When one marries a woman by money, document, or sex, two kinds of acquisition take place. But acquisition by handkerchief does not work.

The subject of קניין סודר ("Kinyan" by handkerchief) acquisition by means of exchange of a handkerchief needs some clarity.
It comes up in the Tosphot HaR''id in Kidushin page 3.
But just for background information, I want to explain what the issue is.
It all starts from the Mishna there that, "A woman is acquired by money, document, or sex." The Gemara says that is meant to exclude barter. That also excludes exchange of a handkerchief.
["Why would we think that a woman is acquired by barter? Because we learn קיחה קיחה משדה עפרון acquisition is said by the field of Ephron. And the same word acquisition is used in discussing when one marries a woman. כי יקח איש אישה. From where we learn a man can acquire a woman by money just like a field is bought with money. (That is why you see nowadays people marry by means of a ring.) So you might think barter also would work since a field can also be bought by barter. But the Gemara says we would not learn that way because barter can be less than a penny and  a woman would not want to be acquired for less than a penny."]


The idea is that when one marries a woman two kinds of acquisition take place; (a) acquisition of marriage.   The idea is that a person can be obligated by means of a "Kinyan" [acquisition]. For example to sign a contract to produce an F-35 in a certain amount of time. This creates an obligation on a person to do the work. [It does not have to be a document. It can be by any kind of kinyan (acquisition) that an obligation is made. Nowadays we depend a lot on documents, but in fact acquisitions can be made by lots of things. [Pulling, pushing, lifting up. For example, if one buys a piano. How do you acquire it? Not by lifting surely. Not by money either. If you paid money and then want out of the deal you get the money back. So you would have to move the piano. And then the deal is finished.]] Another thing that happens when you marry a woman-(b) an acquisition of monetary obligations.

So the idea of the mishna is if one marries a woman by any one of those three ways in front of two witnesses, then these obligations are חל ("hal") that settle on you and her. That is: the acquisition takes place.

[The ring used nowadays is for שווה כסף (something worth money). That is learned from a Jewish slave that can be redeemed by money (if he is owned by another Jew). However let's say a Jew is sold or sells himself to a gentile in order to pay for some obligation. Then how can he be let go if the owner wants to let him go? One way is if someone gives to the owner some money. [I do not think paper money works here.] Another way is a document. But not by means of something worth money. So we see there are times that something worth money is not counted as money. -even if the owner wants to accept the object worth money instead of money, that does not help. It has to be money. But in terms of marriage it is thought to be considered as money.

[This actually brings up a question asked by Rav Shach and Rav Haim of Brisk. That is, that acquiring a woman by something worth money is learned from a Jewish slave. So since it does not work in all cases with a Jewish slave, why should it work at all with a woman? It is a half a gezera shava. [That is sometimes when the same word is used to two places the laws of one place are applied to the other place  except when you can only learn half. Then it does not apply at all.]

At any rate, my point is that you need Kant to limit what you can legitimately claim. But then you need to build up within those limits and that is probably by Hegel.

 Kant in his three critiques limits what we can know and what we can reason about. [That is things that fall into the category of conditions of possible experience. Outside of that are "things in themselves" Hegel takes this into account in order to determine how to stretch these boundaries.

Both seem important but to understand Kant I would go with Kelley Ross [the Friesian School.]

To understand Hegel I would go with Mctaggart.

Hegel is important because you want the big picture. What is the universe all about. Without that question there is absolutely no point to philosophy at all. So Kant can limit what we can understand but you still after him to see what is possible to understand in the big picture but to attempt that understanding taking into account Kant's point about how far human reason can go.


Kant limits what you can build. The reason is limits on reason. Hegel gets around those limits in order to build based on a process of dialectics based on what you see in Plato and Socrates. But with Hegel you get to conclusions that do not end until you get to God. That is he starts with Being and gets up to God. The Friesian approach has faith [non intuitive immediate knowledge] so in that way gets to God in a way, but not like Hegel. [My own impression here is that knowledge does progress. It is not pure empirical nor pure reason. See the paper of Michael Huemer that shows this. But Michael Huemer goes more with probability. [The kind you learned about when new evidence is added to your original probability based on Bayes.]
The Friesian approach needs a bit of study. Probably the best approach is that of Kelley Ross in his blog the Friesian School. The reason is that there are flaws in Fries's approach (that I admit I forgot) that Leonard Nelson corrected. But then in Nelson there were other flaws. So the best seems to be the modified Fries approach of Kelley Ross.]

At any rate, my point is that you need Kant to limit what you can legitimately claim. But then you need to build up within those limits and that is probably by Hegel.

w64 A Major   w64 in midi

Trust in God to help the way it was understood in the Mir in NY was to learn Torah and believe that God will take care of things like getting married and having a living. So the idea of sitting and learning even after marriage was along the lines of trusting in God. In Israel however the approach is to make political parties whose sole purpose is to extract money from secular Jews. That is not trust in God at all. But I should add that my idea of learning Torah since then has been expanded to include Physics and Metaphysics because of Saadia Gaon and people that followed his lead in this subject like Ibn Pakuda of the Obligations of the Heart.

