Gittin 58 - July 13, 24 Tamuz

This week's learning is sponsored by Judy Schwartz in honor of her birthday. "Dedicated to the memory of my beloved mother, Sarah Raizel bat Freida Sima and Mordechai Yitzhak Kraus (Shirley K. Tydor), as in our family we give our mothers a present on our birthday! They did the hard work!"  More stories of the destruction, including the story of the children of Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, the high priest, who were taken into captivity and put together in a room by their masters in order to bear children. Tzofnat bat Peniel taken captive and then while selling her to someone, she was almost stripped naked to show her beauty to him and she then rolled herself in ashes. One who buys from a sikrikon (a gentile who seized land) and then purchases the land from the original owner, the sale with the original owner is ineffective. Rav says this is only true if there was no document for the sale with the original owner. Shmuel disagrees and holds that even a document is not proof of a valid sale, but if in the document the owner guaranteed the land, then it is a valid sale. The law was changed in order to prevent land from remaining in the hands of the sikrikon - after twelve months, one could purchase the land and give the original owner a quarter of the value of the land. If the land was sold after to another and three years had passed since the original purchase from the sikrikon, what happens if the original owner claim to have not received the quarter? If the gentile who seized the land was just a regular thief (anparut), not one who was likely to murder, the laws of sikrikon do not apply and the land goes back to the original owner, even after twelve months. The laws of anparut do not apply in Babylonia - why not? The quarter that is given back to the original owner is that a third of the amount that the buyer spent or a quarter? Rav and Shmuel disagree about the percentage by which the sikrikon would decrease the price when selling the land when selling it, which led them to a different answer to the previous question.