Bava Kamma - Daf 81
- The ten regulations of Yehoshua
A Baraisa states: עשרה תנאין התנה יהושע – Yehoshua stipulated ten conditions with Klal Yisroel when dividing Eretz Yisroel. They are: (1) People may pasture their animals in other people’s forests. (2) They may gather wood from people’s fields. (3) They may gather grass from anywhere (for their animals), except where fenugreek is grown, for which the grass is beneficial. (4) They may cut off shoots from people’s trees (to plant), except from the stump of an olive tree (which is two-fistfuls high). (5) Townspeople may utilize water from a spring which issued from someone’s property. (6) Everyone may fish with a hook and line in the Sea of Tiveria, although it is in shevet Naftali’s portion. (7) People may relieve themselves behind privately owned stone fences, even in a field full of saffron. The Baraisa adds that people may walk through “permissible paths” (shortcuts through private fields generally allowed by owners between crops) until the second rainfall, and the Gemara below identifies this as Shlomo’s enactment. (8) They may walk on the (privately owned) sides of the road to avoid obstacles which formed on the road. (9) One who is lost in a vineyard may cut his way out. (10) An unattended corpse acquires its site for burial and cannot be moved.
- Applying the תנאים outside Eretz Yisroel, and Rebbe Chiya’s student who remained on the road
The Gemara relates that Shmuel and Rav Yehudah were walking on the road in Bavel, and Shmuel turned to the side of the road to avoid the obstacles in the road. Rav Yehudah asked if Yehoshua’s conditions apply in Bavel, and Shmuel replied: שאני אומר אפילו בחוצה לארץ – Yes, because I say they apply even abroad, and certainly in Bavel. In another incident, Rebbe and Rebbe Chiya were walking on the road, and turned to the roadside where the road became difficult to travel. Rebbe Yehudah ben Nekusa was walking ahead of them on the road itself, taking large steps to step over the pits. Rebbe said to Rebbe Chiya: מי הוא זה שמראה גדולה בפנינו – Who is this that is showing “greatness” before us (i.e., making a display of great fear of Heaven), in refusing to take advantage of Yehoshua’s allowances? Such action appears like haughtiness! Rebbe Chiya suggested that perhaps it was his student Rebbe Yehudah ben Nekusa, וכל מעשיו לשם שמים – and all his actions are for the sake of Heaven. When they saw that it was indeed him, Rebbe said, “If you were not Yehudah ben Nekusa, we would “split your leg with an iron club,” i.e., excommunicate you.
- Cutting through a vineyard to help someone, or himself, lost inside
A Baraisa illustrates Yehoshua’s ninth condition: הרואה חבירו תועה בין הכרמים – One who see his friend lost among the vineyards, מפסיג ועולה מפסיג ויורד – should cut his way through up and down, עד שמעלהו לעיר או לדרך – until he reaches the city or the road. וכן הוא שתועה בין הכרמים – And so it is when he himself is lost among the vineyards. The additional novelty is explained: one might have thought that one may save his fellow who is lost in the vineyard, because he knows the way and can minimize the damage, but one who is lost himself, נהדריה נהדר בי מיצרי – he should go back to the end of the vineyard and go around the boundaries until reaching the road. The Baraisa teaches otherwise. The Gemara asks that this law should be d’Oraysa, because a Baraisa teaches: השבת גופו מניין – from where do we know the obligation of returning one’s lost person? The passuk says "והשבתו" – and you shall return him. Why, then, was Yehoshua’s condition necessary? It answers that Biblically speaking, the lost person must circle along the boundaries of the vineyard to avoid damaging it, and Yehoshua allowed cutting through it.
