Resources for Kesubos 75

1.     The גמרא says that someone living in ארץ ישראל is worth double in Torah than someone living in חוץ לארץ, yet someone from חוץ לארץ who comes to Israel is double the level a regular person from ארץ ישראל. The שיטה מקובצת brings from the ריב"ש that explains this as follows: people in בבל learned with more חריפות than people in ארץ ישראל, but people in Israel had the advantage of ארעא דישראל מחכים. Therefore, the average person in Israel will be double that of someone in חו"ל because of ארעא דישראל מחכים. However, when someone comes from בבל to ארץ ישראל they become even better than someone born in א"י since they have the advantages of both places. There is a fascinating בן יהוידע who says that the reason ארץ ישראל makes a person double that of חו"ל is because we see from the fact that ארץ ישראל only has one day יו"ט and חוץ לארץ has two days יו"ט that you can soak up קדושה twice as much in ארץ ישראל as opposed to everywhere else. Therefore, a חכם in ארץ ישראל will be double the level of someone in חוץ לארץ. Once that חכם from חו"‌ל comes to א"י he becomes four times as great as he was originally which is hinted to in the פּסוק where משה said he wanted to go to Israel by saying אעברה נא ואראה הארץ which has the same letters as ארבעה. The פּשטות is the person becomes greater that the people of א"י because he had to work extra hard while in חו"ל so when he comes to Israel he jumps even faster. This is reminiscent of the famous mussar vort from רש"י at the beginning of פּרשת נח who brings a מחלוקת about the words נח איש צדיק...תמים היה בדורותיו. One מ"ד says נח would have been nothing in אברהם’s generation and the other says he would have been an even greater צדיקin אברהם’s generation. One of the בעלי מוסר say there really is no סתירה as someone who had to work so hard to be even a low level צדיק in a place of רשעים would immediately rise to great heights if put in a generation of צדיקים.

2.     The גמרא says that even רבי יהושע holds of חזקת הגוף when there is no opposing חזקת ממון. תוספות explains that the חידוש is that even though there is a חזקת פּנויה, that still doesn’t beat a חזקת הגוף. תוספות asks that if this is true, why would we follow חזקת הגוף when there is a ריעותא in her חזקת הגוף since she has a מום now, plus you have against it a חזקת פּנויה? This would be similar to a מקוה that is found to be missing 40 סאה where we say there is no חזקת הגוף on the מקוה since  הרי חסר לפניך plus the person is בחזקת טומאה. תוספות answers that חזקת פּנויה doesn’t count at all against a חזקת הגוף. The question is why not? The שב שמעתתא in שמעתתא ב׳ פּרק ב says that תוספות means that  חזקת הגוף is an overpowering חזקה and that is why חזקת פּנויה is ignored. In the case of the woman there is a real חזקת הגוף because a מום would be a change in the woman herself, as opposed to the case of a מקוה where there is no real חזקת הגוף since the מקוה wasn’t born having 40 סאה. The שערי יושר at the beginning of שער שני disagrees and says that חזקת הגוף isn’t a super חזקה at all. Rather, חזקת הגוף helps here since it directly addresses the ספק that we are dealing with which is whether she had a מום. חזקת פּנויה does not directly address the ספק. In the case of the מקוה the חזקת הגוף of the מקוה does not address the ספק  directly either since the question is on the status of the person and not on the status of the מקוה itself. 

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