ודברים אין לי אתך. I have nothing to do with you.]

It is important to see how the Rambam and Rav Shach deal with this sugia, but I do not have their books available at this time.

Later it occurred to me that this is not necessarily so. I was doing some sit-ups and it occurred to me that if the thief made the improvements then when the buyer bought the field he paid for the field and the improvements, [like if a fence was built on the property.] Therefore it does make sense for the thief to pay the buyer for the field and the improvements. So maybe my original scheme was right.

[See the original scheme in the link up above on ideas in Shas or at this link  on ideas in Bava Metzia itself on page 101 of Bava Metzia.]


זה עלה בדעתי שאם הגנב עשה שיפורים אז כאשר הקונה רכש את השדה ששילם עבור השדה ואת השיפורים, כמו אם גדר נבנתה על הנכס. לכן זה הגיוני עבור הגנב לשלם הקונה עבור השדה ואת השיפורים. אז אולי התכנית המקורית שלי צדק.

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The Closing of the American Mind

In the book The Closing of the American Mind, Allen Bloom made a point that the project of the enlightenment [classical liberalism ] was at a stage of crisis. He did not offer much in the way of resolution.

It might seem a small consolation   but Allen Bloom did have two ideas that he suggested. Learning the Republic of Plato seems to have been the top priority. "Great books" after that. He also did mention learning Torah in the beginning chapters as a kind of hint but nothing that he explicitly advocated.[I mean to say he mentioned his relatives that had in their background, basic learning of the Oral and Written Law and that that gave them a depth of understanding of the human condition that the NY Times and other modern writings could not compare to.

He also mentioned Hegel in a very positive way, suggesting he might have seen something important there. It is hard to know what though. Allen Bloom in fact had been taught by a Hegelian professor so you you count this as bias towards his teacher. Or it could be he saw something important there.

The truth be told , Thomas Jefferson in a similar vein held the only way the American Republic could survive was by education and for that purpose he founded the university of Virginia. He knew the system of the American Constitution was only workable for a certain kind of person. Not all people.
Only people with a Judaic-Christian orientation.

[My own opinion about this is similar to Allen Bloom and Thomas Jefferson. It is learning Gemara, Musar (Mediaeval Ethics), and Math.] That is to say I do not think all and any education is worthwhile. So in that sense I am disagreeing with Thomas Jefferson. Education yes but only a certain kind of education. Also I am not thinking of the Republic of Plato as being the best of his works but rather the middle dialogues. Also I am thinking Gemara [as shorthand for learning the whole Oral and written Law] Musar Ethics and Math as connecting one's inner self to the Platonic Forms.

[Not that I presume to be anywhere near the greatness of Allen Bloom of Thomas Jefferson. Rather it is my opinion that their ideas need to be modified a bit in because of hindsight.]

I mean to say here that if you look at Allen Bloom's middle chapters about the "self" he is is skimping on the  Kantian approach. [He was quite aware of Kant but in his treatment of the Self he had a lot of material to cover before he could get to Kant.] So what I see is the self of Kant, the "ding an sich,"the thing in itself is something Schopenhauer put the Platonic forms into. Thus all one needs to do in theory is to awaken those Platonic Forms.