Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Tuesday's Thoughts on the Daf - Nazir 26

Nazir 26 contains a reference to the quandary of what to do with an item that has been consecrated for a particular purpose, but then cannot be used for that purpose. This question classically arises when a person sets aside an animal to be sacrificed as a chatas offering and then the person dies before the animal is brought up to the beis hamikdash. In the case of the animal, it is left to die as there is no way to redeem it with money and all are barred from deriving any benefit from the animal.

Today's daf then refers to a braisa in which a person had been obligated to bring a chatas and then declared that he now was also obligated to bring an olah offering. If he died and left money behind without specifying what purpose those funds were to be used for, the money must be thrown into the Dead Sea. This is actually the second time that such a concept is mentioned in Nazir as the Mishna on Nazir 24a also discussed money that had been specified for a chatas offering that could not be used for that purpose as the underlying vow that necessitated the bringing of the offering had been annulled. The mishna comments that the portion of the undesignated funds that was to be used for the chatas must be thrown into the Dead Sea. Tosafos d'h Demay explicitly equtes the money that is thrown into the Dead Sea with chatas offerings that must be left to die, explaining that if an animal had been designated it must be left to die so as to avoid deriving benefit from the animal, so too the money must not be allowed to be used beneficially and by tossing it into the Dead Sea it will be similarly incapable of use.

On Sunday Night, the fellow who was teaching the daf (R' Avi P.) told a story of when he was in yeshiva and he needed to redeem money that had been used to be podeh maaser. Since the yeshiva was nowhere near the Dead Sea, he had been instructed to redeem the value with a coin and then hammer the coin into little pieces. Pragmatic approaches win every time.

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