But the basic structure of belief I still hold that the Mir was right. Trust in God and do not worry because God will take care of those that trust in Him. That is to say help and salvation is not at all assumed. Rather it is assumed according to the degree that one trusts in God.
The problem however can be that of self delusion. People can imagine that they are trusting in God while in fact being blind to the fact that they are trusting in their political parties to extract money from secular Jews.

My own impression is that God has often helped me whether I trusted or not. So I am not saying what will happen if they think they trust in God. I think people can fool themselves thinking they are trusting in God. But I can say that is one really does trust in God, God definitely helps.  

My learning partner David Bronson sent to me a video about the virus that I have not seen yet. But I think to put it up here since I have a great deal of confidence in my learning partner's common sense because almost always when we disagree about Tosphot, he ends up being right

I wanted to bring a subject for the sake of background information. It is about marriage and slavery. Allan Bloom's introduction to Kojeve's lectures on Hegel. Plus the incident of a virus spread in Soth America in Bolivia as a result of a civil war when they got rid of the land owners and divided the land equally. The peasants offered the land owners to sell back to them their land and sheep and cows. The landowners said, "We will not buy back what belonged to us," and left to start life elsewhere. The peasants cleared the jungle to make way for planting corn and upset the ecology in the area, and the rats came to settle in their village. So not just because society in organized in a way with some people on top does not mean they are exploiting. Every army knows letting the troops fight-the way they want is a disaster and recipe for defeat.

So in short for right now let me just bring the Gemara in Kidushin page 3. The Mishna says, "A woman is acquired in three ways: money, a document, or sex." The Gemara says this is to exclude exchange, because you might have thought just like a field is acquired by exchange so a woman. So we learn not so because exchange exists even less than a penny and a woman does not allow herself to be bought for less than a penny. The Tosphot Rid asks " If the handkerchief [for the exchange] is in fact worth more than a penny, she is bought."

The issue here is this. If you have ever sat at a marriage ceremony, you have seen this acquisition made by a handkerchief. And maybe you wondered "What kind of  acquisition it is?" It is not exactly a gift on condition to give back--but like it in some ways.
The answer is based on a verse in Ruth where a person takes off his shoe and gives it to another to seal a deal. It is a kind of mode of acquisition in which at that point the acquisition is made, It is in modern terms like signing a document.

So just to wrap this up for now I want to bring an idea of Rav Shach that will help to resolve these issues. It is that there are two kinds of קניין סודר ("kinyan sudar") exchange by handkerchief. One is where the act of exchange of the handkerchief [or any kind of vessel] finishes a deal--as a kind of way of making an acquisition as you see at marriages. Another kind is the normal act of exchange-barter. This for that.

I would like to go into this more but just quickly I want to add that the relation to slavery is that one can not let go of a slave  by this means exchange by handkerchief. It is to be by one of the three ways a slave is let go. Money, document or by injury to one of his external limbs. And the issue itself I just want to mention that slavery is not all that different from having to get up every day and go to school and then go to work. There are lots of things you are forced to do and if you do not then force is used against you. Slavery is  different in degree, not in kind. So why is it thought to be wrong? Where is the dividing line? A master does not own him? Do you own yourself? Can you do anything you want to yourself? No. Can you do anything you want? No. Everyone has his place and his job in society. Or you could live in the wilderness with no knife produced by society--- and see how you manage.


[The fact is that Hegel's politics does not seem so great. On the other hand "back to Kant" does not seem so great either. Nor "Analytic" vacuous philosophy of the Anglo Saxon world of the 20th century  nor Continental philosophy. Some synthesis of Hegel, Kant, Leonard Nelson seem to me the most promising. A "back to Plato" or "back to Kant" seems a bit difficult. Hegel does seem to hold a lot of promise. But lacking clarity about these issues what I would like to do would be to get through the three critiques of Kant, the four books published by Hegel and the writings of Leonard Nelson before I could draw a conclusion or see a direction forward.]


At any rate, I just wanted to say the basic point of Rav Shach [but not in his words]. Th Gemara is pretty clear that קניין חליפין [exchange by barter] does not apply to acquiring a wife. So to explain the Tospfot Rid is the question. The Tospfot Rid says if the handkerchief is worth more than a "pruta" penny then she is acquired. This is in spite of the fact that usually this acquisition by a handkerchief which is handed back is a kind of acquisition by barter not by money. So to explain this Rav Shach has to go into a  long explanation.

I think to get through these difficulties nowadays the best idea is to trust in God and learn the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach. [But I do not think one should be paid for teaching or learning Torah.]
How to go about this I am not sure. Since God has granted to me a few of the volumes I finding it helpful to do a little review.